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I live in Australia too and while roundabouts are OK for low to medium sized road and even larger roads with even traffic they absolutely do not work for heavy
by dmz73 4y ago
I live in Australia too and while roundabouts are OK for low to medium sized road and even larger roads with even traffic they absolutely do not work for heavy and uneven traffic. I have seen a number of large roundabouts become a congestion point once the traffic became heavy and mostly coming from one or two directions. Once they converted those roundabouts to intersections with traffic lights, the congestion eased significantly.
So, roundabouts can work but not in all instances.
- perilunar 4y agoThere's a couple of roundabouts south of Sydney that have traffic lights controlling the entry flow during peak traffic periods. Seem to work well.
- SOLAR_FIELDS 4y agoYes, this is one of the few areas that traffic lights excel. I’ve been stuck for 20-30 minutes at a small roundabout in Poland where two highways intersect in a rural area simply because of heavy traffic. US could stand to gain massively by replacing about 90% of their intersections with roundabouts - but the remaining 10% could probably stay lights and everyone would win.
- cameronh90 4y agoIn the UK, we solve that by putting traffic lights on roundabouts. Still get the safety advantages of a roundabout but they can carry uneven traffic. Alternatively, offset junctions are also common.