Frederick Douglass Cirlce

Who doesn’t love a circle, am I right?
I have to say, the entrance to Central Park north here is absolutely gorgeous, the large stone bridge that leads up into the trees is a thing of beauty indeed. Aesthetically Frederick Douglass Circle is not the biggest, nor is it the best laid out. Its actually quite difficult to cross as a pedestrian, as there is no straight line across the circle one could take. The traffic pattern around the circle is also pretty flawed; the designers should have taken a page out of European circles and removed the lights, but for obvious reasons they could not (i.e. they didn’t want people getting mowed down by the M4 because they are not used to light free circle traffic patterns). The fact that there are lights really makes the circle cumbersome and obsolete, as car and bus traffic is constantly stopping and starting (as I said the circle is small, and the lights seem to go from green to red in about thirty second). What this all boils down to is a pretty routine traffic jam clogging up 110^th street and Central park north, which really takes away from the beauty of the park (nothing says fresh air like idling buses and trucks — trucks are not allowed to use the transverses that run through the park itself, so they use 110^th as a bypass).
All in all, its a cool little circle that adds to the local flavor of Central park north (west), but it might be more cumbersome to the neighborhood than its worth.