Roundabouts Don't Have to Make Your Head Spin

Now some of these are gonna be, you know, especially from our customer perspective.

So the first one is, as a driver, should you use turn signals in a roundabout?

Yeah, and that's a good question, and it's one of those that it's a good practice but not necessarily letter of the law.

You would indicate your turn before you come to a general intersection.

It's helpful at a roundabout too.

It's not as necessary or useful entering the roundabout because at the roundabout everybody goes to the right and around the circle, but when you're leaving it can be really helpful for the other people waiting to enter to know that you're taking that exit, and then they can take that gap and, and join the circle.

So I think that's, that's where especially it can be, it can be useful.

Okay.

All right.

Next question.

Why don't you just put up stoplights? Aren't they cheaper and safer?

And that's a good question, and the answer is sometimes it depends.

Um, there's a couple parts to that.

About the safety part, generally roundabouts are going to be safer.

They eliminate certain types of crashes, and those crashes tend to be the more severe types.

So those might be the left turn crashes across oncoming traffic if you don't have a left turn arrow or like you would at a stop sign, or the high speed rear end crashes, or some of the, um, broadside crashes that occur when someone runs a red light.

At a roundabout, those crashes become essentially impossible because everybody's entering and yielding at the same, at the same point and at a lower speed.

And on the cheaper part, a signal can sometimes be cheaper when you have the turn lanes already there.

But there's another approach to it that looks at the full, like, life cycle cost, and so that would take into account the construction cost as well as the operations cost.

Um, roundabouts don't require all the traffic signal operating equipment and then the maintenance of that equipment and replacement as, as well as the electrical costs.

And so those, those can be quite an expense, especially in Iowa where those costs are borne by the city where the traffic signal is present.

And then there's the, the safety and operational costs from the sense of the time for the traveling public.

Traffic signals and roundabouts can have similar operations during the peak hours, but a roundabout has some significant benefits during the off-peak hours.

And by off-peak, I mean the 20 or so hours of the day that aren't the morning and afternoon rush hour.

And so when you're stopping at a stoplight when there's one car on the side road, at a roundabout everybody keeps moving during those times.