Surprising Result of NYC Bike Lanes: Faster Traffic for Cars 213
A report at vox.com says that the implementation of bike lanes in traffic-heavy New York City has one possibly non-intuitive result: car traffic was sped up as a result. The bike lanes have caused the lanes for cars to be narrowed, but as a result of the street redesign to accomodate bikes, one big change has especially helped to keep cars moving forward more steadily:
Although narrower streets can slow traffic, that doesn't seem to have happened here — perhaps because traffic in this area was crawling at around 11 miles per hour to begin with.
Instead, the narrower lanes were capable of handling just as much traffic, and one major improvement to intersection design helped them handle more, while also letting bikes travel more safely.
This improvement was something called a pocket lane for left-hand turns: a devoted turning lane at most intersections that takes the place of the parking lane, which gets cars out of the way of moving traffic when they're making a left.
Bikes lanes are nice (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Bikes lanes are nice (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. It looks like the change that actually helped was that, near to intersections, they replaced a lane used for parking with a left turn lane. I don't know why anyone would be surprised that adding a traffic lane would help improve traffic flow.
The only thing that the bike lanes apparently have to do with it is that adding bike lanes was the reason why they decided to change the lane layout.
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In Grand Rapids MI (I think it's Grand Rapids anyway) there are several intersections where left turns are not allowed. Instead, they provide dedicated turn-around spots in the middle of the block, with the intention that you drive past your turn, turn around, and then turn right.
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Bicycles honestly do belong on the road. Where else are you going to put them, on the sidewalk? There are pedestrians up there.
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Bicycles honestly do belong on the road. Where else are you going to put them, on the sidewalk?
They belong under my wheels. Keep your toys off my infrastructure. You will join the other pit slaves on Paving Day, doomed to a life of cleaning public toilets while I cruise the paved world in my hypersonic atomic car, under the light of the chromed moon.
Re:Bikes lanes are nice (Score:5, Funny)
And then, children, they say he dipped so far into trolldom that he emerged through the other side, enlightenment radiating off of his shiny bumper.
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Wait, what? You actually modded him "Troll"? Why would you do that? It's hilarious. Didn't you catch the part where he went PAST trolldom, going further, into enlightenment? Come on people, have a laugh. I mean really, "chromed moon"? How can you not love that?
Maybe Poe's law is in full effect. When the stance of the opposition is so weird that you can't tell them apart from the people parodying them for a laugh.
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Actually, this one's a case of the moderators needing to get off my lawn. The "pave the world" movement was known to any real geek during the days when usenet ruled. Slashdot died a little today, when no one got the joke that everyone would have once recognized. Pit slaves, the lot of you!
Re:Bikes lanes are nice (Score:5, Insightful)
But getting rid of those bikers, which honestly do not belong on the road, could only of helped.
They didn't get the cyclists off the roads (what do you think they did? Build elevated cycling pathways above the road?), they accommodated cyclists on the shared streets.
The cyclists are still there, the cars are still there, but everyone has a little more room, is safer, and traffic moves more smoothly, sounds like a win all around.
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The removed a parking lane and added a bike lane and a turn lane.
The losers are locals with cars and no place to park them. But only idiots live in Manhattan and own a car.
Re:Bikes lanes are nice (Score:5, Informative)
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But getting rid of those bikers, which honestly do not belong on the road, could only of helped.
That's just really bad logic.
A bicycle doesn't take up anywhere near as much road space as a car. On crowded downtown streets, where cars cannot travel faster than bikes, every person on a bike is one less vehicle in your gridlock. And one less competitor for that parking space you are looking for. Bikes make a helluvalot of sense in highly trafficked areas, and bike lanes which encourage more people to use bicycles is one of the best things that can be done to improve the commutes of automobile drivers.
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Suggest you re-read grandparent post, and TFA. This time do so with an emphasis on comprehension, if that is within your capability.
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Why is it the problem that one human is going slower than another? Couldn't the problem be the human that is going faster?
Additionally, it's exceptionally easy to keep up with crowded city traffic on a bike. I would say most days you can easily beat it in fact.
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In cities like New York and London, it's usually that the cars cannot keep up with bicycles (not the other way around). I live in a rural area, but whenever I've cycled in congested urban areas, I've often been MUCH quicker than car traffic and usually the cars are slowing me down. Car traffic in cities is slow because there are too many cars, not because of cyclists (or little duckies).
There's even an episode of Top Gear where they prove the bicycle is the fastest method of getting across London. And that'
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Re:Bikes lanes are nice (Score:5, Insightful)
You are not kept away from cars on a sidewalk.
