[Talk-us] First bona fide mini-roundabout spotted

[Toby Murray]

I just downloaded all highway=mini_roundabout nodes and just browsed
around a bit comparing the nodes to Bing imagery. There are a *lot* of
turning circles tagged as mini roundabouts. And not just in North
America. Some of them are turning circles with an island in the middle
but many of them are straight up turning circles.

But beyond that obvious misuse, outside of the UK this tag is used on
a lot of roundabouts with obvious islands.

If the wiki were to reflect reality, it would probably say something
about the size of the intersection itself. People (including me) are
using this tag to indicate intersections where the road surface and
corners of the intersection have not been expanded to allow for
circular traffic but rather, a chunk of concrete which happens to be
circular has been dropped in the middle of the intersection to slow
cars down.

In my city we have several intersections I have tagged as mini
roundabouts. They are all on residential side streets that run
parallel to major roads and I believe their primary purpose is to
annoy drivers into avoiding the side streets even if the main roads
are busy.

If anyone wants to take a look for themselves, here is the file. It is
only 8.5 MB so JOSM should be able to handle it without problems:
http://ni.kwsn.net/~toby/OSM/mini_roundabouts.osm

Toby


On Mon, May 7, 2012 at 7:26 PM, Paul Norman <penorman at mac.com> wrote:
> The first two would unquestionably be tagged with highway=mini_roundabout up
> here.
>
>> From: Nathan Mills [mailto:nathan at nwacg.net]
>> Subject: Re: [Talk-us] First bona fide mini-roundabout spotted
>>
>> So this is not/should not be a mini_roundabout? It seems a little silly
>> to call it anything else, since the city just dug a hole in the center
>> of the existing intersection, built a circular curb, and planted a tree:
>>
>> http://g.co/maps/e2gsv
>>
>> What about this one? Also a full on roundabout?
>>
>> http://g.co/maps/d6n74
>>
>> This looks more like a roundabout to me:
>>
>> http://g.co/maps/hnbp9
>>
>> -Nathan
>>
>> On 5/7/2012 8:46 AM, Paul Johnson wrote:
>> > This one surprised me, was pretty sure that the US didn't have real
>> > mini roundabouts, but I just spotted one in Burien, WA.
>> > http://g.co/maps/afh8m