An Agenda for Highways and Bridges for a 21st Century Transportation Secretary
By: Jonathan French
Tags: Infrastructure, Transportation, Roundabout, Biden, Pete Buttigieg

4. Roundabout advocacy and implementation

Image by Sbettin, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

I’ll admit as a roundabout advocate, I thought this would be higher on the list when I first started writing this story, but the other three were far more important to the overall effort to repair and modernize our infrastructure while keeping people safe. However, roundabouts are a key method to do both.

Roundabouts are not a new idea as they have existed since the 1960s in Europe and since the late 1990s in the United States, yet they are still seen as an “innovative” intersection by FHWA and as an alternative to a traffic signal.

The traffic signal was no longer seen as “innovative” in the 1930s and 1940s and after arriving in America at the turn of the 20th century with the first electric signal installed in Cleveland, Ohio in 1914. We are now past that point with roundabouts, yet there is no universal recognition and there are still many stakeholders, especially residents of a community who are apprehensive and skeptical of roundabouts compared to a signal which they almost always support as a solution.

Indeed, traffic signals are literally everywhere both as parts of national infrastructure, but also in society — in television shows, books, media, toys etc. One of the first things most young children learn is “stop and go” with red and green lights. Roundabouts have still yet to see the same societal integration, with the most famous examples being in a scene in National Lampoon’s European Vacation or the many viral video clips of errant vehicles launching over the central island — neither good examples of the true operations or benefits of roundabouts.

Roundabouts may not be everywhere, but they are in all 50 states with several roundabouts in the vast majority of states. The United States is estimated to have about 7000 roundabouts. That number may sound high, but when compared to the United Kingdom (10,000), France (30,000 to 50,000) with the size of the United States’ road network, we should have a number much higher considering our number of traffic signals is over 300,000.

While traffic signals are also part of any driver education curriculum, I was only able to find six states that had roundabouts as part of their mandated driver education curriculum as of 2018. Formal driver education itself is only required in 32 states for licensure, so there is already a disadvantage for users to learn about roundabouts compared to a traffic signal, which a user has already vast knowledge of before they even reach their teenage years.

I’ve written in two previous stories (here and here) that roundabouts not only significantly reduce injury and fatal crashes for vehicles and pedestrians when compared to a signalized intersection, but they also significantly reduce emissions and fuel consumption, provide for green space, are resilient to severe climate events which cause extended power outages (rendering signals inoperative), and are excellent solutions to reduce distracted driving and red light running. Yet we continue to lag behind most of the world in their implementation, favoring traffic signals instead.

Cost is seen a major factor, but with the reduction in the severity of crashes, roundabouts also pay for themselves in the long run compared to the traffic signal, which does not provide the same level of safety even though it has been universally implemented and accepted due to its familiarity. The total costs to society of a fatal crash were found to be around $1.4 million according to a 2015 NHTSA study, and roundabouts reduce these crashes by 90–100% compared to a signalized intersection, saving thousands of lives and billions of dollars every year. Roundabouts also do not experience the costs of a regular maintenance cycle for equipment, nor will they become obsolete and need to be totally replaced due to changes in technology. They are already autonomous vehicle-ready, as vehicles will be able to use vehicle-to-vehicle communication for operations.

As a mayor of South Bend, Indiana, Buttigieg implemented multiple roundabouts as part of his Smart Streets initiative to transform the city into a more livable and safe community for all users. He said in his opening address to the Road School at Purdue University in 2018 that while he wasn’t a “roundabout fundamentalist,” he clearly understood the benefits of a “well-placed roundabout,” and he also saw the lack of education of their use as a barrier to acceptance. As the incoming Transportation Secretary, Buttigieg can advocate a similar view to the same media universe he has had access to during and after his presidential campaign and break down that educational barrier.

Secretary-designate Buttigieg may not be the “Roundabout President” (yet) as I had hoped, but that doesn’t mean he can’t take roundabouts to a new level of national recognition to become a conventional type of intersection for FHWA, and to at least have as much acceptance as traffic signals among the majority of Americans. That eventual acceptance will be a major barrier lifted to increase their implementation across the country and potentially thousands more lives per year and billions of dollars saved and a cleaner environment as a result.