Since drivers rarely look for traffic on sidewalks as they go in and out of driveways and side streets, you run a high risk of getting run over at every curb cut. At least when you're on the road, drivers usually see you when they bother to glance up from their cellphones.
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Just a guess here. You've never even seen a picture of a NY city sidewalk, have you?
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[...] on the street [bicycles] interfere with traffic.
Just for your information, bicycles are part of the traffic! As for "interference", the appropriate control situation is not one where the cyclists are magically poofed to New Delhi (or the moon), but one where every cyclist is replaced by yet another car...
Re:Bikes lanes are nice (Score:5, Insightful)
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That's a troll, right?
On the flat (and I'm not a lycra clad person either) I can easily keep up 17-18 mph all day. In a city, this is usually as fast (if not faster) than cars. In no way are cyclists doing this speed compatible with 3mph pedestrians. Cyclists belong on the road. (In fact where I live cyclists have a right to be on the road - cars do not, cars need to be licensed, car drivers need to be licensed).
Motorcyclists are also vulnerable road users. Should they be on the sidewalk too?
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Perhaps true. But except for downtowns and crowded cities, most ordinary cities have no pedestrians on their sidewalks. So why should bicyclists risk their lives driving on the same road as cars when the sidewalks are empty? It would be nice to have sidewalks with a barrier to separate pedestrians from cyclists.
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Feel free to make up explanations off the top of your head, but maybe the slightest bit of NYC knowledge would help.
The three stretches of road that the study looked at traffic speeds for are all one-way, so nothing you said applies at all. Not one word of it.
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I'm betting the bike lanes helped a lot also. Not having to follow some guy dribbling down the road at half the speed limit is nice.
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Average speed was 11mph to begin with. The bikes, able to weave between traffic at 30mph for a biker in shape, were not the limiting factor.
I thought it was going to be more like what other cities that have implemented bike lanes and routes have seen- fewer people in cars on the road.
Re:Bikes lanes are nice (Score:5, Insightful)
Why are so many people delusional about cycling speeds? Nobody does 30mph on a bicycle in a city, most certainly not weaving between anything. That would be suicidal and require fantastically exceptional fitness, not just "being in shape". Most people never do more than 25mph, don't do more than 20mph on a regular basis and do less than 15mph on average - and they're still faster than a car in a crowded city.
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Why are so many people delusional about cycling speeds?
He's going downhill, both ways
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All of which is greater than 11mph.....the speed of the automobile traffic in New York City.
Having said that, I used to drive a Honda Spree. I've *clocked* bicycles doing 30 in 25mph zones.
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Why are so many people delusional about cycling speeds? Nobody does 30mph on a bicycle in a city, most certainly not weaving between anything.
30 MPH is near enough to 50 KPH (48.3 from memory). Cyclists never move this fast, not even down hill and especially in traffic. As verified by the GPS based speedometer on my dash cam, getting stuck behind a cyclist tends to peak at 20 KPH (less than 15 KPH). This is why traffic in my city moves faster in the Winter when more people are in cars instead of on their bike
If you're a cyclist who doesn't hold up traffic we'd love to hear from you, please send a letter to:
I'm a liar
Top Gear
BBC Televisio
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I reach at least 35 mph every day I cycle according to the Cyclemeter GPS application. It's pretty easy to reach that speed downhill.
On the level I can sustain pretty much all day long 17-18 mph.
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I'm a utility cyclist, but cyclemeter tells me I sustain about 17 or 18 mph on the flat (I live in a rural area so cars are not impeding me). I commonly hit 20mph for stretches, and there are some downhill parts of my ride where I hit 35 mph. I don't wear any lycra at all either.
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An excellent time for a century ride (100 miles) is under 6 hours. Or 17+ mph. Most commuter bicyclists do about 15 mph.
However most automotive traffic on the downtown streets of every city I have seen in the last 20 odd years never exceed 20 mph, and spend a lot of time waiting at stop lights. They probably average between 5 and 10 mph. Bicycles usually leave them in the dust, waiting for a light to turn, etc.
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If we could only arrange for every segment of every bike trip to enjoy a 3% downhill grade, a stiff tail wind, 40 degF dewpoint and partly cloudy skies, then almost nobody would even bother to buy a car.
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So, you want to build pressurized bike tunnels? I think it could work, as long as you have an elevator at the "stations"
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And a 120PSI tire can easily put one into 0MPH. Skinny tires are not practical for commuting anywhere there is glass.
