So, I hear you guys like crazy industrial locations...

[CraigZ]

There's TWO roundabouts in this image here in Raleigh, North Carolina.

 

http://goo.gl/maps/PG11P

 

Except the 'big one' doesn't look like that now.  Our drivers have enough problems with single lane roundabouts; two lanes and driver's heads started to explode.  Minor shunts/fender benders abounded...so much so that the city came back and redid the roundabout to remove the second lane.  I watched an elderly lady who knew she had to make a left turn from Pullen onto Hillsborough do exactly that - head into the roundabout moving clockwise.  Whoops.

 

When I tell friends about hitting three lane roundabouts when I drove in the UK....more heads exploding.

 

There's a difference here between a roundabout and a rotary.  The latter are a northeastern US thing...traffic coming into it has priority; they also tend to be higher speeds than roundabouts.  Roundabout rules are as yours in the UK and are being adopted in more places in the US as somebody's figured out they cause way less congestion (once the local knuckleheads get the hang of them) than traffic signals or our idiotic four way stops.

 

Then there's stuff like the SPUI  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-point_urban_interchangewhich work very well.   And the diverging diamond interchange http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diverging_diamond_interchange which REALLY makes heads hurt.  But it seems to work pretty well where I've encountered them.

[highpeak]

CT DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles) uses the terms roundabout, rotary and circular intersection interchangeably in its driver's manual, and sets a very straightforward rule: traffic in the roundabout has priority.

That said, we really don't have that many of them. There are a couple about 10 miles up the road on CT route 80. Quite why they were built instead of the stop signs/traffic signals that control all the other intersections on that 20 mile stretch of road is a bit of a mystery. It's fairly rural and I am not aware of any traffic issues that urgently needed attention.

I doubt they would make any difference to traffic problems here in the Constipation  Constitution State to be honest. Out neighbors to the north in the Commonwealth of MA went in for them in a fairly big way but if it improved things up there, our DOT wasn't listening. Mind you, this is an outfit that has said traffic light sequencing wouldn't work in CT either, though they didn't explain why. Their specialty is more in spreading asphalt wherever they can, hence the name "Department of Tarmac".

[Andy Reichert]

Tiny bit of the wrong side driving added close by our local Trader Joe's

 

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Trader+Joe%27s/@35.1265695,-120.5946269,221m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m2!3m1!1s0x0:0x77b245385abfe7e7

 

We exit the upper corner of the semicircle turning left on the wrong side of the median. And we are the only all Republican County in an other wise all Democratic California. . . . . .  

[Gordon A]

An interesting area. Spotted five locos so far.

How do they sort out who shunts what?

 

I like the fact that they seem to abandon a string of wagons on tracks for no apparent reason.

 

Gordon A

[dave1905]

 

How do they sort out who shunts what?

 

Because they know which tracks belong to which railroad and they know which industries/area each job works.  Each railroad only "sees" the tracks it owns, they don't see the satellite view.  All their maps and documentation will only show their industries, all their switch lists will only show the cars they and tracks they own or switch.  There are thousands of buildings in the area where you live.  How do you know where to go to work?

 

 

I like the fact that they seem to abandon a string of wagons on tracks for no apparent reason.

 

Its an satellite photo so they may in in the process of moving stuff around.  Plus probably half to 3/4 the trackage isn't being used to directly serve customers, so railroads will store excess cars on those tracks, whatever is handy.

[Night Train]

Some of those freeway junctions look a bit "funky". Over here, they are generally "roundabout" based, but much larger than normal. Often the roundabout isn't solid, but a circular road. The same operation principles occur though.

 

https://goo.gl/maps/KGFnnZniyxS2