Several years ago I had a discussion with the City Traffic Engineer about certain intersections and why the traffic at those intersectios was so screwed up, especially at rush hour.  In a nutshell, the intersections had dedicated right turn lanes next to a left turn/straight ahead lane.  Think about it;  that is bass ackwards.  I tried a dozen different ways to explain to him that if he switched to dedicated left turn and straight ahead/right turn lanes the traffic would clear the intersections much faster.  I was the fleet manager of a thirty-truck fleet at the time and our trucks would sit in line at these intersections through three to five cycles before they could clear the intersection.  But the guy just couldn't listen;  he kept trying to make me understand how thoroughly their computer models had gamed each intersection and I obviously did not understand the big picture.  Sigh.  We mostly avoided those intersections but some times it wasn't possible.

So a couple years ago when the city started putting traffic circles in busy side streets, I went out and looked at the progress.  Sure enough, the radii of the circles was too short by yards; their dinky little circles meant that tractor-trailers would be climbing curbs on both sides of the road.  I didn't even bother to call this time.

Then they put a traffic circle in a minor intersection near where Toothache lived.  It was an intersection that became backed up at rush hour causing some congestion on one of the major north/south routes.  I asked Toothache why they were putting a circle there...he shrugged and said, "Hoity-toity". 

Most folks hereabouts are not familiar with circles (we call them "round-abouts" or "roundie-rounds" here).  At first everyone just stopped.  Then there was a dangerous mix of uncertainty as some stopped, some slowed, some raced through, and some couldn't figure out what to do.  Now it is mostly a race to see who can get through it first.  But I guess they are learning.  And in the case of the one near Toothache's house, it really has eased the congestion at rush hour.

And that is the thing about circles:  when everyone knows how to use them, they work.  They accomodate and clear traffic much more efficiently than a regular intersection.  I have seen traffic circles all over the world.  The key is that the circle has to be big enough to handle the flow.  Circles that are too small just add to the misery.

There were traffic circles in Japan when I lived there, a big one in Tokyo and a huge one just outside the Japanese Defense Force base near Takiyama.  That is the one that my family got swamped in during the Typhoon in 1958;  Doc Ford's old Chevy couldn't survive the bow-wave put up by a  bus and we flooded out.  Doc carried my mom, my sister, and myself out of thigh-deep water to the dry side of the circle.

The city of Saigon had several large traffic circles but unfortunately they were taught to drive by the French which meant that even well-designed roads don't mean much when the drivers flood the road with no regard for the lane markers, sidewalks, or anything else.  I got trapped in the same circle where monks had burned themselves alive and traitors were shot at the stake.  An alert and sympathetic MP saved my bacon.

There were several large circles in Germany.  When I was a rookie tractor-trailer driver I picked up a load in Frankfurt and followed secondary roads to Hanau to pick up another piece of the load.  Came down a slight rise and saw the gigantic traffic circle ahead...I made the mistake of jumping into the flow and moving to the left to avoid the slow-down of cars getting out of the circle.  Once I was in one of the inner lanes, that was where I stayed.   I must have made a dozen laps around that circle before I could work my way back to the outside lane. 

One night a couple years later I was one of the NCOs in charge of about 20 tractors that were pulling 155mm Towed Howitzers from Kaiserslautern Army Depot to the port in Bremerhaven.  We were supposed to spend the night in the city of Kassel.  Our carefully planned convoy blew apart when half of the trucks took the wrong exit and the rest got broken up by traffic lights.  The next thing you know we had howitzers being towed all over the city.  It was after 9:00 pm when I came upon a great big traffic circle that had half a dozen or more of my lost trucks  doing laps around the circle.  One of the drivers told me he figured that someone would find them there eventually.  We had trucks going every which way all over Kassel until after midnight.

Well, our little Swirling Epicenter is coming into world-class status, we have several circles in town now.  None are big enough to brag about, but several seem to be doing the job.  We still have an idiot in charge of traffic design and we are still about five years behind on planning.  But I shouldn't complain;  it isn't a town that has real traffic problems, just some frustrations.  Every time I drive out to Phoenix or San Diego or even, Heaven forbid, LA,  I come home grateful for the tiny traffic snarls we experience here....like I said...it's all relative.