Traffic issues need fixed!

[Catchin22 299]

The problem is traffic, and not within my city but outside of it. I was losing out on my electronic sales and I couldn't figure out why. I deleted my recycle centers and my trade ports. That seemed to fix the issue a bit, I noticed a few more sales but still, I was losing money fast. I ended up bankrupting my city and having to start another. I built another to fund my main city to get it going again. I went back into my main city and the funds were not there yet so I just raised the crap out of taxes until I was out of the red.

 

Running a city at 70k+ a month in the red is risky. Right away I decided to try to hunt the problem down now that I had time with some tax money coming in, though my mayor ratings were dropping fast with 17% tax rates. Switching to the Trade Layer I was trying to find my delivery trucks.

4 lanes basically trying to merge into one to get into the city. There are only TWO lanes coming into the city, one from each direction! As you can see, my delivery trucks were just getting stuck. This delayed my exports enough that I was losing a lot of money.



In the above image you can see 4 lanes in total, 2 in and 2 out. The other 2 lanes you see that make up the 6 lane highway go nowhere but right down the center between the other lanes. 

I'm not sure what the reason is behind this design. To me it feels like they just messed up. They could probably fix this by making it 4 lanes in, 2 lanes out, create an 8 lane highway and entrance or put more than one entrance per city.

If this was intentional to challenge us to build railway then I've failed that challenge, even though I did build a passenger train I haven't seen it used yet.

[Zpike 79]

Traffic coming into the city is a big problem that I hope they look at and fix soon.  My city went dead for power because my coal deliveries were delayed out in front of the city.  They never made it into the city for over half an hour and the city was running at the fastest speed.

 

 

I looked at people randomly that were waiting in cars and for the most part they were coming to shop.  I tried putting in two regional bus depots and two train stations but it did not help.

[Sunfighter 186]

Experiment number 1:

 

Remove that tail section of high density road intersecting the Ave. And make it a T-Section instead of a 4 way light intersection. I believe a T-intersection for high density street vs ave decreases the amount of time given to the street stoplight wise vs having it a 4 way.

[Spatzimaus 77]

If this was intentional to challenge us to build railway then I've failed that challenge, even though I did build a passenger train I haven't seen it used yet.

 

While I wouldn't say it's "intentional", it's a natural consequence of trying to cram every single commuter or freight delivery in through a single connection.  Build a couple passenger rail terminals and a couple ferry terminals, and things'll get quite a bit better.  (Also: the large bus depot helps a lot.)  For freight, the key is going to be the Trade Port, either for a rail connection or a boat one.  Getting your goods out through the rail network makes a tremendous difference, since you won't have delivery trucks trying to merge onto roads full of commuters.  Now, if they'd given us multiple highway entrances per city this'd be far less of an issue, but you take what you can get.

 

Also, your intersections are part of the problem.  You've got several intersections with small roads right away, so incoming traffic is grinding to a halt as cars try to change lanes to make turns.  Putting a cross-avenue within the first couple blocks takes a lot of the load off, especially if you design the smaller roads to be less desirable routes.  In my own city, the problem I'd had was my inter-city bus depot and main trade depot required a left turn as you came off the highway, which bogged down traffic pretty severely.  Also, to get to that trade depot, the delivery trucks had to cross the main roads, which made things even worse.  Once I had my rail-based Trade Port, things went MUCH more smoothly.

[Catchin22 299]

I don't have water so I can't ship that way. I have a freight station and passenger rail but they don't seem to get used oddly. I have lots of buss depots I think but I could double check on that. I've tried changing my incoming traffic a lot, nothing solves it. Even if I bring that traffic more into the city, it just gets backed up inside it.

 

See what I mean? The problem seems to be that the game is giving side street traffic lights just as much priority as highway. They need to adjust traffic lights to meet the demands of traffic, that would solve the issue.

[Sunfighter 186]

Do you know where the traffic is going?

[Spatzimaus 77]

The problem seems to be that the game is giving side street traffic lights just as much priority as highway. They need to adjust traffic lights to meet the demands of traffic, that would solve the issue.

 

I don't disagree, but my point was that you can greatly improve the process by IMMEDIATELY dividing your traffic onto multiple avenues to lessen the impact of those first minor intersections.  Your design forces all highway traffic to stay on the same 3-lane avenue quite a ways into the city, so any stoppage is crippling.  Too few cars would be trying to get off the road on those small cross-roads; yes, they should make the lights shorter as a result, but you can fix this yourself.  I'm assuming that the angle of the avenue is pointing towards the center of your city; there's a reason that most major cities have a "beltway" going around the outside.  My own city (I can post a screenshot later) is basically broken up into three square "neighborhoods", bounded by avenues and with three vertical and three horizontal roads going through the middle.  (The fourth quadrant is a hill where I've got power plants, sewage treatment, and a coal mine.)  The highway entrance is in one corner, so within the first two blocks an avenue intersects with the incoming road at a 90-degree angle; half the traffic turns right (which takes almost no time since you can turn right on reds) and half continues straight.

