Do we like our roundabouts, rotaries and traffic-calming circles? A few have recently been added near campus on Virginia street as well as in Midtown.
In the past three decades, roundabouts have been on the rise across the United States, from almost none in the early 1990s to nearly 10-thousand today.
The idea is to slow down traffic without needing traffic lights, with drivers already in the circle getting the right of way. Statistics show roundabouts reduce fatal crashes and car-crash injuries by impressive percentages, while allowing more cars to go through.
Rather than traffic-control devices and technology doing the work, it’s old fashioned geometry and curves helping out.
The champion city of roundabouts is the Indianapolis suburb of Carmel (see photos from articles written about it above), thanks to its seven-term Republican mayor, devout roundabout booster Jim Brainard. It’s been reported that traffic fatalities were slashed so drastically there that its fire department almost stopped using its Jaws of Life extraction tools.
Carmel has also been working toward a more walkable downtown, and roundabouts help for that too, allowing designers to reduce the amount of lanes, traffic lights, and fit more traffic into smaller spaces, while adding green spaces and sidewalks.
So what say you, Reno? Should we have more roundabouts?