City of Bend, Oregon Public Works Department, 15 May 2009

Previous Meeting Next Meeting

⏯

youtube image

►

From YouTube: Roundabout Driving

Description

In August of 2007, the city used this video to educate the public about safely driving thru a roundabout.

A

Hello, I'm, Andrew McCullough and welcome to city Edition, a video news magazine that keeps you informed about our city government and our first segment, we'll take a look at bens roundabouts, the history of them and what the city is planning to do with future ones. The.

B

City events: first, roundabout was implemented in November of 1999 when ODOT constructed the Colorado and century drive roundabout you're.

C

One of the design features of this particular round about was saving the three large pine trees out there, so it ended up fairly large diameter, which is good in terms of maximizing a capacity the roundabout in terms of circulating cars. We.

B

Started in the west side of bandwidth, eight roundabouts through the west side consortium- and they were so successful that we've really implemented them into one of our standard. Another safe intersection, yeah.

D

Cars typically are going much faster through a signalized intersection. We get two roundabouts they're going much slower, so pedestrian can see the car coming. It's going at a slower speed and the driver in a car cease to pedestrian sooner and a slower speed. So they're able to stop sooner at a crosswalk and.

E

One of the biggest things that I see with roundabouts is they operate the same at 4am at noon at 6pm. You do the same thing, no matter what time of day or where you are you slow down, you look and see. If the lane is open, you merge in and you go about your way, so you don't have to worry about electricity or traffic signal being there. We.

D

Like roundabouts, because they are safe for the fishing, we get more cars through around about that. A traffic signal typically once.

C

Roundabouts were considered a acceptable form of traffic control. Our City Council adopted a policy that, as engineering looked at intersection, control for intersections each intersection that was being contemplated for traffic signal would also be evaluated and driven around.

D

About look at signals. Look around abouts evaluate the size. How much right away you need how much property, basically, what's it going to cost, how big they are evaluate those and overall we're you know we tend to find the roundabouts outperform signalized intersections the.

F

City Council believes that the option of a roundabout should always be looked at in any intersection that we a dress for changes. Remainin.

D

Standpoint, inefficiency, a standpoint there to madness: we don't have to mess with signalized intersections and electricity and maintenance of that signal system. You know throughout the course of its life, and so from that standpoint, roundabouts are cost-effective. This.

B

Roundabouts also very successful at seamlessly integrating traffic in a high-volume environment. We have trucks from industrial areas coming through. Here we have traffic coming off of highway 20 and we have a school located nearby, plus a trail crossing. We.

D

Found early on that, the curbs are too tight to some truck movements, and so now later on, we looked at trucks. We can see that the tracking movements from experience now that we should widen out the radiuses a bit more in.

B

The future, what we may do is go back and look at some of our earlier designs and retrofit them so that we can allow trucks and easier time of getting through, because there's some out there that the trucks are breaking. The curbs on us and emergency services may have a harder time getting through the.

E

City has learned a lot about how to accommodate large vehicles and emergency services and roundabouts. It's important that the emergency services Police Fire ambulance, can get through and do their job well.

D

It's a learning experience and we're working a lot closer with the fire department to figure out if a car stops the middle of around about the fire trucks coming kind of fire trucks still get around so.

E

We've worked closely with them to find out what they need, what are some of the obstacles around about to present to them and how we can improve on that users.

B

Need to make safe choices at the roundabouts. That may mean controlling your speed, either speeding up if you're, a bicyclist or slowing down if you're, an automobile they've.

E

Been single lane roundabouts up to now, but we're embarking in a new era or new new phase with multi-lane roundabouts. The.

B

City's first multi-lane roundabout is at bond and wilson avenue creates another entryway into the old mill district, which should take some pressure off of reed market. So.

C

As the community grows, particularly on the east side were undoubtedly will see a lot more roundabouts and a better balance around about throughout the city. The.

F

Roundabout behind me is our first multi-lane roundabout, and the five that are currently under design will also be multi-lane roundabouts. The.

B

Benefit of the multi-lane is, it has all the same safety features of the single lane roundabouts, except it has greater capacity. It's.

E

A change, but it's a continuation of what we've been doing for 10 years now, really we're looking.

D

At about five, what we call multi-lane roundabouts in the city of Bend right now and the first one will be constructed up. But 18th and cooley advantage.

C

Obviously, the tooling around about is increasing capacity intersection. The difficulty was the driver and making weed movements throughout the intersection, but it also accommodates a lot of intersections where you see to tulane, to left turn lanes and improves the capacity and circulation abilities of the intersection 29.

D

Roundabouts is just like entering a signalized intersection. You know you put yourself in the right lane in the lane you want to be in when you enter the intersection, and so that's what you doing. Tulane roundabouts and they once again they're very slow speeds. As you're going around there's been.

E

A lot of engineering and studies been done on multi-lane roundabouts and the city is gone and hired some expertise across the nation from New York Portland Seattle Florida. To learn about these. Bring that expertise to our team so that we can do a good design with these new facilities make sure that they work well at the beginning of the project. As.

F

A city of Bend grows and the traffic increases we need to address moving that traffic through the city in a very efficient and safe manner. The next round, abouts that we're designing as multi-lane, will address those issues.