While Fredericton struggles with roundabouts, Indiana city can't get enough of them

While Fredericton carries on a love-hate relationship with roundabouts, the city of Carmel, Ind., can't get enough of them.

Carmel, with more than 100 roundabouts and more in the pipeline, is called the "City of Roundabouts."

Mayor James Brainard says he started the roundabout craze in the city of about 86,000 just after taking office 21 years ago. He wasa graduate student when he was first introduced to the traffic management feature.

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"I was fortunate enough to go over to England and I saw all this traffic going through circles pretty quickly," Brainardsaid.

When he became mayor of the city north of Indianapolis, hedecided to give roundabouts a shot after Carmel engineers proposed adding lanes at anintersectionto make more room for more traffic. Brainard compared the expanded lanes to a parking lot for cars waiting to go through the intersection.

"I thought if we could improve the flow through that intersection, focus our money on the intersection, we wouldn't have to pave over the entire place," he said.

Better on gas, safer

Safety was the biggest reason for switching to roundabouts, Brainard said.

"A stoplight has 32 potential conflict points. A roundabout has three, when you go in, when you go around and when you go out."

There's also an economic side to the city's love of roundabouts, he said.

"Our city engineer estimates that we're saving about 225,000 U.S. gallons of fuel per roundabout per year," said Brainard.

Carmel startedwith two roundabouts on a new stretch of highway, and they were accompanied by a vigorous education campaign.

Fredericton says ithas had single-lane roundaboutssince 2010 and opened the multi-lane Smythe Street roundabout in 2015. The city's website promotes "five easy rules" for using the roundabout, but some drivers have had difficulty with rule three, about yielding.

While many in Fredericton might be more than happy to see roundabouts disappear from local roadways, Brainard said Caramel wouldn't think of it.

"I couldn't get away with taking one out now," he said. "The public would rebel here. They love their roundabouts."