How To Escape From A Roundabout

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

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