roundabouts

Traffic Circles and Roundabouts
Why they are used and how to deal with them from the City of Langford website.

A recent ICBC study shows that traffic circles are 80 per cent effective in reducing traffic accidents. Accidents in traffic circles tend to be the less severe sideswipes rather than the deadly T-bone type that occur at stop signs and signals. A similar study in the USA on roundabouts found a 39% reduction in vehicle accidents, a 76% reduction in injury accidents and a 90% reduction in accidents causing death or permanent incapacity. A traffic circle is really just a small roundabout.

There are only 8 conflict points in a traffic circle compared to 32 in a four way stop condition.

Reduced Delay: Since motorists do not always have to stop, delays and queues are usually less compared to Stop signs and traffic signals (especially signals with long cycle lengths and multiple phases). This is true under non-peak traffic conditions and especially evident at high traffic flows.

Environmental Benefits: With reduced delay, roundabouts can reduce noise, air pollution and fuel consumption. They also provide opportunities for landscaping and gateway treatments.

The first roundabout in Langford is on the Bear Mountain Parkway. The first traffic circle in Langford is on Peatt Road at Brock. Seattle has about 750 traffic circles. Seattle guarantees to remove each traffic circle if the neighbours within a block radius are 60% against it. In the last 12 years they have not removed a single traffic circle.

How do you navigate traffic circles? The signs on the approaches and on the circle itself tell you to go around the right side of the circle. Keep going around the circle till you reach your exit. Signal a left turn if you are going to drive past an exit. Signal a right turn as you approach your exit.

Who has the right of way? The circles should be treated like an uncontrolled intersection - if someone is already in the circle, they have the right of way, and if two drivers enter the circle at the same time, the person on the right has the right of way. As you approach the circle there is a yield sign. You must yield to traffic already in the circle. But the most important thing is to slow down as you approach the traffic circle, watch what the other vehicles are doing and do not make assumptions about where they are going. That vehicle entering the traffic circle opposite you may be doing a U-turn around the circle (perfectly legal and yet another advantage of the circles) so don’t assume he will leave the circle before he gets to you.

Adaptable and Accessible Housing

Adaptable Housing requirements are modest improvements to accessibility and adaptability in residential buildings that make it easier for people to "remain in place" as they age, or experience illness or injury or simply adapt their house to the changing needs of their family.

Adaptable Housing features allow "universal design" principles, meaning that the housing can appeal to everyone. Adaptable Housing features are visually unnoticeable and allow increased flexibility in selling or renting homes. Including these features at the design stage is inexpensive and greatly reduces the cost of renovation in the future.

The District of Saanich on Vancouver Island and the City of North Vancouver are two communities that have adopted Adaptable and Accessible housing Guidelines. And with over 26% of Summerland's population over 65 why don't we?

Check out the Saanich website: http://www.gov.saanich.bc.ca Click on "business" and then on the left under "Development" is a clickable link - "Adaptable Housing".

Architect Avi Friedman has written several books (The Grow Home and The Adaptable House: Designing Homes for Change) on this topic. Both books are available at the Summerland Library.

Solar Cladding

Solar Cladding is a new, efficient approach to solar heating that is relatively simple, inexpensive and has no moving parts.

Solar cladding is a metal cladding consisting of thousands of tiny perforations and is mounted approximately 6-12 inches out from the exterior south-facing wall. As the sun shines, a ventilation fan draws warm air from the boundary layer on the surface of the wall through the perforations into an air cavity. The heated fresh air is then distributed throughout the building by the conventional ventilation system.

The wall also acts as a heat shade preventing the summer's sun from reaching the main wall and conducting the heat indoors.

Solar cladding is being used in larger commercial and institutional buildings to help reduce their heating and cooling costs.

This benefits not just the building owners, but everyone since high air conditioning use pushes up the cost of power for everyone; including those without air conditioners.

For a more complete description of this technology go to http://www.solarwall.com or see "Going 'Green' With Solar Heating in the January 2006 issue of Municipal World.

Going Green

There are many many ways we can "go green".

Solar Cladding and and the use of solar energy are two ways that buildings (commercial, institutional and residential) could be made more energy efficient.

Solar hot water is an inexpensive, easy-to-install and proven technology, with a payoff period of five to seven years.

Solar B.C. (www.solarbc.ca) has a goal of 100,000 solar roofs in the province by 2020. Which begs the question "why not here?" It is being done in Kelowna, Dawson Creek and North Vancouver. The City of Dawson Creek made public commitments to reduce the natural gas the city uses by installing solar hot water systems wherever possible to demonstrate leadership, provide energy security and provide visibility to solar hot water technology within their community. Why not here? At the very least we should ensure that all new houses are constructed solar ready. At a cost of $300-500 the necessary wiring and plumbing can be done at the time of construction enabling homeowners to add solar panels at a later date without having to do expensive retrofitting.

For those interested there is a grant of up to $1,625 in provincial funds available for homeowneres who want to install solar hot-water systems.

Two interesting websites are: http://www.solarbc.ca and the City of Dawson Creek's http://planningforpeople.ca