Round and round we’ll go

We have to confess that, when we first heard that the City intended to build four “roundabouts” along a 1.7-mile stretch of Central Avenue, our initial reaction was to shudder.

What immediately leapt to mind was a scene from a trip to Paris years ago.  We were in the passenger seat of a rental car studying maps.  (No GPS in those days.)  As the car approached the Place de la Concorde, this is what it looked like:

All right, maybe it wasn’t quite that bad – but it sure was scary to us.  We knew the person behind the wheel could handle herself in a courtroom – but could she, having learned to drive in North Dakota, maneuver a car through all this chaos?

It turned out we didn’t need to worry.  Without a second’s hesitation, our driver barreled into the traffic, and before we could finish the “Hail Mary,” she had brought us safely to the other side.

Is this, we wondered, the experience the City was planning to subject Alameda drivers to?  Had John Knox White and his ilk devised a diabolical scheme to frighten local residents out of their cars?

Well, no (at least as to the first question).  There are no plans to replicate the Place de la Concorde.  But there are plans – which Council approved on April 20 – to put two roundabouts on Central Avenue right away, with two more in the wings once funding becomes available.

Today, we’ll take a look at what the City’s transportation planners have in mind.  (Special thanks to senior transportation coordinator Gail Payne, who not only supplied us with relevant research but also answered all of our questions, obtuse as they sometimes were.)

Rather than refer simply to “roundabouts,” the planning gurus use the term “modern roundabouts” to distinguish them from “traffic circles.”  As they define the term, a “modern roundabout” is a one-way circular intersection in which traffic flows counter-clockwise around a center island.  So-called “splitter islands” deflect traffic as it approaches the roundabout, and entering traffic must yield to traffic already circulating in the roadway.

Here’s a simple – we hope – diagram prepared by the National Cooperative Highway Research Program of a typical “modern roundabout”:

Technically speaking, there currently are no modern roundabouts in the City of Alameda.  (What some local residents may call “roundabouts,” the gurus call “traffic circles.”)  Nor did the City include any as part of the Central Avenue “complete streets” plan authorized by Council in May 2013, and none were incorporated in the “concept” for the plan approved by Council in February 2016.

According to Ms. Payne, City staff and its consultants, CDM Smith and Kittelson and Associates, began researching modern roundabouts – which she described as a “relatively new countermeasure” that is “now seen as a more mainstream best practice treatment” – for the Central Avenue project in early 2020.  This effort, she said, was “in line with our relatively new Vision Zero policy that directs staff to focus on these more serious collisions” (i.e., those resulting in fatalities or severe injuries).

What was so great about roundabouts?  Well, the various presentations by City staff and its consultants cited research showing that intersections with roundabouts are significantly safer than intersections with traffic signals or stop signs.  For example, the Federal Highway Administration reported a study in which converting intersections with two-way stops to roundabouts reduced “severe crashes” by 82 percent, and converting intersections with signal lights to roundabouts reduced such crashes by 78 percent.  Similarly, the National Cooperative Highway Research Program found that replacing “conventional intersections” with roundabouts reduced total crashes by 35 percent, and crashes resulting in “severe injuries” by 76 percent.

These findings make eminent sense:  A driver will need to slow down when she approaches, enters into, and circulates through a roundabout.  In such a case, if a collision does take place, it ordinarily will happen at a lower speed and result in less serious injury.

Equally logical are the oft-cited environmental benefits of roundabouts:  Unlike at a traffic signal or stop sign, a driver going through a roundabout won’t need to stop, wait, and then start up again.  As a result, less fuel will be consumed, and fewer pollutants will be emitted.

City staff and its consultants presented their “final concept” for what now was called the Central Avenue “safety improvement project” to the Transportation Commission last November and to Council on April 20.  The plan called for roundabouts at four intersections:  moving from west to east, (1) Central Avenue, Main Street and Pacific Avenue; (2) Central Avenue, Fourth Street and Ballena Boulevard; (3) Central Avenue, Third Street and Taylor Avenue; and (4) Central Avenue, Encinal Avenue and Sherman Street.

This map shows the four locations marked with red circles:

At the April 20 Council meeting, City planner Andrew Thomas reported that the budget for the Central Avenue project contained sufficient funds to build two of the roundabouts now – but not all four.  (Ms. Payne told us each roundabout will cost about $3 million to construct.)   Mr. Thomas stated that staff had selected the two intersections deemed the “most dangerous” – Main Street/Pacific Avenue and Third Street/Taylor Avenue – to go first.  (Ms. Payne pointed to an analysis showing that these two locales were “higher collision intersections” than the other two, which, she said, are “lower tiered collision intersections.”)

