To my ... astonishment ... I don't think we're ever had a thread on Swindon's Magic Roadabout (nor its brother nor the poor imitations in Hemel Hempstead or Colchester).  Expained on Youtube at https://youtu.be/6OGvj7GZSIo or with a music background at https://youtu.be/xfDaE30qmUE


Read more about its history- ((here)) on an old BBC site

 

There's also their big brother, the Denham "Roundabout" - more benzene that cyclohexane.

 

We have sort of...

http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=17235.0

 

Ah yes - thank you Bobm.   I did search and failed to find that ... probably because I looked only in the public areas; the link you've found is to an "And Also" topic - only accessible for those who have risen to the rank of "frequent poster".

Since 2016 when that thread was started, Bob, we have somewhat widened the scope of the public forum to cover all aspects of travel rather that purely rail.  "And Also" was the spot-on place for the post five years ago, but perhaps it could be moved to this public board now?  Your call - "the power is in your hands" 

 
I remember coming across the Swindon roundabout one wet Saturday night when it was just being set up. Fortunatley I knew the one at Hemel. They initially set up Swindon with black 45 gallon oil drums and rubbish lighting. Good job I was a sober driver that  night.

 

Done

 
Tackled it just a couple of weeks after passing my test. Three years later it is still a little daunting though.

 

If you learn to drive in Swindon you get lessons on it with diagrams.  However, I found that so long as you know where you want to go - by which I mean you can see it rather than follow the signposts - it is fine.  My mother, on the other hand, used to go to great lengths to avoid it altogether. 

 

I think that is why it works so well, everyone is a bit frightened of it and they are extra careful when using it.

 

I remember it vividly. 

 

Blinkin' flip! Is it really three years since BNM has been let loose on the Queens highway? Tempus fugit!

 

The other kind of daunting I've come across was the local speciality of Colomiers, a suburb of Toulouse. The place was conceived in the 60s following one of the ideas current at the time - to allow fluid traffic, with all its main roads suitable for 100 km/hr and not a traffic light or stop line anywhere. I forget why I was there, but I was coming into a roundabout thingy when I realised there wasn't a line to stop at - followed by the realisation that at the next road, traffic entering would not be stopping either.

This was priorité à droite, abandoned when proper roundabouts were promoted in France, but kept in Colomiers. Not only were they there first, but they kept adding them with this pattern and ended up with 48 of them. Then, finally, they were all changed over in 2002, after 87% of the locals voted for it. Supposedly there were very few high-speed accidents, though rather a lot of bent metal. Maybe there were not many visitors unfamiliar with the place; it's very near Airbus but largely residential.

You can just about see the change-over in the oldest two historical images in Google Earth, or else this picture shows the lack of stop line - you have to imagine the car on the roundabout having to give way. But that's only a little, low-speed, one.

 

That's an interesting other kind, Stuving ... and I think you have hit the nail on the head.  'Different' roundabouts may work well in local circumstances where the dominant traffic knows the thing well. For a short while (mid '90s) I lived in Nythe - a 'burb of Swindon from where a drive into the centre involved the Magic Roundabout and it worked well. I don't know what else would have worked as well on that junction, but it worked because everyone knew it.

 
As a rare visitor to Swindon by car, I hated it. The first time I used it, all seemed clear to proceed when a local came flying past from a totally unexpected direction sounding their horn. Collision avoided, but any hesitation and the locals behind me were sounding their horns as well. After a couple more similar encounters on subsequent visits, I started driving further down the M4 to junction 16 and going into the centre from the west which, although longer, was far less traumatic!

 
The other oddity of Colomiers ("the second-largest town in Haute-Garonne" - after Toulouse city itself - despite being obviously a suburb) is the metro that's not a metro. This is a service from Colomiers into town, terminating at Arènes station on the Toulouse Métro (which was the second VAL system). It's always been called Line C, though it's just a little diesel unit shuttling back and forth. It's hourly most of the day, and takes 13 minutes. That suggests it's not much used.

Some people object to calling it a metro line at all, though at least it uses the same ticketing and does connect. SNCF call some other suburban lines by letters too (as in Paris), but they are definitely TER ones. There is now a new line being built, also terminating at Colomiers but going direct via Airbus's sites and round the north of the city. Apparently Line C is being kept, and the new one is to be called "Toulouse Aerospace Express", though now that is a project name including an extension of Line B and a tram to the airport. Presumably this line will need to be called something ...

 

All of France was full of oddities (compared to the UK road network) which have only recently been put right (by "recently" I mean in the last 20 or 30 years) It was all  very well havinng national rules of the road that varied from everybody else's in the old days, but when driving became more international and not everybody knew of or understood the rules (or indeed the reasons for them) there was bound to be trouble.

The things I know about that the French have abandonede in favour of more international ways of doing things (albeit grudgingly in some cases are:

• Traffic entering a roundabout having priority over traffic already on it (that used to cause gridlock in a short space of time)
  
  Priority to the right, meaning that you could be rattling along happily when suddenly a wagon load of straw would appear out of nowhere in front of you
  
  Yellow headlamps

 

Isn't the roundabout at the Arc de Triomphe still priority to the right (ie to traffic joining the roundabout)? I also believe it might be the only roundabout left in France that still has priority to the right.

 
I spent a few months in Paris from autumn 1988 to spring 1989 and I remember the Arc de Triomphe roundabout being completely gridlocked, to the extent that you could walk from central Arc island to the outside, sauntering between the cars as if they were cafe tables. Which I think many of them functioned as for their occupants.

 

Well, that depends how you translate "roundabout". Strictly (and there's no shortage of pedants in France) a rond-point works by priorité à droite, while a carrefour à sens giratoire has signs and markings to give priority to cars déjà présents dans l’intersection. You can drive a long way on roads that go somewhere and never come across any priorité à droite, as it's been widely suppressed on main roads and in a lot of towns by always having lights or marked priorities. But it is still the default, common in little back streets, and once in a while you find one of those cancelled diamond signs on entering a little town.

But Place Charles de Gaulle is more of a big open space for cars to mill about in (if they are lucky) than a roundabout. I think there will be other, smaller, circular town squares elsewhere that have never had anything added to displace priorité à droite. But these are not high-speed roads, so disconcertingly unfamiliar rather than downright scary. The lack of stop lines on side roads should prevent you assuming priority - provided you spot it!

 
And France isn't the only European country to have some sort of priority to the right where not cancelled by diamonds/lights/other markings.

 
A general GB rule to give priority to vehicles already on a roundabout in absence of any road sign to the contrary was only introduced in November 1967 (NI was some time later). As such there was no need to put up Give Way signs, which unfortunately infest many roundabouts in Europe where there is a need to cancel other default priorities.

Although the effect was immediate it took time to paint transverse broken white lines on the entrance to all roundabouts. There was a "short television filmlet" produced to explain things.

 
40th Anniversary yesterday of this gem from ITV

 
From Autoshenanigans - 56 minutes of it...

here on Youtube

Enjoy ...