CHAPTER 11

Roundabouts

In accordance to “Geometric Design Manual for Dubai Roads” by Roads and Transport authority
11.1 Introduction
This chapter provides geometric design guidance for roundabouts. A roundabout can be applied to any class of road
where at-grade intersections are permissible. It may be appropriate at intersections of all types of roads, except for
freeways and expressways where at-grade intersections are generally not used.
The most important geometric considerations include:
• Providing adequate sight distance in order to allow users to easily identify a roundabout, observe other users (e.g.
vehicles, pedestrians and bicyclists), and judge an acceptable gap to enable safe entry.
• Designing the entry geometry of the roundabout so as to restrict drivers to a safe speed.
A roundabout layout consists of a one way circulating pavement around a central island which is 4m or more in diameter.
The entries are designed to permit more than 1 vehicle to enter the roundabout side-by-side.
11.2 Design Principles
11.2.1 Safe and Efficient Design
A roundabout should be designed to produce a safe and efficient design. The principles that should be applied to a
roundabout include:
• Making the roundabout approaches clearly visible from the approach sight distance at the road operating speed in
advance of the roundabout approach
• Limiting the number of legs on the roundabout to four (although up to six may be used for an appropriately designed
single-lane roundabout)
• Intersecting the legs of the roundabout at approximately 90 degrees, especially for multi-lane roundabouts
• Developing appropriate entry curvature to limit the entry speed
• Designing exits to enable vehicles to depart efficiently
• Sizing the periphery of the roundabout (inscribed circle diameter) to be large enough to accommodate all entries and
exits to an appropriate standard without them overlapping,
• Allowing for a circulating roadway that is wide enough to accommodate the swept paths of the design vehicles plus
clearance to kerbs for both through movements and left-turn movements
• Enabling entering drivers to see both circulating traffic and potentially conflicting traffic from other approaches early
enough to safely enter the roundabout
• Providing sufficient entry, circulating and exit lanes to ensure that the roundabout operates at an appropriate level of
service.
11.2.2 Roundabout Design Procedure
• Gathering information including determining the number of entry and circulating lanes from a traffic analysis.
• Developing an initial design.
• Performing a series of design checks and modifying the design in a series of iterations as necessary.
• Refining and developing the final design once all design checks have been satisfied.

11.3 Types of Roundabout

For the purposes of geometric design, roundabouts can be considered to fall into two distinct categories:
• Small urban local-street roundabouts
• Large roundabouts on urban and rural arterials.
11.3.1 Small urban local-street roundabouts
• The small roundabouts with flush-paved central islands of 4 m to 12 m diameter are suitable for use on local roads and
collectors.
• This roundabouts cant be used on roads of an arterial standard.
• A mountable central island should be determined by using the relevant design vehicle template.
11.3.2 Large Roundabout on urban and Rural Arterials
• Where roads of a higher standard intersect, a larger roundabout may be required.
• Roads of an arterial class will typically require roundabouts with a larger central island and may include flaring with one
or more lanes at the roundabout approaches.
• The central circulating carriageway may also require multiple lanes.
• An example of a large roundabout on an arterial roadway is shown in Figure 11-4.
11.4 Sight Distances
11.4.1 Sight Distances Criteria
There are four sight distance criteria that are applied to roundabout design. These are:
• Criterion 1: stopping sight distance
• Criterion 2: visibility to the left
• Criterion 3: circulating visibility
• Criterion 4: pedestrian crossing visibility.
11.5 Design Guidelines
11.5.1 Number of legs
• The number of roundabout entries recommended is either three or four.
• Roundabouts perform particularly well with three legs, being more efficient than signals, provided that the traffic
demand is evenly balanced between the legs.
• Providing more than four legs may introduce legs at angles other than 90 degrees and these should be avoided on
multi-lane roundabouts as it may create conflict at the exits and adversely affect driver comprehension.

11.5.2 Number of Entry, Circulating and Exit Lanes

• Generally, a roundabout should be designed to provide the minimum number of lanes that achieve the desired
capacity and operational requirements for a future design year.
• This is due to the fact that the rates of several types of crashes at roundabouts increase as the number of lanes
increases.
11.5.3 Geometric Design for Speed Control
The speed of a vehicle travelling through a roundabout is one of the most important parameters and therefore geometric
design needs to control vehicle speeds through providing adequate sight distances and providing design elements that
manage speeds. Geometric features which can have a major contributory effect in causing excessive entry and circulating
speed are:
• Inadequate entry deflection
• Very small entry angle which encourages fast merging maneuvers with circulating traffic
• Poor visibility to the give-way line
• More than four entries, necessitating a large roundabout configuration.

