The city of La Quinta is going to spend nearly half a million dollars changing the roundabout at Jefferson and Avenue 52 (the one with the Coachella bird) because drivers just can’t figure out how to use it. “The first time you go through it, ‘What the heck is this?’ You kind of go in the outside lane and the inside lane, but once you are in that inside lane, you could go around there and never come out,” La Quinta resident Joe Diodati told KESQ (how did he pass his written DMV test?). While roundabouts have been found to have many benefits:
- fewer collisions
- less pedestrians hit
- a lower number of fatalities from accidents
- better traffic flow
- they take up less space
- they are less expensive to build
- they are less expensive to maintain
There is on major drawback:
- Drivers won’t take the 30 seconds necessary to learn how to use them
And for that reason, the city is coughing up $400,000 to change the layout of the roadway (it will still be a roundabout – but with just 1 lane to enter) because, well, ugh.
“I would actually like to have no roundabouts personally,” La Quinta driver Jan Wier proclaimed to KESQ – just another driver preferring instead to sit at dangerous stoplights all damn day instead of actually getting to where they need to be.
Watch KESQ’s report and tell us what you think of roundabouts below it:
