Roundabouts already exist in one county in PennDOT District Five and more could be coming soon.
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People watch as a roundabout on Route 322 in downtown Glassboro, N.J. is opened to traffic. Lehigh Valley transportation officials said roundabouts could be successful in controling speeding.
Roundabouts soon could change the way people drive in Northampton and Lehigh counties.
A roundabout is a type of traffic circle with no stoplights, designed to decrease severe crashes and reduce congestion.
The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation already installed one on Route 209, the Marshalls Creek bypass, north of Interstate 80.
Feasibility studies along Route 222 in Berks County indicate the roundabouts could be successful there, too, PennDOT officials said.
“It’s not to say they work everywhere, but where they do work, we’re going to push that,” PennDOT District Five Bridge Engineer James McGee said.
PennDOT spokesman Sean Brown said the roundabouts are not like the traffic circle in Easton.
“You don’t have traffic lights like in Easton,” Brown said. “It’s not like that. Each incoming roadway has (a) yield (sign) so the people in the circle have the right of way. The slow speed actually gives plenty of room to perform merging.”
The lack of a stoplight means a savings in energy and maintenance costs to municipalities, Brown said. Because roundabouts do not typically have long, devoted turning lanes, PennDOT may have to purchase fewer rights-of-way to build roundabouts, Brown said.
But the biggest advantage to roundabouts is safety, according to McGee.
While a roundabout does not necessarily decrease the number of crashes at a given intersection, it cuts the number of high-speed wrecks by 70 to 80 percent, McGee said. High-speed crashes have a higher likelihood of fatalities.
Because cars do not stop at an intersection, the level of emissions generated at a roundabout also is lower than at a regular lighted intersection, McGee said.
PennDOT officials hear concerns about the use of roundabouts, but believe that as more people are exposed to them, more people will warm to the concept.
“It’s definitely an education that has to be done,” McGee said.
McGee said Northampton County drivers in particular may be hesitant about the roundabouts because of experiences with similar styles of traffic management circles in New Jersey.
“They’ve been in New Jersey, and they’ve seen those big circles, but roundabouts are much smaller,” McGee said. “They don’t operate the same way.”
So far, no specific locations for roundabouts have been identified in Lehigh or Northampton counties, but that likely will change, McGee said.
If PennDOT does find viable uses for roundabouts in the Lehigh Valley, they won’t be the first. Sands Casino Resort Bethlehem spokeswoman Megan Verholy said the casino has two traffic circles similar to roundabouts.
“In both cases, we had three directional merges, so we picked (a) rotary (shape) to avoid a traffic light,” Verholy said. “We felt traffic would move more efficiently.”
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