Paul St-Aubin edited section_Methodology_subsection_Site_Selection__.tex  about 7 years ago

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Despite a longer history of roundabout construction in Europe and Sweden, the Swedish roundabouts selected for this study are relatively new compared to other areas of Europe and are incidentally comparable in age to Québec roundabouts: these samples are both, on average at least ten years old, to control for short term effects derived from recent construction.  One important distinction between the Québec and Swedish roundabouts regard pedestrian and, especially, cyclist flows. In Québec roundabouts, cyclist flows at roundabouts are virtually non-existent and pedestrian flows are very low; in comparison cyclist and pedestrian flows at many (but not all) Swedish roundabouts are non-trivial. Consequently, only Swedish roundabouts with limited pedestrian or cyclist flows were considered for this study (low pedestrian and cyclist flows are still very common in Swedish roundabouts in low-density areas). As mentioned earlier sidewalk design is the most striking design difference between Swedish and Quebec roundabouts. A majority of sidewalks in the town of Lund integrate a cycle lane both along rodes roads  and across intersections, and roundabouts are no exception. On the other hand, it is also common for these sidewalks to bypass the roundabouts entirely via tunnels \citep{Sakshaug2010}, including at some of the selected sites. Given this, cycling volumes \textit{within} the roundabout are rare at both the Québec and at the Swedish sites sampled for this study. \subsection{Traffic Data Collection}