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Rotaries vs. roundabouts

Steve Landry, state traffic engineer, offered distinctions between the two circular roadways in Maine, rotaries and roundabouts:

"A rotary is typically a circular roadway that has a very large radius and is built to facilitate speed going through the circle area. The way that each leg comes into the circle is kind of tangential, so you don't have to slow down a lot to enter or go around it.

"A roundabout has a much smaller radius. As the roadways come into the circle, they're aimed to the center, forcing the motorists to take a right turn into the circle, and they're banked to naturally slow drivers down."

Landry said the capital city already had one roundabout because Cony Circle was reconstructed several years ago, and the radius was reduced about 15 feet.

"Memorial Circle is a rotary, but we striped it to make it look more like a roundabout," Landry said. "We're trying to get people into the mode of driving it like a roundabout."

Landry said the state has 25 circular roadways, 22 of them roundabouts.

Other roundabout facts:

• They are safer than other intersections because severe head-on and left turn crashes do not occur.
• They reduce accident rates by 35 percent and injury crashes by 76 percent, according to the National Cooperative Highway Research Program.
• They have fewer accidents involving pedestrians and bicyclists than at intersections with traffic signals.
• They use yields rather than traffic signals, thereby saving time, money and fuel for motorists.

Source: Maine Department of Transportation