Mar­tine Pow­ers

When it comes to epic ri­val­ries, it's not of­ten that Port-of-Spain finds it­self matched up against Pu­tra­jaya, Malaysia, a city of 68,000 peo­ple just south of Kuala Lumpur.But for years, the two cities have been butting heads in a lit­tle-known cam­paign to lay claim to a very bizarre in­ter­na­tion­al recog­ni­tion: the world's largest traf­fic round­about.

In Port-of-Spain, at least, it's al­ways been a fishy as­ser­tion, a ru­mour re­peat­ed so of­ten and in so many places that it be­comes an ac­cept­ed part of lo­cal mythol­o­gy: the roads sur­round­ing Queen's Park Sa­van­nah, lo­cals say, make up the largest traf­fic round­about in any city on the plan­et.

"I'm not sure where the claim came from. We nev­er claimed it to be true," said Dr Trevor Townsend, se­nior lec­tur­er in trans­porta­tion en­gi­neer­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, and one of the en­gi­neers who made the con­tro­ver­sial de­ci­sion to turn the sa­van­nah's sur­round­ing streets in­to a one-way ring road 35 years ago."I guess these things hap­pen in folk­lore."

It's a claim that has been re­peat­ed in all man­ner of lit­er­a­ture: trav­el guides, tourism blogs, and even in a Face­book post by the T&T Gov­ern­ment it­self.

Cit­i­zens for Con­ser­va­tion T&T, a con­ser­va­tion ad­vo­ca­cy group, names the sa­van­nah as the world's largest round­about on their Web site, and at­trib­ut­es that fact to the Guin­ness World Records–though the Guin­ness World Records on­line data­base makes no men­tion of any dis­tinc­tion for largest "round­about," "ro­tary," or "traf­fic cir­cle." The com­pa­ny did not re­spond to mul­ti­ple re­quests for com­ment.

And with its 3.7 km cir­cum­fer­ence, ac­cord­ing to the Web site Map­MyRun, the sa­van­nah does in­deed seem like a pret­ty size­able round­about.The prob­lem: Malaysia says it has the world's largest traf­fic round­about, too. It's an oval-shaped road in the cen­tre of the city, known as the Per­siaran Sul­tan Salahud­din Ab­dul Az­iz Shah. (Per­haps Malaysia can win the award for the world's longest round­about name.)

The "largest traf­fic cir­cle" moniker has been bal­ly­hooed by Malaysian gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials on Twit­ter, and it's been pub­li­cised on the tourism blog Ex­pat Go Malaysia, as well as sev­er­al au­to­mo­tive news Web sites.Of­fi­cials in Pu­tra­jaya's city plan­ning de­part­ment did not re­turn re­quests for com­ment.

Here's the thing: the sa­van­nah def­i­nite­ly has a larg­er cir­cum­fer­ence, if on­ly by a lit­tle. The Pu­tra­jaya traf­fic cir­cle is 3.4 km, just a few hun­dred me­tres shy of the sa­van­nah's perime­ter, ac­cord­ing to MayMyRun.But oth­ers sug­gest that the sa­van­nah, with its strange 'L' shape, should not re­al­ly count as a round­about at all. Pu­tra­jaya's per­fect­ly oval-shaped thor­ough­fare should earn the ti­tle by de­fault, they say, if on­ly be­cause it is as round as the name sug­gests.

US traf­fic en­gi­neer shocke­dover claims for 'largest traf­fic­cir­cle' moniker

But one ex­pert, US-based traf­fic en­gi­neer Mark John­son said he's shocked that ei­ther city would pro­mote the "world's largest traf­fic round­about" ti­tle at all."It's typ­i­cal­ly not some­thing some­one would want to claim," John­son said.John­son, who spe­cialis­es in thedesign and analy­sis of round­abouts all over the Unit­ed States, said he had nev­er heard of a city claim­ing to have the largest traf­fic round­about, and he was not aware of any or­gan­i­sa­tion that would keep track of such an hon­orif­ic.

Most cities de­sign their round­abouts to be as small as pos­si­ble–not large, cir­cu­lar su­per-high­ways. The safe­ty ben­e­fits of a round­about large­ly come from its small size, he ex­plained: when the cir­cle is tight, cars are forced to slow down to about 30 kilo­me­tres per hour, which means that any col­li­sions that do oc­cur are usu­al­ly fend­er ben­ders, rather than crash­es se­ri­ous enough to cause in­jury.

"This idea of some city hav­ing 'the world's largest'–it very well may be. But my re­sponse to that would be...in terms of a mod­ern round­about, you don't par­tic­u­lar­ly want them to be that big," John­son said.

A point of pride–Townsend,UWI trans­porta­tion en­gi­neer

Even so, UWI's Townsend main­tains that the traf­fic de­sign of the roads sur­round­ing the sa­van­nah should be con­sid­ered a point of pride to Port-of-Spain-ers, re­gard­less of whether it counts as the largest traf­fic cir­cle or not.Back in the 1970s, the roads lead­ing around the sa­van­nah ran in both di­rec­tions, with on­ly one lane trav­el­ling each way.

It was, Townsend re­called, a con­fus­ing mess. Four-way in­ter­sec­tions at each cor­ner of the sa­van­nah pre­vent­ed traf­fic from flow­ing, es­pe­cial­ly as cars wait­ed in queues to make right-hand turns and blocked oth­er ve­hi­cles from con­tin­u­ing straight or turn­ing left.

Of­fi­cials de­cid­ed that they would at­tempt to make the roads sur­round­ing the sa­van­nah in­to one-way streets that would fun­nel traf­fic in a con­tin­u­ous di­rec­tion–a last-ditch ef­fort to al­le­vi­ate the choke­hold of rush hour traf­fic that struck down­town Port-of-Spain twice each day. At first, dri­vers were per­plexed."Peo­ple would pass and say, 'Y'all did non­sense!' We did get skep­tics," Townsend re­called.

"But by and large, the mo­torists had been suf­fer­ing for so long that they were will­ing to give it a try."Back when the di­rec­tion of traf­fic was first al­tered, en­gi­neers thought that the one-way fix would like­ly last for on­ly five years be­fore traf­fic got as bad as it had been be­fore the change was en­forced. But over the years, he says, he has been pleas­ant­ly sur­prised by how well the con­fig­u­ra­tion con­tin­ues to guide traf­fic rel­a­tive­ly ef­fi­cient­ly.

"Thir­ty-five years lat­er, it pret­ty much still runs–it's very rare that you find Queen's Park Sa­van­nah lock­ing up," Townsend said."That, to me, is a tes­ti­mo­ny of how suc­cess­ful it has been."