Accommodating vulnerable road users in roundabout design

Roundabout design and implementation has recently become more prevalent as an intersection treatment in North America, especially since the Federal Highway Administrations published Roundabouts: An Informational Guide. Other state and provincial agencies have followed suit and have developed their own design guidelines to assist design practitioners with local implementation. Notwithstanding the amount of emerging information on roundabout design, and the fact that the provinces of Quebec and British Columbia have their own guidelines at various stages of maturity, a nationally adopted Canadian roundabout design guideline does not currently exist. This discussion is not intended as a set of roundabout edicts to be followed during design; instead, comparisons in how some readily available design guides accommodate vulnerable road users are presented for consideration. Some general observations, which are anecdotal at best, are made that will desirably stimulate a roundabout designer to contemplate pedestrian and cyclist movements through these intersections. For the covering abstract of this conference see ITRD number E211395.