Traffic rotaries

Lecture notes in Transportation Systems Engineering

3 August 2009

Overview
Rotary intersections or round abouts are special form of at-grade
intersections laid out for the movement of traffic in one direction
around a central traffic island. Essentially all the major conflicts at
an intersection namely the collision between through and right-
turn movements are converted into milder conflicts namely
merging and diverging. The vehicles entering the rotary are gently
forced to move in a clockwise direction in orderly fashion. They
then weave out of the rotary to the desired direction. The benefits,
design principles, capacity of rotary etc. will be discussed in this
chapter.

Advantages and disadvantages of rotary

The key advantages of a rotary intersection are listed below:

1. Traffic flow is regulated to only one direction of movement,

thus eliminating severe conflicts between crossing
movements.
2. All the vehicles entering the rotary are gently forced to reduce
the speed and continue to move at slower speed. Thus, none
of the vehicles need to be stopped,unlike in a signalized
intersection.
3. Because of lower speed of negotiation and elimination of
severe conflicts, accidents and their severity are much less in
rotaries.
4. Rotaries are self governing and do not need practically any
 control by police or traffic signals.
5. They are ideally suited for moderate traffic, especially with
irregular geometry, or intersections with more than three or
four approaches.

Although rotaries offer some distinct advantages, there are few

specific limitations for rotaries which are listed below.

1. All the vehicles are forced to slow down and negotiate the
intersection. Therefore, the cumulative delay will be much
higher than channelized intersection.
2. Even when there is relatively low traffic, the vehicles are
forced to reduce their speed.
3. Rotaries require large area of relatively flat land making them
costly at urban areas.
4. The vehicles do not usually stop at a rotary. They accelerate
and exit the rotary at relatively high speed. Therefore, they
are not suitable when there is high pedestrian movements.

Guidelines for the selection of rotaries

Because of the above limitation, rotaries are not suitable for every
location. There are few guidelines that help in deciding the
suitability of a rotary. They are listed below.

1. Rotaries are suitable when the traffic entering from all the
four approaches are relatively equal.
2. A total volume of about 3000 vehicles per hour can be
considered as the upper limiting case and a volume of 500
vehicles per hour is the lower limit.
3. A rotary is very beneficial when the proportion of the right-
turn traffic is very high; typically if it is more than 30 percent.
4. Rotaries are suitable when there are more than four
approaches or if there is no separate lanes available for right-
 turn traffic. Rotaries are ideally suited if the intersection
geometry is complex.

Traffic operations in a rotary

As noted earlier, the traffic operations at a rotary are three;

diverging, merging and weaving. All the other conflicts are
converted into these three less severe conflicts.

1. Diverging: It is a traffic operation when the vehicles moving

in one direction is separated into different streams according
to their destinations.
2. Merging: Merging is the opposite of diverging. Merging is
referred to as the process of joining the traffic coming from
different approaches and going to a common destination into
a single stream.
3. Weaving: Weaving is the combined movement of both
merging and diverging movements in the same direction.

These movements are shown in figure 1.

Figure 1: Traffic operations in a rotary

It can be observed that movements from each direction split into
three; left, straight, and right turn.

Design elements
The design elements include design speed, radius at entry, exit
and the central island, weaving length and width, entry and exit
widths. In addition the capacity of the rotary can also be
determined by using some empirical formula. A typical rotary and
the important design elements are shown in figure 2

Figure 2: Design of a rotary

Design speed

All the vehicles are required to reduce their speed at a rotary.

Therefore, the design speed of a rotary will be much lower than
the roads leading to it. Although it is possible to design
roundabout without much speed reduction, the geometry may
lead to very large size incurring huge cost of construction. The
normal practice is to keep the design speed as 30 and 40 kmph
for urban and rural areas respectively.

Entry, exit and island radius

The radius at the entry depends on various factors like design

speed, super-elevation, and coefficient of friction. The entry to the
rotary is not straight, but a small curvature is introduced. This will
force the driver to reduce the speed. The entry radius of about 20
and 25 metres is ideal for an urban and rural design respectively.

The exit radius should be higher than the entry radius and the
radius of the rotary island so that the vehicles will discharge from
the rotary at a higher rate. A general practice is to keep the exit
radius as 1.5 to 2 times the entry radius. However, if pedestrian
movement is higher at the exit approach, then the exit radius
could be set as same as that of the entry radius.

The radius of the central island is governed by the design speed,

and the radius of the entry curve. The radius of the central island,
in practice, is given a slightly higher radius so that the movement
of the traffic already in the rotary will have priority. The radius of
the central island which is about 1.3 times that of the entry curve
is adequate for all practical purposes.

