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THE SEMINAR/WORKSHOP
Mini-roundabouts
- A Definitive Guide!
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 Delegates attending the
seminar at Chichester
October 2005
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I ran the
seminars on mini-roundabouts since 1997,
shortly after publication of Mini-roundabouts
- Getting them right! This proved a
practical way of getting the information over
where issues can be debated freely.
These
tended to be large events with sometimes over 40 delegates
and lasted all day! In America several delegates flew
in from neighbouring states to attend (1999).
Experience suggests
that numbers should be limited to around
twenty to allow for full participation by
delegates. The seminars are aimed at key
members of staff from highway authorities,
consultancies, government bodies and
institutions and are held at a suitable venue
usually in-house.
At
66 I would not wish to run a full day event. It would now
need to be much less
formal and about 3 hours with a short break to make it more palatable
for everyone. Things have changed a lot; when I started
there was virtually no published information - today there
is much and the ground can be covered more quickly.
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SEMINAR
AIMS
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- To clarify the
principles by which roundabouts operate:
levels of giving way/yielding,
amount of deflection.
- To clarify which
sites are suitable
- and which are not!!
- To clarify design
rules
- To reduce casualty
numbers, severity and deaths
- To save money by
eliminating unnecessary features
- To make the road
environment friendly for all road users
- To introduce
roundabouts in forms which will work well
throughout the world
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| Delegates will
learn when to use a mini-roundabout, exactly how
to design it, when to avoid using one, how it
fits in with traffic calming, how to keep costs
down, what accidents occur and why, what the
likely capacity will be, and where designs are
going in the future. |
Workshop Agenda - 2 parts
| Part
1 |
Outline
of mini-roundabout usage |
| Important
History Early results, |
how the
offside priority rule completely changed roundabout operation;
its effect on capacity, safety and land use. |
| Site
Selection |
What
intersections are appropriate for retrofit with (mini-)
roundabouts;
geometry, crash history, congestion and "knotted"
traffic movements. |
| Design
Principles |
Examine
conflict points, deflection, approach layouts, location and size
of central island, location and function of yield lines, 3-way
mini-roundabouts, 4-way single, multiple (mini-) roundabouts.
Use and design of splitter islands. |
|
Break for
Coffee/Tea Informal discussion |
| Part
2 |
Detailed
design aspects |
| Detailed
design |
Illustrations
of a number of designs and how they are done in detail using
intended vehicle paths and appropriate deflection. |
| Flows
and Capacity |
Rule of
thumb formula, imbalanced flows, when not to use a mini-rbt,
tidal flows, multi-lane use approaches. |
| |
(Mini-)
roundabouts in Networks. |
| Notes:
Each presentation will incorporate drawings, graphics,
images and video to illustrate the principles of mini-roundabout
operation. |
Delegates
will be free to ask questions during the proceedings rather than
to wait until the end of a session; this has been found to
enable focussed discussion on a particular topic as it arises. |
* * * *
*
Here
are some comments about the earlier seminars:
| Thank-you so much for your extremely
interesting and well presented seminar that you
gave for our members at the Exeter St. Thomas
Cricket Club. Watching from the wings it was
pleasing to see the members interacting with
yourself and each other especially the section
with their own designs. I know that the feedback
from the questionnaires has been excellent and
I'm sure that we may wish to have this
presentation again in the future. |
May I take this opportunity of
congratulating you on a well constructed seminar
which managed to hold the attention of the staff
attending throughout the entire day. Much of your
advice and guidance was most interesting... |
...many thanks for your excellent
seminar. I do not think I can recall a similar
presentation which has generated so much
interaction and indeed during the following week
discussions are still taking place in offices and
corridors of this department on various issues
raised during Friday. |
Charlie Cross
Chairman IHIE South Western Branch |
Sam MacNaughton
Head of Consultancy,
Roads and Transport,
The Highland Council, Scotland |
Roger Drummond
Principal Engineer,
Shropshire CC |
* * * * *
SEMINAR
PRICES
Please contact me for details
concerning seminar prices; the price will be
based on a fixed fee for up to 20 delegates plus
expenses; however, experience has indicated that
this formula may not always be appropriate.
For
managers considering the problems of balancing limited
training budgets, do remember that the savings in making the
right scheme choices and detailed designs will pay for the
event many times over!
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Email me for more information.
| Problem
sites We will still try to look at any problem sites
referred to us before the seminars if we have
sufficient time to get there. We record stills
and video of what is going on and these are
played back appropriately during the session. The Engineer
whose site we are inspecting should be prepared
to present the site briefly at the seminar.
