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Thesis Defence: Sustainable Transport Safety: Are Turbo Roundabouts Applicable to Canada?
July 5 at 9:00 am - 1:00 pm
Scott Juniper, supervised by Dr. Gord Lovegrove, will defend their thesis titled “Sustainable Transport Safety: Are Turbo Roundabouts Applicable to Canada?” in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Applied Science in Civil Engineering.
An abstract for Scott Juniper’s thesis is included below.
Defences are open to all members of the campus community as well as the general public. Registration is not required for in-person defences.
ABSTRACT
As relatively novel intersections, roundabouts have garnered support and interest from many countries due to traffic flow and safety improvements over traditional intersections. Despite growing application, knowledge and experience is relatively scarce within Canada for multilane roundabouts; the Canadian Roundabout Design Guide was only published in 2017 and was largely based on US guidance. Turbo Roundabouts are an emerging multi-lane roundabout design successfully implemented in Europe over the past 20 years, however nowhere yet applied in Canada, and rarely in the United States.
Claimed to reduce safety risk for all users (not just automobile), decrease greenhouse gas emissions, increase climate resiliency, and reduce lifecycle costs for an intersection, Turbo Roundabouts present a multi-lane roundabout design option that warrants consideration for Canada; there is also considerable opportunity to implement this design due to increased capacity over a single lane roundabout. Many research teams have demonstrated injury risk being significantly lower to auto and non-auto road users by implementing this design. This lower risk is due to several design features, including spiral circulating lanes, physical lane dividers, and adequate separation for pedestrian and bicyclist crossings – among others.
Existing Canadian design guidelines don’t provide guidance for Turbo roundabouts, and no planning level tools exist pertaining to Canadian specific requirements. There are currently two roundabouts constructed in Canada that aspire to some aspects of turbo roundabout design features, despite hundreds constructed in Europe. This research aims to identify how effective Turbo Roundabouts might be in a Canadian environment and provide context as to what gaps may exist in design to accommodate Canadian requirements. The methods used in this research include literature review of existing multilane roundabout design, a case study feasibility design project, and field visits to existing Turbo Roundabouts in Europe.