Width of the rotary

The entry width and exit width of the rotary is governed by the
traffic entering and leaving the intersection and the width of the
approaching road. The width of the carriageway at entry and exit
will be lower than the width of the carriageway at the approaches
to enable reduction of speed. IRC suggests that a two lane road of
7 m width should be kept as 7 m for urban roads and 6.5 m for
rural roads. Further, a three lane road of 10.5 m is to be reduced
to 7 m and 7.5 m respectively for urban and rural roads.

The width of the weaving section should be higher than the width
at entry and exit. Normally this will be one lane more than the
average entry and exit width. Thus weaving width is given as,

(1)
where is the width of the carriageway at the entry and is the

carriageway width at exit.

Weaving length determines how smoothly the traffic can merge

and diverge. It is decided based on many factors such as weaving
width, proportion of weaving traffic to the non-weaving traffic etc.
This can be best achieved by making the ratio of weaving length
to the weaving width very high. A ratio of 4 is the minimum value
suggested by IRC. Very large weaving length is also dangerous, as
it may encourage over-speeding.

Capacity
The capacity of rotary is determined by the capacity of each
weaving section. Transportation road research lab (TRL) proposed
the following empirical formula to find the capacity of the weaving
section.

(2)

where is the average entry and exit width, i.e, , is the

weaving width, is the length of weaving, and is the proportion

of weaving traffic to the non-weaving traffic. Figure 3 shows four

types of movements at a weaving section, and are the non-
weaving traffic and and are the weaving traffic.

Figure 3: Weaving operation in a rotary

Therefore,
 (3)

This capacity formula is valid only if the following conditions are

satisfied.

1. Weaving width at the rotary is in between 6 and 18 metres.

2. The ratio of average width of the carriage way at entry and
exit to the weaving width is in the range of 0.4 to 1.
3. The ratio of weaving width to weaving length of the
roundabout is in between 0.12 and 0.4.
4. The proportion of weaving traffic to non-weaving traffic in the
rotary is in the range of 0.4 and 1.
5. The weaving length available at the intersection is in between
18 and 90 m.

Example

The width of a carriage way approaching an intersection is given

as 15 m. The entry and exit width at the rotary is 10 m. The traffic
approaching the intersection from the four sides is shown in the
figure 4 below.

Figure 4: Traffic approaching the rotary

Find the capacity of the rotary using the given data.
Solution

• The traffic from the four approaches negotiating through the

roundabout is illustrated in figure 5.

Figure 5: Traffic negotiating a rotary

• Weaving width is calculated as, w = = 13.5 m

• Weaving length, l is calculated as = 4 w = 54 m

• The proportion of weaving traffic to the non-weaving traffic in

all the four approaches is found out first.
• It is clear from equation,that the highest proportion of
weaving traffic to non-weaving traffic will give the minimum
capacity. Let the proportion of weaving traffic to the non-
weaving traffic in West-North direction be denoted as , in

North-East direction as , in the East-South direction as

, and finally in the South-West direction as .

• The weaving traffic movements in the East-South direction is

shown in figure 6. Then using equation, =

= =0.783 =

= =0.718 = = =0.674
 = = =0.6099

• Thus the proportion of weaving traffic to non-weaving traffic is

highest in the East-South direction.

Figure 6: Traffic weaving in East-South

direction
• Therefore, the capacity of the rotary will be capacity of this
weaving section. From equation,

(4)

Summary
Traffic rotaries reduce the complexity of crossing traffic by forcing
them into weaving operations. The shape and size of the rotary
are determined by the traffic volume and share of turning
movements. Capacity assessment of a rotary is done by analyzing
the section having the greatest proportion of weaving traffic. The
analysis is done by using the formula given by TRL.

Problems

1. The width of approaches for a rotary intersection is 12 m. The

entry and exit width at the rotary is 10 m. Table below gives
the traffic from the four approaches, traversing the
intersection. Find the capacity of the rotary.

Approach Left turn Straight Right turn

North 400 700 300
 South 350 370 420
East 200 450 550
West 350 500 520

Solution

• The traffic from the four approaches negotiating through the

roundabout is illustrated in figure 7.

Figure 7: Traffic negotiating a rotary

• Weaving width is calculated as, w = = 13.5 m

• Weaving length can be calculated as, l = 4 w = 54 m

• The proportion of weaving traffic to the non-weaving traffic in

all the four approaches is found out first.
• It is clear from equation,that the highest proportion of
weaving traffic to non-weaving traffic will give the minimum
capacity. Let the proportion of weaving traffic to the non-
weaving traffic in West-North direction be denoted as , in

North-East direction as , in the East-South direction as

, and finally in the South-West direction as . Then

using equation, = = =0.816

= = =0.69 =
 = =0.676 =

= =0.630

• Thus the proportion of weaving traffic to non-weaving traffic is

highest in the East-South direction.
• Therefore, the capacity of the rotary will be the capacity of
this weaving section. From equation,
= 380.56veh/hr.

Bibliography

Prof. Tom V. Mathew 2009-08-03