C-Roundabout

The C-Roundabout is a new type of multi-lane roundabout developed in New Zealand in 2005, originally for the sole purpose of catering for cyclists. It was developed as part of the New Zealand Transport Agency research programme [[1]], and was concurrently a thesis submitted for completion of a Masters degree (civil engineering) by Duncan Campbell.

Many cyclists find big roundabouts daunting to ride around, and they also suffer much higher crash rates than at other intersection types. That's not to say that multi-lane roundabouts are death-traps for cyclists mind you, but they can be at the very least a barrier for novice riders.

Roundabouts are by the way a much safer form of intersection control than traffic signals, although you may get as many or more minor fender-bender type crashes at a roundabout, traffic signals will suffer far more injury crashes. This is simply because of he fact that much higher collision speeds are possible at traffic signals, compared to a well designed roundabout.

However even though roundabouts are clearly the overall safer form of intersection control in terms of injury crashes, some city councils in New Zealand are more concerned with catering for pedestrians and cyclists so are installing traffic signals instead. In addition, conventional multi-lane roundabouts can take up a lot of room so can be expensive to install. This is where the C-Roundabout fits in quite well - it can be built in a compact area and if designed with lower vehicle speeds in mind can be safer for both pedestrians as well as cyclists.

Here are some relevant links for the C-Roundabout:

Paper presented at 2005 IPENZ conference[[2]]

NZTA published research document

Paper and presentaton given to 2009 Cycling Conference in New Plymouth [[3]], [[4]]

Note this page is at the moment in its very draft stages so hope to clean it up a bit. In addition, I will try to put some links to video footage which I will try to make available.