by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR

This week Montrealers get the gift of a simple traffic innovation that simultaneously gets cars to slow down and yet gets drivers to their destination faster. Oh yeah, it also reduces accidents, increases green space, and hell, it even saves on brake pads. Montreal is getting its first (or almost first) Euro-style circular intersection known as the roundabout, a traffic defence that up until now they've only heard about in the song by rock band Yes that famously promises will make "the children really ring."

For those unaccustomed to the concept, a roundabout is an intersection with a circle in the middle that drivers go around and then continue on the route of their choice. Pedestrians cross at crosswalks and cars only stop if a person is trying to scamper across.

As part of a $2-million road reno, this week Nuns' Island unveils its first roundabout (the city's only other lies deep in the Technopark of Ville St-Laurent.) Nuns' Island, an upscale community of 15,000, currently has no traffic lights and wants to keep things that way. So they transformed the second intersection after entering the island into a circle, courtesy of Verdun borough engineer Jean Cardin. It's the first of five planned for the isle and Cardin proudly notes that "we use less asphalt, which means more green space," and also proudly announces that "it even allows drivers to make U-turns."

An educational blitz has accompanied the unveiling of the unfamiliar setup to help drivers avoid accidentally going around the central circle for hours, as happens in Mr. Bean skits.

Pedestrians might admire the landscaping and fountain in the centre, but Cardin admits that the local driving custom of ignoring pedestrian crosswalks won't fly here. "Some are scared of the pedestrian crossings because cars have to cede the passage to pedestrians, which isn't always done in Quebec," he says.

One expert says that walkers have little to fear. "There have been about 700 installed since 1990 in the U.S. and I could count the pedestrian accidents on one hand - and it's a small hand," says Bill Baranowski, who studied and built many roundabouts in the States. "Whereas with traffic signals your psychology is to speed up before a light turns red, at the roundabout you have no reason to speed up because you go through without lights."

Baranowski says studies have shown roundabouts reduce accidents by 40 per cent and bring a 75 per cent decrease in traffic injuries. "Cars are moving at a slower speed so if you should ever get into an accident, they tend to be minor fender-benders, instead of high speed, right-angle injury-type accidents." He says the lack of stops also reduces travel times by "up to one-third."

In spite of their benefits, proposed roundabouts are frequently met with trepidation. "Some neighbourhoods think cars are going to go too fast and the visually impaired have had a lot of questions," admits Baranowski, "but in France, where they installed 30,000 roundabouts, the blind community there has no issue them."