We have probably 10 of them within a mile radius of our house and they're awesome. The stop signs in the middle of nowhere went away and you're constantly moving.
Changes coming for I35/Hwy 30 exit
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If you can't manage a roundabout you should have your license revoked. They're easy to navigate and better than waiting endlessly at lights or stop signs. In the Detroit metro we even have them when turning off onto a surface road from a highway exit.
Okay. So one example of a very specific situation means decades of research is wrong?
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This is because people demand it. Read opinions about roundabouts on CF - they are by far more efficient for a certain intersection traffic counts yet aren't always put in because the population screams about them. It's not always a case of doing what's best and shutting out popular opinion.
If places like Ankeny and Ames really wanted to fix this they would stop requiring developers to build in a street hierarchy pattern.
Believe it or not more intersections increases safety. That's a fact. But people want cul-de-sacs and 6 lane roads. That causes traffic problems
So you're saying the problem needs to be fixed before the problem exists? Have you lived in the United States before? Better get on that, because you've got a lot of work to do if you think that's going change any time in the near future. Until then, they need to deal with the issue at hand - the current state of traffic on 35.
I do southbound I35 to eastbound 30 quite often and that's a nail biter under normal traffic and weather. Throw in slick roads and it's really fun.
Yet somehow people manage to be confused by them.. Fort Dodge got one 6-7 years ago and people freaked the hell out even though there were signs before it saying go counter clockwise and only yield to GET ON. Idiots would stop midway on the roundabout to let a car get on it then they would get rear ended. It's much better than it was but some people on it still yield to people waiting to get on.
Blame our pathetic licensing system for that. They are incredibly simple and make sense. But it does force people to look up from their phones and actually think about driving for 30 seconds.
It is about time they admitted their mistake and fixed this #### hole. Engineers make mistakes all the time on road construction and then it takes millions to fix it right, instead of spending a little more at the start and get it right. Putting in the Interstate on my farm, they tried to make water run uphill. Dad told them and told them, but they were right. After spending thousands of dollars to tile the wet spot, I can farm most of it now. 6 lanes from Ames to Des Moines is a necessity.
Bah. Heavy traffic? Check out Palo Alto, Austin, DC beltway, NYC bridges. If it is start and stop more than 30 minutes a day, it might be needed. Certainly running back to Ankeny from ballgames should not be the driver.
Your point would be valid if the stretch between Ankeny and Ames was actually an urban area. You may also want to pass along that little known transportation engineering fact to the engineers in Houston, Los Angeles, Chicago, Kansas City, Omaha, New York, Boston, San Francisco, Oakland, Seattle or any large metro area in American. Even in the Des Moines Metro where in the late 90's they added lanes to the 80 by pass that goes north of the metro, then added lanes from 2002 thru 8 to the 235 which runs through the metro. Adding lanes does reduce congestion. We are talking freeways where speeds get quite high. Not avenue's, streets or drives where 30 mph is the norm. And it is a very well know fact that bus and bicycle lanes do nothing to alleviate traffic concerns in an urban area.
There are worse interchanges in the country. I live in Tulsa ,Oklahoma as of recently and the Interstate 44 with highway 75 merger which services the heart of the city is a 25 MPH cloverleaf with a 500 foot exit/entrance partition on the bridge overpass. Traffic literally stops every night between 4:00 pm and 6:00 pm, and semis are using this regularly to merge. The 30/35 intersection is the only thing I have seen close to this, but it pales in comparison. Hope you get real merge lanes and flyovers.
You need to calm down. Over the years as Ames has grown the amount of traffic using the road has increased. So has the speed limit on I-35. I guess the engineers back in the 70s should have thought of that huh? You sound like just the type to be happy to tell people how to do their jobs from behind the keyboard.
Are you a CRP major trying to justify their degree? Unless you can pick the next technological and industrial breakthroughs and economic upswings, you are not going to be able to perfectly plan your cities unless you artificially limit the growth, which officials would be silly to do. So you have to adjust and do the best you can with what you have. But by all means, shows the exceptional scenarios where it worked, but you need to allow for changes to forecast and be ready to make changes. Go ahead and propose a entire city refabrication for 10 billions dollars or such and see what government official will bite. Or get real.
So we need to wait until 80/35 to Ames takes 2 hours before doing something? There is a significant amount of traffic going from Des Moines to Ames daily. Nobody here is discussing making gameday traffic better. All it takes is someone sitting in the passing lane or a semi going 66 passing a semi going 65 and the entire pass is backed up, resulting in accidents.
I'm really confused, the argument you're making focuses on traffic in town. Duff Avenue is quite possibly the worst designed road in the state of Iowa but nobody is talking about it. How does better urban planning deal with the significant increase in traffic carried daily between 80/30 and Ames on I35?
How would a 3rd lane on the Interstate accomplish nothing?
The problem I have with them is when they are put in places that don't need them. My friend has one by his house that people go backwards on it because there is never more than one car and it makes no sense to go 3/4 of the way around. The ones by Johnston High School are similar. There was no need for them and they just slow traffic down.
Simple question: which is faster...rolling through a roundabout or stopping at a stop sign?
Stop sign easily when people aren't there. The ones in Johnston need to go back to two way top signs.
