I’ve driven the Brighton roundabouts and several other’s downstate frequently. It annoys my travel mates because I actually go out of my way to drive them as try understand them more. The Brighton exchange is fairly new and it is also filtering traffic that is coming off of the express way. So, people going 70-80 mph are all of sudden forced to go 18-mph through some quite small roundabouts for the purpose. It was an ambitious project to put three roundabouts together.

That said, the several times I’ve driven them I’ve had no issues and at rush hour there I’ve hardly seen the traffic I’d suspect to see; the traffic is there, but it simply clears through more efficiently. The newness factor is an issue and a lot of communities that don’t have them and then have them installed have a 2-3 year learning curve. In those communities, the letters to the editor stack up with complaints and consternation. Then, after people learn how to navigate them and the police and political leaders see that there has been a decline in serious injury causing crashes, the tone starts to change.

New Jersey is often sited as the bad experience, but NJ is known for it’s traffic circles, not its roundabouts. Here is an ok explanation of the difference between the two (BTW, I’ve seen better, but I can’t locate it right now) http://www.alaskaroundabouts.com/mythfact1.html

This article from the NY Times explores the growing pains of their use and mentions why New Jersey is often wrongly sited: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/19/us/19roundabouts.html

At the end of the day, many people hate large signalized intersections equally as much as some people hate roundabouts. Heck, many of us hate the car dominated world in general, but we aren’t changing that anytime soon. However, the safety advantages are what is moving many of the DOT’s to prefer roundabouts. In New York state, roundabouts are actually to be considered before all other options.

As far as I can tell, the Santa Barbara County Taxpayer Association proposes that roads should be built straight and wide, and if there is a need for speed control, then hire more police officers. Those ideas may work for expressways, but not for streets running through the middle of communities where there is a need for mixed modes, context sensitivity and a need for a higher degree of creativity.