Take this similarly confusing double-roundabout for example https://maps.app.goo.gl/VTSrSWsBGnsYyzKU6
There are accidents here almost every week and when an out of towner comes off the interstate to get some gas at Sam's Club (where I used to work) I had to try and explain to them how to get back onto the interstate...
I might try to clone this project idea, it was fun to play!
They also proposed a peanut style roundabout with a *train track going through it* that thankfully has not been built yet https://media.conwayarkansas.gov/media/documents/project/85/...
I had to drive this specific Kirkland roundabout the other day, and ended up missing my offramp and going in completely the wrong direction. It's the most confusing roundabout I've ever seen.
Adding lanes makes it far more confusing. I consider myself, you know, pretty smart. Not stupid, at least.
But I almost sideswiped someone in this roundabout the other day. Years of driving experience gave me an intuition that the middle lane would not cross over the outer lane. E.x. a car in the inner lane would not pass through the outer lane (except at the very end). So when I saw an oncoming car in the inner lane I thoguht I was safe to enter the outer lane. Not so. The inner lane car was actually lane-changing to the outer lane (at the exact point I was about to enter the roundabout) in order to exit.
Thankfully, I literally sold my house because of it, and my timing was good and I got out before prices dropped.
A taste of what that would be like is when all the power goes out, including the power to the traffic lights. Traffic moves faster! Because drivers cooperate. Traffic also moves faster when a cop is directing traffic.
- have a mute button for the background music.
- there should be a gas pedal and a brake, rather than the car going forward at a constant speed unless I hit the brakes.
- the car should go straight, unless I turn. if I don't do anything near the exit of a roundabout, sometimes the "default" behavior is to exit the roundabout, sometimes it's to turn and continue within the roundabout.
frustration with the last point was enough for me to give up trying to play it. I'm sure the LLM that vibe-coded this thinks the controls make perfect sense, though.
in general:
is this trying to make a point of some kind about the design of the interchange? the "Inspired by online discussions of the Kirkland roundabouts" text sort of hints at that but it's unclear how.
is the point that it's overly complicated? or is the point that it's actually not that complicated, in response to people criticizing it? I can imagine it going either way...but the poor controls mean that it's not really effective at making either point.
different roundabout / intersection types would make this much more interesting. I've driven through the "diverging diamond" interchange of I-5 in Lacey [0] before, and it was a bit confusing the first time but now doesn't seem any more complicated than any other busy highway intersection. or, add a before & after comparing the old Kirkland interchange design to the new roundabout.
0: https://wsdot.wa.gov/travel/traffic-safety-methods/diverging...
Though, in real life, people often don't look at the road markings - possibly even more true in America, where people are perhaps less familiar with the roundabout concept - and general directions of traffic flow is an issue. Perhaps driving this particular roundabout in real life might indeed turn out to be as annoying as this game is to play.
(There are a couple of straightforward-looking ones near me that, in practice, are almost impossible during busy times in specific directions. Even if your car is powerful enough to zip onto the roundabout in a tiny gap without there being a crash, now you have to not crash while making it turn...)
The linked ones, also called "magic roundabouts", are roundabout rings made out of roundabouts. In particular, you can take them clockwise or anticlockwise - it is a ring of roads connected by mini roundabouts. Even just the road sign gives you a headache!
Having been exposed to the idea for over a decade, I still don't know instinctively how to navigate them.
This interchange might have been better off using a diverging diamond interchange layout [1]. While not a roundabout they are "magic" and we should use them more often.
They just look confusing because at some point you are effectively driving on the wrong side of the road, but are extremely efficient. My daily commute includes one that cuts a few minutes off what it once took to negotiate the previous traditional interchange.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diverging_diamond_interchange
this one probably is not good for a DDI because it is also supposed to be a bus interchange for a BRT project, and the buses will stop at the roundabout level.
If it were a regular 2-lane traffic circle, it wouldn't be too difficult to navigate.
Personally, I find multiple-lane traffic circles (4+) to be more difficult to navigate, mostly when some people in the center lanes pull a fast right turn across all lanes of traffic. Otherwise, much better than traffic lights at keeping traffic moving or first-come, first-served stop intersections when people don't really stop or sit there waving you through.
To be fair, I'm not sure there's a good solution. The real problem is the volume of traffic and that it dumps onto two lane roads at the edges of this roundabout. To really fix things you need to give people other exits to use.
That said I have yet to drive through a roundabout that I think improved an intersection in any meaningful way. Half of them work as intended but I find them less pleasant to drive through, the other half are just horribly designed and often have semitrucks go through them when they aren't really large enough for that.
The problem is that at intersections the normative behavior of American drivers is to queue and wait for your turn. Roundabouts assume a different behavior based on jumping the line.
Thus there is a lot of unpredictability regarding other drivers due to generations of driving patterns developed in diverse regional driving cultures...many of which are distinctly not-urban.
In addition, this roundabout is part of an Interstate Highway interchange. The US Interstate system is at a scale that doesn't occur elsewhere. It is transcontinental.
It has a lot of intersections.
Reconfiguring intersections is expensive and disruptive. Stop signs and traffic lights take less space and are often the simplest thing that might work.
And yet it still mostly works, and is loads faster than the former lights that were there before, so i suspect it will be a success in most eyes once everyone adapts.
For additional fun, check out the sticker price on this intersection overhaul (which includes much more than the round about).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeFY9u69tkE
The adjoining roads have a large speed differential. The runoff areas around this project do not appear as if designed with this in mind. I predict a few horrible accidents and some hamfisted redesigns.
The local news has a ground level view of this project: