Did anyone study the fuel efficiency of a roundabout vs. traffic light?
I expect it to be a lot worse.
- roundabout, light traffic : break, turn, accelerate again, 100% of the time
- (dumb) traffic light, light traffic: 50% chance of stopping and accelerating again, 50% chance of not slowing down at all.
- roundabout, heavy traffic : stop, move 3m, stop again, move 3m more, stop again, repeat 10 times, finally turn, accelerate.
- traffic light, heavy traffic: stop & engine off, start & move 100m, stop & engine off, start again and accelerate.
You're missing the variations where you have stop lights to go into the roundabout or the even worse variant, roundabouts that are large enough to have 3-4 zones of stoplights inside of the roundabout itself!
I'll take a roundabout any time of the day, but then I mostly to drive out in the public when the traffic is the least, so any stop lights tend to be more annoying that useful.
Streetcraft on Youtube compared 2 similar routes, one with roundabouts and one with traffic lights. They found roundabouts to be quicker and more fuel efficient: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=012fMI3TdRo" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=012fMI3TdRo
M95D · · focus · HN ↗
I expect it to be a lot worse.
embedding-shape · · focus · HN ↗
I'll take a roundabout any time of the day, but then I mostly to drive out in the public when the traffic is the least, so any stop lights tend to be more annoying that useful.
Miksel12 · · focus · HN ↗
throwawayffffas · · focus · HN ↗
Their conclusion i believe was they were about the same in pretty much all regards.
It was highly synthetic, people driving around a small course with roundabouts or fourway intersections, continuously for an hour or something.