Quote:
Originally Posted by MonctonRad
Indeed the proliferation of roundabouts on Larry Uteck is most peculiar (and unnecessary).
There's a multilane "dogbone" roundabout in Moncton, at the Dieppe/Harrisville Interchange with Highway 11/15, which actually works surprisingly well but, as always, multilane roundabouts work best for natives who inherently know which lane to be in. Itinerants will always have more difficulty, which is why the three-roundabouts-in-a-row on Larry Uteck is such a pain in the ass.  |
I have to agree with that. Even the locals don't seem to know how to handle the multi-lane roundabouts, yet try to traverse them as quickly as possible. I've noticed that the Uteck series of roundabouts are being handled more quickly and haphazardly with each passing year. Witnessed a near pedestrian fatality on Friday night when somebody in the left lane stopped for a pedestrian, while somebody in a small SUV was just about to blast by them on the right - luckily the pedestrian saw them and stopped just as the driver slammed on the brakes - it could have been bad. Have witnessed other creative uses of the lanes, not to mention those that don't seem to understand that a car in the circle has the right of way, among other things.
Those particular roundabouts are just a bad design, though. They are too tight, too numerous in succession, and 2 lanes in a small roundabout is just too difficult to get everybody to understand quickly as to what they are supposed to do. I feel that I have masted roundabouts in general, and typically do not hesitate to tackle the Uteck ones, but found myself yesterday taking a different route to avoid them, because they just aren't worth the hassle. Most people who use them seem to think they have somehow graduated to the skill level of Emerson Fittipaldi, but I have to tell them... they have not - they need to slow down at least to the point that their tires aren't starting to lose grip...
Honestly, I found the ones that are designed well, like the downtown circles near the armories seem to work pretty well. Roundabouts in general do suffer from one inherent design deficiency though, and that is that in rush-hour situations, the busy roads feed constantly into the circles, creating a situation where one route only gets traffic priority (constantly occupies the circle) and thus all other routes that feed into the circle, after the busy entrance, get backed up because there is nothing breaking the flow of traffic for subsequent lanes to feed into. Experienced it coming from Chebucto Road into the Armdale roundabout in rush hour a couple of weeks ago. All the traffic from Quinpool fed into the circle, jamming it up for anyone else to get in, thus the backup on Chebucto - eventually, you feed into it and then have to look for a gap and gun it to get into the circle - either that or sit there until rush hour is done...
Rant over... the new ramp should be an improvement when it's actually finished, and the lighting will be a godsend...
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