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Opportunities for roundabouts missed [UPDATED]
Published 7:41am Wednesday, July 18, 2012 Updated 11:42am Wednesday, July 18, 2012Fergus Falls: strong contender for champion of awkward, difficult, inefficient and dangerous road intersections.
While roundabouts have been shown to save fuel, be more efficient and safer than stop lights, the Fergus area seems hesitant to use them.
Missed opportunities include the Walmart and Mabel Murphy light, and now the north Tower Bridge, west Lincoln and Pebble Lake Road, Hwy 210 intersections.
Potential candidates include the infamous Target intersection, the Tower Rd. and College way intersection and the Dairyland triangle.
I’ve heard the south Tower Bridge, Co 1 intersection will be a roundabout so finally we’ll get a chance to see the benefits of that design.
Chuck Adelsman
Dalton
The stop lights work just fine. After all we are not a big city, and I don’t see it ever being allowed to grow, so why would we need a round about. Most people hate them, they are a nuisance.
Nuisance? What’s more of a nuisance than sitting at a red light when there isn’t cross traffic in either direction for blocks? I can’t think of a more ridiculous use of resources than the gas that is burned by the long line of cars that queue up daily waiting to turn west on to Lincoln from South Union.
Roundabouts have the advantage of offering similar capacity to signalized intersections while increasing the throughput of traffic. They have been shown to decrease crashes by 39% and fatal accidents by 89%. They do this by injecting an element of uncertainty into the driving process. But this is a good kind of uncertainty — it’s the kind that makes drivers slow down, look around them, and respect the actions of other users, motorized and not, of the road.
Roundabouts could also be an effective tool in improving the appearance of our city. In addition to the locations on the perimeter mentioned by Mr. Adelsman, I could imagine the downtown stretch of Lincoln with roundabouts in each of the major intersections. Decorated with a shade tree, flowers, a fountain, or some other sort of statue or monument, these would help humanize the space while providing a visual terminus, which is an age-old design technique used by builders of all the great cities. Ol’ George Wright at the end of Washington is a fine example of that and, aside from City Hall, about the only attractive thing left on that street.
Roundabouts are also wonderfully low-tech, as they will continue to function, even in a blackout. And with no moving parts and no need for electricity, future maintenance costs are reduced as well. Something we don’t often think of enough when designing our systems.
Our own DOT even makes a pretty strong case for them, which is where I got the above accident figures:
http://www.dot.state.mn.us/roundabouts/
It’s just too bad they didn’t follow their own advice this time around.
If you have never experienced a round about,you really wouldnt understand how well they work.. They may take a “bit getting used to”.. But,isnt saving lives a little more important than the short lived discomfort one may feel while learning how to use them? If Fergus Falls “passed” on them,it certianly wasnt the smartest thing they’ve ever done…
Also,the first one or two I experienced were in rural communities.. Bell Plaine,New Praige,Mn.. they can save lives no matter what intersection they replace
The population of Grand Rapids Minnesota is 10862 which makes it a smaller community than Fergus Falls by about 3000 citizens.
Grand Rapids Minnesota has two turning circles or round abouts. The people of Grand Rapids do not hate their turning circles and they are not anymore difficult than making a simple right turn.
However, those fearful of progress have nothing to fear, Fergus Falls will never make the move to this modern innovation until such time as some future council decides it wants to catch up with Foxhome.
Most round abouts are not designed correctly. They try to make them too tight and semi’s have to tear up a lot of the grassy areas around them. Fergus Falls is not a major area, talk to the council, they like it that way. My husband travels and he sees more accidents and other major errors due to the round abouts then you see with stop lights. Until the city is allowed to grow there is no need for all this. And if you are worried about the gas fumes, think about all the contaminates that are in the asphalt. Bituminous is made with a lot of oil, some of which is recycled, and who knows what has gotten into it. There is no real answer.
I don’t think you need to classify a roundabout as a “big city” feature. It’s different than what we’re used to around here, sure, and therein probably lies the rub for many. But many places, both big and small, have been able to successfully adopt roundabouts into their streetscape.
And maybe we’re thinking of different traffic control devices, but wouldn’t a grassy or landscaped roundabout lead to less paved area in an intersection, and not more, as your comment would suggest?
The fact that the advocates are forgetting is that roundabouts require more space. If you were going to build a roundabout at Lincoln/Union, you would have to remove the businesses on all four corners. If you were to build roundabouts at every intersection on Lincoln, you would have to remove every house or apartment or business at each of those corners. Do you really think that’s going to happen?
Roundabouts are fine at new intersections where there is space to build them (such as south Tower Road). I would also consider converting the Target entrance, since that is the stupidest design I have ever seen! However, a simpler solution would be to just move the entrance to Target 100-150 feet to the west.
Obviously their use and design should be dictated in part by the space available and the impact they would have on the surrounding environment. To ignore that would create a situation no better than the one we are currently in, where blind application of conventional design patterns leads to sub-optimal results.
In the specific case of Union and Lincoln, one should take note that there are effectively five to six lanes worth of traffic to the south of the intersection and another four coming in from the west. There’s a lot of road there, and none of it very pleasant if you’re sitting outside Cafe 116, say, or walking along the sidewalk by the grocery store or Walgreens. Maybe a roundabout isn’t the answer there, but I do think we could do a better job of making a more equitable arrangement for all users of the street.