The newly reconfigured Tainan’s Xinying roundabout is the first turbo roundabout in Taiwan.
Prior to conversion:
After conversion:
There is also a great article that has the before-and-after accident stats for all roundabouts that underwent reconfiguration in Mandarin.
Prior to the conversion, there were 82 injury causing accidents in the past 6 years, of which 32% happened when a vehicle merges to the outside lane.
With a turbo roundabout, merging to exist eliminated.
Well, apparently, the one in Xinying Tainan is only the second turbo roundabout in Taiwan because another roundabout in Nantun Taichung got there first. The one in Taichung is in a new developed area, so not a lot of people in the area. It was originally not going to be a roundabout, but because people fight for an old tree that would have been removed for the planned intersection, the city government put in a turbo roundable instead.
It is usually referred to the Takeshi Kaneshiro Tree roundabout, despite it absolutely not being the actual Takeshi Kaneshiro Tree, as that tree is in Taidong.
It’s great and all, but since they are planning for the tree in the middle to be a part of a park, I wonder how pedestrians are supposed to get to the middle with the current design…
Attention skybridge construction companies: Get ready to submit your bids!
What moron thought putting parking spaces around the edge is a good idea?
That just creates bottle necks for people waiting to pull in or out, doing a full circle/ cutting across so they can get to a space (not what they are designed for), it also adds a nice rat run for scooters not wanting to do the loop.
KMT city councilor, Cai Yuhui (蔡育輝), bragged about fighting for those parking spaces on the sidewalk on his social media.
FTFY
On the positive side, even if all these new designs are flawed, I recognize the effort and the intention to make things better. Who agrees with that?
The problem is by doing something with an obvious flaw, when the problems do arise people will use it to argue agains change.
All these ideas have been tested many times in cities around the world. The information is already out there on what works and what doesn’t, there are engineers who specialise in traffic management.
They shouldn’t be doing half arsed measures, spend the money, do it once and do it right, even if it means importing some talent.
The problem is they don’t recognize these designs are flawed!
Half of the new pedestrian crossing scheme on a bridge in Xindian is used by scooters trying to get into a left turn box, both riding on the crossing and parking on it making it unsafe and/or unusable at rush hour. A lot of the problem is the scheme does not confirm to road design guidelines, crossing is too close to both the junction and the left turn box. Does anyone care? Hell no, they’re congratulating themselves for implementing it!
The Taichung one sucks because it has traffic lights in what seems like an area with little to no traffic and every exit has a STOP marking (no traffic lights) meaning you must come to a complete stop…for no reason at all. For some stupid reason the pedestrians have a crossing light too. So if a pedestrian has a red crossing light they can’t even start to enter the crosswalk to begin with, so that makes the STOP on exit even more pointless than it already is, which is an impressive feat.
Also all the wasted space that could be better utilized for having more pedestrian space and narrowing the crossings…or just having sidewalks instead of a bunch of disconnected medians for pedestrians to walk on.
When I asked the city about making some changes the Taichung City Transportion Dept. said everything is designed in accordance to regulations…
Yeah…sure.
As for the inner area for the park…yeah people have been wondering about that too. It was in the news before too if I recall correctly.
Look at how traffic just flows in this roundabout filled Scandinavian country.
thats an old one, have a look at Ghost riders chases, the bike ones are even more crazy.
I am struggling to imagine ANYTHING more crazy than the driving in that video. 
EDIT: OK, I’m the dummy, I’ll wear the crown, as now I am finally clueing in that this video was sped up for dramatic effect.
Guy
look this guy up
I don’t think my adrenaline level can take much more tonight! 
Guy
Ah, I think I’ve seen him on the roads in Taiwan a couple of times 
Testing whether roundabouts or traffic lights are better for time, fuel efficiency, and safety.
Testing is conducted by driving 10 miles in Carmel, the roundabout capital of the US, and then another 10 miles just outside of Camel where all roundabouts disappear, with the same amount of left and right turns.
Roundabouts took shorter time (-6 min), have a higher average speed (+8 mph), and is better for fuel economy (+3 mpg). Traffic lights have a higher top speed (just by 2 mph).
I don’t use the route often but I do think the removal of the roundabout at Gongguan has made it much safer. The roundabout concept, even with the addition of traffic lights, just seems too advanced for a lot of drivers in Taiwan, not really surprising as no training on their use is included in any driving school. Given that that roundabout had both traffic lights and a roundabout the quoted study is not really applicable. Would be interesting to see the number of traffic accidents before and after the change.
Number is already out.
