Waterloo and Mississauga have recently adopted roundabouts, one of the best ways to combat congestion on roads. So what is Toronto waiting for?
By Vanessa Farquharson
Toronto has some of the worst traffic congestion in North America, which is why city council is perpetually debating ways to improve transit and road infrastructure. But there’s one very simple solution that hardly gets any attention in these forums: roundabouts.
The benefits are clear: There are 76% fewer injury collisions at roundabouts than at intersections with traffic lights, according to a 2000 study done in the U.S.; they cut noise and toxic emissions from idling vehicles; and they keep traffic flowing, which prevents bottlenecks.
It appears to be a perfect answer to our gridlock, especially on wider arterial roads that have space to accommodate a retrofit. And now, when most Torontonians spend nearly 80 minutes commuting each day, thinking outside the box on such issues is critical. Unfortunately, it’s unlikely we’ll break free from our current infrastructure anytime soon, thanks largely to three factors: Budget restraints, fear of change and logistical nightmares (streetcar tracks, sewage redirection and so forth).
A British invention, roundabouts are incredibly popular in the U.K. — there are more than 25,000 of them in England, where the design was first conceived in 1903 and fine-tuned throughout the ’60s. (The nation is also home to the headquarters of the Roundabout Appreciation Society, which publishes, amongst other paraphernalia, a calendar boasting “12 stunning shots of the very best traffic islands Worcestershire has to offer”; it has sold upward of 100,000 copies worldwide.)
Throughout the rest of Europe and increasingly in the United States, roundabouts are making appearances in a myriad of forms. There’s a mini roundabout, distinguished by a small painted circle in the middle that you can drive over; a turbo roundabout, where drivers commit to their exit before entering; stacked roundabouts, for multi-layered highways; hamburger roundabouts, which resemble a cross-section of a Big Mac; and even magic roundabouts — a series of mini roundabouts that envelop a bigger roundabout in the middle, which allows traffic to flow both ways.
“We have installed a few of them here on local roads, usually singlelane,” says Nazzareno Capano, acting director of transportation infrastructure management for the City of Toronto. But, as he admits, these are often in places where congestion isn’t an issue to begin with. There’s a small one in Rosedale, for instance, where Roxborough Drive, Highland Avenue and Scholfield Avenue intersect, and another in the west end, connecting Windermere Avenue, Coe Hill Drive and Budgell Terrace.
To clarify: A proper roundabout is an intersection at which there is no stop sign or traffic light but rather a circle formation that vehicles drive around — all in the same direction — until they reach their desired exits. Cars must slow down before entering the roundabout and yield to those already circling.
Although electronic traffic signals require less space on the ground, next to no landscaping and are much cheaper to install —the bill is usually around $200,000 compared to roughly $1-million for a basic roundabout at a four-way intersection — it’s important to note that hydro bills are significantly cheaper for roundabouts and upkeep is usually minimal.
These are a few reasons why Steve van De Keere, a transportation engineer for the region of Waterloo, became such a vocal proponent of roundabouts. Thanks largely to his efforts, this area now has 17 in operation, with about 20 to 30 more on the drawing board.
“There was a lot of anxiety [in 2004] when we opened our first one,” he says. “We’re always a little concerned initially, and we always see people going the wrong way or going backwards. I’ve seen stuff that I’d never believe people would do, but the good thing is that it’s all happening so slow.”
Closer to Toronto, in August of last year, Mississauga stole a sliver of the spotlight when it installed the GTA’s first city-centre roundabout at Duke of York Boulevard north of Burnhamthorpe, at Square One.
Capano, however, remains critical: “You have to commend Waterloo,” he says, “but it’s a different situation. They had more land to do that and they have a strong educational campaign to help people out. With the one in Mississauga, there’s still some confusion there. I see drivers stopping and pausing, like, ‘Do I stop? Do I go?’ ... We don’t dismiss roundabouts entirely — there are a lot of obvious benefits to them — but there are some challenges and drawbacks.”
The main challenges? Space and volume. In 2008, former city councillor Case Ootes asked Capano to look more closely at opportunities for roundabout construction in the city. One intersection they studied was Don Mills and Eglinton, but the final report indicated that any roundabout would have to be at least three lanes wide to accommodate the 90,000 vehicles moving through this intersection each day, and that was too big.
“We also looked at the DundasBloor-Kipling area,” Capano says, “but it’s very complex there, and we found that a roundabout wouldn’t properly address the needs of all its users.”
Philip Weber, a project manager at Richmond Hill’s Ourston Roundabout Engineering, agrees that major downtown intersections aren’t always the best candidates for this type of thing. Places such as Durham, Halton and Peel are all jumping on the roundabout bandwagon partly because they have more space and are building more roads from scratch, meaning no headaches over reconfiguring hydro, water and sewage lines or finding a way to divert heavy traffic flow during construction.
“It usually only makes sense to install a roundabout if you’re building a new road or ripping up your intersection anyway,” he says. “But there’s still lots of potential in the GTA. An area that immediately comes to mind is the East Don Lands development.”
If it helps, van De Keere says he’d be happy to throw a bunch of Toronto councillors in a van and take them on a tour of Waterloo’s roundabouts for a first-hand experience. Convincing the general public, however, might be more difficult. It requires a critical look at our road networks, understanding that roundabouts aren’t just a “European thing” or a gimmick in Chevy Chase films.
“There’s a lot of ignorance,” he says. “Some people will complain that they don’t feel safe in a roundabout. … Well, if you don’t feel safe, then mission accomplished because you should never feel safe in an intersection. There’s 2,000 pounds of metal swirling around you. ... But the truth is, feeling safe and being safe are two different things.”