When I was a student at music school in Boston, I also got an education in roundabouts as they were plentiful in and around that city.  In theory, they are an elegant solution for traffic flow.  However, in heavy traffic, they are a disaster with motorists jockeying and forcing their way into an unremitting, bumper to bumper stream of vehicles.

During tourist season, the Scoharie roundabout can, at times, demonstrate this problem when a stream of northeast bound cars on Highway 33 occupy the right of way for a time.  Fortunately, arriving from a rural area, that stream is not unremitting.  However, one can imagine the acute congestion from compressing that Highway 33 stream into downtown Picton (at the height of tourist season) while meeting the County Rd. 49 stream, not to mention the Bridge St. traffic attempting to enter.

I don’t know whether or not a traffic flow study has been done to anticipate Main St. from May until Oct. as we know there are three different populations of Prince Edward County: locals, seasonals and tourists.  All three overlap for six months of the year with the unhappy potential for roundabout traffic congestion.

We have already made an effective and much less costly solution at the Tim Horton’s intersection where the awkwardness of three streets converging on Main St. has long been solved by traffic lights.  Certainly not as picturesque as a roundabout, but nobody argues about the right of way.

David Mott

Waupoos