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The fastest ever individual stage over 10km on the Tour de France was 33.90 MPH, set by Greg LeMond in 1989 during a 15.3 mile time trail from Versailles to Paris. His bike was a steel-frame Bottecchia with custom handlebars on a single 52x12 gear. LeMond himself was 28, in his top shape, and -- some say -- full of EPO. The roads were closed to normal city traffic. Now, no doubt you can sprint to more than that on a downhill and drafting behind a lorry, but it stands that "[n]obody does 30mph on a bicycle i
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Yea, never heard of a recumbent bicycle, have you? We've got them that allow people to easily and near-effortlessly do 50MPH+ on a flat road. Also, fixie bikes with huge front gears can go much faster than your typical 10-speed with a crank gear a third the size.
For instance, Jose Meiffret passed the 60MPH mark in 1962, paced by a car on Germany's Autobahn. And in 1995, Dutch cyclist Fred Rompelberg reached 167 mph while using a top-fuel dragster to pace him at Bonneville Salt Flats - which by the way is re
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Motor pacing is more than just a little bit of aerodynamic resistance reduction. Even riding behind another cyclist already results in 40% power reduction. And Fred Rompelberg's configuration was pretty extreme: see http://www.fredrompelberg.com/... [fredrompelberg.com]
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You forgot the part where they morph from 'car' to 'pedestrian' without warning... Riding on the road until something is blocking it, then zipping onto the sidewalk for a few hundred feet and then flying back out on the road without looking... Or coming up to a red light and then turning 90 degrees to cross the road, then going up on the sidewalk and back out on the road again having just successfully made a 'left turn' without waiting for the light...
But accidentally bump one of them and suddenly you're ju
Re:Bikes lanes are nice (Score:4, Insightful)
The addition of the left turn lane was possible only because the lane width had been reduced due to the bike lane. The thing to take home from this is that current road layouts are not optimal, and rethinking them offers improvement opportunities. That the improvements can be counter-intuitive should encourage more research into alternative layouts: If you reject change too easily, you won't find a great solution. Who would have agreed to narrower lanes if it had not been necessary in order to have a bike lane?
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This is true but, it also is a case where what works in one place may or may not work the same (or be implemented similarly) elsewhere. I have seen these exact same lanes turn into a nightmare. Not because they put traffic in the way but because they retained the left and right lanes, and just occasionally, turn the left lane into a turn only lane....so everyone who was traveling in that lane suddenly has to move over.....and few things slow drivers down like a lane merge.
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In 1980 the two southbound lanes of the Sunshine Skyway were knocked into Tampa Bay by a freighter. Until the new bridge was constructed the two lanes of the remaining half of the bridge every year carried more vehicles in less average time and with fewer accidents than when it was four lanes.
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Yeah. Duh. They *added a left turn lane*, which means that they *added another lane*.
News Flash - when you add a lane, traffics moves faster.
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No, they didn't. The total number of lanes declined. In essence, they went from having four lanes, with no dedicated turn lane, to three lanes for most of the street, expanding to four (with one being a dedicated turn lane) at every other intersection. So, for the bulk of the street, the number of lanes declined.
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Four lanes with no dedicated left turn lane turns into three lanes when someone wants to turn left.
And add to that the chaos of having to do lane changes because people get stuck behind left turners
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Four lanes with no dedicated left turn lane turns into three lanes when someone wants to turn left.
And add to that the chaos of having to do lane changes because people get stuck behind left turners (and the corresponding people who want to turn left but were in the other lanes to avoid left turners in the previous intersection) means traffic just gets all jumbled up.
Put in some proper traffic lights to help clear left turn lanes so people don't jam it when it fills up and spills into a straight through lane...
Basically all that happened was in order to build a bike lane, they had to reconfigure a bunch of intersections and in so doing also happened to improve traffic flow.
On your traffic lights point, please do remember that these left turn lanes aren't like what you're used to, if you're not a New Yorker. These are left turn lanes coming off a one way street. In Manhattan (at least) most major arteries are one way. They're not there to facilitate turning left across oncoming traffic, but rather because turners often get held up by pedestrian traffic.
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Problem: how to increase traffic to the website.
Solution: Post self-contradictory submissions so people are more likely to reply.
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So it's not the bike lanes. (Score:3)
TFA implies is has nothing to do with bike lanes. The benefit comes from the improved intersection, which can happen with or without bike lanes.
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But, which presumably wouldn't have happened without adding the bike lanes, and therefore was a happy side effect which made cyclists safer AND cars go faster.
