Roundabouts Again

Groupies will know that the staff and management here at Underbelly central are big fans of highway roundabouts.  They do take a bit of getting used to, but after a few hours days weeks  (whatever) of being chased around Southern England.  I came away a true believer, an acolyte, even a proselyte. We now even have a few roundabouts here in Palookaville--mostly in somewhat out of the way places, which suggests that the proponents were settling for what they could get--but the fact may have the unintended virtue of letting newbies practice their rounding skills in a low-stress environment. There is a new one near the center of town which seems to be trouble waiting to happen: there's a one-way street in just where you would most want to go out. But I grant that the deeper issue here may be a whole new traffic pattern, as if calculated to leave the whole town screeching and hollering on their way into the season of love and joy. We'll get used to it, and emerge better for the ordeal.

The Wichita Bureau, reporting from exile in nearby Lawrence, offers a more complicated account:

The city government ... is proposing to put in a ‘roundabout’ in a major street near here. Although they have been building them here for years, the locals (esp. the elderly) don’t adapt easily and entirely too many take the shortcut straight across. The intersection in question is in need of a light due to traffic levels but supposedly the roundabout would save money. At that point the local arts commission which has no money pipes up with a proposal to put a piece of art in the center.

I’m going to propose that they weld two Mercury Grand Marquis (or Lincoln Towncars) into a sculpture and put it in the roundabout. Here in the midwest, the aspiring elderly all drive Grand Marquis (or to show they made it) - and since they quit making the brand, they are getting a bit battered. They are a huge car – a throw back to the days of cheap gas – and welding two into a sculpture would be appropriate and also block the short cut.

More about Portland: Driving

Something I just realized about Portland: driving here can be pretty hairy, or scary.  This surprises me because I think of Portland as an easy place to get around in, what with bikes, and trolleys and pedestrian lanes and suchlike.  And to be fair, lots of Portland are just fine.  But in close to downtown, and on the east side--well, two problems.

One: the river.  True, lots of cities have rivers--that's why the cities are there.  But think of St. Louis, or Sacramento: there's  river, alright, but all the action takes place on one side of the river.  The other side is just bordellos and meth labs.  Not so Portland.  Here there is action on both sides of the river, and they are deeply entangled.  And it seems like everybody has a story about how they had to cross three different bridges to get from an address on the west side to one on the east (I have no idea how this works, but I hear it).  And on either side, you can get into godawful tangles as you try to weave your way through what seems like a highly improvisational pattern of intersections.  Go left.  Now go right.  No, left, left.  Now, don't move....  I suppose if you do this as an every day as a commute, you get used to it,  but as the occasional visitor, it seems like a Mensa test, or some kind of device for testing mental acuity among the elderly.

That's one problem.  But the other problem is the stuff they brag about: the public transport, and the pedestrians, and the bikes.    I feel like a whiner for complaining: for most of my adult life I have been an out-of-the-closet pedestrian, and I own a bike (although in fairness, I haven't been riding a lot lately).  And I'm one of the new people I know who actually likes to ride the bus.

But riding them is one thing: sharing space is another.  Where ever I go here, seems like I am always getting entangled in some kind of bus-only lane:  worse, with one bus in front of me and one behind. These guys may be eco-friendly but they  can't build up much compassion for the cars that stumble into their lane.

Bikes and pedestrians are a different problem.  The city is boiling with bike lanes and pedestrian-friendly crossings.  Bully for them.  But hitting a pedestrian--or a bike--is a bummer for all concerned.  Hit a Hummer, he may not even notice.  Hit a pedestrian--well, you get the idea.

I'll grant that the bikers, at least, are moderately conscientious about staying in lane and, perhaps more important, suiting up with Da-Glo colors. Truth is, I  can't think of any city in America where I have seen so many innovative bike safety devices.

That's most of them.  Maddeningly, there still seems to be a minority who feel free pedal around at night without a light and in a black raincoat.  Them and the pedestrians: what I think we are seeing here is a sense of entitlement coupled with an extraordinary presumption of trust--trust that I, for example, while not simply turn sociopath and ice them off the planet.   Still a nice city though.  And I suppose what I'm saying is that I'm getting at least as much of an adrenaline rush from driving as I would if I walked.

Update:  Yes, Oregon. Should have said.

Cloverleafs

Something I learned just now: a guy got a patent on the design for the highway cloverleaf.  So I learn in Earl Swift's Big Roads (Kindle  page 101), a history of the Interstate highway system.  Per Swift, the patent-holder was "a Maryland engineer named 'Arthur Hale" and so far I've been unable to learn anything else about him; seems like after his moment of notoriety he retired behind his Steelcase desk with his slide rule and never troubled history again.

What I'd like to know is whether Hale ever got any return on his investment.  Apparently Hale had his lightbulb moment in 1916; the first actual cloverleaf wasn't actually completed in the U.S. until 1928, i.e., a year after Mort Dixon and Harry M. Wood inflicted on us published "I'm Looking Over a Four-leafed Clover," that most pestiferous of all musical mind viruses.  Swift says the designer (of the interchange, not the song) got his idea from a magazine cover showing such a novelty in Argentina.  Did the builders learn about  Hale?  Did he learn about them?   Was he still alive?

Apparently there is general agreement that the cloverleaf is outmoded today--an assertion that would surely win assent from anyone who held his heart in  his throat while trying to squeeze into the right-hand exit lane as some hotrod came shooting out of his turn behind you.   Must have been a simpler time, 1928.

The other thing I'd like to know is more about the cloverleaf as it relates to the roundabout, so far as I can tell, the dominant mode of traffic intersection control in Britain; rare in the US though we have a few in Palookaville.  Wiki has an instructive discussion, though it is a bit shy on precise dates; no patent-holder is mentioned.

And here's what must be the weirdest piece of cloverhood in human history: