Curious as to why there are so few roundabouts in the USA?

They do have benefits for traffic

45 comments

  1. They can take up a lot of space.

    They sometimes can be a huge issue. Near my neighborhood, there has been talks about one, but doing so would eat up land by a bank and bring them under the legally mandated minimum number of parking spaces, and the city/county won’t provide an exemption for that.

  2. There’s a handful in my town. Off the top of my head I can think of 6 specific ones but I’m sure there are a number of others.

    Google says there are around 8,800 in the country

  3. People don’t know how to use them. There’s one near where I live and I avoid it because I have repeatedly seen people going around the wrong way because they want to make a left turn.

  7. There’s been more added in my area and I live in a neighborhood with roundabouts but people don’t know how to use them even if there is signs.

  8. *stares at Carmel, Indiana*

    So I think roundabouts are great for modest amounts of predictable traffic, which is largely what Carmel has.

    Carmel is a northern suburb of Indianapolis. Unlike a lot of suburbs, it lacks an Interstate Highway but does have US-31 which is now upgraded to Interstate standards. It also has Keystone Parkway, which is another basically Interstate level road. So it has two major north/south roads that are not intersecting with city traffic. So thru traffic doesn’t have to mingle with city traffic.

    It also has a lot of office space which leads to a lot of predictable rush hour traffic. Outside of peak commute times, traffic isn’t bad.

    Where roundabouts don’t work is when there’s a lot of intense traffic with a lot of businesses and alleys to access, like there is in dense downtown areas. Stop signs and traffic signals will function much better. Even in Carmel, 146th Street is a heavily trafficked road and largely doesn’t have roundabouts until it gets more into low traffic and rural suburbia. The heavily trafficked parts of 146th in Carmel/Westfield and Noblesville/Fishers are almost all traffic signals.

    Another drawback of roundabouts is the cost. They take much more in area which means eminent domain, and unlike a corner intersection, it can be tougher to develop near a roundabout. If there’s an existing business where a roundabout goes, it can be tough to work around and often it gets demolished.

    Carmel is also a relatively affluent community so it can absorb these upfront costs for the more long term savings, but most communities don’t have that type of luxury.

    Finally, at least in Indiana, pedestrians almost never have the right of way unless they have an affirmative crossing from a walk signal. Roundabouts, especially the large figure 8 ones, require pedestrians to yield maybe up to 7x. And they’re supposed to go with the flow of traffic. So at a 4 way stop you cross one or maybe two times. At a figure 8 roundabout you may be crossing up to 7 times.

  9. Our traffic developed around the four way stop serving the same function as a roundabout serves there. Roundabouts are a newer addition. Sometimes roundabouts are better, sometimes four way stops are better, and the overwhelming majority of the time there’s no difference.

  10. Cursory Google search tells me it’s a mix of bad implementation of traffic circles in the early 20th century that cut them out of road networks moving forward and the cost and inconvenience of ripping out intersections to replace them.

    We know about the benefits, but Americans can be stubborn. They tore out a five-way intersection near me at a major crossing just outside of a fairly large town in Ohio to replace it with a roundabout a few years ago. It diverted traffic up and down rural roads, caused a lot of major traffic inconveniences to local towns, and forced a local burger restaurant out of business because it was next to the intersection and nobody was driving down there with the construction going on. That’s reason enough for some to protest their implementation.

  12. They’re becoming quite common in my area. Too common if you ask me, they’re used for intersections where they’re not really necessary.

  13. We as a people don’t like them and it would take too long to retrofit intersections where they’d be most useful.

  15. There’s a ton in Massachusetts and a lot in California. It’s gotta either correlate with progressiveness or high gdp but I dunno

  16. I know people will say that statistically they’re safer. And that’s mostly because you have to slow down to like 20mph in order to use one (where someone can blow through a stop light or stop sign).

    It’s worth mentioning that they are used commonly across parts of Europe in areas that aren’t often covered in snow and/or ice. Navigating roundabouts in nasty weather conditions never seems exactly “safe”.

  18. There are a number of them in the suburbs and exurbs here in locations where, in my opinion, they are not at all necessary and are just annoying. Maybe the future plans for those areas indicates an amount of traffic where they will actually be helpful; idk.

  19. I have 4 of them right outside my neighborhood. Like literally all within a mile of each other. Delaware seems to be jumping on the roundabout bandwagon.

  20. I find it weird when people say that America has very few roundabouts. I feel like the city I live in–Madison, WI–has like 10 roundabouts. Is that unusual in other cities?

  21. There’s tons of circles in New Jersey. It’s not a roundabout, but it is the same concept and it’s better

  23. There are a bunch near me in MN. Depends on state and if there is a found use for them over a fourway.

  24. They’re becoming increasingly common. In some places, they’ve made traffic flow worse, e.g. the exit ramp from US-23 north to Geddes Road in Ann Arbor. The east–west traffic on Geddes Road never stops, and it can take 10 minutes or more to exit the freeway through the roundabout to get onto Geddes during morning rush hour.

    There’s also the fact that we haven’t had to rebuild cities post-war in the last 80 years, and ours are designed mostly with standard intersections. Many of the newer roundabouts seem to be installed in expanding suburbs/exurbs (where they generally work well).

  25. They’re building more roundabouts here in AZ. They also just completed the “double diamond” style traffic model in North Phoenix. Roundabouts make sense and definitely help the flow of traffic when it’s peak tourist season during the winter/spring months.

