November 25, 2007
Roads
A Shift, but for Some Drivers, a Vicious Circle
By JILL P. CAPUZZO
Wall Township
“GO, go, go,” shouted Narendra Khichi from inside his truck parts
shop, urging a white sedan that had stopped outside his window in the
middle of the traffic circle where Routes 33 and 34 meet. “Go,
wherever you want to go, but just go.”
This kind of armchair traffic controlling has become a daily source
of entertainment and frustration for Mr. Khichi and others affected
by this busy route in central Monmouth County who find themselves
facing yet another configuration of roads, courtesy of the New Jersey
Department of Transportation.
The latest design — and one of the new buzzwords in traffic
management — is a roundabout. Imported from Europe, this smaller,
more simplified version of the loathed traffic circle is gaining
popularity among transportation officials not only in New Jersey but
also around the country as a way of slowing traffic down and reducing
the number of accidents.
While not unique to New Jersey, traffic circles — along with another
famed New Jersey road design, the jughandle — are the bane of many
drivers’ existence. First introduced to the state in 1925, the
traffic circle, or rotary, concept was meant to keep traffic flowing
by allowing cars to pass through an intersection in a circular motion
without stopping.
Back then, when roads were less congested and drivers were more
polite, it worked. Not so today. Lengthy backups on roads leading
into the circles and accidents are commonplace.
Over the last several years, the Department of Transportation has
been on a mission to eliminate circles statewide, as resources become
available, said Erin Phalon, a spokeswoman for the department. Where
once there were 44 traffic circles on state roads (and 25 to 30 on
county and local roads), now there are just 25 circles on state
roads, and several of them are slated for elimination.
In some cases, the circle is being straightened out, replaced by a
regular intersection with traffic lights, as at Routes 30 and 130 in
Collingswood in Camden County, or by an intersection with contiguous
jughandles, as at the old Berlin Circle at Routes 30 and 73, also in
Camden County.
A third alternative — which is generally less costly and involves
acquiring less land — has been to transform the circles into
roundabouts, which tend to be smaller and with fewer lanes. And here
is where a new set of problems begins.
“It was the biggest mistake,” said Kristen Van Dunk, a clerk at the
Exxon gas station that sits on the Route 33/34 roundabout in Wall.
“Now that they’ve changed it, nobody knows who’s supposed to go where
and when.”
Ms. Van Dunk said she had witnessed numerous accidents since the
roundabout opened in June, including a serious one in mid-November
after which “the police spent an hour cleaning up glass after a guy
was rear-ended.”
That accident was caused by a drunken driver, according to Capt. Tim
Clayton of the Wall Township Police Department, who said that “no
engineering in the world can stop a drunk.”
While minor accidents still occur regularly, Captain Clayton said
there had been a slight reduction in the overall number of accidents
(to 36 from June to September, down from 40 in the same period in
2006) and a drastic drop in severe accidents at the site, which was a
primary goal in replacing the circle with a roundabout.
Another goal, to improve traffic flow, by all accounts has not been
met, with drivers complaining that backups at the circle are worse
than before.
One problem stems from the fact that the generally unwritten rules
governing traffic circles run opposite those governing roundabouts.
With roundabouts, those entering are supposed to yield to those
already in the roundabout, who have the right-of-way. For traffic
circles, the rules are a little more ambiguous, with the advantage
going to what is deemed the dominant roadway.
The New Jersey Driver Manual published by the Department of
Transportation does not do much to clear up the confusion. “There are
not set rules for driving into, around and out of a traffic circle in
New Jersey,” the manual states. “Common sense and precaution must
prevail at all times.”
Another hitch is that the modern roundabout is typically a tight, one-
lane loop that forces drivers to drop down to 25 miles per hour in
the circle. That works well in slowing down traffic on local roads
but not so well when the feeder roads are four-lane highways with
cars traveling at 50 m.p.h., as is the case in Wall. The road there
narrows to one lane through about half the circle.
(In a Federal Highway Administration policy paper on roundabouts,
published in 2000, the agency suggests that single-lane roundabouts
serve areas where the number of daily cars passing through does not
exceed 26,000. The Route 33/34 roundabout, part of which is two
lanes, averages 35,000 to 40,000 cars a day, Ms. Phalon said.)
Mayor James Maley of Collingswood said he finds himself on both ends
of the road debate. On the one hand, he is thrilled that the
dangerous and constantly flooded circle at Routes 130 and 30 in his
town is finally being replaced with a straight intersection, a
project he said had been in the works for more than 20 years. On the
other hand, he serves as redevelopment counsel to Glassboro Township,
where the state is proposing a new roundabout on Route 322, just
outside Rowan University’s campus.
“I have one meeting with the D.O.T. about the roundabout in
Glassboro, while they’re spending a gazillion dollars to eliminate
the Collingswood Circle,” Mayor Maley said. (The actual cost estimate
is $36.8 million, according to the Department of Transportation, with
$41.2 million more for work on connecting roads and other aspects of
the project.) “At broad brush, it may seem a conflict, but in reality
it’s not. It’s a good fit for a place like Glassboro, but I can
understand how it’s a problem on a major highway.”
Several miles north of Wall, at the entrance to Brookdale Community
College in Lincroft on Route 520, the state has installed another
roundabout — one of more than a dozen the Department of
Transportation is looking at building throughout New Jersey over the
next few years.
Despite some initial reservations, Stephen Nacco, executive director
of college relations at Brookdale, called the new roundabout, which
replaced a regular traffic signal intersection in August, “an
unqualified success.”
That is not how Mr. Nacco would describe the Wall roundabout.
“That is a deathtrap,” he said. “I drive through it once a week, and
I am terrified.”
Ms. Phalon said the Department of Transportation was closely
monitoring the Wall site “to determine if additional signage or other
adjustments are needed.”
Meanwhile, she suggested that “motorists may need to modify their
driving behavior to adjust to the new pattern.”
