if you havent been there before this is the telecoms circle in Tla’a Al Ali - Amman; on your way to Rabieh from madeena monawara st.
isnt this amazing!! 
how could they think of this? and how could other countries not take this as an example? even if it was in any other country i find this nonsense!!
four traffic lights on the circle itself and 2 on each side of the st. wow!!
I wish i could’ve taken a better angle that shows not only the circle but every side of the street has also traffic lights.. more confusing!
22 responses so far ↓
Ghaith // July 3, 2006 at 8:52 am
Loool Unbelievable!
What happens if one of them is red? Besakker el dowwar?
Can’t wait to see it for myself!
rare // July 3, 2006 at 9:48 am
Sometimes I wonder should I think in that way & say “why did they do that”, or leave such things for the experts in that fields.
Cos many things in all over Amman can’t be understood at all!
Abdoun Bridge is one more example of that! Useless insignificant solution! & …etc of same examples.
Hani // July 3, 2006 at 10:15 am
lol I think they got this Idea from Saudi Arabia, there are a couple of circles with traffic lights here, just the same way as telecom circle
Samer // July 3, 2006 at 10:31 am
I happen to live nearby that place. God I hate that junction! It’s always jammed. I wonder now if those traffic lights are going to be of any good.
I saw such traffic lights in other cities like Dubai. At first, I thought it’s ridiculous, but it turned out that without them, things will go bananas. But anyway, this proved to be a good solution for much bigger roundabouts where the incoming/outgoing roads are 3-5 lanes. I don’t know about Telecom roundabout!
This whole street is experimental. Do you know the U turn next to this roundabout on the way to khalda. THAT IS A ROUNDABOUT!
Ohoud // July 3, 2006 at 10:45 am
lol!
Hilarious!
Jano // July 3, 2006 at 10:52 am
Gaith; lol maho dayman msakker :p
rare; hmm good point of view
Hani; thanks for coming,, i guess it was a big circle in sudia arabia, wasnt it?
samer; this circle is so small! if you wanna cross the green light to get into the circle u wont move your care cm then the traffic on the circle is red.. believe me this is rediculous// and im not sure i knew the U turn ur talkin about.. ill check
thanks for visinting here
Ohoud; glad i gave you a good laugh 3ala hal sobo7
lol
Karin // July 3, 2006 at 11:19 am
Jano, that’s a total nonsense … in a round-traffic there are usually NO lights - that’s just the purpose of it! The one who’s IN the round-traffic has the say and the one who wants to GET IN - has to wait … it does work very fine, saves from back-ups - but NOT with these stupid lights!!
Jano // July 3, 2006 at 11:26 am
Karin; that wt i thought.. but things dont usually go like this here..
i had a terrible accident on a circle near my home cuz i simply thought its my right to leave the circle b4 someone gets in speeding.. heh.
Sari Al-Hiari // July 3, 2006 at 11:37 am
Guys,
Lets not put down an idea that may actually be useful.
I’ve driven in many parts of the world, and the only places that have no respect for roundabouts is Amman and Egypt.
People don’t seem to get the notion that if they waited for people IN the roundabout to pass, they will pass faster themselves.
It is a shame for the drivers not the designers that it had to get to traffic lights on a round about.
~ The Circle of life at Bakkouz!> // July 3, 2006 at 11:44 am
[...] What is not justified however is the flahes of divine inspiration some of our civil engineers have, such as Traffic lights on Circle, now thats just brilliant, absolutely brilliant, Just think about it, Circles are good, Traffic lights are good, why not combine both of them!! We have Such A circle in Aqaba and aparently there’s one in Amman too Which Jano wrote about Here. [...]
Qwaider قويدر // July 3, 2006 at 12:15 pm
A glorious example of Wastat at work. You put a mule in charge, you get such results
(With all due respects to the mule of course)
Hani // July 3, 2006 at 12:52 pm
No Prob. I always drop your blog a visit, as for the Circle, it is not that big, and it only connects three streets, not even four. but it is located at the gate of the military airport (base) gate, so I guess they needed the traffic lights to hold the traffic when VIPs go or come from that airport!
dadan // July 3, 2006 at 1:40 pm
i think they should add another one .. 4 is not enough
Karin // July 3, 2006 at 2:17 pm
MAIN thing you’re fine after this terrible accident!! Say .. don’t these people who are responsible for this nonsense, do inquiries before? I mean … here in Europe these round-traffics exist ALL OVER and they work fine! With traffic lights no circle is needed … or the other way around! It’s an oxymoron!
