mmcirvin | Hell Rotaries of Massachusetts

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.

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What did Timothy J. Mahoney ever do to get that evil airport rotary named after him? He must be right there with Mother Cabrini in the "why did they have to name that after me?" sweepstakes

I was going to mention the sad plight of Timothy J. Mahoney, but had some temporary trouble verifying the name, since it wasn't showing up on the map view.

They don't have rotaries elsewhere? How odd.

It's like learning nobody outside of Maine has heard of red hot dogs.

Rotaries exist in other parts of the US, but are relatively uncommon, and drivers from out of the region are not comfortable with them the way New Englanders are. I remember riding around with my parents when they were visiting the area, and actually having to yell at my dad when he was negotiating the big rotary at I-93 and Route 60 at Medford Square: "ITISAROTARYYOUHAVETOYIELD!!!"

I live near and drive through Powderhouse Circle every day, and indeed, dear god. A certain kamikaze attitude is indispensible, and if you don't know where you're going, god help you. One additional bit of evil you didn't mention: unusually for the Boston area, the paved area in the circle is wide, spacious even. There's easily enough room for two lanes of traffic, but no dividing lines are painted, and in fact there's no sane way to *distribute* two lanes of cars. Everyone with any familiarity with the thing simply ignores all the excess pavement and drives it as one lane; but then there are always newcomers to bring the chaos.

Also, I grew up with rotaries in Nova Scotia. But it turns out there is an essential difference. The traffic laws I grew up with say that rotaries are to be driven give-and-go -- that is, traffic entering a rotary is supposed to be permitted to merge with traffic already in the rotary. It took me a couple of months cursing the maniacs at Powderhouse Circle who would never let me in before I discovered that Massachusetts law was different.

Still, I love rotaries. I don't have any kind of study to back up my impression, but I am convinced that any attempt to replace Powderhouse Circle with traffic lights would mostly succeed in bringing gridlock to West Somerville.

That is probably true. The great advantage of rotaries, as long as they're not adulterated rotaries like a couple on my list, is that they allow enormous traffic throughput for their size, which is pretty important around here where real estate is precious and everything is tightly packed. The tradeoff is that they demand a lot of the people driving through them, in both wit and courage.

This Wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundabout_intersection) makes a technical distinction between "modern roundabouts" and urban-style "traffic circles", in that the former are controlled by a universal rule that all incoming traffic must yield to the traffic in the circle, and the latter are controlled some other way, by stop signs or lights at the entrances. I suppose Powder House Square would be a hybrid between the two, since most or all of the entrances do have lights but then the rotary yield rule applies beyond them. The article mentions advocates for blind and visually impaired pedestrians favoring this system. In any event, they're all colloquially called rotaries here.

Heh. I can't remember which one it was (it was near Logan), but a Massachusetts rotary was where I heard my dad say "Fuck!" for the very first time.

This page has pictures of the wacky cylindrical sign. (http://web.mit.edu/smalpert/www/roads/ma/somerville/)

The Fresh Pond rotary pair in Cambridge does well and truly suck. I must say, however, that one of my fondest memories is of rocketing through there in the passenger seat of a Toyota MR2 proceeding at a rate of speed that the local constabularly might have considered felonious, had there been applicable statute.

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.

Its little brother exists, on route 128 (I-95 if you aren't from these parts) at route 20 in Waltham (exit 26). Given the volume of traffic that goes through there, it is, in fact, a Hell Rotary and is the major reason that traffic ties up on 128 there mornings and evenings.

Ah, yes. I make an effort to not be anywhere near there at any time.

Yes--in Towson, Maryland, a densely urbanized edge city just north of Baltimore, a complicated multi-road double intersection that used to have horrendous backups in all directions due to the red lights was replaced during the 1990s with a weird oval-shaped rotary, and while it took locals a bit of time to get used to it, it has drastically cut down on the backups there. It's called the Towson Roundabout and is one of three toundabouts developed in Maryland as part of a big project in the '90s. You can look at the picture and imagine how screwed-up the intersections there used to be --

I'll admit to having sort of a love-hate relationship with the signaled traffic circles that show up in parts of D.C., as they can make the driving situation much more complicated (I've never driven through Dupont Circle enough times to feel comfortable with its overcomplicated design) but they also offer a reprieve to pedestrians (which is what I usually am since I don't have a car). I frequently walk around the unsignaled circle at Blair Portal (on 16th Street NW at the Maryland/D.C. line) and it would be a lot tougher if the traffic volumes on all the streets there were as high as the volumes passing through Dupont Circle seem to be.

And of course Tenley Circle also does that trick where one of the main roads is allowed to go right through the circle at grade.

I'm disappointed that none of the Hell Rotaries are Satanic fraternal lodges.

Lest people think I am anti-rotary, I should say that the Boston area has an enormous number of these things, and these really were the worst examples I could think of. There are many that do their jobs pretty well; to take other prominent examples, the big rotaries along I-93 at Fellsway and Medford Square manage to function as interchanges for a major commuter highway and aren't bad, as long as you watch out for the occasional incoming jerk or out-of-towner who won't yield.

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.

Since the construction was completed, I've actually been kind of fond of the fresh pond rotaries. At rush time, there's a delicate interplay between which side is backed up enough at any one time to allow traffic to flow unimpeded from the immediately downstream inlet to the one 2/3 of the way around.

