Thread: Traffic Circle
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Old 06-20-2007, 11:59 AM   #41
OFD232
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Default Traffic Circle or Roundabout Whatevah!!!

Quote:
Originally Posted by chmeeee
Do you want to back that up with something? Those are all fairly standard roundabout statistics, backed by federal research. I am a traffic engineer, and I can tell you that when properly designed and implemented in a place with appropriate volumes, they work very well. I haven't driven through the Meredith one yet, I will next weekend though, so I cannot comment on the design of that one.

My experience as it comes to working with DOTs is that while upper level decision making can be (and frequently is) extremely poor, design work in the modern era is almost always very good.
Well My comment was more about the newspaper, it is a NH version of the Boston Herald. It was often said that if WWIII broke out between the US and Russia , the NY times headline would have been US-Soviet Conflict escalates, The Boston Globe would be US-Russia dispute ignites, Its Bush's Fault and the Herald would have been BOOM. But since you bring it up after being in a line of work where stats are used as a measure of performance it has been my experience that you can use the same stats to prove or disprove anything you want, IE There are statistics and then there are dammed lies. Federal research or for that matter any research is done to sometimes shall we say support certain goals or positions. I will have to agree with you though on upper level decision making especially in agencies where leadership has a political tinge to it is "unique" at times. Truthfully when all is said and done drivers will either adapt to it or go another way causing the traffic to be displaced on some other location. Last of all unless they put one somewhere on the lake itself I will just use the Boston Method of dealing with it Close my eyes and accelerate.
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