Mini-roundabouts - Getting them Right

THE SEMINARS

Mini-roundabouts - Getting them Right!
Traffic Calming - Getting it Right!

The Seminar is crucial. Although the book is very helpful, it makes a great deal of difference to discuss and debate the many issues that surround the use of mini-roundabouts.

Is the site appropriate?

What about deflection?

What about pedestrians?

Will there be enough turning traffic?

Why not traffic signals?

Will it be a mini-roundabout?

What is a midi-roundabout?

and so many more... All these things get debated and sorted out at these events. Don't miss out -
Book your seminar today...

Delegates attending the seminar at Chichester
October 2005

I have been running the seminar on mini-roundabouts since 1997, shortly after publication of Mini-roundabouts - Getting them right! This has proved a practical way of getting the information over where issues can be debated freely. The Mini-roundabout Seminar covers all aspects of their design, use and installation. There is much detail because little other material has been published.

In contrast to mini-roundabouts, there is a huge amount of literature available on traffic calming. Even so, it is apparent that many traffic calming schemes are failing to work as intended. This seminar helps to clarify the issues and illustrates effective solutions to the wide variety of problems that traffic calming should resolve.

Experience suggests that numbers should be limited to around twenty to allow for full participation by delegates. The seminars are aimed at key members of staff from highway authorities, consultancies, government bodies and institutions and are held at a suitable venue usually in-house.

SEMINAR AIMS
Mini-roundabouts	Traffic Calming
To clarify the principles by which roundabouts operate: levels of giving way, amount of deflection. To clarify which sites are suitable and which are *not!! To clarify design rules* To reduce casualty numbers, severity and deaths To save money by eliminating unnecessary features To make the road environment friendly for all road users To introduce roundabouts in forms which will work well throughout the world	To identify what works, and what doesn't!! To clarify which features may be used where To clarify design rules To reduce casualty numbers, severity and deaths To save money by eliminating unnecessary features To make the road environment friendly for all road users To introduce traffic calming where it is really necessary To make it bus and emergency vehicle-friendly
Delegates will learn when to use a mini-roundabout, exactly how to design it, when to avoid using one, how it fits in with traffic calming, how to keep costs down, what accidents occur and why, what the likely capacity will be, and where designs are going in the future.	Delegates will learn what encourages and discourages speed, what traffic calming features work, pitfalls to avoid, minimising cost of traffic calming, and what is in store for the future.

TYPICAL AGENDA - MINI-ROUNDABOUTS

9.00 - 9.15	*Registration*
9.15 - 10.30	History - early results	Capacity and safety studies, double roundabouts
	Selection of sites	Crash sites, congested and "knotted" junctions, safety.
	Principles of design	Conflicts, deflection, approaches, position of central islands and give-way lines, 3-way mini-roundabouts, 4-way single and double mini-roundabouts, multiple mini-roundabouts
10.30 - 10.45		Coffee/Tea
10.45 - 12.00	Detailed design	Illustrations of a number of designs and how they are done in detail
12.00 - 12.30	Flows and Capacity	Rule of thumb formula, imbalanced flows, when not to use a mini-roundabout, tidal flows, lane use
12.30 - 13.15		Lunch
13.15 - 14.30	Visual aid presentation	Selected sites for discussion
14.30 - 15.00	Mini-roundabouts & Traffic Calming	Use of mini-roundabouts in traffic calming schemes, innovative vertical deflections, area calming and network management. Potential of the new H and S humps
15.00 - 15.15		Coffee/Tea
15.15 - 16.15	Your problem sites	Bring overheads, .DWG or .DXF files (to release 13) and any other information concerning sites that are giving problems or which are prospective mini-roundabouts about which there are concerns and let's discuss them together. (Try to get sites to me in advance)
16.15 - 16.30	Summary

TYPICAL AGENDA - TRAFFIC CALMING

Note: This seminar is normally done in conjunction with or shortly after that on mini-roundabouts. The reason for this is that the casual use of mini-roundabouts as part of traffic calming schemes has been found to be ineffective unless the mini-roundabouts are each justified in their own right. They should not normally be used otherwise.
9.00-9.30	Registration
9.30-10.30	Introduction What are you trying to achieve?	Speed/volume/HGV control or a combination? Demand management Network management – speed profile your network Speed reduction measures Bringing speeds down Keeping speeds down - repeat features What encourages speeding What discourages speeding Consultation
		*Coffee/tea*
10.50-12.00	The Mechanics Vertical deflections Horizontal/lateral deflections	1. Uniform across carriageway 2. Differential slopes according to track widths - speed cushions, H-humps (lots of detail here) Chicanes Pinch-points
12.00-12.30	Traffic calming main roads – urban and village	Aims and objectives Crash Reduction Environmental improvements Speed control Effects on everyone, bus, car, cycle, pedestrian Combinations of calming features
		*Lunch*
13.30-13.50	Visual aid presentation
13.55-14.15	Rural traffic calming	VISP and visual aids Gateways Small roundabouts Quiet Lanes Designing rural roads for all users
14.15-14-45	School Zones Worked examples of school entrances	Desired speeds (network management recap) Accommodating parking Junctions Links
		*Coffee/tea*
15.00-16.15	Practical session Your problem sites:	Traffic calming that has gone wrong Prospective sites and unravelling the way forward
16.15-16.30	Summary