As a result, the traffic is staying on the avenues most of the time, but with enough drivers using the side roads to keep avenue volume from getting too high.  That first block can still get congested, but it's not nearly as bad now that I've built a trade port with a rail connection, two passenger rail stations, and two ferry terminals.

 

We're all new at this game, and it'll take time before we figure out the best ways to do things.  In my own city, I think the road layout is as good as it can possibly be for now, and yet I've still made many placement mistakes (like the ones I mentioned earlier) that greatly hampered my city's movement.  When I was first expanding my city, I'd have horrendous traffic jams with only 80,000 residents; now, I've got very smooth movement at 100k, and over time, I could improve it even more through a better understanding of how the AI plans bus routes based on stop locations.

[Catchin22 299]

I made my first intersection a main avenue, still the same problem, No matter what you have the issue of traffic lights that don't adjust for traffic. I'll keep messing around with it and see if I can come up with a solution.

[hert048 0]

I made my first intersection a main avenue, still the same problem, No matter what you have the issue of traffic lights that don't adjust for traffic. I'll keep messing around with it and see if I can come up with a solution.

The Traffic lights do adjust to demand. If there is no traffic coming from the cross road the light will stay green. The issue is that on/off ramps cant handle demands that well and theres no way to upgrade them.

[cjuk88 4]

I agree with hert.

 

I have built several large 150k+ cities with various specialisations and have learnt how to manage the traffic. There are still problems, but these are all to do with traffic intelligence, not quantity.

 

The first major problem is the pathfinding.

 

I actually don't have an issue with sims having to arrive on the right side of the street on medium density streets and higher. That makes sense. However, I have a problem with the way the traffic negotiates that limitation. Some examples:

 

1) I had a avenue running east west, with a high density street intersecting it from the south (actually the road that forms part of the stadium.) Accross opposite that T intersection is a casino, placed on the avenue. before I plopped the stadium, cars would only exit and turn right from the casino. OK that makes sense.

Then, i plop the stadium. This forms a trafffic light intersection near the entrance of the casino. Great! now instead of going all the way to the end of the avenue to uturn and leave, they can exit the casino, and then almost immediately uturn. But they dont, they go down into the stadium, and uturn there??

 

2) On a HD avenue, the three lanes are divided approaching intersections. Left lane is for left turns, u turns, or straight ahead (if there is no left turn). Right lane for right turns, center lane straight ahead. However, at a T intersection, traffic only moves from one road at a time. Instead of in real life, where normally traffic is moving on 2 roads at once.

 

3) There appear to be certain intersections where cars can't u-turn

 

4) its silly that cars cant turn accross low density streets and dirt roads

[kgpurrs 107]

Thanks for the screenshot, I can easily help you out, traffic does not need to be changed in the game, the way you organize your traffic on the other hand does!

 

First off, you need two park and rides at your freeway entrance on both sides.  You also want to provide a streetcar stop as close as possible to the freeway and park and rides.  What this does is allows the commuters to park their cars as they enter the city and take the bus.  It might even be plausible depending on traffic to put a bus terminal there which allows for much more parking, again depending on the traffic.

 

Next you need to remove zones and skyscrapers from your city entrance, at least 1 square avenue needs to be completely cleared out from that entrance, and no intersections from the actual entrance.  That causes a stop light right at the entrance causing all that pileup on the freeway.

 

Manage your traffic, don't ask the developers to manage it for you, and play within the constraints you are given at this time.

 

As for trade, that is the only intersection you are allowed to have at the freeway entrance, and make sure its one way, what I mean by that is as soon as the trucks leave the freeway they only have one option to travel to trade centers and its far away from everything else (which is a good thing since they have terrible land value).  The only people that will travel (aka traffic to your trade) is either workers on the bus going to work, or driving to work which isn't high traffic.

 

Don't forget to thumbs up ==============================>>>

[CoolColJ 42]

Putting a Park and ride at the entrance can help

[Blade_125 0]

I hope they add multiple entrances into the city. Make it like a real city as there isn't only one entrance from the highway.

[Catchin22 299]

Putting a Park and ride at the entrance can help

Yeah, did that also, 2 of them and a bus depot. Didn't really seem to help but might have needed more time, game crashed out on me. I'll boot it up in a bit and see what it does.

