Frank Blackmore; invented the mini-roundabout
Hyfler/Rosner
Saturday, 28 June 2008
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/frank-blackmore-traffic-engineer-who-invented-the-miniroundabout-856107.html
Frank Blackmore's invention of the mini-roundabout had a
profound effect on traffic engineering. During the 1950s and
1960s traffic growth exposed the weaknesses of earlier
roundabout designs, which operated without any priority
rule, and allowed entering traffic to force its way
unchecked into the junction. This caused jams sometimes so
fierce they could only be unlocked by traffic police.
Designers responded by building ever-larger junctions in an
attempt - largely unsuccessful - to absorb traffic surges
without locking. The result was increasing intrusion,
land-take and cost.
Blackmore's work changed this in two radical stages. Firstly
he successfully advocated an "off-side priority" rule,
requiring entering traffic to give way to traffic to its
right on the roundabout. Secondly, he then went on to
exploit this to create far smaller designs, right down to a
painted disc on the road - the celebrated mini-roundabout.
All of these designs, particularly minis, were less
intrusive, much cheaper, and they significantly reduced
congestion and accidents.
These advances did not come easily. Blackmore pioneered the
work through the 1960s and 1970s against the marked
resistance of a very cautious profession. But he was
unstoppable. He combined charm and fluency of conviction and
used the results of his own extensive experimentation to
persuade, cajole and convince a growing band of enthusiasts
among local authority and government engineers. His designs
were ultimately incorporated in government manuals in 1975.
The results are nowadays so ubiquitous that it is easy to
forget just how radical his approach was.
Frank Blackmore was born in colonial Algeria in 1916, at a
town then known as Fort National, of a Swiss-French mother,
Clarisse, and British missionary father, Josiah. He studied
engineering at Lausanne University, Switzerland, and then
moved to the UK to work in Colchester's borough engineering
department. In 1939 he joined the RAF as a pilot, flying
Wellingtons. He once told me of a forced landing he had had
to make off the west coast of Scotland, on a beach where
there was nothing but, extraordinarily, a working red
telephone box, and so remote that he and his crew had to be
rescued by sea. He remained in the RAF until 1959, working
first for the Air Ministry in London, then for Nato in
France, and finally as Air Attaché at the Beirut embassy.
He joined the Transport and Road Research Laboratory in 1960
(now the Transport Research Laboratory) and it was there
that his ground-breaking work was done. Although his primary
focus was in the UK at that time, he also devised successful
junction experiments in places as diverse as Bangkok and
Baghdad.
His approach never lacked scale - with his team he conducted
large experiments on the test track and public roads,
including some designs so radical they proved too much for
local engineers. Two surviving exceptions are the
"ring-junctions" (also known as the "magic roundabouts") at
Hemel Hempstead and Swindon, where Blackmore converted
existing very large roundabouts into a ring of two-way
connecting roads between satellite mini-roundabouts. The
public road experiments were daunting. Overnight, and with
police oversight, Blackmore and his team would clear the
existing junction - in some cases hundreds of metres
across - and change the whole layout completely. If it was
not all done by the following morning's rush-hour, and
occasionally it was not, chaos awaited the unsuspecting
motorists.
In 1975 he won the Wolfe Award for his work on roundabouts,
and in 1976 he was appointed OBE. Although formally retiring
in 1980, he went on to work as consultant in France and
Switzerland. He played a key part in persuading French
engineers to give up their old "near-side priority" rule -
so perverse to roundabout operation under traffic load - and
replace it with his off-side priority rule. His work is
currently being enthusiastically promoted in parts of the
United States.
Frank Blackmore was above all a generous man, whose
determination to succeed was always tempered with great
personal kindness.
Rod Kimber
Frank Cuendet Blackmore, traffic engineer: born Fort
National, Algeria 16 February 1916; DFC 1944; OBE 1976;
married 1939 Ginon Dufour (died 1942), 1945 Eva Johnson (one
son, two daughters; marriage dissolved 1969); died London 5
June 2008.