Third Place is one of my favorite coffee shops in town (and their apple turnovers…Lord have mercy) but yeah it’s just an environment that could be a destination but feels more like a pass-through.
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This roundabout isn’t happening; If it was I’d certainly my be in the meetings for it.
Cars around here have a hard time yielding to pedestrians. Blue Ridge Rd has flashing beacons and traffic does not stop there (save some cars here and there).
Excuse me? Your bias is showing. You might want to cover that up.
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Yeah a roundabout at Five Points would absolutely have to be multi-lane. I don’t know whether that’s better or worse than the current signal there… I agree with wanderer that I think there’s a fair debate to be had as to whether that’s better or worse for that immediate area compared to the current signal.
Speaking of blowback from the neighborhood, there’s a proposed rezoning/development at the intersection of Fairview & Bickett - 48 apartments/condos & 20K sq feet of office/retail. The adjacent neighborhood is up in arms over it and has been blowing up my email all day. Of all the locations (next to direct access to Capital Blvd and on the fringe of the neighborhood), this development probably should be a no brainer yet everyone is acting like it is going to destroy people’s property values and people are going to be running kids over going to the park across the street. One of their complaints is overflow on-street parking… (the developer is building a 2 story parking deck)
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Those emails were pretty funny. It started when someone asked if the five point CAC mailing list should be renamed “NIMBY new alerts?”. Let’s just say that some people didn’t take it well ^^.
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Can we get a 
added to this, pls?
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Re: roundabout…it’s definitely a matter of perspective. If you’re a commuter using Glenwood to get into town and just breeze through the green light, it’s no problem.
But, if you have to approach via Fairview or Whitaker Mill, or even Glenn, it’s a pain point. Unless you’re familiar with the ROW’s, no one knows what to do—even with the signs and signals. I live here, and I see near-miss accidents almost daily.
The worst part for me is the pedestrian experience. We’ve tried strolling our kids across Glenwood, and, even with the signals, it’s SUPER dicey. Confused drivers are looking for other cars because they don’t understand the ROW, so pedestrians are an afterthought. We love to walk around the area, but the current setup keeps the neighborhood pretty divided. Gimme those refuge islands at least!!
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In all seriousness, people treated that initial roundabout like they were being asked to circle the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. As a state grad, I had zero issues with the first one and actually preferred it. In hindsight, maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to introduce Raleigh to roundabouts in such a busy and high profile area with lots of traffic? Sure there were small roundabouts already in some subdivisions, etc., but the HIllsborough St. re-imagining was really the first time that they were introduced on a major city artery.
Even today, I see timid drivers completely stop at the entrance to all of the roundabouts when THERE’S NO CARS IN IT!!! Yes I am shouting because it’s maddening to be behind these people.
Even still, I’d love to see a large roundabout at 5 points. I say large because I think it would have to be physically large to deal with all the access points to it, while giving drivers room to be brave enough to use it without completely stopping upon every approach to it. Don’t get me wrong, I am all for people stopping when they need to; I am just trying to figure out in my head how to design it to prevent analysis paralysis.
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I got once stuck once in a roundabout in Mexico City during rush hour. This things was like 3-4 lanes. And we weren’t sure which road to take, so I just kept circling around and around while my friend tried to use broken spanish and ask for directions with neighboring cars. We finally figured out which street to take, but then it took another few laps to get to the outside lane so we could actually take it. Must have gone around it about 7-8 times total.
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I love Mexico City, but I would never want to try to drive in it. That’s some crazy shit. Hats off to you for making it out the other end of that gauntlet!
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Great rendering and absolutely what should replaced that intersection. I almost got hit 2 days ago by some turning left off Whitaker mill onto Glenwood completely ignoring the walk signs…not the first time it has occurred either.
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Terrific initial attempt at a solution! From my previous posts, I think that it needs to be physically larger to deal with driver anxiety. As for the actual inflows/outflows, I think that Whitaker Mill should have a dedicated lane to Glenwood northbound to keep thru-traffic moving on Glenwood. I’m less concerned about Glenn to Glenwood southbound because that traffic is light.
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I want to set the record straight here
The “2 lane” roundabout at Pullen and Hillsborough was a piece of junk, and that’s why it had so many crashes. If it was a plain two lane roundabout it would have been fine, but it wasn’t. It was asymmetrical, with each approach having different geometry and channelization. It was too complicated for such a congested, busy area with lots of things for drivers to keep track of and get distracted by.
If I recall, eastbound, the left lane was the through/left turn lane, westbound, the right lane was right turn/through; northbound there was only one lane on approach, and southbound was something else different. Different configuration from every approach, no consistency. Habitual drivers would have it figured out by the fourth or fifth time through, but infrequent drivers were guaranteed to slip up. Not enough time for them to understand, react, change lanes accordingly, all while watching for pedestrians and traffic while navigating the curves.
It didn’t fail because people were too stupid. Crash counts were not way out of family for even two lane roundabouts because Raleigh drivers are dumb, or because NC State is a bad school, or becaue of too much jaywalking, or drivers on their phone, or any other reason like that. The traffic engineers who designed it, just f*ed up! They implicitly acknowledged their error by restriping it into a single lane roundabout (although they never actually admitted fault and publicly scratched their heads about it.) And guess what. It functions just fine now
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Let me set the record straight… it was a joke. I guess I thought that was obvious.
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I’ve always thought the best win-win-win solution was a Dupont Circle style roundabout at Five Points to let the Glenwood thru traffic tunnel underneath non-stop 2 lanes each way and then let the surface roundabout handle the local traffic. The pedestrian experience would be infinitely better with just the local traffic to manage. The topography actually isn’t too bad for starting the tunnel at the south side in front of Underwood (306’), sloping down for clearance under the intersection (320’), then sloping back up to somewhere around Wells Fargo (312’).
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This happens all the time, unfortunately. Here’s the average driver approaching from Whitaker Mill to turn left on Glenwood:
-Unless I drive here all the time, I probably don’t know the ROW’s and am confused.
-I’ve sat through two red lights already, so I’m impatient.
-I have to yield to oncoming Fairview traffic, so my eyes are looking to the right.
-I have a tight window to turn because oncoming Fairview drivers with ROW often aren’t visible until the last minute, plus it’s a short green light.
-So, I gun it left, and then slam on brakes for the pedestrian crossing Glenwood that I wasn’t looking for (and was likely hidden by my car’s A post).
I would be interested to see what the 5-year crash analysis for the intersection is. My anecdotal observations is that while it is less than ideal, the number of crashes at the intersection itself as a result of the skewed geometry is not really that high (maybe due to people being more cautious?). I could be completely wrong
The number of pedestrian crashes is not particularly high at the intersection - Map Viewer
and the intersection has never really been identified by NCDOT as one of the more dangerous intersections in the area: Map Viewer
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Here’s how the Finns deal with their complicated traffic circles with a focus on pedestrian and bicycle accommodation. Explore this. It’s really interesting.
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I think you’ve been on this board long enough to know you have to tread carefully when mentioning NC State on here. 
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That is exactly why I do it. 
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