Round and round part 2 – Round and around we go – Roundabouts

Lagos to Tavira.

Through this point in the trip I’d used Portugal’s highway system of A and N roads for my intercity driving.  Today, I’d leave Lagos for Tavira in the Eastern Algarve with an intermediate stop in the region’s capital, Faro. Since the total distance was less than 150 kilometers, I thought this would be a good day to make a more leisurely drive so, after a morning walk along the cliffs, I checked out of the hotel and used the avoid highways routing option on the GPS.

Portugal isn’t a particularly densely populated country and about 45 percent of it’s roughly ten million citizens reside in the metro areas of Lisbon and Porto. Faro, is the Algarve’s largest city by population with a bit more than 45,000. Similar to many other European countries, roundabouts (traffic circle or rotary might be a more familiar term to some readers) are common in Portugal and particularly so on local roads. If you look again at this Google Maps 

image you can easily spot two roundabouts without enlarging it and, if you open it up and zoom in, several more will pop out. I can’t say for certain that the roundabouts kept traffic flowing better than signals or four way stops would have but it certainly seemed that way. I can say for certain that I passed through so many roundabouts that it was weeks before I was able to fully dislodge from my aural memory the article-less expression, “At roundabout, take second exit” that had piped so repeatedly from the GPS in an English accented female voice.

Roundabouts do carry certain advantages over other forms of traffic control. They require no electricity, they can’t malfunction, and they never need signal lights replaced. As I noted, they also seemed to keep traffic moving. I can think of only one or two spots anywhere in the Algarve or Alentejo where I faced a significant line of cars approaching a roundabout. Of course, you do need to abide by the very specific rules of navigating these circles in Portugal where, vehicles in the circle always have the right of way and if the circle has more than one lane, drivers are supposedly required to use the inner lane until they need to exit the roundabout. (I write supposedly because in some roundabouts the roads enter so closely that it’s a bit of a navigational trick – and pretty much unnecessary – to switch lanes.)

This isn’t to say that there are no traffic signals on these more rural roads in Portugal. They appear at occasional intersections and randomly to serve as speed control devices particularly when approaching an area that might have some congestion or pedestrian traffic. Interestingly, these latter signals frequently only stop traffic in one direction.

While even the local roads didn’t pass within view of the ocean as I’d hoped they might, they did let me see some things I certainly would have never seen on the highway. For example, I encountered three families ambling along in heavily loaded horse drawn wagons though they did keep to the shoulder as much as possible. I also found myself wondering at times whether, like my trip down the Great River Road or on the stretch of old U S Route 66, I might have been able to find some curious roadside attractions if I’d had that sort of guide to the area.

A few other driving observations.

I’ll take you through the day in the next post but first I’d like to share some other observations I made while driving in Portugal starting with the roundabouts. Perhaps 100 meters from a roundabout, it’s common for the speed limit to drop from 90 to 50 (all speeds are in kph) and then to 30 for the last 50 meters and the circle itself before returning quickly to 90 once out of the circle. Between roundabouts, most drivers would burst forward to speeds at or above the posted limit in a way similar to something I see frequently between traffic lights in the States but that I don’t particularly understand in either locale. The typical distance between the roundabouts was less than two kilometers so drivers would be at speed for a few hundred meters before having to slow down again. The way I see it, the more you use your brakes the more you waste the energy you used to get to speed (whether it’s electricity or gas) and the sooner you wear out your brakes. (I drove my last gas vehicle more than 120,000 miles on the original brakes.) With the price of gas at €2.09/liter, I’d think maintaining a more constant speed would be more economical and fuel efficient while the cost in time would be minimal.

Although I’ve been to Europe on several occasions, because I’d never been there as a driver, I never paid particular attention to the traffic signs. Portugal, like the rest of the continent uses internationally agreed upon signage

most of which I expected (even if I wasn’t familiar with or couldn’t decipher all the meanings) but one, in particular, surprised me and it actually appears at the top of the poster above (from adventureswithsarah Pinterest). It is the stop sign. The red octagonal is universal but I expected the sign to read PARE in Portugal but all the stop signs I saw used English. (Later in this trip I’d find this also appeared to be the case in Austria and Czechia.)

In general, at least in these rural areas, I noted that most Portuguese drivers are very much aware of yielding to pedestrians at crosswalks (generally true in Vienna but less so in Prague). This was less true for motorcyclists who weaved through traffic, straddled lanes, and pushed aggressively ahead of autos whenever they could  – much like their American counterparts. I should also note that pedestrians nearly always walk, as they properly should, against the flow of traffic even when negotiating a roundabout.

Intelligent Speed Assistance.

In addition to the random signals I mentioned above, it seems that either all or nearly all of Portugal’s speed limit signs have Intelligent Speed Assistance or ISA already installed as did my vehicle (remember it was a quite new Toyota Corolla hybrid). According to here.com, as of July 2022, “ISA will be mandatory in Europe on all new-model cars, vans, trucks and buses.

Here’s how it worked: An image of the European speed limit sign appeared in the upper left of the speedometer on the dashboard. Each time I passed a sign, the image changed to display the current speed limit. This happened even when the signs were as closely placed as they were approaching a traffic circle. Whether drivers will heed the additional warning or whether ISA will eventually be used to control a vehicle’s speed remains an open question. (There was an occasional conflict with the speed posted on the GPS some of which was due to absent signs. As I noted above, after exiting a roundabout the speed quickly returns to 90 but if I passed no sign, the ISA continued to display 30.)

In the next post, I’ll share my thoughts about my brief stop in Faro and my day and night in Tavira.