The growing trend of traffic lights on roundabouts...
Discussion
Just me, or are these starting to pop up all over the place?
Are we now at a point with the increased traffic on the roads that roundabouts are becoming unsuitable? Were the yanks right all along?
The latest i've seen is on a small/medium roundabout local to me which has never really had problems with traffic flow in the 20 years i've been driving around it. Utter madness.
Are we now at a point with the increased traffic on the roads that roundabouts are becoming unsuitable? Were the yanks right all along?
The latest i've seen is on a small/medium roundabout local to me which has never really had problems with traffic flow in the 20 years i've been driving around it. Utter madness.
That council lot have to justify their jobs somehow.
It's crap, I wish they'd just leave them alone, or make them part time only at a push.
They are taking as much responsibility away from the drivers as possible. At the expense of people actually getting anywhere.
Heaps of perfectly good junctions near me have been converted to traffic lights, at great expense. Also creating congestion at the same time.
It's crap, I wish they'd just leave them alone, or make them part time only at a push.
They are taking as much responsibility away from the drivers as possible. At the expense of people actually getting anywhere.
Heaps of perfectly good junctions near me have been converted to traffic lights, at great expense. Also creating congestion at the same time.
I find traffic lights on Motorway junction roundabouts to be frustrating.
(1) Off peak/at night they are a pain in the arris when they make you stop at each junction.
(2) J4 of the M20, as an example, used to be a free flowing roundabout. You therefore had a steady stream of cars joining the motorway which was fine for cars on the motorway. Now you have huge constant spurts of 30-40 cars all jostling to join. Even worse when a slow driver/HGV joins at 30-40mph with 30-40 cars queued up behind waiting to join.
(1) Off peak/at night they are a pain in the arris when they make you stop at each junction.
(2) J4 of the M20, as an example, used to be a free flowing roundabout. You therefore had a steady stream of cars joining the motorway which was fine for cars on the motorway. Now you have huge constant spurts of 30-40 cars all jostling to join. Even worse when a slow driver/HGV joins at 30-40mph with 30-40 cars queued up behind waiting to join.
In my previous job I had a 6 mile commute that included 13 roundabouts. The only roundabout with any queues was the one with traffic lights. The only time there were no queues was when the lights had failed. I know it's not scientific, but it does seem to me that they just throw lights on any reasonably busy roundabout, whether the busyness actually causes congestion or not.
vikingaero said:
I find traffic lights on Motorway junction roundabouts to be frustrating.
(1) Off peak/at night they are a pain in the arris when they make you stop at each junction.
(2) J4 of the M20, as an example, used to be a free flowing roundabout. You therefore had a steady stream of cars joining the motorway which was fine for cars on the motorway. Now you have huge constant spurts of 30-40 cars all jostling to join. Even worse when a slow driver/HGV joins at 30-40mph with 30-40 cars queued up behind waiting to join.
This. Jct 4 is a joke but it doesn't end there, if you head towards Snodland and Tesco that roundabout is now lights. If you head to Kingshill the ''bypass' that has a lower limit than the road it replaced has a ridiculous number of set on it. They've also put lights all round the M20 jct 9 for no f(1) Off peak/at night they are a pain in the arris when they make you stop at each junction.
(2) J4 of the M20, as an example, used to be a free flowing roundabout. You therefore had a steady stream of cars joining the motorway which was fine for cars on the motorway. Now you have huge constant spurts of 30-40 cars all jostling to join. Even worse when a slow driver/HGV joins at 30-40mph with 30-40 cars queued up behind waiting to join.
king reason and the A20 roundabout up from it now has lights all round it too, while the link road between them has been reduced from NSL to 40. At night they are clearly set to stop everything. The number of times they're green until you drive over the sensors then they go red and make you wait for no one. I'm sure there must be something going on between someone at KCC and a traffic light installer. They're putting the bloody things everywhere.
Oddly, on a recent road trip to the US I noticed a few places had roundabouts. We need to look at road design in other countries. Look at France for example, you can drive from one corner of the country to the other without having to stop. One road flows into the next.
It's not so much the lights ON the roundabout, but the pedestrian crossing lights a couple of car lengths AFTER. All these seem to do is cause gridlock across the roundabout which comes and goes as the ped works their way around the edge of the roundabout.
