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MANDAUE CITY, Philippines – After seeing it at work in Europe, Mandaue City Mayor Jonas Cortes wants to adopt a “roundabout” traffic system at road intersections, similar to what has been in use in Cebu City’s Fuente Osmeña rotunda for decades.
Cortes, who arrived on Monday from a weeklong official trip to the Netherlands, said he was briefed by Dutch officials about the country’s traffic system and plans to copy it for Mandaue.
The mayor said Mandaue’s congested roads would benefit from copying the traffic system in Europe.
“We will study it first and find intersections in Mandaue where we can put roundabouts,” Cortes added.
By using roundabouts, the mayor said the city could save funds for maintenance and operation of traffic lights, since these are usually not needed at roundabouts.
Roundabouts are a kind of road intersection where vehicles from different road converge on a circular, one-way road. Large roundabouts that have islands or parks at the center, such as the Fuente Osmeña Rotunda in Cebu City, are usually referred to as traffic circles.
According to the National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) in the United States, the roundabout system is a redesigned traffic circle system implemented in the early 1900s.
Modern roundabouts range in size. A “mini-roundabout” can have an outside diameter of 15 meters. Roundabouts of up to 150 meters in diameter, with multiple lanes and at times semi-circular overpasses exist, usually on freeways.
Cortes said many intersections in Mandaue could use roundabouts.
He cited intersections along Mandaue City’s M.C. Briones Street, one of the busiest roads in Metro Cebu where public vehicles and cargo trucks to and from northern towns and cities, as well as those from Lapu-Lapu City in the east, converge.
Roundabouts are popular in Europe, particularly in France and England. Outside of Europe, the roundabout is a standard feature in Australia, and is becoming more common in New Zealand, South Africa, and Israel.
Since 1990, there has been an emergence of the modern roundabouts in some parts of the United States. The strong interest in this type of intersection in recent years is partially due to its success in several countries in Europe and in Australia, where the modern roundabout has changed the practice of intersection design.
