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Turbo-Roundabout

INT-TRB-02
Recommended Intersections & Crossings

Turbo-Roundabout

A roundabout variant using spiral lane markings and raised lane dividers to guide multi-lane traffic without the weaving conflicts a standard multi-lane roundabout allows.

Related Media

The items below come from outside the Commonway System, external videos, podcasts, and articles related to this page's topic, not part of the guidebook itself.

Aligned

Are Streets Too Complicated Now?

City Beautiful

Asks whether today's proliferation of lines, signals, and lane types on streets is overcomplication or a needed response to modern demands, a question that runs directly through CS's Element-scale catalog and the density-tiered Corridor retrofit paths this video is tagged to.

Context only

America Built the Wrong Roundabout (The Dutch Didn't)

Safe By Design

Traces the turbo roundabout's origin and safety data, but also reports the Fietsersbond's documented cyclist/pedestrian crossing hazards at turbo roundabouts directly, worth noting since it complicates a clean "aligned" label.

Typical at: Compact Urban

Suburban and Core are edge cases. Undeveloped and Rural are unlikely pairings.

Design notes

Reserved for higher-volume Arterial-to-Arterial junctions, where a standard roundabout's capacity is not enough but a signal is still not the preferred default. This keeps the roundabout-first philosophy intact at higher volumes rather than defaulting to a signal once traffic grows.1

Roundabout (Single/Multi-Lane) (INT-RAB-01) (the base pattern this scales up from), Signal (INT-SIG-03) (explicitly named on this page as the alternative not preferred even at these volumes)

Getting there: Retrofit path options

Signal-to-roundabout conversion (RFT-INT-01)

References

  1. Evidence-based Fortuijn, L.G.H., "Turbo Roundabouts: Design Principles and Safety Performance," Transportation Research Record 2096 (2009).