Not all drivers are square with the new roundabouts

Nov 22, 2008 (The Buffalo News - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- MCD | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating -- Nadine Hollis, who no longer drives, is often a watchful, and scared, passenger during her trips through the new pair of small roundabout-style traffic circles at Kensington Avenue and Wehrle Drive in Cheektowaga.

She avoids rush-hour journeys to the reconfigured intersection, popular for its three drugstores, a bank, a restaurant and a McDonald's. As she climbed back into a car at the Jubilee Foods parking lot on Harlem Road, she said this about her approach: "I'm grabbing the side of the car and going, 'Oh, my God!' "

Ron Zoeller, of Cheektowaga, says that his slow turns through the double roundabouts once or twice a day have been making his life better, not worse.

"I love it. I don't have to stop. It saves the brakes," said Zoeller, who doesn't miss the two traffic lights that he used to pass turning from Kensington to Harlem. "I don't understand, or comprehend, why people would be confused."

As they spoke one recent afternoon, other motorists drove slowly through the pair of roundabouts at the Harlem- Wehrle-Kensington intersection, now nearly clear of construction work. They are part of a $21 million road project that includes a new circle at Cleveland Drive and Harlem.

One confused driver, instead of driving through the roundabout as she was supposed to, stopped and waved another driver waiting at a yield sign to proceed.

State Department of Transportation officials admitted there is a "learning curve." Yet, the state's fondness for the new small, specially designed traffic circles -- called roundabouts by DOT people -- has remained untempered. Five to 10 new ones, intended to encourage slow, collision-reducing traffic, get built each year.

"Safety is priority No. 1," said Howard McCulloch, a roundabout design specialist at the DOT office in Albany. "They really should be considered everywhere."

This year, Western New York has several new single roundabouts -- from Niagara Falls to Hamburg. And more -- Staley Road and Grand Island Boulevard and Routes 5, 20 and 438 on the Cattaraugus Indian Reservation -- are on the way and in the planning stage.

New York's DOT was the first in the country to mandate, by altering its design manual in 2006, that roundabouts be considered for every intersection, said McCulloch. Now other states are following suit, he said. The federal government requires that roundabouts be considered for projects it funds.

Roundabouts keep traffic safe and slow at close to 15 mph with small-diameter circles, McCulloch said. They don't have the same hazards as large circles that let speeds climb. The size of Buffalo's Gates Circle, for example, allows more dangerous, 40-mph traffic, he said. Even bigger traffic circles, such as those Boston is famous for, let speeds climb to 55 or 60 mph, McCulloch said. "So it's almost like entering the highway with no acceleration lane," he said.

Roundabouts also are an advantage because the merge lanes guide cars in and out without the perpendicular angles of traditional traffic light intersections.

"It's almost tough to get a serious- injury accident," said McCulloch.

Other drivers who went through the double roundabouts said that navigating the Kensington-Harlem-Wehrle circles -- built side by side like a figure eight with lots of yield signs -- was alternately a "great," "convenient," "complicated" or "confusing" traffic adventure.

Most problems, the drivers said, came not from themselves, but from others who go too fast or stop in the middle of the circles.

Locals in need of navigation advice can find it in wonkish detail at the DOT roundabout Web page: the DOT Web site. Links lead to animated videos that show gliding bicyclists and toylike cars managing roundabouts with ease. "Modern roundabouts follow the 'yield-at-entry' rule in which approaching vehicles must wait for a gap in the circulating flow before entering the circle," it explains.

As Brian Bensching talked through the roundabouts' pros and cons from the driver's seat of his truck in the Jubilee lot, his perspective shifted in the direction that the DOT Web site seems to hope for.

"I hate it," Bensching said of the intersection. "It just makes it more complicated getting through."

Yet, he said, the roundabouts' bushes, flagpoles and cobblestones are better looking than the old stoplights.

"Once the construction's done," he said, "it'll probably calm down."

Adel Sadek, a University at Buffalo professor and roundabout specialist, prefers the small, controlled traffic circles to traditional stop lights for the gas savings, among other things.

Cars heading through roundabouts don't idle or use the extra gas that stopping and starting at lights requires, said Sadek, who moved to Buffalo a few months ago from Vermont.

"You have to look at context," said Sadek, who is an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering.

When one street of an intersection has much heavier traffic, the imbalance makes roundabouts impractical. And the path for emergency vehicles can't be cleared by switches as it can with light signals.

Still, Sadek said, the pluses of roundabouts outweigh the minuses. As people age, it becomes harder to judge left turns and get the timing right to turn at a traffic clearing. Roundabouts eliminate this problem.

mkearns@buffnews.com

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