102
just... do a roundabout, man
this post was submitted on 25 Apr 2026
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But roundabout require people to think and interact with the traffic! We want to drive fast, but stupid.
i think the average american would die of shock if they came to visit me. just to get through town (as in just passing by) requires navigating on average 9 to 11 roundabouts, and that's on an E-road.
it's pretty obvious when using google maps for navigation that they don't really "get" roundabouts. it pipes up "take the second exit" in every roundabout where you need to go straight through.
Thank you for providing Wikipedia for e-roads
Hmm how suspiciously Milton Keynes of you....
We've had roundabouts all over the place for 20+ years at this point. I genuinely don't get why people still struggle so much with them.
But fwiw my town also requires several roundabouts to get through and it’s not very big. And almost every time an intersection needs work, we get a new roundabout.
However I actually do like the way the directions work in maps where it says “take the x exit” because a ton of roads aren't well marked in roundabouts, and there are some weird but decently common situations where the exit you'd think you need is not the right one. Thats just sort of what happens when you are retrofitting everything, and have space constraints.
but i mean, it doesn't say "continue straight" in every interchange. i don't know how other countries do it but we have being able to navigate by signage as a mandatory part of driving tests and it's always understood that no instructions given means "continue on your current course".
Sometimes my GPS will be like "go left up here," but left is actually straight and right is the exit. I think it's just seeing if I'm still awake.
It depends here, sometimes we genuinely do get a bunch of “continue straight to stay on xyz” for no obvious reason, and on highways with multiple off-ramps that split the existing lanes, it’s very common to get “use the middle lane to continue on xyz” so it’s not really as out of place as you might think. Our roads are just spaghetti garbage. Josh from Let’s Game It Out must have done the road planning.
And yes, navigating by signs is doable, but we are (were?) talking about navigation apps which provide excruciating detail, so thats a bit of a moot point. But where, specifically, they are marked changes, how well they are marked changes, and on many of them you can’t see signage at night until you are almost past it, and due to mostly being space-constrained retrofits, which exit you want from the roundabout isn't nearly as standardized as it should be, even to continue straight. Sometimes straight is the first exit, sometimes the third. Usually second. It’s not a super great implementation of the system, but the roads themselves aren't a whole lot better. Sometimes it is really really unclear what road you are already on, because only cross-streets are marked (as in you can’t see the signs for your road until you go through an intersection, and it might not be marked in a way you can see for several blocks if the intersections are with small quiet streets).. driving in general sucks, basically, and the maps direction to continue through the second exit is thus either welcome, or at least not a dealbreaker, for drivers here.
The more progressive and more well-planned small towns and cities around the US have actually been building out roundabouts for the better part of a decade now. When I go visit my parents in suburban Washington I go through 4 or 5 roundabouts between the highway and their house. Turns out you can get the majority of suburban Americans on board with a roundabout if you just point out that it means they probably won't have to stop and idle anymore. Also, usually cheaper.
I have mastered the Swindon Magic Roundabout.
I can take on anything now.
Magic roundabout not a problem.
Spiral roundabouts are constantly mis signed and are a menace if you've not driven them ten times already.
Same in medellin. Any big intersection is a roundabout. It really helps ease the traffic jams or as the locals call them “tacos”.
I mean... the second exit is usually going straight. So that makes sense. First exit would be a right turn (or left in the UK)
point being, they don't announce "keep going straight" at normal intersections
Is that monstrosity over 10 lanes wide? I think it's closer to 18 in actual width. That could be as wide as 63 meters (206 ft). Insanity.
Anything but building some trains and putting buildings closer together.. We'd sacrifice anything and everything on the altar of cars.to appease the rich and the selfish.
Apparently this is actually less wide compared to his original concept that served 19,000 vehicles per hour.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwE3GzzHIhI
21 lanes wide, however there are medians making it wider than that.
If you want to do a left turn across this intersection on foot or a bicycle, you'll wait at 8 traffic lights, surrounded by 2 dozen lanes full of cars with their engines running, on a football-field sized slab of asphalt with no shade and no grade separation.
Best bring a filter mask, a bottle of water and a hi-viz vest if you want to make it across.
In 10 years they'll form a committee to consider the costs of a pedestrian crossing. It'll get shut down with a bill that also gets rid of 5 more bike lines.
It's not that bad. There's a perfect lil square in the middle, probably place for a playground. (/s)
The designer of this intersection type actually touted that island as a place where you can "beautify" the intersection with a sculpture of landscaping. Lmao
A few things stand out from the demo/concept:
- Proposes to knock over a lot of buildings to grow the intersection footprint by... I'm guessing 3x.
- Avoids constructing an overpass while aping features of a diverging diamond and NJ-style jug-handles. I think this is possibly cheaper, but probably not by a lot.
- Lots of runway for merge zones, far from intersection.
- The "just one more lane" gang is gonna be disappointed with the inevitable bill to widen this monstrosity in ten years.
- Makes it impossible to turn into local parking lots which might be inducing demand for the intersection in the first place.
So, it's not great nor abysmal but man is that a fuckload of extra pavement just to build a pedestrian "dead zone". With respect to the last point, I've seen that kind of thing happen first hand. By the time the project is over, local business astride the new overpass/intersection have already closed their doors since traffic is now optimized to blow past everything at 55MPH.
IMO, if exercising imminent domain is on the table, may as well beef up and/or add secondary relief roads around this intersection instead. Spread the infrastructure build and cost into multiple smaller projects and leave the existing intersection to through and left-turn traffic only. The result should be calmer and less accident prone. Then, make sure that pedestrians and bikes can get around these multiple smaller roads.
if exercising imminent domain is on the table
It isn't. This concept was not ultimately chosen for this intersection. In fact the inventor of this concept was a pretty... interesting guy.
https://www.tampabay.com/news/crime/2024/04/23/greg-parsons-bomb-threat-tampa-fdot-district-7/
4,000 busses were harmed during the making of this video.
It's the state level version of endless wars to funnel money to donors. The fact that they will never be done is the point.
Works for citties:skylines but its a nightmare in the real world
Would it? All the cars might just choose to take one of the turning lanes and leave the other half barren.
My thinking was that its good in a game, where you have to manage cars. In the real world, where you want to make it better for people to get somwhere, its stupid to occupy the space of multiple blocks to manage just one ineficient kind of transportation
Reducing commute time by two (2) minutes and it will cost 30 billion dollars. Seems like a good value proposition.
That looks like some truly dumbass nonsense
It honestly is quite amazing from an engineering standpoint but would be pretty immoral to build in real life
I disagree, it looks like quite bad engineering to me
How so? It's a total traffic killer, in more ways than one :P
Isn't engineering supposed to involve efficient use of resources? Space, time, cost, maintenance; this looks like an awful design for transporting things.
This is more like art; wasting resources on something grandiose that makes some sort of 'statement', whilst honouring daft constraints like 'each twat must be at least 4m from every other twat at all times'.
It increases the efficiency of car traffic, not moving people. It's still good engineering from a car perspective, but terrible urban design.
That's exactly where this belongs—it's textbook city builder meme material.
I guarantee you that people will miss the exit ramp and fuck the whole thing up when they try to make a sharp turn in the middle
Why don’t they just build on top por favor existing road or below 🤪
Revolting. All of this just to go eat at Chili's