New traffic light system coming to World Drive near the Magic Kingdom auto plaza

[Monorail_Red_77]

I think this actually looks good

check out this if the one above freaks you out

behold the MAGIC ROUNDABOUT
View attachment 93662 View attachment 93663

Ive seen the plans for those, and they could be a bit dangerous as people have enough trouble driving on the correct side of the road as is.

roundabouts are cool, and they work well in other countries,

no reason for us not to explore new ways of traffic management.

in carmel indiana they redid an entire stretch of road intersections that were a series of bad stoplights and made them look like this. it actually works quite well once drivers got use to it
View attachment 93664

I think over here engineers get all excited about it and they put them in the wrong locations.
I think they would work good if they are not around any traffic lights.
The biggest trouble with ours is that it is soooo close to a traffic light that all of the traffic backs up into it and it becomes a parking lot and everybody thinks they have the right of way at the same time. It can be insane at times.

 

[ABQ]

Rotaries/Roundabouts are fine for cars, but I'd hate to be on a fully packed bus as they swerve through those tight turns. Taking a packed bus back from Epcot to any MK resort is already not so joyous as they hit those two large curves exiting the Epcot area, tight turns are even worse. I can only hope that once the speedway is demolished a far better traffic pattern can be laid out.

 

[MGMBoy]

What about something like this?

Improve the road in blue, add a ramp approaching it and force all of the non-bus traffic going to the resorts that direction (one-way obviously). It would help the buses by cutting down on the number of cars in front of them at the toll plaza, would make it so the only traffic interfering with southbound traffic is buses who could them (in theory stop if needed and it would allow resort guests to avoid the plaza backups. Since there is no way to get into the MK lot from there, they wouldn't lose out on parking revenues and the northbound traffic could easily merge back onto World Drive since the second northbound lane starts there so there would be no merging. It is also far enough from the World/Vista interchange that you would not have to worry about traffic backing into the intersection during a red light.

Thoughts?

 

[Monorail_Red_77]

All this talk of roundabouts. I found this one in the ESPN Wide World of Sports parking lot.

 

[marni1971]

You Americans.... Roundabouts are the norm in the UK and mainland Europe....

 

[Monorail_Red_77]

You Americans.... Roundabouts are the norm in the UK and mainland Europe....

True. But not all roundabouts in America are created correctly nor always in an area where they can work properly.

 

[marni1971]

True. But not all roundabouts in America are created correctly nor always in an area where they can work properly.

Oh trust me, that's the same over here

 

[Master Yoda]

You Americans.... Roundabouts are the norm in the UK and mainland Europe....

Well...we don't give our deserts disgusting names!

Spoiler

 

[Next Big Thing]

All this talk of roundabouts. I found this one in the ESPN Wide World of Sports parking lot.

View attachment 93688

The roundabout at WWoS is really more of a pick up/drop off area that happens to go 'round and about.

 

[marni1971]

Well...we don't give our deserts disgusting names!

Spoiler

spoiler]

Lol Remind me to bring you some

 

[Master Yoda]

Lol Remind me to bring you some

I have had it before and I think it is awesome...but that name. How did that ever make it past marketing?

 

[Monorail_Red_77]

This roundabout in the town where I work is the one that backs up every single day Monday to Friday abnout 3pm to about 6pm. It can take around 20 minutes to travel the distance shown in the picture below. The red circle is where there is an existing stop light. The roundabout used to be a 4 way stop sign intersection.
Then they installed this roundabout that has two lanes around it not including the four bypass lanes on the sides. The issue is that this thing backs up with solid traffic due to everyone leaving towards the direction of the traffic light at the red circle. all of the roads that feed into the roundabout then backup with standstill traffic and the roundabout no longer functions properly and everyone fights to cross lanes within the circle and cut each other off, etc.
In my opinion this particular roundabout should not have been built where there are two four lane roads intersecting. The roundabout is too small to support two lanes of traffic turning off at different points in addition to the nearby stop light intersection.

