It is a pathetic commentary on our society that we can't implement roundabouts without spending millions of dollars and a decade of time. I feel that an intersection could be replaced with a roundabout in a single weekend if people cared enough. Didn't the Japanese recently reroute tracks and reconfigure a train station overnight, before the 7 AM train arrived?

At some point this attitude has to be given up. There's no reason traffic circles should cost millions to billions. I'd be willing to wager that this short sighted, quick and dirty meantime fix strategy has been employed too much and now we've arrived at this reality.

It’s not an “attitude”, it’s an objective fact about how capital project go in the US right now.

I’ve got theories, but I don’t really know what the best way is to fix that. We probably need to try a bunch of things, and I’m all for that.

But drivers running red lights kill people. I’m for for the ideal, elegant solutions, and also for the imperfect incremental ones. I really don’t think worse-is-better, if that’s what you’re advocating, is appropriate.