11.5.4 Central Island Design

• The shape of a central island should preferably be as circular as possible.
• Changes in curvature on the circulating carriageway may result in fluctuations in speed that increase a driver’s
workload.
• For constrained or unusual site conditions, elliptical, oblong or other shapes may need to be considered.
Central Island Size
• Roundabouts in high-speed areas generally need to be larger to allow entry and approach geometry to be designed to
reduce the higher approach speeds.
• Table 11-2, adapted from (1), provides guidelines for choosing the minimum central island radius for a circular
roundabout.

Click here Table 11-3: Conditions where Minimum Central Radius May Need Modification
11.5.5 Entry Design
This in turn influences:
• Speed on the entry which minimises rear-end type crashes
• Speed at which drivers can enter the circulating carriageway and limits the angle formedbetween entering and
circulating vehicle paths thereby minimising the relative speedbetween entering and circulating vehicles and the crash
rate between these vehicle streams
• Speed required on the circulating carriageway which minimises single-vehicle crashes in this area.
Three ways of achieving good roundabout approach geometry include:
• A single-entry curve to the right, applied generally
• Reverse curves, for potentially minimising single-vehicle crashes on road approaches with operating speeds 80m km/h
• Blisters, suitable for urban low-speed environments where a single-entry curve option is not practicable.
Reverse Curves on Approaches
In areas with high operating speeds, the use of a straight approach with a single-entry curve may result in an excessive
decrease in speed at the start of the entry curve. This may lead to a potential for single-vehicle crashes on the entry
curve. The use of two approach reverse curves prior to the entry curve can be applied to alert drivers and achieve a more
gradual reduction in vehicle speeds. This treatment is typically only used in areas with high operating speeds (80 km/h). A
comparison of a single entry curve with a reverse curve treatment is shown in Figure 11-8 and Figure 11-9, respectively,
adapted from (1).

Alternative Treatments to reverse curves

Development of Entry-path Deflection
• One of the most important safety checks at a roundabout is that for vehicle-path deflection on entry to a roundabout.
• It is necessary in order to ensure that excessive speeds through the roundabout cannot occur.
• For design purposes, the vehicle entry path should be such that the radius of the tightest curve on the entry path does
not exceed 100 m.
• This is illustrated in Figure 11-11.
To define the entry path, the following assumptions are made:
• The entering vehicle is 2 m wide and takes the “straight ahead’ movement at a four-leg
roundabout and across the head of the T at a three-leg roundabout.
• There is no other traffic on the approach and on the circulating pavement.
• The driver negotiates the site constraints with minimum deflections, ignoring all lane
markings.
• The initial approach position for the centreline of the entry path curvature (which must
be at least 50 m before the give-way line is no closer than 1 m to the outer kerb and no
nearer than 1 m to the centreline of a divided road or the inner kerb of a divided road.
(This ensures that all approach alignments are examined and that no vehicle path can
exceed the recommended maximum radius of curvature.)
• The vehicle proceeds toward the give-way line and continues towards the central island
of the roundabout, with the centreline of its path never coming closer than 1 m to any
kerb.
Measuring the Entry-path Curvature
• The entry-path curvature is measured over the length of 20 m in which the tightest radius occurs, on the portion of the
path in the vicinity of the give-way line (but not more than 50 m in advance of it). This is between points X and Y in
Figure 11-12.
• The tightest radius is measured by means of suitable curve templates or an appropriate computer technique.

Entry Angle
The entry angle serves as a geometric proxy for the conflict angle between entering and circulating streams. The method of measuring the
entry angle is set out in Figure 11-14.
The line EF is midway between the outer kerb and the median line or the edge of any median island. Where this kerbed line intersects the
give-way line, the tangent BC is drawn. A'D' is the centreline of the circulating pavement. The entry angle is measured as the acute angle
between the line BC and the tangent to A'D' at the point of intersection between BC and A'D’. The relationship between entry angle and
entry capacity is a weak inverse one; as the angle increases, so capacity decreases slightly. However, care should be taken in the choice of
entry angle, because angles which are too high and angles which are too low may both result in increased accident potential. The entry
angle should if possible lie between 20° and 60°, with a figure of around 30° being the optimum.
A small entry angle such as that depicted in Figure 11-15 forces drivers into a position where they must either look over their left shoulders
or attempt a true merge using their mirrors (with the attendant problems of disregarding the give-way line and the encouragement of high
entry speeds).
Large entry angles produce excessive entry deflection and can lead to sharp braking at entries accompanied by “nose to tail” accidents,
especially in rural areas. Figure 11-16 shows an extreme case.
Entry Radius
The following guidelines should be used when determining an appropriately sized entry radius:
• The optimum entry radius is 20 m.
• The minimum entry radius should be 6 m (10 m if significant numbers of trucks are anticipated).
• Radii above 20 m produce very little consequent increase in capacity.
• Very large entry radii almost certainly result in inadequate entry deflection.