[CoolColJ 42]

I hope they add multiple entrances into the city. Make it like a real city as there isn't only one entrance from the highway.

Some city plots allow as many road entrances as you want

Putting a Park and ride at the entrance can help

Yeah, did that also, 2 of them and a bus depot. Didn't really seem to help but might have needed more time, game crashed out on me. I'll boot it up in a bit and see what it does.

Don't put the bus depot there! That will make things worse when the buses return to it and try to leave.

Place the depot far off, the Park and Rides are bus stops themselves in any case.

[Spatzimaus 77]

Don't put the bus depot there! That will make things worse when the buses return to it and try to leave. Place the depot far off, the Park and Rides are bus stops themselves in any case.

 

Exactly.  This was my mistake; I'd put my big regional bus depot right next to the entrance, on the LEFT side as you came in, so the traffic jam at that first intersection was pretty phenomenal.  The big buses would clog everything up trying to get into their depot.  Then, once I saved up a bit of money, I moved the bus depot much further into town, where it wouldn't get in the way of traffic, and things have been much nicer.  Sure, it's a bit awkward at times, since that means the buses are now driving through town before leaving, but it's still a net gain.

[Catchin22 299]

I have it on the outlet side, but I'll try removing it altogether and see what happens.

[zogleheros 2]

You need avenues. Lots of avenues.

[wanns 0]

I don't have water so I can't ship that way. I have a freight station and passenger rail but they don't seem to get used oddly. I have lots of buss depots I think but I could double check on that. I've tried changing my incoming traffic a lot, nothing solves it. Even if I bring that traffic more into the city, it just gets backed up inside it.

 

See what I mean? The problem seems to be that the game is giving side street traffic lights just as much priority as highway. They need to adjust traffic lights to meet the demands of traffic, that would solve the issue.

 

How long is your bus waiting time in the city??? That usually gives a good indication if your public transport is sufficient. 

[zogleheros 2]

How can you not have issues with this ?

[Zpike 79]

Thanks for the screenshot, I can easily help you out, traffic does not need to be changed in the game, the way you organize your traffic on the other hand does!

 

First off, you need two park and rides at your freeway entrance on both sides.  You also want to provide a streetcar stop as close as possible to the freeway and park and rides.  What this does is allows the commuters to park their cars as they enter the city and take the bus.  It might even be plausible depending on traffic to put a bus terminal there which allows for much more parking, again depending on the traffic.

 

Next you need to remove zones and skyscrapers from your city entrance, at least 1 square avenue needs to be completely cleared out from that entrance, and no intersections from the actual entrance.  That causes a stop light right at the entrance causing all that pileup on the freeway.

 

Manage your traffic, don't ask the developers to manage it for you, and play within the constraints you are given at this time.

 

As for trade, that is the only intersection you are allowed to have at the freeway entrance, and make sure its one way, what I mean by that is as soon as the trucks leave the freeway they only have one option to travel to trade centers and its far away from everything else (which is a good thing since they have terrible land value).  The only people that will travel (aka traffic to your trade) is either workers on the bus going to work, or driving to work which isn't high traffic.

 

Don't forget to thumbs up ==============================>>>

 

I love the idea of park and rides at the freeway entrance.  I'm going to try it tonight on my high traffic city.  I have 290k pop and traffic is killing the city.

[Dewm 177]

Thanks for the screenshot, I can easily help you out, traffic does not need to be changed in the game, the way you organize your traffic on the other hand does!

 

First off, you need two park and rides at your freeway entrance on both sides.  You also want to provide a streetcar stop as close as possible to the freeway and park and rides.  What this does is allows the commuters to park their cars as they enter the city and take the bus.  It might even be plausible depending on traffic to put a bus terminal there which allows for much more parking, again depending on the traffic.

 

Next you need to remove zones and skyscrapers from your city entrance, at least 1 square avenue needs to be completely cleared out from that entrance, and no intersections from the actual entrance.  That causes a stop light right at the entrance causing all that pileup on the freeway.

 

Manage your traffic, don't ask the developers to manage it for you, and play within the constraints you are given at this time.

 

As for trade, that is the only intersection you are allowed to have at the freeway entrance, and make sure its one way, what I mean by that is as soon as the trucks leave the freeway they only have one option to travel to trade centers and its far away from everything else (which is a good thing since they have terrible land value).  The only people that will travel (aka traffic to your trade) is either workers on the bus going to work, or driving to work which isn't high traffic.

 

Don't forget to thumbs up ==============================>>>

 

 

As for the OP, I don't have the game, but a couple things that "might" help. putting the power plant right next to the region access. That way the power trucks don't have to navigate through multiple intersections and whatnot.