CARNDUFF - Traffic circles (or roundabouts) have been used for almost 250 years.
Perhaps the most famous one is located in Paris, the Place de L’Etoile, that encircles the Arc de Triomphe. Roundabouts came to North America in the 1790s, but when the horse and buggy era ended and the increased speed of the automobile age arrived they were mostly phased out in the 1950s.
With some tweaking, they returned a decade later. By 1970, most large cities were using them again, and they’re used more and more as cities plan their traffic flow. It might even be argued that traffic circles are evidence that a city has arrived.
Is Carnduff on the verge of becoming one of those big cities? Well, if you’re travelling through town at the right time of winter, you might think so. Traffic circles can be found periodically at various intersections.
It must be noted that the roundabouts disappear almost as quickly as they come into being. The traffic circles are made of snow. Town workers clear the streets by pushing the snow into the intersections. Before too long, a front-end loader and a dump truck converge to take them away.
But for an hour or two – or maybe even a bit longer – that snow sits in the middle of the intersection and Carnduff’s traffic drives around it, in the same way that vehicles drive around those big-city roundabouts.
Carnduff may look big with its traffic circles, but they’re here today, gone tomorrow. And only in the winter.
