Roundabouts: The Rad, The Raunchy, and the Ridiculous

Norway also loves roundabouts. They also love tunnels through mountains. So in 2013 they combined the two and built a roundabout in the middle of a tunnel. The Vallavik Tunnel.

Glad to see the shout out for Dutch smart signals - they are amazing. I always wondered why they were not more prevalent in the US, which seems to always go on timed signal cycles - so interesting to see how the road design itself makes them possible. Would love to see a video just on these!

As a dutch person, I really enjoy these videos; I never think about these things, they're simply not a part of my active mind eventhough I'm interested in infrastructure (That shouldn't be a surprise, since I'm here om this video). These videos do make it an active part of my mind. Makes me realise how lucky I am that my country has taken the time, effort and money to make sure I can cycle to my work every day, still half asleep sometimes and don't have to worry about my safety or that of others.

In the UK we have a fixation on making roundabouts as fast as possible so we have really high entry and exist speeds and often two or more lanes on even small residential roundabouts. This not only makes them leathal if you're on a bike and very difficult to cross as a pedestrian but often just diminishes the capacity / speed overall becuase there's so many conflict points. Its really frustrating

Amazing video! The issue in America of roundabouts being added as a response rather than a precaution is very much true. Near me there was an intersection exiting a school that saw a very high number of collisions constantly. It was redesigned as a 2 lane roundabout. While the number of collisions has decreased, the risk for pedestrians stays nearly the same. People drive straight through it without slowing down, ignoring the painted lanes. It's as if the roundabout isn't even there!

Having grown up in the netherlands myself, I never paid much attention to any of these things, and really took them for granted. Now after seeing more and more videos like these, the more I've come to appreciate having grown up here instead of, for example, car-centric america

I really appreciate the scientific approach vs. the 'because we said so' approach that's unfortunately common in the world. I think there is a similar issue in the world of firefighting.

This is an excellent explanation! It does make me wonder what options an American grid system even has to slowly moving towards separating flow types. A step by step guide to stroad redesign and repurposing would be funny ::)

Greetings from Stevenage, England! Stevenage was originally built in the 1950s for 60,000 people without a single traffic light! It's a great case study for why an efficient road network can be bad. Also shoutout to Hemel Hempstead's magic roundabout!

Compliments! High quality content! Let's hope it will be seen by those who can learn from it. Thank you!

Really enjoying your videos. Whenever I visit the US I go positively insane coming to all these 4 way stops in residential areas. I always think they'd benefit from a mini roundabout like they do in the UK, but as you have pointed out, the solution is much simpler than that in some ways. If the travel surface was designed to properly slow everyone down, we dont need either and vehicles can be traveling at a logical speed to lead to yields. Interested to hear your opinion on mini roundabouts in general

idk if i'd ever had it broken down like this before even being an avid yimby-youtube watcher, i knew about stroads and roads and streets but the four-way division between long/short roads, streets, and pedestrian spaces is super useful and super clear to me now—and of course the types of roundabouts and their strengths and weaknesses, thanks and keep up great work i really appreciate your content!

It's amazing how much more scientific road design is approached here. Road design should not be seen as a us vs. them as it seems to be the case in many other places where the conversation seems to focus on bikes vs. cars. In The Netherlands I have seen so many times how a driver sitting in their car will pull over and speak to a person on a bike. They are not enemies and to them it is completely normal that each of them can use the public streets! Edit: I forgot to say great video! You explain things really well and your channel shows how the Dutch are not just building roads this way because of some ideology or because of climate reasons, rather they build for efficiency and safety which comes with other positive side effects. Love your channel!

Great video, I came a bit late so I'll have to watch again from the beginning! In the US, some cities or states are going crazy with roundabouts (like Arizona) and it is interesting to see them mentioned as duct tape!.

This was quite informative, as an American who doesn’t really understand why traffic is so bad here. Thank you for the lesson!

One of the (many) issues with roundabouts in Canada is drivers do not know how to drive through them. There were zero roundabouts in Nova Scotia when I got my license. The first time I ever drove through a roundabout was when I was living in New Zealand. Then when I moved back to Nova Scotia, there were a bunch of roundabouts there. And anyone who got their license before I did would have received the same amount of training as I did (zero).

I'm so happy that you referenced command and conquer there - I know it's a defunct title with the most recent release in it being a hilariously terrible flop on the market, but I still sometimes feel way older than I am, knowing that people have almost forgotten all about command and conquer.

Thank you for pointing out just how important it is to be holistic with transportation planning. I recently visited a small town that has a major arterial stroad where the state DOT had four double-lane roundabouts installed within 800 meters. And people complain, because of course, that's insane. No effort was made to rethink how to cut down the number of intersections for this high-volume arterial. Roundabouts are treated as interchangeable, ploppable assets, and the level of planning is so granular and close to the ground as to be useless when it comes to actually improving transportation.

As someone from Canberra Australia, we absolutely love roundabouts. I have about 20 of them within 1.5km of my house. Big duel lane ones including one with traffic lights for peak hour traffic

Excellent video, keep up the great work!