Gridlock Guy: Fixing roundabout confusion on N. Decatur Road in Druid Hills
Roundabout explainers have been low-hanging fruit for American news operations for years, as traffic planners are installing more of them and people can be flummoxed by these traffic circles. We have done no shortage of roundabout stories and guides since my new traffic gig at 11Alive began, including a thorough how-to from the Georgia Department of Transportation’s Natalie Dale in September on our daily show “The Take.”
Very simply, roundabouts are meant to keep traffic moving uniformly through an intersection, with cars outside of them blending in at the gaps between others inside the circle. Doing so decreases what traffic engineers call friction points, or places where cars may collide. The circles also keep traffic moving, even slowly, instead of the abrupt stop-starts that stop signs and traffic signals bring.
DeKalb County sought to bring that circular goodness to Druid Hills’ North Decatur Road and its intersections with Oakdale Road and Springdale Road. North Decatur is a two-lane and is lined with houses in this stretch.
Fitting circles inside of tight squares, which had been four-way stops, is awkward. The small islands inside these traffic circles leave barely enough room for vehicles to turn.
But resident Don Jennings, who spent nearly a decade as an officer both in the Atlanta Police Department and in Roswell, noticed a problem with it.
“When people approach those intersections from any of the four directions, they see a sign that says yield and then a smaller sign underneath it that (tells the traffic already in the roundabout to yield) to traffic entering the traffic circle,” Jennings told 11Alive and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The main problem with this, of course, is that it violates state law (Section 7 of the Georgia Department of Driver Services handbook) and the common understanding of roundabouts. Traffic inside a roundabout has the right of way.
Drivers, some of whom may already be tense with negotiating a small roundabout, now were being fed conflicting information.
“It was confusing drivers. I could see it because I walked through that area all the time and could see cars hesitating and stopping,” Jennings said. “If people come up to them and then treat them as a four-way stop, then they’re going to increase the chances of a collision.”
There are no better experts on a commute than the people who experience it daily.
Jennings emailed me about this recently and included a photo of the signage. He loves roundabouts, he said, and knows they work. He wanted DeKalb County to look into this.
I flipped his email over to the proper contact with DeKalb County. We had a phone conversation that seemed to go nowhere. The county had gotten no complaints, they said. Jennings’ was the first they heard of it.
I explained why what Jennings observed is important and the contact and I left it there. But the county did say it would investigate.
The next day, DeKalb called me back and said they removed the erroneous signs.
So, photojournalist Stephen Boissy and I took our 11Alive Traffic Impact Tracker Truck to Druid Hills and, lo and behold, found the signs gone and only the original yield signs in place. They were properly directed at the traffic preparing to enter these Oakdale and Springdale roundabouts.
“I think most people are starting to understand how traffic is supposed to flow in a roundabout. So I was glad that they made this change,” Jennings said. “It’ll be interesting to see how cars start to react to this now, but it’s far better than it was.”
Georgians already use 175 roundabouts and nearly 300 are in development or are under construction, per GDOT’s roundabout hub. More drivers will have to continue to adjust, and hopefully they will do so without unforced errors like the ones Jennings and others experienced in Druid Hills.
Thankfully, after some thought, DeKalb officials reconsidered and removed the confusing signage. And Jennings, thankfully, turned our eyes to it.
If you see traffic issues or have questions, drop me a line at the email address below. Sometimes transportation officials need fresh sets of eyes and ideas from the people who are the top experts of their own microcommutes.
Doug Turnbull covers the traffic/transportation beat for WXIA-TV (11Alive). His reports appear on the 11Alive Morning News from 6-9 a.m. and on 11alive.com. Email Doug at dturnbull@11alive.com
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