Everybody wins.
Re:So it's not the bike lanes. (Score:4, Interesting)
Except it could have been done for less than the cost of adding the bike lanes, if the city actually cared about traffic congestion.
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Well, presumably they cared about not having cyclists die.
If it achieves that and improves overall traffic flow, it takes away a lot of the reasons for people bitching against bike lanes in the first place.
It's freakin' New York City, from what I understand traffic congestion has been a problem for decades, and so has cyclists getting killed.
I call this a win-win.
Re:So it's not the bike lanes. (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh boo hoo, the city, quite reasonably, combined two projects that work on roads into one process. What financial malfeasance.
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Except now, the next jackass-bike-messenger-as-a-hero-movie [imdb.com] will be a lot less interesting to watch.
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And slashdot is just the latest of hundreds if not thousands (by the time slashdot gets updated with news) of blogs and news agencies which totally reported Bike Lanes as being the cause.
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TFA implies is has nothing to do with bike lanes. The benefit comes from the improved intersection, which can happen with or without bike lanes.
The TFA not withstanding, the theory is sound.
I live in Perth, Western Australia and roads with cycle lanes do travel faster than roads without them, even in peak hour. Not only is it faster for both motorist and cyclist, it's safer for both motorist and cyclist. Unfortunately a lot of old roads that are frequented by cyclists dont have cycle lanes. These roads are noticeably faster in the winter than the summer because the cyclists are in their cars. That's right, more cars and the traffic moves faster.
P.S.A. in you live in NYC (Score:3)
this is a police scam.
there is no law saying a bicyclist must ride in lane in NYC.. it's only recommended but up to rider's discretion.
I showed up to my hearing and the judge dismissed it without me saying a word (after the cop lied about how far he saw me riding of course).
they're of course hoping you don't know the law and don't (or can't) get off from work 6 months later (when you get a hearing date) to challenge it.i wonder how many millions theyve stolen from the public this way.
ok - that's all.
Re:P.S.A. in you live in NYC (Score:5, Informative)
"there is no law saying a bicyclist must ride in lane in NYC.. it's only recommended but up to rider's discretion."
This isn't actually true. See below. If there's a bike lane, you're required to use it, unless you're making a turn, or are reasonably trying to avoid conditions. Reasonably is the key word here. Reasonably means "what a typical person in that situation would do," the rider doesn't get to define reasonably based on his/her own standards. Clearly, if there's a car parked in the bike lane, it's reasonable to go around it. If you're still not in the bike lane two blocks later, that's going to be hard to claim.
(p) Bicycles. (1) Bicycle riders to use bicycle lanes. Whenever a usable path or lane for bicycles has been provided, bicycle riders shall use such path or lane only except under any of the following situations:
(i) When preparing for a turn at an intersection or into a private road or driveway.
(ii) When reasonably necessary to avoid conditions (including but not limited to, fixed or moving objects, motor vehicles, bicycles, pedestrians, pushcarts, animals, surface hazards) that make it unsafe to continue within such bicycle path or lane.
http://rules.cityofnewyork.us/... [cityofnewyork.us]
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decent article on it: http://www.wnyc.org/story/2842... [wnyc.org]
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You're on a bike, a cop yells 'halt', and you halt? What is wrong with you? God damn law abider.
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Depends, how do you feel about being run over by cops?
Re:P.S.A. in you live in NYC (Score:5, Insightful)
Hey, it's a defense, don't get me wrong, but your categorical statement that there isn't a law requiring you to ride in the bike line was just wrong, and bad advice for other riders. You can get ticketed for riding outside the bike line, and then it's incumbent on you to make the argument that you had reasonable grounds to be outside the lane. In your case, the judge was very friendly - not all are.
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NY State law only requires non-motor vehicles to be as far to the right "as practicable" and has explicit provisions preventing smaller jurisdictions from restricting the freedoms of bicyclists. These segregated bike lanes are a recipe for getting plowed over by unobservant turning drivers and it isn't unusual for "practicable" to mean riding on the left side of the lane proper.
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These segregated bike lanes are a recipe for getting plowed over by unobservant turning drivers
If you're depending on drivers to notice you when turning, you're already dead, bike lanes or not.
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Reasonably is the key word here. Reasonably means "what a typical person in that situation would do,"
No, sorry, that's not what "reasonable" means as a legal term [wikipedia.org].
