If there’s one thing American drivers hate more than a roundabout, its a railway skirting across the road. Grade crossings are a blot on the country’s pristine highways and cause all manner of confusion and collisions every year. So imagine how angry you’d be if you stumbled across a piece of infrastructure that combined the level crossing and the roundabout all at once.
That’s exactly what you can find in New Zealand, where there’s a legion of roundabouts that contain level crossings running right through the middle of them. Absolute madness, I know.
On a recent trip to the country, I came across these anomalies while driving in the South Island. They look exactly how you’re imagining, with the usual railroad crossing warning signs and lights stationed at each entrance to the roundabout. Then, once you’re in and driving around, a stretch of train track cuts through the middle.
For most of the day, everyone interacts with the roundabout as if it’s no different to every other traffic circle in the country. Cars safely join and exit as they please, blissfully unaware that a train may arrive on the scene at any moment.
I drove just like this on my travels, and each time hoped to see the barriers drop and a train approach just to watch how it all worked. Alas, that ever happened and I skirted around the traffic circle and went on my way.
When a train does pass through the roundabout, the railway crossings are fitted with all kinds of warning lights and barriers to prevent drivers from getting stuck on the tracks at the wrong moment. There are also sensors built into the roundabout that can alert oncoming trains to anyone that might be stuck on the crossing. Imagine, well-designed, safe highway infrastructure. Crazy, I know.
How would a run in with one of these roundabouts make you feel? Does just reading about it leave your palms feeling sweaty? After all, America doesn’t have a good history with railroad crossings, with more than 2,100 collisions occurring on level crossings in the U.S. every year.
But in New Zealand, and Australia as well it turns out, level crossings are much less deadly. So city planners decided that the wild roundabouts are fair game.