Columbus is getting its first taste of an innovation in traffic management. They are called “roundabouts.”
Although they have been around in some form since the 18th century and are a common feature in European roadways, the first roundabout in Columbus — at the Highway 82 and Military Road interchange — opened just a few days ago. It is actually a semi-roundabout, we are told.
The basic concept of a conventional roundabout is simple: Traffic moves in an orderly, counter-clockwise direction, with those entering the roundabout yielding to traffic already circulating. The curvature of the roundabout reduces speeds to safe levels. Peace, order and harmony prevail.
At least this is how the Federal Highway Administration’s website imagines it.
As of Thursday in Columbus, it actually works this way:
Drivers exiting the highway arrive at the roundabout, turn on their left-turn blinker and grind to a stop to stare slack-jawed at the roundabout like it’s Stonehenge.
Traffic backs up and the horn-blowing begins, prompting the cautious driver to ease into the roundabout as if he were a drunk teenager sneaking into his house at 3 a.m. This causes those who are already in the roundabout to slow, perhaps even stop, to allow the new arrival into the concrete corn maze where a series of “You first. No, you first” hand signals are exchanged.
Once in the roundabout, the new driver joins the procession, left-turn signals blinking as testament to their stubborn determination to eventually go left on Military Road before they die. Eventually, drivers escape and find themselves on Military, most often headed in the opposite direction they desired.
To enhance the general entertainment value, MDOT has strewn traffic cones at random junctures, perhaps to make sure everyone has the opportunity to be equally disoriented/stimulated.
Traffic experts say roundabouts are efficient and affordable, but the real motivation is that they are popular in Europe, which gives them an air of sophistication we Americans have long coveted.
There’s even a song about them. “Roundabout,” (lyrics by Jon Anderson of the English group, Yes) was inspired by the band’s encounter with the traffic control devices almost 50 years ago.
The opening stanza:
I’ll be the roundabout
The words will make you out ‘n’ out
I spend the day your way
Call it morning driving through the sound and
In and out the valley
We can all acknowledge that Anderson has eloquently captured the sense of what it’s like to be in a roundabout.
Once drivers have solved the mystery of the Military Road roundabout, they will be able take their roundabout game up a notch when the city opens a series of three roundabouts on the west entrance to the city along Main Street. In the span of a few hundred feet, drivers will spin around one roundabout and be deposited back on to Main only to enter another vortex, then another. It’s sort of like that game people play at birthday parties where you place your forehead on a baseball bat, spin around for a while, then try to run to the finish line.
This is certain to liven up the Main Street ambiance.
The Federal Highway Administration, perhaps admitting that roundabouts aren’t quite as simple as they suggest, has put together an instruction manual on how to proceed through roundabouts, which is potentially helpful to about half the population.
The male population won’t read instructions for assembling a nuclear reactor let alone read instructions on how to drive. The male ego will simply not permit it.
We’ll figure it out ourselves.
You first. No, you first.
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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