Why Doesn't America Have Roundabouts?
If you’ve ever had the pleasure of driving in the United States, there is a strong chance you won’t have come across a single roundabout during your time on the road there.
Roundabouts – a circular intersection where traffic flows in one direction around a central island - are a familiar and prolific feature of European roads, but it’s a traffic management method that has famously been ignored by Americans for decades.
That’s not to say there aren’t any roundabouts in the United States with estimates in 2022 putting the figure at just under 9,000.
But when you consider there are 26,000 roundabouts in the UK alone – a nation that 40 times smaller than the USA – it seems unlikely roundabouts will ever entirely catch on with the American public now.
So why do North Americans shun the modern roundabout when it is so widely used across Europe, South America and Asia?
The Modern Roundabout
The basic schematic for the roundabout has been around for centuries, though early installations of what were referred to as ‘circular junctions’ varied between locations with no standardised method of design or use.
Into the 20th century and ‘circular junctions’ were becoming an increasingly common sight, not just in the UK, but in the United States where they were referred to as ‘rotaries’. However, these were rudimentary in conception with many allowing entry at high speed, while others required a stop and 90-degree turn to enter.
This haphazard application made it difficult for drivers to understand how to use different rotaries and they became the location for numerous collisions. It led to them being phased out by the 1950s.
Soon after, however, the UK’s Transport Research Laboratory re-engineered and standardised circular intersections, referred to as ‘the Modern Roundabout’.
By introducing a ‘priority rule’ that decree always giving way to circulating traffic on your right (on UK roads) when entering an intersection, it brought order in a simplified manner.
It proved to be a veritable revolution in road planning and by 1966 the design became mandatory around the UK with other nations following.
The USA, however, was not one of those nations.
The Reasons Why the USA Doesn’t Have Roundabouts
Damage of Rotaries
As mentioned, the poor application of rotaries – the original roundabout – went a long way to giving the method a bad image in the United States that lingers. With more and more people getting on the road in the run up to the 1950s, rotaries – with their high collision rates and confusingly variable designs – became undesirable enough to deter cities from attempting to adopt the standardised design and rules that came with the ‘modern roundabout’.
Timing
While the ‘modern roundabout’ became commonplace from the 1960s in Europe, the design was only adopted for the first time in selected locations in the United States in the 1990s, by which time people had become accustomed to traffic-light intersections.
US Road Layouts
A major factor in the rejection of roundabouts was the existing layout of many US streets which are built on a grid format. This makes a four-way intersection with hard angles standard fit for such a system, whereas roundabouts take up more room and would require a major undertaking – both in terms of construction and finance – to redistribute the layout.
Deep Seated Preferences
Widespread adoption of four-way intersections have become ingrained in US culture, while studies have shown that Americans feel more comfortable with ‘tell-me-what-to-do’ instructions at junctions rather than using judgement as you would to enter and exit a roundabout.
Are Roundabouts Better Than Intersections?
Interestingly, though proposals for new roundabouts in American communities often attract great opposition, studies have shown that people prefer them once they have become accustomed to them.
Some mayors across the United States have initiated a major transformation of their cities and towns by introducing roundabouts having been inspired by their use in other countries but the application is broadly ignored.
However, roundabouts have been shown to be safer and more convenient for road users. For instance, studies have shown that roundabouts greatly reduce the number of incidents – particularly T-boning or horizontal deflection – or running through red lights, while pedestrians have more time to cross the road because a roundabout intersection isn’t as wide.
Moreover, traffic is shown to be move 10 per cent quicker via roundabouts, while vehicles tend to idle less which reduces pollution.
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