Admiring the Arc de Triomphe at the Place Charles de Gaulle
I was getting more and more excited as we walked down the Champs-Élysées. In the distance, I already saw what is one of Paris’ most famous monuments the Arc de Triomphe. Apparently, the Champs-Élysées leads directly to the famed monument. As I would later find out, there is a large roundabout where the Arc de Triomphe sits – the Place Charles de Gaulle. I think that translates to Charles de Gaulle Plaza. As we stand at the edge of this place. I observed the traffic here at the roundabout. At total of twelve avenues end up at this point and from my limited experience with roundabouts, it should be a nightmare to navigate should you happen to be driving here.
Close Up of the Arc de Triomphe at the Place Charles de Gaulle
Just imagine, some of the avenues that connect to the Place Charles de Gaulle have four lanes. And this traffic all empties into the roundabout. The roudabout at Place Charles de Gaulle is very wide, probably enough to accommodate 10 lanes. It is probably the largest roudabout I have seen in terms of volume of traffic handled at a time. The way roundabouts work is they have rules where vehicles entering the roundabout need to position their vehicles in certain locations the roundabout to be able to safely exit the roundabout. For example, if you are exiting by taking a third exit of a roundabout, then you probably need to position your vehicle at the inner lane of the roundabout. If everyone follows this rule, then traffic moves quite well. However, it seems that roundabouts don’t scale well since the complexity increases as the number of exits increase. Looking at the chaos here at the Place Charles de Gaulle, it is a wonder not more accidents happen here at the roundabout.
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