  26. There are quite a few of them in my area and while some people don’t understand how to use them they are for the most part they are much more efficient than stop lights particularly at intersections of two roads with moderate to slightly heavy amounts of traffic.

  28. It seems we’ve favored the 4 way stop instead of a roundabout. Which is really strange, because they often seem confusing to most as well. Although roundabouts are becoming more common.

    In our driving centric little part of the world most seem to want to be told exactly what to do. Green, you go. Red, you stop. Stop sign, you stop. Roundabouts though there is where the confusion comes in. Yield to enter, adds confusion for so many people who don’t seem to understand them. But in that same way 4 way stop signs are similar. I’ll watch someone sitting at a stop sign waiting for another car to pull up and stop. Then they actually go. Or no one knows when they should actually go at the 4 way.

  29. I’ve lived in three American cities so far.

    Chicago IL – I can think of one roundabout in the suburbs of Chicago in a residential area.

    Twin Cities, MN – Maybe one or two?

    Charlotte, NC – roundabouts EVERYWHERE. Bane of my existence.

    The only thing I can thing of is that the first two are midwestern cities with a big body of water in the way of city planning that roundabouts aren’t super friendly with. Charlotte doesn’t have that so, and is an older city by American standards and is built in a circular fashion, much like Europe, compared to the midwest where there’s a grid.

  30. Four way stops were established prior to roundabouts.

    So, four way stops are are most often taught but round abouts are rarely even taught in the US driving curriculum.

  32. They’re catching on a lot more, now. It sure would be nice if people knew how to use them though. It’ll take a generation for them to be common place.

  33. They added stop lights to some of the busiest roundabouts in Tijuana. I’m not sure what the thinking behind that was, it’s a total shitshow of a traffic jam driving through there now.

    The only roundabouts I see here on the US side of the border are mostly very small ones in residential neighborhoods.

  34. Impedance on property. They take more space.

    That said, they’re gaining adoption in my area. We’re building more and more.

  35. >They do have benefits for traffic

    That’s highly debatable.

    I grew up in a town in Massachusetts (the Northeast has a lot of roundabouts though we call them rotaries) and there used to be a rotary in our town right in front of the bridge over the Cape Cod canal and it caused massive backups on the highway that led over the bridge. They replaced it with onramps and traffic lights and traffic improved immensely.

    But that said, there actually are a fair amount of then still in New England.

  36. They’re pretty common in parts of New England, and a new one was installed in Morristown, NJ, near where I live, and has improved the intersection of spring and Morris streets.

  38. Simple answer? Its because we had money and we’re a developed country. So traffic signals (and the electrical infrastructure for them) were readily available. Im always shocked at how even slightly less developed countries like Australia have so few signals and street signs and signalized intersections. The roads look impoverished most places Ive visited outside America if that makes sense.

  39. Because they’re a pain in the ass. One lane roundabouts,ok. Multi lane roundabouts though? Fuck them.

  40. They are quite common in some places and very rare in others. There are some quite large ones in New England that they call a “rotary.” Carmel, Indiana has plenty as well. There’s always a learning curve when they’re constructed in an unfamiliar area, with rather hilarious results.

    As for why, I’d honestly assume because people have trouble figuring them out at first.

  42. We have enough drivers with problems going in a straight line most days. Watching them go with around a round about, or being in one while watching the nut jobs try to get in and out is pretty much taking your life in your own hands times a thousand.

    When I lived up in Maine there were a few up there and I’ve driven around a few in Boston, they are extremely nerve-wracking when it’s not something you’ve grown up with. In fact they had a small one in a city near me and they have several accidents at this roundabout. So they decided to put in a bigger one that you had to get off and on to the highway with over by the hospitals, I haven’t been there to hear how many accidents they’ve had with that one but I can only imagine it’s several.

  44. My city tested it out with a few intersections.
     

    **Traffic**

    It didn’t have a huge effect on the throughput of traffic. You had to slow down to 20mph to use it, where as a 4way stop you could stay going 35mph. So this sort of evened out.
     

    **Cost**

    It also took up a lot of space, so the city had to buy 2 properties and part of one. Then they also had to pay to move and store the stuff while those businesses were relocated. So it had a huge upfront cost. The physical size of it was larger, which increased the cost of materials. Although they did save on lights. In the end the maintenance and running costs were similar.
     

    **Accidents**

    In terms of accidents, one had a few less, but it wasn’t a big enough difference.
     

    **Summary**

    After 3 years one was turned into a standard 4 way stop and the other one became 2 lanes in all directions, so whatever you want to call that.
     

    This brings me to one of the biggest reasons I don’t think we see them in the USA as much as Europe…. Growth. Many cities in the USA are less than 200 years old while also being some of the biggest in the world in size and population. So you need a system that can grow and expand quickly and can also be scaled later on. It is pretty easy to expand 1 lane into 2 when you have a 4 way stop. In some cases, cities plan for that and use medians, or sidewalk strips. This way if that part of the city expends, they can easily buy that land and widen the road to multiple lanes.
     

    This actually just happened a block away from me. It took them a week to do and poof a 2 lane road.
     

    **Personally**

    I think roundabouts can be useful for those intersections that have an oddly high amount of wrecks, but generally I think they will become bother some. most cities are grid based in the USA, so just dropping them in anywhere could cause problems.

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