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The roundabout, which Nairobi Governor Evans Kidero has tried removing in between replacing them with drums — which have since disappeared — is a British creation.
It perhaps ranks third among some of the most influential of British inventions, besides soccer and the steam engine.
The roundabout, would you believe it, was first used in Letchworth Garden City in 1909 Britain so that carriages could navigated round a monument without hustle?
This “one-way gyratory road management system,” according to The Economist (October 2013 issue) became so popular, there were about 40,000 roundabouts globally by 1997.
While Kidero is trying to dispense with roundabouts - and introduce ‘yellow boxes’ whose concept few understand — the number of roundabouts is nosing north around the world.
From 40,000 in 1997, there are about 60,000 today, half of them in France - where roundabouts provide a chance for motorists to admire roundabout gardens ...more like admiring Kidero grass around Nyayo Stadium, right?
Just like Kenya, the USA was colonised by Britain (although American athletes refused to bow to the Queen during the opening of the 2010 London Olympics, he!he!), but the US was not keen on roundabouts, having erected its first one in Nevada in 1990. There are now about 3,000 roundabouts in the land of ‘Uncle Barry.’
“For reserved Britons,” notes the Economist, “the roundabout represents not just a clever solution to a common inconvenience, allowing vehicles to swirl rather than stop at empty crossroads, but also the triumph of co-operation over confrontation.”
Although known to reduce road accidents, not everyone follows simple rules of fair play: you go, I go, we go. Instead, kichwa ngumu motorists often reduce roundabouts into places to ‘lay eggs’ in a maddening gridlock.
In Baghdad, drivers circle on their side, while in Jordan, they are numbered!
Roundabouts are less expensive to run than traffic lights. But why are most built on the busiest intersections?
“In Nairobi, for example,” notes the Economist, “the four roundabouts that mark the city’s heart are so badly jammed that policemen have been drafted in to act as human traffic lights. When it rains, the officers seek shelter and the mess gets even worse!”
Did you know the earliest roundabout in Nairobi was the Kenyatta Avenue/Uhuru Highway one? It was specifically made for horses to negotiate...not cars!
These horses ferried railway engineers from the Norfolk and The Stanley hotels in 1900 and had to gallop back - without colliding - hence the reason Kenyatta Avenue is the city’s widest as Jan Hemsing informs us in his 2004 book, Nairobi’s Norfolk Hotel: The First Hundred Years.