For example, a ped who wants to get from one corner (sic) of a roundabout to the one diagonally opposite will cause gridlock four times if every road joining is a dual carrageway or the crossing is split by an island with two sets of lights.
For example, a ped who wants to get from one corner (sic) of a roundabout to the one diagonally opposite will cause gridlock four times if every road joining is a dual carrageway or the crossing is split by an island with two sets of lights.
The traffic lights failed on a major roundabout near us the other day, and my wife said the traffic actually flowed much better - shorter queues at all the exits... I only travel across there at night to get to the gym/pool and I cross through about four sets of lights in a ten minutes journey - all are red by default and all usually change to green as soon as I pull up and stop, which is very wasteful of fuel - if the council insist on putting lights in then the least they can do is have them only active at peak times.
I'm sure they were introduced to speed up the flow of traffic on our conjested roads but as said, I don't know any roundabouts that are quicker to get through than they used to be without them. They also encourage poor lane discipline and queue pushers. The Moor farm roundabout at the top of Cramlington is a prime example. People queue in lane three when only one and two let you on the A19. There's always a mad dash and some dangerous manouvers where lane 3 jumps into lane 2 at the last second. Maybe they help those who struggle with the concept of judging oncoming traffic and not pulling out when there is a gap but overall, they are a pain. The bigger ones with lots of lanes are the worst, people often don't know which lane they should be in.
toon10 said:
I'm sure they were introduced to speed up the flow of traffic on our conjested roads but ..........
Maybe I'm getting more cynical as I get older but I'm sure it's for exactly the opposite reason. It's to slow us down, cause congestion, control us...... to punish the evil car drivers. I do a lot of miles and honestly cant remember an 'improvement' that has actually improved something. I used to think it was incompetence but surely it can't be can it? There can't be that many incompetent people designing roads can there? That and the fact there're undoing something a previous designer built that actually worked. I live in an area just outside Glasgow (East Kilbride) which is infamous for the number of roundabouts it contains. A few of the major roundabouts can be pretty horrendous leading up to and beyond rush hour where they tend to bring out the worst behaviours in drivers - everyone jostling for a spot in the lane they should have been in before approaching the roundabout, attempting to get through/past seemingly at any cost. Unfortunately, since some of these had traffic lights installed it seems to have only exacerbated things.
I'm sure they work well in some circumstances but I've yet to see it with my own eyes. That said, it's probably got more to do with the aforementioned behaviours than anything else.
I'm sure they work well in some circumstances but I've yet to see it with my own eyes. That said, it's probably got more to do with the aforementioned behaviours than anything else.
Ferosferio said:
I live in an area just outside Glasgow (East Kilbride) which is infamous for the number of roundabouts it contains. A few of the major roundabouts can be pretty horrendous leading up to and beyond rush hour where they tend to bring out the worst behaviours in drivers - everyone jostling for a spot in the lane they should have been in before approaching the roundabout, attempting to get through/past seemingly at any cost. Unfortunately, since some of these had traffic lights installed it seems to have only exacerbated things.
I'm sure they work well in some circumstances but I've yet to see it with my own eyes. That said, it's probably got more to do with the aforementioned behaviours than anything else.
Kingsgate Retail Park and Whirlies by any chance?I'm sure they work well in some circumstances but I've yet to see it with my own eyes. That said, it's probably got more to do with the aforementioned behaviours than anything else.
It's getting to the point where using back roads can actually be quicker than using the main route, which I often do anyway as using man logic at least you're making progress rather than stop starting 
That's totally against the point of what the main roads were built for in the first place
That's totally against the point of what the main roads were built for in the first place
Funnily enough , one roundabout near us has had the lights switched off for the last few months and guess what ?
The queues have returned back down to previous size pre lights.
Now there's a surprise.
Further down the same road there are lights at the next roundabout that are still operating on a Sunday afternoon , up to five minutes in a queue watching no or very little traffic coming from the rhs.
Boils my p iss
The queues have returned back down to previous size pre lights.
Now there's a surprise.
Further down the same road there are lights at the next roundabout that are still operating on a Sunday afternoon , up to five minutes in a queue watching no or very little traffic coming from the rhs.
Boils my p iss
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