It's NOT what a "typical person" or an "average person" would do. As Wikipedia explains:
The reasonable person standard is by no means democratic in its scope; it is, contrary to popular conception, intentionally distinct from that of the "average person," who is not necessarily guaranteed to always be reasonable. The reasonable person will weigh all of the following factors before acting:
-- the foreseeable risk of harm his actions create versus the utility of his actions;
-- the extent of the risk so created;
-- the likelihood such risk will actually cause harm to others;
-- any alternatives of lesser risk, and the costs of those alternatives.
All of those components aren't part of the strict definition, but the idea is that, legally, "reasonable" activities are those made using good judgment by a sort of "ideal" person. A "typical" or "average" person may be a jerk, for example, and act in selfish ways that could actually endanger others. (Observe traffic behavior in highly congested areas som
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You're 100% correct, and I phrased that very poorly.
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I'm a cyclist as well, in NYC, and I certainly know this. Don't generalize.
Simple physics (Score:2, Funny)
If you decrease the cross-section area while maintaining volume flow, the velocity has to increase.
This has been another installment of Physics Applied Badly.
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Not fluid flow. Semiconductors. Bikes are dopents. They leave openings in traffic behind them.
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So Miller Coupling Capacitance delay implies that bikes cycling side by side go 2X slower.
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Not fluid flow. Semiconductors. Bikes are dopents. They leave openings in traffic behind them.
Not quite. To continue the electrical analogy, bikes are resistors. They slow it down, limit current.
In traffic, there is never an opening behind a cyclist, there's normally a large line of cars trying to get around them.
Simple change. What about round abouts (Score:3)
Have roundabout been trialed in big cities? I know it doesn't apply to one way streets unless 2 of them meet.
The small town I grew up in doubled in size since I left and they replaced 2 major intersections with roundabouts. The congestion has been reduced significantly and the police posted numbers showing a 75% reduction in accidents at those intersections in the first 5 years of implementation.
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Roundabouts completely fail if there's lots of traffic. If one entrance has lots of traffic entering then it's likely that the entrance after it will be unable to flow into the circle at all. I've seen this in action, or should I say inaction.
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Roundabouts completely fail if there's lots of traffic. If one entrance has lots of traffic entering then it's likely that the entrance after it will be unable to flow into the circle at all. I've seen this in action, or should I say inaction.
Operative words: heavy traffic.
Traffic lights will also cause huge tailbacks if there is enough traffic to stall a roundabout. Here you need to have a limited access road with no traffic obstructions (so basically a highway). Often, roundabouts are faster than traffic lights because they allow all four entrances and exits to be used at once. Sure you may have to slow down a little, but you dont normally need to stop compared to a traffic light where you have a 50% chance of a red light.
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There's a bunch of roundabouts in the Fort Lauderdale area (Hollywood, in particular) that are basically 6-lane mini-freeways with a few random minor roads between the two main endpoints, but as a practical matter your chances of safely and successfully going ANYWHERE from one of those minor streets besides a right turn onto the main highway and continuing travel in the same direction is somewhere between "slim" and "none", because you'd have to cut left across 3 lanes of 45mph+ traffic with almost no break
Re:Simple change. What about round abouts (Score:5, Informative)
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Huh? Roundabouts and standard crossings are equivalent when it comes to pedestrians. In both cases, you add crosswalks "circling" the roundabout or intersection, and cars must yield for pedestrians when entering and leaving the roundabout/intersection. (Example of small roundabout [findvej.dk] with pedestrian crossings and bike path.)
If there's a lot of traffic, you add traffic lights; this, too, can be done for both roundabouts and intersections. (Example of roundabout with traffic lights [findvej.dk]; though I've personally obse
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Dupont Circle is a traffic circle which isn't quite the same as a roundabout. Roundabounts have different design specifications: smaller, not usually more than four connecting paths. This makes them easier to negotiate when placed in locations where volume isn't too high to lock out less trafficked lanes. In places where more roads need to meet you'll sometimes see double roundabouts to handle the connectivity while maintaining the advantage of better sight lines from the smaller radius.
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Or Paris, or London, roundabouts with more than 2 lanes are a nightmare because humans aren't made to handle that many inputs in real time.
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Re:No Fucking Shit (Score:5, Informative)
The innovation here is left turn lanes on ONE WAY STREETS. Left turn lanes on two way streets have been around for a long time, but they are rarely used when the street you're turning off of is a one-way street (so you're not crossing oncoming traffic when making a left).
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This is a city where cars are at risk of being run down by pedestrians - a "one way" street has a lot of pedestrian flow in both directions.
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Ding ding ding.