Tricky Urban Intersection

[Galemp 0]

Hey everyone. I'm new here but I've been playing SimCity for fifteen years now. Great, great stuff.

Anyway, there's an intersection that I'm having trouble with that should be relatively common, but I can't get it to network right. It's the crossing of a diagonal avenue with a four-way road intersection.

This sort of situation crops up all the time in grid cities with non-gridded avenues, such as New York (Broadway) or Philadelphia (Ben Franklin Parkway). Unfortunately with SimCity 4 and Rush Hour there were no easy ways to do it.

This is the traditional way I've handled it. It doesn't take up any more space than necessary but it slows traffic flow along the grid and doesn't really look nice.

The NAM lets me do this, which is a tremendous improvement. We have a much tighter intersection and good traffic flow in one direction, but flow in the other direction is halted completely.

To try and improve flow at the expense of a few extra squares I tried roundabouts. NAM won't let me run avenues diagonally into one-way roundabouts though so this is a bit of a hack converting the avenues into side-by-side one-way roads. As you can see the art doesn't line up right and neither does the pathing; vehicles on the outer lanes vanish when they reach the roundabout and the two extra junctions cause problems with flow as well.

So has anyone come up with a better solution to this? Perhaps more work should be done on traffic circles to allow better integration with avenues/one-way roads coming in diagonally. Another solution would be to make a six-way intersection for the avenue for this situation, resulting in a large open paved area (like a four-way avenue intersection) with three sets of traffic lights. This would be the most authentic solution for places like New York's Times Square or Herald Square.

The NAM team has done a tremendous amount to help further integrate avenues into the SimCity network system; bravo! I think a few more tweaks to the road networking system and we'll be all set. Thanks again for all you folks have done.

Pete

[Andreas Roth 607]

Would this be a viable solution for you?

Note: You can't do this yet, since the avenue roundabout isn't released yet. It will be available with the next NAM version. At the moment, only avenues can connect with the avenue roundabout.

[Galemp 0]

That's cute, but it's waay too big for what I want to do. I need to conserve as much space as possible; remember, Times Square. The second image on my post is really what I'm looking for, but with full art and pathing in all six directions.

[daniel01 0]

wow Andreas how did you make that?

[Tarkus 6,932]

Galemp:  Welcome to the community!  Well, there is a way to make something exactly like what you're talking about.  However, it would require modding something called the "IntersectionSolutions RUL File", which isn't something for the faint of heart.  It's definitely doable from what I can tell, and I may take a look into it when RL and various other modding projects calm down for me. 

daniel01:  Two words: next NAM. 

-Tarkus

[daniel01 0]

thanks Tarkus

[_MostlyHarmless 17]

I usually use the second pic you put up. It looks the best, though as you said one road doesn't go through. To combat this I just alternate which road goes through if you know what I mean.

[CapitolAnarchy 5]

Have you considered using the "under bridge" tool for the road that doesn't go through?

You can divert your traffic underground without disrupting the flow of traffic and without messing up the appearance of the intersection.

The only thing it will affect, is that you won't see the visual effect of the cars crossing the intersection, as instead they will be diverted underground.

[sc4portugal 10]

wow great roundabout