Here’s what the design for the two new roundabouts will look like.  First, Main Street/Pacific Avenue:

Then, Third Street/Taylor Avenue:

At the April 20 Council meeting, most of the discussion about roundabouts involved the one proposed for the Encinal Avenue/Sherman Street intersection, which was not one of those scheduled for the first round.  The design prepared by the consultants would bar access from Sherman Street into the roundabout, turning the block south of it into a cul-de-sac.  We’ll spare our readers the details of the debate, but suffice it to say a lot of residents didn’t like that idea – and their objections found a receptive ear in Mayor Marilyn Ezzy Ashcraft, who joined Councilwoman Trish Spencer and Councilman Tony Daysog in opposing the proposed design.  (For those keeping score, this may the first time those three found themselves on the same side.)

Ultimately, Mr. Thomas got Ms. Ashcraft to buy into an alternative configuration that eliminated the cul-de-sac and instead allowed southbound traffic access from the roundabout to Sherman Street, and created a “slip lane” for residents on the block to use to turn right onto Encinal Avenue.  Ms. Spencer and Mr. Daysog still weren’t satisfied, but Ms. Ashcraft’s vote was enough to give staff the go-ahead for a project that included the alternative design.

We didn’t do any exact tabulation, but at both the Transportation Commission and Council meetings, the vast majority of public commenters endorsed the “modern roundabout” concept (if not always its use at Sherman Street and Encinal Avenue.)  But a number of speakers raised what we considered a legitimate issue:  pedestrian safety.

As the drawings above show, the design places a pedestrian crosswalk on each street leading into the roundabout.  The crosswalk is set back about a car’s-length from the circulating roadway, and it is divided into two segments of equal length separated by a “splitter island.”  According to the consultants, this design allows pedestrians (or bicyclists who choose not to ride through the roundabout along with the cars) to cross one lane of traffic, pause, and then cross the opposite lane of traffic.

Here’s the problem:  The roundabout creates a constant traffic flow into and out of the intersection – unlike intersections with traffic signals or stop signs, vehicles won’t need to stop when they enter or exit the roundabout.  Instead, they’re supposed to yield to any pedestrians in the crosswalk.  But will a driver exiting the roundabout have enough time to react?  And what if she doesn’t?  By the same token, a pedestrian about to enter a crosswalk may be able – unless she is visually or hearing impaired – to see or hear a car heading into or out of the roundabout.  But can she be sure the driver will see her – or that the driver will stop?

This problem, of course, becomes especially acute for people who do have visual or hearing disabilities.  And they made their concerns known both to the Transportation Commissioners and to the Council members – sometimes, in dramatic fashion:  “I’m a dead duck if I start crossing the crosswalk,” one told Council.  “There’s no protection for me.”

(Mayor Ashcraft cut off this speaker as soon as the clock timing public comments ran down to zero, even though it appeared that the speaker was in the midst of completing a thought.  In this regard, Ms. Ashcraft has proved to be an even more rigorous – or, should we say, more rigid – enforcer of time limits than Chief Justice John Roberts, who at least lets an advocate finish a sentence before requiring her to sit down.  See sidebar.)

Curiously, the consultants, who had offered plenty of statistics to back up their recommendations, stated that no “definitive” study had been done about accidents being caused by vehicles failing to stop for pedestrians in crosswalks adjacent to roundabouts.  In fact, they seemed almost to pooh-pooh the issue.  “We can’t ever guarantee a safe crossing for anyone across any intersection, signalized or roundabout,” one consultant told Council.  “But overall when you look at roundabouts and their safety benefits for all users, including disabled folks of all types, overall I believe these are a safer option than a signalized intersection.”

Nevertheless, the consultants assured both the Transportation Commission and Council that the design drawings for the roundabouts would include features – like flashing or auditory signals – to warn drivers about pedestrians in a crosswalk.  How to alert visually or hearing impaired people to the presence and location of cars poses a tougher challenge, but Mr. Thomas promised that staff “absolutely” would pay attention to the needs of disabled people in the final design.

One of the links Ms. Payne sent us when we asked for background information about roundabouts was to a YouTube video entitled, “Why the U.S. Hates Roundabouts.”  Thanks to the video, we now know that, in reacting to the concept as we did initially, we were suffering from the “availability heuristic.”  Our readers can watch the video for themselves, but please note that it’s Chevy Chase in London, not us in Paris, whom it depicts as being trapped for hours trying to get out of a roundabout.  Nevertheless, once the project gets built, we’ll probably still be inclined to bike, not ride, down Central Avenue.

Sources:

Central Avenue project: 2020-11-18 staff report to TC re Central Ave. project; 2020-11-18 Presentation to TC; 2021-04-21 staff report re Central Ave. project; 2021-04-21 Presentation

Roundabouts: 2021-01-27 Presentation re Roundabouts; NCHRP Report 672 re roundabouts; IIHS, Roundabouts; FHA, Roundabouts; nchrp_rpt_572_presentation_handout