Roundabouts

The trip from my house in Chester Springs, Pa., to the YMCA was 3.5 miles, roughly the distance I travel here from Crawfordsburn to the Bangor Aurora Center. There the similarities end.

There were 10 traffic lights between my house and the Y; there are no traffic lights between me and Aurora. How is it possible to drive the main road through affluent towns and a suburb without a single traffic light?

Intersections here are governed by small roundabouts, very small circles where you essentially curve slightly left then right before continuing ahead. I absolutely love not waiting at multiple lights to get from A to B. If I don't have to yield to anyone in the roundabouts, I can get to Aurora without stopping.

More fundamentally, my trip to Aurora is almost completely within residential areas. Planning and zoning here does not permit reckless development. Commercial areas are reserved either for the town center (Bangor for us) or for the ring road, which is what it sounds like. There's nothing in between.

My trip to the Y took me past six strip malls, a Wawa, two gas stations, several fast food stores, several banks, two hotels, two schools, and the obligatory drug stores on every corner in America. And each of the developers of those properties went to the township and said "We need a traffic light!" And the township obliged.
4/9