Traffic Roundabouts

Yep, in my city we have a roundabout with 4 cardinal directions, roughly aligned with compass directions.The West connection is to/from highway, so it has most traffic. People arriving from North/East/South want to leave on the West. And this causes massive jams, as the constant supply of traffic going from South entry to the West exit (i.e. doing left turn, and passing all ramps) essentially blocks all the other traffic.Roundabout are great, they increase safety of dangerou

Roundabouts often lead to cars being forced to stop. The stop is however generally much shorter, occasionally not needed, and when cars leaves at the first turn then the other cars from other directions can simultaneously use the roundabout at the same time. Many roundabouts here where I live also have extra roads for some direct right turns where such traffic flow is common, which mean that those cars don't even need to enter the roundabout and just need to be observant of cars existing to

Allow me to explain why at least one of them is so annoying. The roundabout is atop a hill; there is little visibility of what traffic is approaching from other directions because the hill is steep. Motorists don't bother signaling how far around they will go. I, riding a bicycle on a sidewalk, wish to go straight across the road. However I can't always see that someone is entering the circle. And even if I do see someone is entering, I don't know when they will exit. Compare this

Roundabouts are no panacea and are commonly used in situations where other solutions would make sense.One example is when a minor road crosses a major one. At rush hour, the traffic going straight across can saturate the roundabout. You end up with congestion in all directions due to both faster traffic having to slow down for the roundabout on the major road and the traffic on the minor road being "stuck" waiting for a gap. A crossroads with lights would work better in this situation but the

Cities in Europe are full of roundabouts in the busy city center, we don't have four way intersections. It's not terrible; it's safer. They handle the throughput better than intersections, because the flow is usually uninterrupted.

Roundabouts are rare in the US. Four-way stops are far more common. If the authorities find a particular one to be too dangerous, they would normally install traffic lights rather than replace it with a roundabout.

I live in the PNW. I like roundabouts where they fit, but near our house there's a super-busy one with multiple lanes that is just an accident magnet. People are constantly cutting across lanes while entering and exiting and sideswiping each other. It was originally a 4-way traffic light and it should have stayed that way. OTOH, we have a 4-way stop sign that is also an accident magnet during rush hour (when there's so much traffic that right-of-way is often unclear) and it should be a

My city has a lot of large roundabouts and a few years ago they made big improvements that reduced the number of incidents and improved traffic flow:1. They switched from 3 lane traditional to 2 lane spiral roundabouts. There are signs well before you enter the roundabout telling you what lane you need to be in, so you can get into the right lane early. We have a lot of snow in winter, so road markings are not visible.Example of a sign indicating which lane you need to be in. After this si

Roundabouts are great, dependent on traffic flow. If you have large amounts of traffic moving in one direction, it will prevent traffic flow from the direction that has to give way to it. In New Zealand, we use a lot of roundabouts, but often congestion easing requires replacing roundabouts with traffic lights to merge two incompatible streams of traffic.

wont roundabouts solve the same problem today!?