Here We Go Round

Some of my most memorable near death experiences happened driving on rotaries in the state of Massachusetts. I remember one rainy morning circling around one near Faulkner Hospital. A large truck zoomed out in front of me. Somehow with a quick yank of the steering wheel I managed to avoid a collision, do a near 360, and end up in the right place.

Massachusetts installed many rotaries in the 1940s and 1950s. Most residents curse them. Governor William Weld began a program to eliminate the traffic menaces in the 1990s. The last time I visited some of the more dangerous ones had already been ripped out and replaced.

It was with horror that I received a letter in the mail back in the early part of the decade that Anchorage's first "roundabout" was going in just up the street on Southport Drive. The first winter was a disaster as just about every planter and sign along the structure got thrashed by a vehicle.

Snow removal and ice on that rotary have me exiting out Bayshore many winter morning to avoid it. The ice there seems to be a problem of a magnitude higher than any traditional intersection.

The problem it seems according to the experts was that it was too small. Too small? Advocates of this silly technology in Massachusetts claim the circles are too wide.

They widened the "roundabout" on Southport. That must have been the recommendation of the engineer who cursed us with it. All that did was move some of the structures out of collision range. It is all okay though because the engineer was happy. Anybody else thinks he probably lives in Arizona?

The first major road in town to get a traffic circle was Dowling. Oddly enough, the horrendous spectacle in Southport was used as an example of how great it could be. Mysteriously, the Dowling circles have recently required modification in the form of speed bumps. Could it be it is not working as well as advertised?

Why stop when the signs of failure are everywhere? The road designer geniuses have now opened their latest jewel at Old Seward and Huffman. What a great opportunity it was to spin through it on my way home yesterday. It was just so pretty I could hardly stand it.

That first announcement on the Southport "roundabout" was glowing about how attractive it would be. It was going to make the road so much more enjoyable to drive. Beauty is what we should strive for with any road.

The argument from "roundabout" proponents is that things would all be just fine if people just understood how to use rotaries. We would also have almost no lung cancer if people never started smoking.

It is true that people do not understand traffic circles. There are still people that stop at the Southport circle even when there is no other car in sight. There is no advantage in flow if people treat it like a stop sign.

I once blew my horn at a driver on the C St. rotary because he stopped for no reason at all and showed no signs of moving. He proceeded to give me a salute with one of his digits and my guess is he will never fine tune his circle etiquette.

People who love these Eupopean delights in Massachusetts make many of the same arguments heard here. Drivers go too fast. Drivers just need to understand. The radius is too small. The radius is too large.

Call me crazy but roads should be functional, not beautiful. The Seward highway south of town is one of the most scenic in the country and look how well that works. Arguments about speed and width and driver intelligence dominate that controversy as well.

Comprehension is a big part of functionality.

You can give it a pretty name like "roundabout." You can try to make everybody love and understand them. You can continually modify the structure. You can blame idiotic drivers. You can continue to make excuses. At some point, whatever the reason, you need to question the wisdom of using the technology.

Truth be told when I first drove rotaries in New England I thought they were cool. After all, there is no stop sign or traffic light and it feels like the world is going to flow. They theoretically would work if everybody followed the rules and slowed down. It is no different with any other intersection especially in the winter.

The problem with driving is it not always about what you know or what you do. It is often about everybody else on the road. Do I really want to be cruising "roundabouts" with people who could not even adapt to the metric system? You know, that other good idea that died because people refused to adapt.

The thing is the road to hades is paved with good intentions. And there is likely a rotary every kilometer or two along the way.