To make things even more interesting the roads that feed into this roundabout on the left hand side are in the process of being increased from four lanes (two in each direction) to six lanes (three in each direction). Not sure how well this get cleaned up.

zoomed view

Then to add icing to the cake. There are four cross walks that do not have any electronic signaling for pedestrians to cross. This roundabout has zero electronic signals to assist flow of traffic into the roundabout in times of traffic backups or pedestrians trying to cross at the 12 places that pedestrians can com into contact with cars at this roundabout. There is however a state law that requires vehicles to stop if pedestrians are in the walkway. It's just all around nice and hectic when you throw drivers into this that are not familiar with it or do not have the quickest reaction times, etc.

 

[Monorail_Red_77]

The roundabout at WWoS is really more of a pick up/drop off area that happens to go 'round and about.

I figured it was a low traffic area within a parking lot. Just posting it for a prior poster that said they don't need to add a roundabout to WDW.

 

[networkpro]

If you stay over in the GF/Poly/SoG area and have to go to Ft Wilderness for little things like horse riding or Hoopty Do you know what a pain it can be to sit there while an endless stream of perfectly spaced buses pass by preventing you from getting across for 10-15 minutes. This light will be a thankful addition.

 

[Monorail_Red_77]

Surprised it has taken this long. The current configuration is terribly dangerous.

I've seen many bus drivers blow right through the stop sign if they think they see a window in the traffic out of the plaza. The current situation must be a huge liability for Disney.

There did not used to be a stop sign for traffic exiting the auto plaza into this intersection, before the traffic signal work being done now.

In the first pic you can see a stop line in the red circle for the traffic heding south on world drive turning east onto vista. The yellow circle indicates there is no stop line for traffic heading out of the mk auto plaza and continuing north on world drive.

Here is a street view showing stop signs on the left for the southbound traffic heading east across the intersection and then for traffic continuing straight as viewed, there are no stop signs.

Maybe this is why they are adding the light? Perhaps traffic going across this intersection was playing chicken too much with northbound traffic.

 

[marni1971]

I have had it before and I think it is awesome...but that name. How did that ever make it past marketing?

Speckled Richard didn't hit the mark?

 

[Master Yoda]

There did not used to be a stop sign for traffic exiting the auto plaza into this intersection, before the traffic signal work being done now.

In the first pic you can see a stop line in the red circle for the traffic heding south on world drive turning east onto vista. The yellow circle indicates there is no stop line for traffic heading out of the mk auto plaza and continuing north on world drive.
View attachment 93701

Here is a street view showing stop signs on the left for the southbound traffic heading east across the intersection and then for traffic continuing straight as viewed, there are no stop signs.
View attachment 93700

Maybe this is why they are adding the light? Perhaps traffic going across this intersection was playing chicken too much with northbound traffic.

That is exactly why. It also causes a huge back up if you get buses at that stop sign.

 

[Monorail_Red_77]

If you stay over in the GF/Poly/SoG area and have to go to Ft Wilderness for little things like horse riding or Hoopty Do you know what a pain it can be to sit there while an endless stream of perfectly spaced buses pass by preventing you from getting across for 10-15 minutes. This light will be a thankful addition.

Yes, I can see how there would be no hopes of crossing this intersection during peak times. or even half peak.

 

[Monorail_Red_77]

I think this was brought up before. But, if not.

Here is a current aerial view of the intersection in question.

If they do not do a massive change to the auto plaza then they could make some changes like this. It would utilize an access road that is not used currently by guests. It would require a repave and striping. They could then install a traffic signal at the existing intersection in yellow.

They could then remove the roadway from the auto plaza to the current world drive and vista intersection, as shown below. They could even leave the weird snake that southbound world drive does currently to get onto east vista.

This would eliminate the possibility of traffic backing up into the auto plaza and even farther, at least as the plaza exists today.

 

[Phil12]

You Americans.... Roundabouts are the norm in the UK and mainland Europe....

In the USA the state of New Jersey has lots of roundabouts. Those of us in the states consider New Jersey to be the armpit of the nation. And I say that having been a former resident of The Garden State.