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Comment by tmnvix | Hacker News Reader

Roundabouts get a lot of praise whenever they're mentioned, and from a traffic flow perspective that's understandable - if by traffic you mean motorised traffic. For pedestrians and cyclists they are worse than the alternative (lights - or even a simple intersection) in my opinion.

> Making a roundabout for everyone

ctrl-f "walk", "cycl", pedes". Nothing.

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Citation needed. As a cyclist I prefer roundabouts: they're faster than lights and don't rob my momentum, and they're safer than uncontrolled intersections/4-way stops because all the cars are coming from the same direction.

Caveat: this is for simple, single-lane roundabouts. Multi-lane roundabouts are gnarly for cars and worse for cyclists.

Apologies. A bit of a blanket statement on my part. There are definitely examples of roundabouts built properly (where cyclists and pedestrians are considered first-class users). Sadly not that common in my experience.

Here is an example of the kind of thing I had in mind: https://maps.app.goo.gl/mexZWJ9ZP1yvEJ7k7

As you can see, they are building a pedestrian overbridge on the north side, but consider what you would have to do to traverse in any other place as a pedestrian (or get across anywhere currently). Here's a suggestion from Google (i.e. just pretend you're a car): https://maps.app.goo.gl/AiBoyWk4Z7bFr21z5

The above is in one of the busiest parts of this city. It's not like there are no people wanting to walk. In fact I found myself in exactly this position here not too long ago. I wanted to get from the mall side to a cafe on the opposite side. I gave up and ate a sad meal in the mall :(

Edit: Here's another example (with Google's hilariously impractical suggestion): https://maps.app.goo.gl/pati5dBBTnSgxZ1m9

In my experience[1], if there’s no bike path roundabouts are better, in particular for left turns. But on a bike path they are usually not much fun, basically requiring negotiating with drivers 270 degrees apart at the same time.

My preferred roundabout is separate bikepath that joins the road just before and is a part of the same surface, usually found in bike friendly places.

[1] 60000+ km throughout Europe

If you are on the bike path it really depends of the configuration and how large they are. Ideally you want te driver to have completed his entry so that he can focus on the bike lane. Best ones are those that have an elevated bike path that is seen as a speedbump for the drivers: they are forced to slow down and look.

I do agree that the roundabout pictured in the article does not seem to include any considerations towards non car traffic, but at least in Germany the vast majority of roundabouts have seperate bicycle lanes and zebra crossings on all entrances, meaning foot and bicycle traffic has right of way. As a pedestrian I vastly prefer these to intersections in nearly every situation.

Definitely preferable to intersections. A roundabout means there is only one place to look for oncoming cars, rather than potentially 4.

Although ideally the crossing on a roundabout should be set back so far they arguably aren't even on the roundabout... so space is an issue.

> For pedestrians and cyclists they are worse than the alternative (lights - or even a simple intersection) in my opinion.

As a cycling Dutch I prefer a roundabout to a traffic light. As a roundabout doesn't force a fullstop and takeoff again. Also because stopping/get going again is more difficult for elderly/injured people.

My German bike experience is that the car drivers themselves are relaxed and yield out of courtesy.

Cars turning right at an intersection are an order of magnitude more dangerous.

I agree they're a pain for pedestrians (cars are faster, drivers too busy looking at every other car entering the intersection to look at pedestrians) the Dutch do car and bike roundabout well (embedding the car one in a bike one)

Elevated pedestrians crossing (which means the crossing is a speed bump for drivers_ is the solution because roundabouts are actually safer than regular intersections once drivers are forced to slow down.

I know all those speed bumps are annoying when you are driving but elevated crossings and bike paths are great traffic calming solution as screaming your engine between speed bumps soon gets very old and tiring and even the most aggressive drivers just end up staying between 12 and 20mph (20-35kph) in the sections that involve pedestrians and cyclists.

> cars are faster One of the main advantages of roundabouts vs 4-way intersections is they force drivers to slow down, so this doesn't make any sense.

I generally prefer a well-designed roundabout when either cycling or walking, but I see how they can be non-ideal when done improperly.

The Dutch roundabout design is amazing for cyclists. See here [0] for a more detailed explanation, but the tl;dr is: Second, outer ring that's a bike lane - motorized traffic has to yield so bikes never have to stop and lose momentum.

[0] https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2015/10/13/explaining-the...

In Cambridge we have recently had both our first Dutch roundabout and our first few Cyclops [0] junctions and I have to say I actually prefer the cyclops. Yes, you lose momentum if you want to turn and the throughput doesn’t match a roundabout but you can use it as a normal cross roads if you want or use the protected turn with lights around the ring without worrying about whether cars have actually seen you and understood that it’s your right of way. My opinion might change if I lived somewhere where people were used to Dutch roundabouts.

[0] https://cities-today.com/uks-first-cyclops-junction-opens-in...

Zebra crossing at roundabout entry-ways, and social norms which encourage drivers to respect these.

The roundabout forces drivers to slow down in any case, so they are already reducing speed.

Social norms is another thing, but if every driver is in asshat mode you are going to have traffic problems regardless of infrastructure.

Want to see it work? Visit Carmel, Indiana.

Strong disagree, a well designed roundabout is both safer and faster for both pedestrians and cyclists. See this roundabout [0] from Delft, Netherlands for a good example. Pedestrians have right of way over everyone, then cyclists, and lastly there's a set of traffic lights to give trams and buses right of way when they come by. Cars come last and traffic flows smoothly and safely.

[0] https://www.google.com/maps/@51.9970826,4.3550136,195m/data=...

I like the order of priority here. It's as if the designers ranked travellers by the magnitude of their kinetic energy, and forced the highest-energy travellers to exercise most caution. How sensical!

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