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Hell Rotaries of Massachusetts
New England is unusual for the United States in that a lot of road interchanges here are rotaries (aka traffic circles, roundabouts, etc.) They're almost as common here as in the UK (though they circulate the other way), and people from other parts of the US are often frightened and confused by them, especially if they don't know that you're supposed to yield to circulating traffic while entering the rotary. But after a while, you get used to them.
Some of them, however, are particularly horrible, and modern technology makes it possible for people all over the world to observe their shame in pictures. Therefore, forthwith, some of my least favorite Hell Rotaries of Massachusetts:
5. Mystic Valley Parkway and Alewife Brook Parkway, Arlington
A contributor to the general terror here is what goes on just before the rotary for traffic coming west on Mystic Valley Parkway. The road's been subdivided into two lanes in each direction to accommodate modern traffic levels, but it clearly wasn't built for that, and the lanes are actually narrower than many trucks, with no median down the center. A lot of lane-changing in this harrowing environment happens in preparation for the rotary; it was worse until recently, when signs were added to make it clearer that traffic in both lanes could go around the rotary to Alewife Brook. Through traffic usually yields to traffic in the rotary, but it's only about 90-95% of the time (less at rush hour), which is a dangerous fraction.
I can only imagine what it must be like to live on Capen Court.
4. Alewife Brook Parkway, Fresh Pond Parkway and Concord Ave., Cambridge
Not much to say about this one except that there's a lot of traffic and you can smell the hate in the air.
3. Pond Street and Woodland Road, Stoneham
I deal with this one daily. It's a small, squashed rotary in form, but it doesn't act like one, since the through traffic heading north on Woodland Road doesn't treat it like one: those trees near the last curve mean that drivers can't even see it until it's really too late for them to yield, and it's doubtful that they would anyway. So if you're heading south on Pond Street and you're going eastward around the rotary to... Pond Street, you've got to enter the rotary, then stop and wait for a gap in the northbound traffic.
Most of the time, this isn't such a big problem. But there was a time a couple of years ago when the entrance to Ravine Road just to the south was closed off for construction, and this little rotary was suddenly choked with detoured traffic making the right-hand turn to Pond Street east; and they didn't yield either, nor was it possible to tell in advance who was going straight because of the usual Massachusetts disdain for turn signals. Naturally, in the southbound lane, this led to a months-long epidemic of frustrated honking on the part of the second guy waiting in line: "YOU commit suicide! I'm in a hurry!"
Occasionally, particularly charming southbound individuals will drive past this line in the right lane and then squeeze in to the right of the head car waiting for a gap, of course ensuring that the driver of said car can't see the oncoming traffic and will have to go after. It really boosts your faith in humanity.
2. Powder House Square, Somerville
This oval, hexapodal monster that crouches in a pretty neighborhood between the Tufts University athletic fields and a historic powder house is almost the Platonic ideal of a scary rotary, requiring the driver to make instant snap judgments in fast-moving, irritable traffic, on the basis of scant street signs often located far from the actual turns they indicate, or end up on the wrong side of Somerville, or even headed for a head-on collision in the wrong lane.
(In case you're wondering where Powder House Square went, remember that in the Boston area, the word "square" conventionally refers to any major or even minor street intersection, often with no square to be found; Copley Square in Boston is a rare exception.)
The thing casting a shadow in the middle of the circle is a peculiar sign shaped like a drum on a stick, covered with notations and arrows theoretically disambiguating all the streets leading away from the circle. Of course, its location means that if you are in the rotary and you actually attempt to look at it, you will die.
All in all, a strong effort, but this one only takes second prize, because of:
1. Routes 1A, 16, and 60 and Beach Street, Revere
Like a fearsome Cerberus, this thing-that-should-not-be guards the otherwise relatively pleasant northern approach to Logan Airport via Route 1A, impeding passage in all directions.
Aside from its role in airport traffic, its particular unpleasantness arises from two features. In a sense it is another rotary-that-is-not-a-rotary, since the through lanes running across it pass neither above nor below the level of the rotary, but intersect it at grade with a pair of traffic-light-controlled intersections that cause frequent backups.
But the real horror here is the way that Route 16 and Route 1A, two of its most heavily used tributaries, meet it at the same point and share a common offramp. The consequence is that transferring from 16 east to 1A south, or 1A north to 16 west, requires a profoundly counterintuitive maneuver: the traveler must almost completely circumnavigate the rotary, take the same exit one would use for a U-turn, then peel off to the correct ramp, often in heavy traffic that makes changing lanes difficult. The usual ambiguous, small and occasionally obscured signage compounds the problem. Once I was on an airport shuttle van that got lost doing this.
Special honorable mention: US 1 and Route 60, Revere
This huge, lopsided rotary is not, in fact, hellish at all. Its great size and more-than-adequate signage actually make it downright pleasant to use. But it could have been different.
The reason it's huge and lopsided can be seen on the map: Those unused ghost overpasses on the northeast bulge were intended for a planned routing of Interstate 95 through downtown Boston. You can see the cleared right-of-way extending some distance through the Revere marshes to the northeast.
In a fit of sanity, this was never actually constructed, and 95 today loops around the city to the west along Route 128. But had it happened, today this placid giant might well be the single greatest Hell Rotary of Massachusetts.
