Massachusetts Is Dropping Rotaries For Roundabouts

The famed Massachusetts rotary, once the closest you could get to (legally) living out your "Fast and the Furious" fantasy, is on its way out. The bad boy of traffic patterns will see more rules as the state begins to streamline drivers into "roundabouts" with signs and some lines of paint.

The difference between a roundabout and a rotary? Safety, state transportation officials told the Boston Globe. According to the Globe, rotaries across Massachusetts, which boasts the most in the country at over 100, are being converted on a rolling basis.

But the switch is not sitting well with everyone. Patch's own Bob Holmes, who braved the rotary at Exit 40 on the border of Reading and Wakefield using only his bike - and nearly met the business end of an elderly woman's Buick for his troubles – described the pattern as dropping "a handful of over-cooked spaghetti on your kitchen floor."

"The insane traffic flow we all now deal with was created by a highway worker with a paint brush in one hand and a pint of Crown Royal in the other," Holmes wrote in February.

In a Shakespearean twist, the strengths of the rotary proved to be its downfall. According to the Globe, the idea was to limit structure for minimal slowdown and continued traffic flow. But as more drivers hit the road, each with a personal how-to guide for rotaries, the traffic circles became less of a convenience and more a high-stakes game of chicken.

"A rotary is all about weaving," Neil Boudreau, Massachusetts' state traffic engineer, told the Globe. "And the reason they are falling out of favor is that lack of definition."

There's something to be said for more structure, according to data from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. A 2000 study cited by Boston Daily found the conversion of intersections into roundabouts resulted in a 90 percent decrease in collision-related fatalities and 39 percent decrease in crashes overall.

Meanwhile MassDOT is slowly chipping away at the state's breadth of rotaries. The Globe reported that 15 have already been overhauled – for far less than it would cost to build new intersections – and rotaries in Gardner and Ayer are next on the docket.

Some may remain, relics whose charm, like old wooden roller coasters, lies partially in their danger. But for the most part we're going to have to get used to staying between the lines.

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