He/she should provide overheads/CAD files of the site and
any other information to be able to illustrate
the difficulties that the site presents.
I often find that "your problem sites" illustrate key issues in the
main seminar sessions so images of your sites
often appear quite early on!
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Previous Seminars (1997-)
Nov 1997
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Norfolk CC
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| Feb
1998 |
Bedfordshire CC with Luton BC |
| Mar
1998 |
Mouchell (Hatfield) |
| Apr
1998 |
Wiltshire CC |
| May
1998 |
East
Sussex CC |
Manchester (Rochdale) |
| June
1998 |
5
seminars in Scotland at: |
Edinburgh, Alloa, Forfar, Aberdeen
& Glasgow |
| July
1998 |
Suffolk
CC |
Thurrock,
(inc West Essex) |
Doncaster
& South Yorkshire |
| Sep
1998 |
Oxfordshire
CC |
South Gloucestershire |
| Oct
1998 |
Lancashire
CC |
Dumfries |
| Nov
1998 |
Bradford |
Worcestershire
CC with Hereford |
Gloucestershire
CC |
| Dec
1998 |
Poole |
| Jan
1999 |
Kirklees
(Huddersfield) |
Cornwall
(2 seminars) |
IHIE
(south-west) at Exeter |
| Feb
1999 |
Highland
Council (at Inverness) |
Northumberland
CC |
Cumbria |
| Mar
1999 |
Peter Brett Associates, Reading |
| Apr 1999 |
USA |
Maryland State, Baltimore
Vermont State, Burlington
Michigan State, Lansing |
| Mott MacDonald, Winchester |
| May
1999 |
West
Sussex CC |
Southampton City Council |
| June
1999 |
Leicestershire CC (2 seminars) |
| July 1999 |
Cambridgeshire CC |
| Tour
of Wales and NW England |
Newport, Cardiff, Carmarthen,
Carnaerffon, Holywell,
Halton & Shrewsbury (Shropshire CC) |
| Sept
1999 |
Seminar for IHIE, London |
| Oct
1999 |
West Midlands |
| Dec
2000 |
Parkman at
Ealing
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| May 2001 |
Wiltshire
CC (Traffic Calming) |
| Feb
2002 |
Cornwall CC
(Traffic Calming x 2)
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| Mar
2002 |
Derbyshire
CC (Mini-roundabouts & Traffic Calming)
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| June
2002 |
Northern
Ireland 2 seminars (Mini-roundabouts)
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| Dec
2002 |
Isle of Man
(Mini-roundabouts & Traffic Calming)
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| Feb 2003 |
Grand
Cayman
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| Sept
2003 |
Hants CC
(Mini-roundabouts)
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Feb 2005
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Dunfermline
(Mini-roundabouts & Traffic Calming) |
| Oct
2005 |
W Sussex
(Mini-roundabouts & Traffic Calming)
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| June
8 2006 |
IHIE south-west at
Yeovil (Mini-roundabouts)
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| Sept 19 2006 |
IHIE south-west at
Yeovil (Traffic Calming) |
| Feb 15 2007 |
Seminar for IHIE LEEDS (mini-roundabouts) |
Presentations
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| Nov 2007 |
Road Safety on Four Continents -
Bangkok
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| Feb 2008 |
Federal Road Safety Commission,
Nigeria International Road Safety Conference, Abuja
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| May 2008 |
USA National Conference on
roundabout design, Kansas
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| May 2011 |
USA National Conference on
roundabout design, Carmel
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The Future
Despite the considerable need, there has been
little demand for the original seminar since Leeds 2007.
The publication of the government TDs and advice documents seem to
have taken the place of my work in the UK.
Unfortunately those documents, as identified on this site, are
seriously flawed. We are not seeing any improvements in the poor
designs that have been scattered all over the UK with the result that
mini-roundabouts are now viewed by a sceptical public in much the same
way that modern roundabouts in America were perceived by their public.
Worse, I continue to hear comments that our guidelines are not being
used by others because they are perceived to be poor. (Perhaps I have
done a good job here warning [the Americans] off from using our design
rules and criteria!)
I remain available to help sort out
any sites that have given problems and that has been the thrust of
most of my work in the last few years. In time I hope to be able to
add before and after images of them with comments on the design
aspects that have caused the problems.
If you identify with this please
contact me and I will do what I can to help. This may include a
focussed presentation but is now unlikely to be a full training day of
the type that I was doing until 2007.
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