Two entities have crept westward across the land in the past
few years and made their way into northwestern Wisconsin and
northeastern Minnesota.
The first is called a “Kwik Trip.” They are
gas-station-mini-grocery-store-combos that are multiplying faster than rabbits
in the Duluth/Superior area. And they make the best chicken
alfraid-o (pronounced “alfredo”) pizza in the whole wide world! How
do I know that? I took a survey of all the 13 year old teenage grandsons that I
know…and Noah gave it a resounding two thumbs up!
The second is called a “Roundabout.” There are at
this time only two in our area (that I know of). They are the
cruelest of other-worldly circular traffic control inventions ever foisted upon
the American public.
Roundabouts were originally designed by the English during
the Dark Ages (that era before cable TV) to slow the Viking hordes from
spreading lutefisk throughout Europe. They
worked wonderfully – when that fierce Norwegian warrior Erik the Red (cousin of
Barney the Purple) attempted to lead his army to London, upon entering the
roundabout he simply kept going round and round and round until he was finally
heard to say, “Uffda Sven! How do we get out of here! Let’s
snack on some of that lutefisk and then skeedaddle back to Norway!”
For those unfamiliar with these marvels of traffic
engineering, here is some information from “Roundabout USA” (kind of sounds
like an amusement park, doesn’t it?): “A modern roundabout has three major
characteristics compared to its predecessors -- traffic circles and rotaries.
First, the roundabout gives vehicles in the circular travel way the
right-of-way. This change on a national basis in England in
1963 marked the start of the modern roundabout era. Second, roundabouts are
small, generally from 70 to 160 feet in diameter compared to 300 to 400 feet
and more for traffic circles and rotaries.”
Did you catch that? The predecessors to the
roundabout were “traffic circles” and “rotaries.” Traffic circles faded in
use when crop circles became the favorite form of UFO traffic control and
rotaries eventually merged into a loosely knit consortium of civic
organizations.
This is an early cave drawing of a roundabout found near
London:
This is a blueprint of a modern day Roundabout found in an
engineer’s office:
And this is an aerial view of the Roundabout at the other
end of the
Bong Bridge - that's me in the blue car:
And don’t feel bad if, when you entered a roundabout for the
very first time, panic and a sense of dread set in. They are beyond
confusing! Consider the following phraseology from several different
publications describing this wonder of traffic control:
“The rotary began in the U.S. as a simple circle with
no governing principles, but evolved into new designs based on weaving theory.”
Weaving theory? You begin to think about making
baskets when you go in there?
And this, “If theories can correctly predict the critical
gap, correctly predict how many such gaps are available, and correctly predict
move-up time for vehicles in the queue, then theoretically we can sum
individual driver behavior to predict total capacity, queuing, and delay. It is
this apparent simplicity that gives gap theory its broad appeal.”
The queue? Simplicity? Broad appeal? I
hope they get a queue, because I predict that when the gap theory combines with
the weave theory there is going to be a pile of cars in the middle of Roundabout Island the
size of the Empire State Building!
And here is some more unintelligible rambling on the subject
of Roundaboutology, “In the last step of gap theory, analysts sum predictions
of individual driver behavior to predict aggregate intersection performance during
the analysis period. This is mathematically simple but statistically dangerous,
because aggregating results of previous estimates will compound any estimation
errors.”
I don’t usually scream at my computer, BUT WHAT DOES THAT
MEAN???
And finally this: “First, a roundabout is geometry. Unlike a
signal, roundabout performance is entirely controlled by geometry and markings.
To evaluate the effect of geometric design elements, a gap theorist must
reliably predict a driver’s reaction to all relevant geometric parameters…”
What? My reaction to relevant geometric
parameters? How should I know? I flunked geometry!
And get a load of this from “Roundabout USA” (Hee-Haw!),
“…roundabouts have a raised entry "splitter" island that slows down
or constrains speed just before entry, duplicating in a way the curvature the
driver will experience within the roundabout itself.”
The curvature the driver will experience within the
roundabout? We’ll get bent out of shape when we go in there? Am
I reading that right?
Maybe on “Splitter Island” they should add a McDonalds or a
Bass Pro Shop to give motorists who cannot escape something to do.
Perhaps the roundabout was the inspiration behind the weird
machine in Carl Sagan’s book/movie “Contact” that sent Jodi Foster to see her
dearly departed dad in the Chevy Vega System via a worm hole. Why do
I say that? Because one person from Superior, Wisconsin that was
trapped for 93 minutes in a roundabout on the eastern end of the Bong Bridge
stated, “Once I got in there I began going faster and faster until I was bent
out of shape by the weaving geometry of the gap theory. And it
seemed like time itself was slowing down! And then, as I neared the
speed of light on Splitter Island, I began to see my long dead
relatives! And even some of my short dead relatives!”
I think the Department of Roundabouts should give out
trophies to motorists who actually navigate successfully through the weaving
splitters of gaps and queues and geometry, oh my!
To conclude my thesis on “Escaping from a Roundabout via a
Parallel Universe,” this actually happened to me when I approached the Bong Bridge Circle of
Death for the first time. As I entered the new roundabout from the
west on Belknap Street,
the sign indicated that I should enter the rotisserie and go counter
clockwise. (What makes this Roundabout even more confusing is that
it incorporates a “wheel within a wheel” technology – there are TWO circular
lanes orbiting Splitter Island!) But one of the arrows
engraved into the concrete in one of the lanes approaching this DOT amusement
park strongly suggested that I should enter this scarey-go-round and go LEFT to
get to Duluth.
(I think I have that right…it was all so confusing.)
Fortunately my sixth sense indicated to me that if I did
that, I would begin seeing dead people…one of them being Dan Vander Ark.
What did I do? I could see Duluth in the distance
to my left so I put my two wheel drive S-10 into four wheel drive (I double
clutched), put the pedal to the metal, flipped on the nitrous oxide switch for
an extra surge of power (actually I just turned up the radio), cut right
through the McDonald’s drive-through on Splitter Island, grabbed a double
cheeseburger, and plowed my way onto the Bong.
Or something like that.
I leave you with this final thought: “The history of
research on roundabouts shows that ‘what is going on’ is not obvious.” (Mike
Brown, Retired Chief of Geometrics, London)
I’ll say :>)
Dan Vander Ark
Copyright 2015
All rights reserved
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