Roundabout the motu: The loved and hated road features

Source: Radio New Zealand

The opening of a so-called ‘peanut-about’ in Hamilton got everyone talking about roundabouts.

The peanut-shaped roundabout while unusual, is not the only one in New Zealand, with a few others scattered around the motu.

But it did get RNZ listeners sharing stories about some of the other more notorious road features.

The roundabouts riling locals

From Auckland’s Greenlane to Blenheim, there were roundabouts all over the country that prompted complaints.

“I often have to traverse the Greenlane roundabout, we have re-named it the Russian roulette roundabout,” one Auckland listener said.

“I submit the Redwood Street, Main Street roundabout in Blenheim as the world’s worst,” another listener said. “Similar to Royal Oak, think multiple lanes, several exits, and the cherry on top, a train line going through the middle. It’s madness.”

For just over a decade Kaysi Fredericks has been an admin on Facebook groups like New Zealand Accidents and Bay of Plenty, Bay of Plenty and Waikato Accidents and Traffic and Bay of Plenty and Waikato weather and natural events.

Although she lives in Tauranga now, while living in Auckland the Royal Oak roundabout had certainly been memorable.

“I hated that one, what is it, eight different ways off it or something?”

Her husband Sam had lived in Blenheim and said the roundabout on the corner of Main Street and Redwood Street was the town’s fan favourite to complain about.

He said it was a five-road raised roundabout with a train track going through it.

“It’s kind of confusing, especially when there’s a train coming through and people are like, do I go, do I don’t go.”

He said while there were signals and barrier arms many had ignored them.

In their current hometown of Tauranga, Fredericks said there had been a recent increase in accidents with people going the wrong way on multi-laned roundabouts.

“It’s just been crazy drivers lately, and it’s been police chases and everything, and they’re just constantly going the wrong way, even before the police even get there,” she said.

While these cases occurred in different roundabouts across the city, the Tauriko roundabout was a common one with issues.

“It’s because it’s multi-laned, and so people go in the wrong lanes, and then they realise, oh, crap, they’re in the wrong lane, so they go to move but they’re actually cutting people off.”

Another issue Fredericks said people often complain about were roundabouts with too much foliage, as it could obstruct the view of drivers.

The Tauriko and Maungatapu roundabouts were some that came to mind.

“Because you can’t gauge, okay, there’s somebody coming down this way, but I’ve got about 10 seconds before they’re going to come around the corner.”

The happy roundabout

While there have been a few roundabouts that frustrated people, Fredericks recalled one that did quite the opposite.

It was a roundabout right outside the Maunganui hot pools that had been painted as a smiley face around two years ago.

“Everybody loved it,” she said.

“When you were driving, it just brightened your mood up … it was just a smiley face, you smiled.”

A call for more roundabouts

Despite the complaints, Fredericks said she had seen quite a lot of commentary recently to build more roundabouts in some areas.

“In certain places, like places where roundabouts really help with traffic, especially coming out of T-intersections.”

She said the intersection on Cambridge Road and State Highway 29 was one that many had said needed to have a roundabout. It is now set to get a traffic light.

“I think it all depends on what the flow of traffic is, also what speed you’re going.

“If it’s coming up to a bottleneck with rush hour traffic, roundabouts sometimes work better.”

Fredericks said in her many years of experience monitoring Facebook pages she had learnt that people wanted improvements but did not like change.

“They want the roads all to be fixed and everything and they want things to flow better, but they will complain about change … then they’ll actually get used to it.”

Using orienteering skills

Some Morning Report listeners had also texted in their tips and tricks on how to navigate the Hamilton ‘peanut’ roundabout without the assistance of a compass, or more realistically, a map app on your phone.

Orienteering enthusiast Pete Swanson shared his thoughts with the programme.

“In orienteering, we purposely put people into where they have to figure out where to go. Purposely putting them in situations where they feel uncomfortable.

“We use different methods such as, identifying landmarks or reference points. So we use those to help people orientate themselves quickly.

“For things like a roundabout, that’s actually quite similar to what happens on some of our orienteering maps,” Swanson said.

For those who claim to be able to automatically sense which way is north, regardless of where they are, Swanson said that could be down to a few factors.

“There’s probably quite a lot happening intuitively there, you have a sense of where the sun is, or you might have unconsciously identified a landmark that you just have in the back of your mind, oh there’s a range of hills in the distance, so I know where that is. So perhaps some people are more attuned to just logging those things, subconsciously or consciously.

“But it’s definitely learnable, I guess that’s the point we would make, it’s a learnable thing,” he said.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Original source: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/05/20/roundabout-the-motu-the-loved-and-hated-road-features/