...a roundabout!

        This is your future, people.    Hug it.    The DOT isn't giving you much of a choice.

        We don't exactly embrace change in these parts (see: Brett Favre vs. the Packers) and it's even tougher when those switches are mandated.      A recent Journal/Sentinel piece said we'll be dealing with six times the roundabouts we currently do in Wisconsin, with the DOT citing improved safety and a reduction in crashes, especially the serious variety.

        That story prompted a flurry of reactions in the paper, with everyone from columnists like Laurel Walker and Patrick McIlheran weighing on their virtues/detriments.      Even my former colleague, Kevin Fischer, tossed in his two cents in the CNI papers this week.    His take: fire good...roundabout bad.     He references Amy Rinard's original piece: "Have you been on Drexell near the Shoppes at Wyndham Village? How about 116^th and Grange in Hales Corners? Moorland Road?   There you will encounter profanity-induced roundabouts, the nightmarish creation of common sense-challenged transportation bureaucrats.  One of them was quoted in Rinard’s article today: “The chances of killing someone at 20 mph are substantially less than the chances of killing someone at 55 mph.”  But who's going 55 mph in the spots where roundabouts are being placed? Not at 116th and Grange."

      I drove through that intersection regularly (it's the one pictured above), both pre-and-post roundabout.     A friend of the family was involved in a nasty t-bone crash there before the changes came in, with injuries involved.     There'd been many others.    No, people didn't do 55 there, but a few came pretty close.    And, many tried beating cross-traffic when there were only stop signs along 116th.    The roundabout limits speed, and should (by design, if drivers embrace the concept of "yield") prevent cross-traffic snafus. 

      I asked Hales Corners DPW head Mike Martin about accident rates, before and after the roundabout: he told me the intersection was host to three "bad" accidents a month before the circle went in.     They've have four--none of them involving personal injury--since the change in 2004.       Martin told me of a man who stormed into his office the other day, saying he'd "almost been killed" in a roundabout mishap--to which Martin pointed out that he WOULD'VE been killed had the same crash happened WITHOUT the change, since the speed at which the mishap occurred was greatly reduced.     

      The old-school fix would've been to put in a four-way stop, but Weber says the DOT's road-flow "bible" wouldn't allow it at 116th and Grange because of the uneven traffic flow--more cars use Grange than 116th.      Four-way stops need equal flow to work, the state says.     At unbalanced intersections, it recommends the roundabout.

      Some roundabouts are admittedly better than others.    The one on Milwaukee's Canal Street at 25th seems to work fine--I have yet to see a single casino patron piled up on the side of the road, the unfortunate victim of a roundabout crash.       The one, along South 6th Street in Milwaukee is a different kettle of fish.

     I don't know if it has something to do with the angles with which you come into this little beauty, or the fact that you're not expecting it coming off the viaduct, but even I have to admit that it throws me for a bit of a loop each time I come across it--which isn't that often, since that's not a route I frequent.     Which leads to the point about familiarity: once you've encountered a roundabout a few times, you actually...get...used...to...it.    

     Even when you're dealing with that beastly roundabout along Moorland Road outside the Ridge Theater in New Berlin.    I freaked when I first drove into it, since it featured not one but TWO lanes of circular traffic.     I can't think of another such creation in southeastern Wisconsin, and negotiating it takes some getting used to.      My kid has to do both the Grange/116th roundabout and the Moorland variety each time he goes to work at the theater.     His learning curve was abrupt, and expensive: he got a ticket for failure to yield in the New Berlin colossus, but now says he has the knack.     It's just a matter of getting used to it.

     If you can't wrap your mind around the concept of a multiple-lane roundabout, check out this video from the State of Washington Department of Transportation.  

    http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/Projects/roundabouts/

    Change.    What a concept.     Fischer wants no part of it.    Nor do his buds.   "I have talked to many, many, many people in my regular line of work and I have yet to have anyone tell me they like roundabouts," he writes.  "The only folks that approve of these atrocities are people who hate cars and asphalt and love mass transit.    But in true government fashion, roundabouts are being shoved down the public’s throats.      Roundabouts are accidents and road rage waiting to happen.      But government doesn’t care."

     I like my car.    I've embraced the roundabout.     I don't see people abandoning their cars at 116th or along Moorland, hoping on the bus to avoid another frustrating encounter with a circular intersection.      Plus, you can't catch a bus on Grange any more, thanks to transit system cuts.     So much for that option.       The beautiful thing about Kevin's rant, though, is that he provides his own solution to the roundabout conundrum: "The typical motorist in these parts is clueless when it comes to the simple 4-way stop. Now you expect him/her to safely navigate through a roundabout when he/she has no intention of being cautious and/or courteous?"

     Exactly.     I encounter just such a cluster-you-know-what each day at 92nd and Grange, where a four-way stop generates more one-fingered salutes that a Bears fan on the 50 yard line at Lambeau.      There isn't a week that goes by where someone doesn't jump a turn, roll through a sign or hesitate when their turn to proceed comes along.     Drivers who have no intention of being cautious or courteous are a menace to us all--the roundabout merely reduces the consequences of their bone-headedness.      Roundabouts aren't a willy-nilly government mandated quest to get us all to ride the bus (I STILL don't get that connection).     They're meant to protect us from each other.     And, they can even save gas--no more waiting forever at a stop light, no more needless idling waiting to turn left.    

    Oh, my God.     Does that mean roundabouts are Al Gore's idea?      Then they HAVE to be EVIL!