I was recently on a fairly long road trip, and got routed down one of those annoying secondary highways where there is the occasional red light every few miles.

Except this one had been converted to roundabouts, so instead of lights, I just had to slow down a bit, and keep going. I had used roundabouts before, of course, but I had never seen them used so extensively on one highway before. I still would have preferred an open freeway, but it was a much more pleasant and efficient driving experience.

Now I'm hoping they'll start using them more in my state.

They are using a roundabout as a slow-down area. That’s ok, though not exactly great.

Why? Roundabouts are good for traffic calming and are generally considered better than four-way intersections, especially in areas like this.

The road leading up to it is still straight and uninterrupted, which means crossing pedestrians still have to deal with speeding cars.

I mean for like a few seconds of driving it is? Every 40 meters or so is a large outcropping for the pedestrian/cycling crosswalks, which doesn't curve the road but does visually calm traffic. Every other intersection is a roundabout that does curve the road.

Will people for the love of Christ just actually go look at what they're talking about for five seconds before writing out a lengthy response to it?

There is a pedestrian crossing with an island, which is an improvement.

Agreed.

They look nice when driving by, but other than that, they do nothing.

Besides improve noise pollution, reduce the heat island effect, absorb rainwater, reduce headlight glare at night, improve the speed calming function of the traffic island...

If they had moved it to the side of the road

The side of the road is being used for street-side parallel parking. Regardless of what you think of that, though (I think it's a great idea here), there's no reason they needed to move it to the side of the road. Moreover, while not directly on the side of the road, there's greenery (including trees) planted in fenced-off areas separating the cycle/foot lane and the smaller sidewalk that's used for the street-side parking.

but this way, it does nothing but increase speeding, because it separates cars from the oncoming traffic visually.

Okay, now you're just baselessly asserting that traffic islands like this that tighten the space of the roadway have the opposite effect that they actually empirically do (while also reducing collisions, of course).

They added bike stands, but no bike paths even though there’s more than enough space to do so.

See above about actually going to look at what you're talking about. There are spacious bike paths. These bike stands are repeated several times across this stretch of road too.

They added two lights. Well… Better than nothing I guess.

You mean the street lamps? They added four – one at each corner of the intersection and should be adequate lighting. Again, just looking with your human eyes at the things you're talking about...

Continuing with the motif of wasted space: That roundabout center island is a huge one.

The roundabout's island is about 12 meters in diameter – extremely reasonable for this setup.

Looks like a redesign by a rookie designer who has never been to a place that actually does it right.

Not experts like you. I'll bet they actually surveyed the place they were building at before designing for it. Rookie mistake.

Round abouts are great.

But I agree that it lacks bicycle infrastructure.

Aka. Protected bike lanes.

Very few countries do this correctly, I live in the Netherlands so I'm spoilt with good pedestrian and cycling infrastructure

there is no pedestrian roadway!

???

What could be present that would give you a reason to bike there ?

I mean, there's more greenery, there's an island that makes crossing easier. It looks way less depressing. The speed of cars is likely to be way lower.

Is it amazing? No. But it is better.