You Won’t Believe The Astonishing Number Of Cars That Go Through The Asbury Circle

So, we all know the Asbury Circle is the eye of the traffic hurricane in our area. Do you know anyone who likes driving on it? Me either. So it was time to do a little experiment.

I took it upon myself to see the Asbury Circle in a different light. Maybe I just hadn't traveled around it enough to understand its nuances. So I got in my SUV and set out to do some calculations.

The first thing I did was tackle the big question of just how many cars are actually on that Circle each day, and so I parked in the old Perkin's parking lot and started counting. It was, of course unscientific, but I counted away, and after some frantic eye work and significant strain to my neck, I came up with some numbers.

In one hour, the 2:00 pm hour yesterday (5/6) I calculated that 3252 cars went around that circle, and that doesn't even count cars that went from Route 35 South straight onto Route 66.

That means, factoring in rush hours and the quieter overnight hours, it's possible that over 50,000 cars attempt to negotiate that Circle on an average day. And we can't even imagine what it would be like on a weekend.

The next thing I did was begin driving around the Circle continuously to see how many times I could make it around the Circle without being beeped at. The apparent correct answer to that was 3.

So I did it again, and this time the polite drivers allowed me to complete the Circle 5 times before getting honked at. I'm guessing that's some kind of record, and incidentally, both times I got beeped at were because I  didn't try to floor it to cut someone off, and that is apparently frowned upon at this beloved Circle.

So here are some more tidbits that will help us fall in love with the traffic engineering masterpiece we all call the Asbury Circle.