Veteran N&R enviro reporter Taft Wireback writes up the traffic circles popping up around the Triad:
Traffic planners like them because they prevent cars from idling at traffic lights, when engines pollute the air most heavily. They also minimize damage and injuries in car wrecks.
“They go at very slow speeds, so the accident rate at roundabouts is extremely low,” said Pat Ivey, the division engineer for Forsyth, Davidson, Davie, Rowan and Stokes counties.
Ivey said his office has added roundabouts in various settings for about 10 years and recently used one to solve traffic tie-ups at the entrance to Davidson County Community College in Lexington.
Congestion was particularly bad between 7:45 and 9 weekday mornings and during lunch, said Rusty Hunt, the school’s vice president for finance and administration.
“They pretty much had to talk us into the traffic circle because we were thinking traffic light,” Hunt said. “But it really has eliminated the problems we were having.”
Just so happens JLF has weighed in on traffic circles, calling them another professional planning fad that creates greater risks for people needing emergency services.
Hey, I think the roundabout next to M’cCoul’s in downtown G’boro that circles General Greene is pretty cool, even if it is a symbol of municipal government grou-p think that dictates a circle in the middle of the road does so much greater societal good.