Splitter Island
• Kerbed splitter islands should be provided on all roundabouts as they:
• Assist in controlling entry speed
• Guide traffic onto the roundabout
• Deter left-turners from taking dangerous wrong-way short-cut movements through the roundabout
• Provide shelter for pedestrians.
Entry Width
• The entry width “e” is shown in Figure 11-17 and is measured from point A (where the median side of the entry
pavement meets the outer side of the circulating pavement) perpendicular to the outer kerb.
• The relationship between entry width and capacity is highly significant. The most effective way of increasing the capacity
of an approach is by providing greater entry width.
• Figure 11-17 also shows, for an undivided road, the approach half-width (v) which is
measured between the points G and H, and which is used in capacity calculations. It is
the width of the pavement available to approaching vehicles prior to any widening. For a
divided road, v is taken to be the width of the travelled way on the pavement leading to
the roundabout.
• It is good practice to add at least one extra lane to the number of lanes on the
approaching road, but as a general rule not more than two lanes should be added and no
entry should be more than four lanes wide. Each entry lane should lead into a
corresponding allocation of road space on the circulating pavement. The practical range
for entry width is 6.0 m to 15.0 m, but for undivided roads, the upper limit should be 10.5
m.
• Lanes measured across the entry width should be not less than 3.0 m wide. They are
tapered back in the entry flare, and should not be marked out as narrower than 2.5 m.
(Because lane widths are tapered, they do not conform to the guidance for other forms
of at-grade intersection.) It is generally better to use wider lanes, particularly where
trucks or buses are expected. For example, with a 12 m entry width, three 4.0 m lanes at
the give-way line are preferable to four 30 m lanes.
11.5.6 Circulating Carriageway
• The circulating pavement should, if possible, be circular in plan, and its width should generally not exceed 15 m.
The widths of the circulating pavement should be constant and should be:
• between 1.0 and 1.2 times the width of the widest entry
• where necessary, greater than 1.2 times the width on smaller inscribed circle diameter (ICD) roundabouts, but care
should be taken to ensure that the wider pavement does not permit vehicle paths with less than adequate deflection.
11.5.7 Exit Design
• Exits at roundabouts should be designed to be as easy as practicable in
order to minimise the exiting/circulating crash rate at any particular exit
point. In areas with significant numbers of pedestrian crossings at an
exit, the exit speed should be limited by providing a smaller exit curve.
• A kerb radius of about 40 m at the mouth of the exit is desirable but for
larger rural roundabouts this may be increased to suit the overall
intersection geometry. In any case, the exit radius should not be less
than 20 m or greater than 200 m.
Exit Width
• Exits at arterial road roundabouts generally have relatively large radii to
enable traffic to leave the circulating roadway as efficiently as possible.
• In exits leading to undivided roads, a minimum width of 6 m should be
maintained adjacent to traffic deflection islands, to allow traffic to pass
a disabled vehicle.
11.5.8 Inscribed Circle Diameter (ICD)
The inscribed circle diameter (ICD) is the diameter of the largest circle
which can be inserted within the outline of the intersection, medians and
median islands being ignored for this purpose. Figure 11-18 shows how
the ICD is measured.
11.5.9 Separation between Roundabout Legs
11.5.10 Separation between Roundabout Legs
General
• To provide comfort and to enable drivers to remain in control, the maximum algebraic sum of opposing crossfall grades
at a crown line should not be greater than 5%.
• Normal crossfall for drainage on roundabouts should not exceed 2%. To avoid ponding, longitudinal edge profiles
should be graded at no less than 0.5%.
• Application of proper grades and crossfalls may not necessarily ensure satisfactory drainage, and therefore the correct
siting and spacing of gullies is critical to efficient drainage.

Entries
• Curves may be tightened and the degree of super elevation should be appropriate to the speed of vehicles as they
approach the roundabout; however, super elevation should not exceed 5%.

