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i travel in and out of town every day , some days are slower going then others , but it is nothing compared to oahu . roundabouts get serious this is small town Hilo . it would cost a fortune and take years to build .
only traffic ( if you can call it that ) is morning work time and evening going home time . small little inconvenience to live in a small town
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quote:
I'm not sure about that. When I lived in NJ there was a 6 lane highway (3 lanes each way) with a 50MPH limit, and intersections every couple of miles. No matter which direction you were traveling, if you drove about 45 to 50 MPH, you would make most of the lights.
Hmm. Imagine a moving sequence of lights turning green in one direction, say north on a N/S road like Kanoelehua. How does that work for the opposing traffic coming the other way (south)?
quote:
small little inconvenience to live in a small town
Been to Maui, Kauai, or (gasp) Oahu lately? As mentioned roundabouts inherently have considerable cost efficiencies due to the complete absence of electrical hardware and power infrastructure requirements. Road maintenance and changes can be performed progressively. The traffic here seems incredibly obnoxious to this old Hilo boy at this point. From the 50's till the late 90's it was great. It can only get worse without rail or maybe population decimating war, plague, or flying cars.
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When I live in Alaska they took stops light out at of couple of intersection and put in roundabouts. Everyone thought it was a crazy idea but the roundabouts work a lot better than lights. I think roundabouts are the way to go if you can work them in. I don't think so on major roads like hwy 30 or 11 on smaller streets yes.
jrw
jrw
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"Hmm. Imagine a moving sequence of lights turning green in one direction, say north on a N/S road like Kanoelehua. How does that work for the opposing traffic coming the other way (south)?"
I agree, it doesn't seem to make sense when you think about it, but somehow it worked! I never was good at math (actually I think it's some other area of study) but I think it has something to do with the combination of the distance between the intersections, the length of time the lights are red/green and the speed of the vehicles.
The intersections were about a mile or two apart on the road in NJ(ironically also named Rt 130). It could be that the distance between the intersections gave enough time for a full cycle of red/green light before you reached the next one, so yes, it may not work on a road where the intersections are closer together.
As far as traffic circles, NJ is famous for those as well. Oh boy were they fun for a beginning driver! They actually work quite well once you get used to them. You can move an insane amount of traffic through them despite the white knuckle effect they can sometimes have.
The funny thing is, I don't think they would work so well in Hawaii for one reason.... drivers are TOO nice! Ha ha.
The idea is that if you are IN the circle, you have the right of way and you don't stop or yield to drivers who are waiting to enter it.
When it works best, the drivers approaching the circle will time their entry so that they don't have to stop and will seamlessly merge with the ones already in the circle. Of course when traffic is heavy, drivers entering the circle have to stop until there is a space for them.
I envision Hawaii drivers constantly stopping INSIDE the circle to wave on drivers waiting to enter, totally defeating the purpose of keeping the traffic moving!
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Cameras would be able to see the traffic and the computer would generate the most efficient traffic signal patterns
This did, in fact, come to pass, but for tracking and ticketing, not to help the flow.
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The old "traffic circles" in NJ are not the same as modern roundabouts.
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Not sure what is different about a "modern roundabout" but I do remember that the circles did actually work quite well, again that was because people were used to them and knew how to enter/exit properly.
Some of them even had multiple lanes. Circles or roundabouts, they are still better than sitting in traffic, waiting for a light, especially when there's no one even coming the other way.
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I lived in a town that had a serious bottleneck and the DOT proposed a roundabout to fix it. A stop light wasn't really an option because it would have required traffic to backup onto a bridge. The whole town was aflutter on what a big mistake the roundup was going to be. The "Letters to the editor" section of the newspaper was flooded with doomsday predictions of traffic accidents, backups, and serious end-of-the-world chaos. Video rental stores couldn't keep "National Lampoon's European Vacation" in stock as people wanted to queue up that scene where the Griswalds got onto a roundabout in London and went round and round in circles for hours. "Look! They are stuck forever on the roundabout!" Shouted one video viewer. "And they are driving on the wrong side of the road!" Shrieked another. One day I spotted a Prius with a "Roundabouts Kill" bumpersticker sandwiched between the "You can't hug your child with nuclear arms" and "Free Tibet" stickers.
The DOT tried to educate the public on roundabouts and released a public service announcement on the radio. Unfortunately it had the opposite effect that they were hoping for. Half the town criticized the message. The other half criticized them for hiring Dick Cheney to narrate it.
The nanny state ignored the public outcries and proceeded with the planned roundabout. People started stockpiling food, water, and ammunition. Churches were overflowing with confessing congregations on the Sunday before the grand opening of the roundabout. The eve before the grand opening, the DOT erected the new roundabout signage. Before the morning dawn broke, somebody had spray painted a swastika on it.
Then the day came when the roundabout opened. Some brave souls woke up two hours early to navigate the gridlock and congestion that they were sure they were going to face, but most families just retreated to their basements, held hands, and prayed. And waited. When they didn't hear the sounds of vehicles colliding and the screams of the wounded they bravely turned on their radios. Why were the radio stations featuring their normal programming? Why wasn't the emergency broadcast system activated? Why was the morning traffic report stating THERE WAS NO TRAFFIC DELAYS?!
Eventually, people came out of their basements. It took their eyes a moment to adjust to the daylight, but eventually through their squinting eyes they could see that instead of stopping traffic and mankind, the roundabout actually worked! The bottleneck was gone! Why did we spend so many years waiting waiting waiting at that intersection? Who were these mad scientists and engineers the DOT employed? We never got the answers to these questions but it was almost like... almost like.... almost like the roundabout had been used in other countries for decades successfully, and that America's sick fascination with the stoplights and expensive overpasses may not be the only solutions to the world's traffic problems.
The first time I approached the roundabout, my fingers were tingling as they clutched the steering wheel tightly. Butterflies were fluttering in my stomach. I entered the roundabout. A Prius in front of me had a scraped mark where somebody had removed a bumper sticker but couldn't get all the glue off. Hybrid cars, roundabouts, Dick Cheney shooting people in the face. What had this world come to? I didn't really have time to ponder it all, because the roundabout shaved 10 minutes of my commute.
(having deja vu? I found this on the Punaweb terracore archives)