Dadan … you’re a real joker, ha-ha !! :)
onzlo // July 3, 2006 at 2:20 pm
Its the most retarded thing in the world, not only is it extremely redundant putting 322 traffic lights on a small junction, but it looks damn ugly as well.
Also although the concept maybe good to control traffic going into a small roundabout, in reality the timings are wrong so what ends up happening is that there will be cars backed up all the way down the road blocking traffic of side streets because it take so long for the lights to change.
MommaBean // July 3, 2006 at 4:51 pm
Jano,
Thanks for bringing me here! This is hoenstly quite amazing. I’ve never seen anything quite like it. What I want to know is, what happens if they are ALL red at the same time :). I will say that given the traffic on the 6th circle, sometimes I wonder if we’ll ever go. It should have been bigger to allow for more breaks. So, maybe lights will help… Not that many lights, but one or two maybe. Haha. I can’t even believe they had enough room to put up all of those lights. Must look like Christmas in the US, all that red and green, teehee.
jameed // July 3, 2006 at 5:58 pm
it may work. let me tell you why:
i used to live right at the corner where you took your picture from. back in the day and before there was a circle, a bunch of “7ara” kids used to take it upon ourselves to “regulate” traffic on this intersection. that included whistling at taxi cabs then hiding, stopping traffic to extend imaginary cables across the street and acting as human traffic lights. Despite the one time time a taxi cab driver got down and started running after us with fury coming out of his eyes, traffic was running smoothly. so give it some time, if it does not work, i am sure we can teach the next generation of “wlad el 7ara” some tricks to make traffic run better.
PS I still object to the one time a guy decided to reverse the direction of the stop sign. that was a dangerous idea…
Jano // July 3, 2006 at 8:11 pm
Sari; yes, the drivers are not good, a friend of mine from south africa says all drivers here twisting and i forgot what else but he was shocked..
Qwaider; the thing is all amman’s structure and buildings management is wrong
Hani; thanks for this explaining..
Dadan; u have to see that its really funnier than u may think
Karin thanks
onzlo; yes its really ugly and all cables are ugly this way..
Mommabean; you’re welcome..
Jameed, you know the thing is since the day they put this i took this photo and i kept observing each day, onetime we stucked in the circle maybe someone passed when it was red dono, but the amazing thing is i found it working today.. or maybe it wasnt the jam time.. i hope it will work better later, anyway, i thought it would be easier and less confusing if they took away the circle and kept the traffic lights instead.. its really more confusing than u think.. and hey; welcome here
lammoush // July 3, 2006 at 8:51 pm
actually i dont really figure out how this would work lol
MommaBean // July 5, 2006 at 4:58 pm
I drove through here yesterday and today. I have to agree without the circle woudl work better. As it is, when you pull into the circle there are like 6 sets of lights pointing at you. I’ve been lucky that all of them were green, but if they weren’t, I wouldn’t know which ones to follow. And, it’s such a small circle to have so many lights! Too funny.
Jano // July 5, 2006 at 7:08 pm
MommaBean i went there today also and i found out that there was no need for the lights on the circle.. when your turn to move all lights on the circle are green hehehe thats funny, why to put them then? right?
Ghaith // July 7, 2006 at 2:19 pm
Jano I passed there last night at 2 AM with some friends, it was my first time after the addition of the traffic lights.
You know, I never went there > 1 AM and found one car slowing down to enter the circle, everyone used to cross it like it never were there, but last night there were three long lines of cars waiting!!
I think that the traffic lights they added don’t have traffic sensors, so they can’t detect whether or not there are cars at one side, and the traffic lights will remain red or green as long as it takes! Last night I waited for almost 5 minutes to pass through.
Anyway, while we were waiting for the green light, a guy infront of me made a very funny and “smart” move
… He couldn’t wait, so he crossed the red light and went into the circle, but there he just stopped at the red traffic light inside the circle 
It’s like “He crossed the red light, but he didn’t cross actually”
By the way, I think that they will be removing the circle min aslo and make it a regular traffic intersection.
Jano // July 7, 2006 at 3:43 pm
Gaith; yes that what i said, i saw it thursday and they were making the circle very smaill or remove it, cuz i said it before, its useless cuz it works according to the lights on the lines before the circle..
thanks for the feed back
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