Reducing Traffic Lights 1: Modern Roundabouts

I mentioned in a previous post entitled "The evils of traffic lights" that I'm not a big fan of traffic lights. I think reducing the number of them in our cities can encourage more pedestrian and bike friendly places.

One way to do this in some cases is to install Modern Roundabouts where there had previously been a stop sign or traffic light. The key here is to not confuse Modern Roundabouts with traffic circles and rotaries, which is what primarily exist in Massachusetts. The main differences between them are the overall diameter of the circle and the typical speeds in the circle as well as entering and exiting speeds. A well designed modern roundabout will never see cars traveling higher than 25 mph in the vicinity and many keep speeds to less than 20 mph within the roundabout.

For a good video of what I'm talking about check this out.

The best examples are single lane roundabouts. They are the smallest, slowest moving and the most simple type. Traffic in these commonly moves at around 15mph around the roundabout, which is a very bike friendly speed.

Some people might not like these because there seems to be limited opportunity to draw bike lanes or paint in green. But bicycles can be easily accommodated by adding a bike bypass path outside of the roundabout wide enough for pedestrians and bikers to share. However with single lane roundabouts, these are probably unnecessary. Simply a sign saying "bicyclists use full lane through roundabout" would more than suffice.

By removing traffic lights, speeds would be reduced and the tension resulting from the temporal nature of traffic lights would be eliminated.