Circulating Pavement
• The conflicting crossfalls at the crown line have a direct effect on driver comfort and, if excessive, can be a significant
contributory factor in load shedding and truck roll-over accidents. The maximum permitted algebraic difference in
crossfall is 4%, and lesser values are desirable, particularity for smaller roundabouts.
Entry kerbing
On unkerbed approach roads with or without shoulders, care should be taken when introducing the kerbs at the
roundabout. Normally, the kerb should be introduced at the back of the shoulder and the shoulder then run out over a
smooth length at an average rate not exceeding 1:10.

11.5.11 Special Treatments

Wide Medians and Streets of Unequal Width
11.6 Pedestrians and Bicyclists at Roundabouts
11.6.1 Pedestrian Path and Crossings
In order to improve the safety of pedestrians at roundabouts features that a designer may
consider include:
• Providing appropriate entry and exit geometry to mitigate potential conflict speeds
• designing splitter islands large enough to comfortably accommodate pedestrians and
• Enable drivers to anticipate their movement onto the road
• Prohibiting parking on approaches to provide clear visibility
• Designing pram crossings for persons who have a disability
• Providing street lighting
• Locating signs and vegetation so as not to obscure smaller pedestrians
• Providing pedestrian crossings on approaches (zebra or signalised)
• Locating uncontrolled pedestrian crossings approximately one to two car lengths (6 to 12 m) back
from the give-way line to allow vehicles to select gaps without being distracted by the presence of
pedestrians.
11.6.2 Bicycle Lanes, Paths and Crossings
Roundabouts should be designed to provide an acceptable level of safety for bicyclists. At roundabouts, the need for
special geometric treatment for
bicyclists depends on:
• The daily and peak-hour traffic volume of vehicles
• The traffic volumes of cyclists
• The functional classification of the approach legs
• The overall traffic management strategies for the location.
Collector or Arterial Road with Bicycle Lanes
11.8 Roadway Lighting
Lighting Considerations at Roundabouts
the following features of lighting should be considered in roundabout design:
• Lighting should be located in order to provide sufficient illumination on the approach nose of splitter islands, which is
the conflict area where traffic enters the circulating stream, and at places where traffic streams separate at points of
exit.
• Special care should be taken to provide lighting at pedestrian and cyclist crossing areas, especially in areas where
pedestrian/vehicle conflict is anticipated to be significant at night.
The design of a lighting system should consider the risk of an errant vehicle colliding with a lighting pole and impact
absorbing poles are recommended. At roundabouts, lighting columns and other poles should not be placed or retained in
vulnerable areas such as:
• within small splitter islands
• within large splitter islands directly in line with approaching traffic
• on the central island directly opposite the entries
• on the right-hand side of exits (rigid poles), as these areas have a high risk with respect to run-off-road crashes.
Typical Road Lighting Schemes at Roundabout
s
Where the central island is large and the circulating roadway is
wide, lighting the circulating carriageway and entry/exit roadways
from a single intermediate height (12 to 18 m) or using a high
mast lighting column located in or near the middle of the central
island may be advantageous.
The following should be considered:
• In some instances, it may be appropriate to provide lighting
from one or two lanterns as shown in Figure 11-24, adapted
from (1).
• Placing lighting in the central island is generally undesirable due
to their smaller size.
• For environmental and aesthetic reasons, high mounting
heights and high wattage lights are generally inappropriate for
local streets.
11.9 Landscaping and Street Furniture
landscaping and street furniture should consider:
• Not creating dangers to road users, particularly when vehicles leave the road
• Preventing the impedance of available sight distance for drivers approaching a roundabout or their ability to recognize
the type of treatment
• Not obscuring the view of potentially conflicting vehicles for a driver at the holding line of a roundabout.
Landscaping, fixed objects and street furniture should be selected, designed and located so that they do not have an
adverse effect on an impacting vehicle. This requires:
• Avoiding the placement of rock, stone walls or other fixed objects in areas where vehicles are likely to run off the road
• Providing signs and lighting poles that are frangible
• Designing kerbs that are smooth and of a semi-mountable type
• Ensuring that steep ditches or culvert end walls are not provided within the central island or adjacent to the roundabout
• Not locating trees, and bushes with substantial trunks in areas vulnerable to vehicle run-offs.
• Designing central islands to ensure that excessive storm water run-off does not occur from the central island to the
circulating pavement as debris may be carried onto the pavement and compromise vehicle braking.