Some of them, however, are particularly horrible, and modern technology makes it possible for people all over the world to observe their shame in pictures. Therefore, forthwith, some of my least favorite Hell Rotaries of Massachusetts:
5. Mystic Valley Parkway and Alewife Brook Parkway, Arlington
A contributor to the general terror here is what goes on just before the rotary for traffic coming west on Mystic Valley Parkway. The road's been subdivided into two lanes in each direction to accommodate modern traffic levels, but it clearly wasn't built for that, and the lanes are actually narrower than many trucks, with no median down the center. A lot of lane-changing in this harrowing environment happens in preparation for the rotary; it was worse until recently, when signs were added to make it clearer that traffic in both lanes could go around the rotary to Alewife Brook. Through traffic usually yields to traffic in the rotary, but it's only about 90-95% of the time (less at rush hour), which is a dangerous fraction.
I can only imagine what it must be like to live on Capen Court.
4. Alewife Brook Parkway, Fresh Pond Parkway and Concord Ave., Cambridge
Not much to say about this one except that there's a lot of traffic and you can smell the hate in the air.
3. Pond Street and Woodland Road, Stoneham
I deal with this one daily. It's a small, squashed rotary in form, but it doesn't act like one, since the through traffic heading north on Woodland Road doesn't treat it like one: those trees near the last curve mean that drivers can't even see it until it's really too late for them to yield, and it's doubtful that they would anyway. So if you're heading south on Pond Street and you're going eastward around the rotary to... Pond Street, you've got to enter the rotary, then stop and wait for a gap in the northbound traffic.
Most of the time, this isn't such a big problem. But there was a time a couple of years ago when the entrance to Ravine Road just to the south was closed off for construction, and this little rotary was suddenly choked with detoured traffic making the right-hand turn to Pond Street east; and they didn't yield either, nor was it possible to tell in advance who was going straight because of the usual Massachusetts disdain for turn signals. Naturally, in the southbound lane, this led to a months-long epidemic of frustrated honking on the part of the second guy waiting in line: "YOU commit suicide! I'm in a hurry!"
Occasionally, particularly charming southbound individuals will drive past this line in the right lane and then squeeze in to the right of the head car waiting for a gap, of course ensuring that the driver of said car can't see the oncoming traffic and will have to go after. It really boosts your faith in humanity.
2. Powder House Square, Somerville
This oval, hexapodal monster that crouches in a pretty neighborhood between the Tufts University athletic fields and a historic powder house is almost the Platonic ideal of a scary rotary, requiring the driver to make instant snap judgments in fast-moving, irritable traffic, on the basis of scant street signs often located far from the actual turns they indicate, or end up on the wrong side of Somerville, or even headed for a head-on collision in the wrong lane.
(In case you're wondering where Powder House Square went, remember that in the Boston area, the word "square" conventionally refers to any major or even minor street intersection, often with no square to be found; Copley Square in Boston is a rare exception.)
The thing casting a shadow in the middle of the circle is a peculiar sign shaped like a drum on a stick, covered with notations and arrows theoretically disambiguating all the streets leading away from the circle. Of course, its location means that if you are in the rotary and you actually attempt to look at it, you will die.
All in all, a strong effort, but this one only takes second prize, because of:
1. Routes 1A, 16, and 60 and Beach Street, Revere
Like a fearsome Cerberus, this thing-that-should-not-be guards the otherwise relatively pleasant northern approach to Logan Airport via Route 1A, impeding passage in all directions.
Aside from its role in airport traffic, its particular unpleasantness arises from two features. In a sense it is another rotary-that-is-not-a-rotary, since the through lanes running across it pass neither above nor below the level of the rotary, but intersect it at grade with a pair of traffic-light-controlled intersections that cause frequent backups.
But the real horror here is the way that Route 16 and Route 1A, two of its most heavily used tributaries, meet it at the same point and share a common offramp. The consequence is that transferring from 16 east to 1A south, or 1A north to 16 west, requires a profoundly counterintuitive maneuver: the traveler must almost completely circumnavigate the rotary, take the same exit one would use for a U-turn, then peel off to the correct ramp, often in heavy traffic that makes changing lanes difficult. The usual ambiguous, small and occasionally obscured signage compounds the problem. Once I was on an airport shuttle van that got lost doing this.
Special honorable mention: US 1 and Route 60, Revere
This huge, lopsided rotary is not, in fact, hellish at all. Its great size and more-than-adequate signage actually make it downright pleasant to use. But it could have been different.
The reason it's huge and lopsided can be seen on the map: Those unused ghost overpasses on the northeast bulge were intended for a planned routing of Interstate 95 through downtown Boston. You can see the cleared right-of-way extending some distance through the Revere marshes to the northeast.
In a fit of sanity, this was never actually constructed, and 95 today loops around the city to the west along Route 128. But had it happened, today this placid giant might well be the single greatest Hell Rotary of Massachusetts.
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There are a few types of problems. A common one is that people on some associated road persist in driving too fast for the size of the rotary, and, partly as a consequence, won't or can't yield. I've heard this described as mostly a problem of small rotaries, but I think it's also the geometry; if some lane of the road goes past the rotary at a tangent while remaining essentially straight, people are going to treat it as a through lane with right of way and just blow through there.
This is part of the problem at the Stoneham one I mentioned. This is also an occasional problem with the big one at Medford Square, since the curve of the westward ramp from 93S is gentle, it meets the rotary just after a merge from a surface street where the ramp does have right of way, and you can't see the whole rotary clearly. Usually the prominent sign that says ROTARY gets the idea across, but its significance might be lost on people who do not know Lawgiver and do not have the yield rule in their bones. Or who are just jerks.
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