Traffic Circle

I drive through it twice a week on my way to an elementary school to tutor my fourth graders. It’s alright I guess. Kind of scary the first couple times, but not so much anymore.

The photo isn’t the Traffic Circle at PCH & Lakewood. Some people from North Jersey can’t manuever traffic circles, because there aren’t many; whereas, South Jersey has lots of them. When I first drove this Traffic Circle, they do it differently than in South Jersey, so took a while to learn. One day entering the Circle from Lakewood Blvd going West, as I rounded the curve going uphill, a dog apppeared out of nowhere and I instantly hit my breaks. Didn’t even think that I could have been rear-ended, the dogs safety was my only concern. Hearing him cry, realized he was under the tire and backed up and he ran ‘cross the highway. Pulled across and parked. My daughter and I searched for the dog to take it to a Vet. It was nowhere to be found. We felt horrible not being able to find it and because it seemed impossible for it to appear so quickly, and also get across the highway with all that traffic, we called it a ‘ghost dog’, that maybe it was not real.

It is fairly unique for being a roundabout (or traffic circle) on a major highway (California State Route 1, aka “Pacific Coast Highway”) in the United States, but it is still something only a road geek or a traffic engineer would love.

The traffic circle is at the intersection of PCH, Lakewood Blvd. (aka California State Route 19) and Los Coyotes Diagonal in Long Beach, California.

There is a rumor that the engineer who designed the traffic circle died in an accident in the circle. As with many urban legends, it is false.

An update: The Long Beach Traffic Circle now has its own article on the Wikipedia here.

Worth Driving!