Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Traffic Circle Success


Bruce Andriatch of the Buffalo News on that areas new traffic circles...

A funny thing happened to traffic on Harlem Road in Cheektowaga the other day: It kept moving.

Cars, motorcycles, trucks and buses approached the intersection with Cleveland Drive from the north and the south — even as vehicles were coming from Cleveland in two directions toward Harlem at the exact same time — and the wheels never stopped turning. They slowed down, but they never stopped. It was mesmerizing...

In his just-published book, “Traffic,” Tom Vanderbilt notes that the traditional intersection is where fully half of all road crashes occur, partly because there are 56 potential points of conflict where your car can hit another car or a pedestrian. In a roundabout, the conflict number falls to 16. One study he cites found that at 24 intersections that had been converted from signs and lights into roundabouts, the number of crashes fell by 40 percent and fatal crashes by 90 percent.

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