This past weekend, I was out of commission with strep throat, which was bad for two reasons: 1) I couldn’t blog and 2) I had to miss my girls’ weekend “Up North.” I was so ready to take good notes and photos for the sake of this blog. Nevertheless, I am embarking on my first trip to Wisconsin Dells in two weeks, so I am sure to plenty of Wisconsin culture to share.
I did venture out on Saturday (just to the emergency room at the new Franklin hospital), and along the way I encountered a topic I had planned to write about: the roundabout.
The roundabout is a relatively new phenomenon in suburban Milwaukee. City planners love them, drivers hate them. Many words have been written on the subject recently. The Franklin hospital has one on its campus, for inexplicable reasons. It may have been my fever or the snow, but I swear it wasn’t even an intersection. It was a roundabout for roundabout’s sake.
So what is a roundabout? Perhaps you may already know it by a different name: the traffic circle. My husband also offers the word “rotary” from the time he spent in graduate school on the east coast.* I think the term “roundabout” is more suited for a gymnastics move or some rare colloquialism, but not a serious word for modern infrastructure. And look at the sign for the roundabout -- what is this telling me? Slow down, it's time to recycle?
Actually, I don’t think I even knew of such intersection madness until I was in my late 20s and had the misfortune of driving through Des Plaines, IL. The Cumberland Circle, affectionately known as Suicide Circle, is an anomaly in Chicagoland. It was so unexpected; I cannot imagine how I even maneuvered through it. Please correct me if I am wrong, but I can’t recall any such beast on the Southside.
Traffic circles have recently become en vogue in southeastern Wisconsin with New Berlin housing two additions (with one being at the end of an expressway exit ramp.) And just last week, the Department of Transportation supported a plan to create a corridor of roundabouts on 27th Street, just a few minutes from my home. Note the word “corridor” – it means they want to replace TWELVE stoplights with roundabouts. That is SIX MILES of roundabouts. I would be trapped in my subdivision!
Apparently, studies show that traffic circles are safer and quicker alternatives to traffic lights and stop signs. The only reason they may seem safer is that people are so freaked out about driving through a roundabout that they have a death grip on the wheel as they move along at 10 miles per hour. And quicker? Who cares about quicker? I now view stoplights as brief opportunities to check Facebook on my BlackBerry. I’m not in any hurry.
I hope the DOT does an about face on their roundabout idea. And even if they called them traffic circles, the term I prefer, I don’t think I’d like them any better.
*Yes, I am aware that there are technical differences between a roundabout and a traffic circle or rotary. I’m not interested in those details. When other people (and you know who you are), start to use “you’re/your” and “it’s/its” correctly, then perhaps I could be persuaded to care about the differences in controlled intersections, mmkay?
I did venture out on Saturday (just to the emergency room at the new Franklin hospital), and along the way I encountered a topic I had planned to write about: the roundabout.
The roundabout is a relatively new phenomenon in suburban Milwaukee. City planners love them, drivers hate them. Many words have been written on the subject recently. The Franklin hospital has one on its campus, for inexplicable reasons. It may have been my fever or the snow, but I swear it wasn’t even an intersection. It was a roundabout for roundabout’s sake.
So what is a roundabout? Perhaps you may already know it by a different name: the traffic circle. My husband also offers the word “rotary” from the time he spent in graduate school on the east coast.* I think the term “roundabout” is more suited for a gymnastics move or some rare colloquialism, but not a serious word for modern infrastructure. And look at the sign for the roundabout -- what is this telling me? Slow down, it's time to recycle?
Actually, I don’t think I even knew of such intersection madness until I was in my late 20s and had the misfortune of driving through Des Plaines, IL. The Cumberland Circle, affectionately known as Suicide Circle, is an anomaly in Chicagoland. It was so unexpected; I cannot imagine how I even maneuvered through it. Please correct me if I am wrong, but I can’t recall any such beast on the Southside.
Traffic circles have recently become en vogue in southeastern Wisconsin with New Berlin housing two additions (with one being at the end of an expressway exit ramp.) And just last week, the Department of Transportation supported a plan to create a corridor of roundabouts on 27th Street, just a few minutes from my home. Note the word “corridor” – it means they want to replace TWELVE stoplights with roundabouts. That is SIX MILES of roundabouts. I would be trapped in my subdivision!
Apparently, studies show that traffic circles are safer and quicker alternatives to traffic lights and stop signs. The only reason they may seem safer is that people are so freaked out about driving through a roundabout that they have a death grip on the wheel as they move along at 10 miles per hour. And quicker? Who cares about quicker? I now view stoplights as brief opportunities to check Facebook on my BlackBerry. I’m not in any hurry.
I hope the DOT does an about face on their roundabout idea. And even if they called them traffic circles, the term I prefer, I don’t think I’d like them any better.
*Yes, I am aware that there are technical differences between a roundabout and a traffic circle or rotary. I’m not interested in those details. When other people (and you know who you are), start to use “you’re/your” and “it’s/its” correctly, then perhaps I could be persuaded to care about the differences in controlled intersections, mmkay?
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It is not on the Southside, but there is a traffic circle somewhere in Brookfield. That's some scary stuff. Give me a stoplight any day.
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