I’m from the UK where in general there’s only a stop sign if it’s needed, such as a junction where you can see absolutely nothing on one side. Otherwise usually there’s a give way line instead, to let people slow the car right down to look, but not need to stop if it’s unnecessary.
Whenever I see a video of an American street, it seems like there’s a stop sign everywhere I’d expect there to be a give way line. Surely this is inefficient as stopping and starting increases emissions, and stops the flow of traffic.
Is it really just the American government doesn’t expect drivers to look properly? Is it so the police can give people tickets for not quite stopping but still doing the junction completely safely?
Some areas are implementing roundabouts, but I think one problem with them is they require more space than a square intersection.
I think telling someone in Europe that we don’t implement roundabouts in the US because of space considerations might seem ridiculous to them.
Would have to deal with the four property owners on each quadrant of the intersection. Any one of them can stall the effort. This goes even worse in cities where buildings are likely close to the intersection. And yes, they should have built everything with roundabouts in mind in the first place. We focused on cars when we built everything but made poor choices which hinder future changes.
So that along with all the other red tape need to go through like environmental studies and such make each update to a roundabout somewhat daunting.
An issue I see locally is they can’t just paint a circle on the road with a couple signs. It always has to be a million dollar project widening out the curbs, building up a huge curb in the middle, putting a big goddamn planter in the middle, then sprinkle signs liberally until it’s unreadable.
In England, so many villages just paint a circle in existing intersections and call it a mini roundabout. Sound great until you realize cars just drive straight through it at full speed when there’s no island to force them to slow down and turn.
Agreed, but they can commit to doing it via incremental progress. When they need to tear up an intersection for some other reason just make the change then. Eventually we’d all be a lot safer.
Of course, at least in Philadelphia, planning is not something that gets a lot of effort. The number of times over the years when I’ve seen crews resurface a road, then within a week or two some other crew is out ripping it all up to do some sort of work.