Here are some comments about the seminars:

Thank-you so much for your extremely interesting and well presented seminar that you gave for our members at the Exeter St. Thomas Cricket Club. Watching from the wings it was pleasing to see the members interacting with yourself and each other especially the section with their own designs. I know that the feedback from the questionnaires has been excellent and I'm sure that we may wish to have this presentation again in the future.	May I take this opportunity of congratulating you on a well constructed seminar which managed to hold the attention of the staff attending throughout the entire day. Much of your advice and guidance was most interesting...	...many thanks for your excellent seminar. I do not think I can recall a similar presentation which has generated so much interaction and indeed during the following week discussions are still taking place in offices and corridors of this department on various issues raised during Friday.
Charlie Cross Chairman IHIE South Western Branch	Sam MacNaughton Head of Consultancy, Roads and Transport, The Highland Council, Scotland	Roger Drummond Principal Engineer, Shropshire CC

* * * * *

SEMINAR PRICES
Please contact me for details concerning seminar prices; the price will be based on a fixed fee for up to 20 delegates plus expenses; however, experience has indicated that this formula may not always be appropriate.

For managers considering the problems of balancing limited training budgets, do remember that the savings in making the right scheme choices and detailed designs will pay for the event many times over!

Email me for more information.

Problem sites

Ann and I look at the problem sites referred to us before the seminars if we have sufficient time to get there. We record stills and video of what is going on and these are played back as part of the afternoon session - "Your problem sites". The Engineer whose site we are inspecting should be prepared to present the site briefly at the seminar. He/she should provide overheads/CAD files of the site and any other information to be able to illustrate the difficulties that the site presents.

I often find that "your problem sites" illustrate key issues in the main seminar sessions so images of your sites often appear quite early on!

Previous Seminars (1997-)

Nov 1997	Norfolk CC
Feb 1998	Bedfordshire CC with Luton BC
Mar 1998	Mouchell (Hatfield)
Apr 1998	Wiltshire CC
May 1998	East Sussex CC	Manchester (Rochdale)
June 1998	5 seminars in Scotland at:	Edinburgh, Alloa, Forfar, Aberdeen & Glasgow
July 1998	Suffolk CC	Thurrock, (inc West Essex)	Doncaster & South Yorkshire
Sep 1998	Oxfordshire CC	South Gloucestershire
Oct 1998	Lancashire CC	Dumfries
Nov 1998	Bradford	Worcestershire CC with Hereford	Gloucestershire CC
Dec 1998	Poole
Jan 1999	Kirklees (Huddersfield)	Cornwall (2 seminars)	IHIE (south-west) at Exeter
Feb 1999	Highland Council (at Inverness)	Northumberland CC	Cumbria
Mar 1999	Peter Brett Associates, Reading
Apr 1999	USA	Maryland State, Baltimore Vermont State, Burlington Michigan State, Lansing
	Mott MacDonald, Winchester
May 1999	West Sussex CC	Southampton City Council
June 1999	Leicestershire CC (2 seminars)
July 1999	Cambridgeshire CC
	Tour of Wales and NW England	Newport, Cardiff, Carmarthen, Carnaerffon, Holywell, Halton & Shrewsbury (Shropshire CC)
Sept 1999	Seminar for IHIE, London
Oct 1999	West Midlands
Dec 2000	Parkman at Ealing
May 2001	Wiltshire CC (Traffic Calming)
Feb 2002	Cornwall CC (Traffic Calming x 2)
Mar 2002	Derbyshire CC (Mini-roundabouts & Traffic Calming)
June 2002	Northern Ireland 2 seminars (Mini-roundabouts)
Dec 2002	Isle of Man (Mini-roundabouts & Traffic Calming)
Feb 2003	Grand Cayman
Sept 2003	Hants CC (Mini-roundabouts)
Feb 2005	Dunfermline (Mini-roundabouts & Traffic Calming)
Oct 2005	W Sussex (Mini-roundabouts & Traffic Calming)
June 8 2006	IHIE south-west at Yeovil (Mini-roundabouts)
Sept 19 2006	IHIE south-west at Yeovil (Traffic Calming)
Feb 15 2007	Seminar for IHIE LEEDS (mini-roundabouts)
Future seminars Currently no full day seminars are planned, but there have been a number of presentations:
Nov 2007	Road Safety on Four Continents - Bangkok
Feb 2008	Federal Road Safety Commission, Nigeria International Road Safety Conference, Abuja
May 2008	USA National Conference on roundabout design, Kansas

Links to other pages:

Home
Titles & Links	Main Page
Detailed design	Drawings
Mini-rbts & Traffic Calming	Crossroads
Capacity	Networks
TRL report	Normal roundabouts
County Surveyor's Society Report 2002	DfT & CSS good practice guidance
Millennium Vision	Your problem sites
The Seminar	America
Pedestrian Safety	Cayman Islands
Traffic Calming Pages

MoorWeb