You can see the remains of a rotary replaced by an inordinately confusing system of lights just above, where rt 2 intersects fresh pond. I don't know when that interesection was redone, as it certainly predates my arrival. But the traffic handling capacity is much lower there, which causes backups all the way through the rotaries at the worst times, in part leading to the delicate balance mentioned above.

Also, there's a couple of very hellish rotaries on Jamaicaway that I'm a bit disappointed not to see.

...Another common aggravation, though it's not really a safety problem unless you have poor impulse control, is that one of the tributaries has much, much, much more incoming traffic than all the others, and woe to you if you're coming in on the road to its immediate right, because those people have the ironclad legal prerogative to never let you in. I had to deal with that for a while on one of the rotaries on either side of the Mystic River near Lower Mystic Lake, where 60 meets the parkway. There's nothing for it but to wait until they get a stop light somewhere upstream.

Though it is pretty cool to complain about a traffic backup at the source of the Mystic River. It sounds like you were waiting for Gandalf to magic you out.

Somewhere between 5 and 10 years ago, I think. I'm told it was done because traffic coming off Rt 2 (a divided highway) was travelling too fast to merge safely with Alewife Brook Parkway. ("Too dangerous for Alewife Brook Parkway" is not a concept I can easily wrap my brain around.)

That horrible thing by the Alewife T station? It was beyond the purview of this survey, but I was itching to say something about it.

I was hoping that people would pipe up with their favorites.

...Thinking about it, it's probably unfair to blame the Fresh Pond rotaries for their own suckiness, since the baleful influence of the Alewife Brook Parkway/Route 2 interchange is probably the actual cause.

We have only a few in Syracuse, NY -- in fact, I know of only two, on the same road about a mile apart, both named for companies with plants nearby. I can't comment much on them because I hardly ever drive them, though Boston tends to make Syracuse's worst traffic look like a Sunday drive in the country. But for the avid collectors out there:

General Motors Circle

Carrier Circle

The Alewife interchange used to be a rotary, before the Red Line extension and the construction of Alewife Station. There was a horrible road construction project there that seemed to last around five years, and now the former site of the rotary is occupied by an intricately-signaled Y-intersection whose three arms are Route 2 to the west, and the Alewife Brook Parkway to the northeast and south. It's made worse by the decision to route an exit from the Alewife Station parking complex directly into the heart of this intersection, to allow commuters to get directly onto Route 2 westbound.

Matt, do you know the nightmare that is Concord Ave/Leonard St/Common St/Stone Bridge at Belmont Center? I started to try to describe it and gave up.

in the Boston area is not knowing how your destination might be labeled on the other side, especially when you're unsure of that destination in the first place because you don't know whether you're about to be dumped into the Charles or not. Going straight takes at least three trips around the center: One to recognize the road you just came from, one to spot the sign labeling the exit for it, and the third to spot the same label, opposite direction, on the other side.

in the Boston area is not knowing how your destination might be labeled on the other side, especially when you're unsure of that destination in the first place because you don't know whether you're about to be dumped into the Charles or not.

It's the spice that adds flavor to life, that not-knowing. And a dip in the Charles is quite bracing at this time of year. Try it!

It looks pretty gnarly.

My first encounter with one was in the town of St. George, Utah.
http://www.roundaboutsusa.com/stgeorge.html
That is, if rotary in this instance means the same thing as roundabout which is what they're called there. Further articles mention several of them in that state with more planned.
I have no idea which one I was on. I was in the midst of a cross country move at the time but I do remember thinking how nice it was had everyone else understood how they were supposed to work!

Those are indeed what a Massachusetts driver would call rotaries.

There does seem to be an increasing awareness elsewhere in the country, just in the past few years, that, if well-planned and for a certain range of traffic speeds and volumes, a rotary can be a good way to design an interchange. With luck, maybe more Americans will understand them.

The ones that don't work around here have often been overtaken by history one way or another; either traffic patterns have changed to the point where you'd really need a more complex multi-ramp highway interchange (but there's no place to put one), or new roads were badly hacked into the system.

http://image34.webshots.com/35/5/39/58/2467539580096152869ILYsed_ph.jpg

This rotary in East Longmeadow is miserable. It it bass ackwards in that traffic in the rotary does not have the right of way, and it actually made it into Ripley's Believe it or Not as being one of the most dangerous intersections in the U.S.

I nominate the weird knot where the VFW parkway, the Arborway and the Jamaicaway all meet in JP.

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&sll=42.978266,-71.975699&sspn=0.213753,0.408554&ie=UTF8&ll=42.309958,-71.120081&spn=0.006752,0.012767&z=17

"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."

You can see what must be the other end of this planned I-95 route at the junction of 93 and 95 in Canton. I've been there a few times to hang out and do various delinquent teenager type activities, and always wondered what the deal was.

http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=42.206937,-71.140101&spn=0.054104,0.102139&t=h&z=14

That is, I think, the epitome of how not to design a rotary. Obviously everything about it down to the right-of-way rule was designed to maximize the speed of the through traffic, which is the worst possible thing to do.

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Hell Rotaries of Massachusetts

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The thing that really makes rotaries hell

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What about this one?

My favorite

Ghost overpasses

Re: What about this one?