Wednesday, December 05, 2007
Murphy's Law of commuting: if something CAN go wrong with your route to work, it will.
My commute has been a total breeze for 8 months. 15 minutes. 18 if I hit all the lights. Then the powers of Murphy did their annual review of commutes and discovered my bliss.
Then there was road construction. I put up with that for a little. And now there are 2 rotaries. Also known as roundabouts.
I have never been able to figure out these structures. Honestly, does the diagram above help you at all? Does it not show cars colliding in the roundabout?
So the construction that created the roundabouts has yielded to collisions in the roundabouts. Sigh. Hafta find a new way to work.
3 comments:
It's called a round about because it makes you go round about instead of directly to your destination. Some engineers don't realize that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. (Sigh)
Shel - the roundabout near where I grew up was affectionately called "8 corners" by the locals. It's where 8 entry options come into play rather than 4. It scares the bejesus out of most roundabout newbies, but I'm at home in it.
I think it's a good idea when there are that many streets coming together; if everyone started at the same time, a lot more traffic can move than if they all took turns. Unfortunately, most people go one of two ways when entering a roundabout: 1. speed through and get it over, 2. stop, start, stop, start, I'm scared! Once people in the area get used to one, it's all good and not to be avoided. Just keep trying and you'll get the hang of it. You boldly moved across the country to a largly unknown land, uprooting your entire family to do so. Don't let a little old roundabout scare you now!
I have a feeling that they just put these things in the street to avoid putting a stop sign there... or as an excuse to put planters in the middle of the street. Because the traffic flow was really ok. No major streets converging... just side streets intersecting with a major street.
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