How do you handle traffic?

[shaamaa 2]

Fine... in an effort to keep positive, I'll just try to live with the problems in the game.

 

For example:

How exactly do you deal with traffic problems?

 

I noticed that sometimes a congestion starts when an intersection with four ways that just stops cars from moving anywhere.

 

Deleting and rebuilding the intersection greatly solves the issue, although you sacrifice all buildings around it coz this lovely game just has to take down buildings with the roads you bulldoze.

 

Other than that, keeping a balance between the number and the place of every single intersection also seems to be working... a bit... but very tiring...

 

What do you know about how to deal with this?

 

Thanks.

 

P.S. Waiting for a patch or handpicking a certain kind of region is not an answer 

 

Edit: search is not easy on this site. Found a good topic:

 

[perafilozof 143]

Some basic tips:

 

Don't zone on avenues that are the main traffic routes. 

Don't play on maps that only have one entrance/exit to the highway.

Avenue + Avenue = traffic lights = bad, avenue + medium density road = stop signs = good.

Use tunnels and overpasses or bridged overpasses to reduce the number of intersections and make long roads that lead from one end of the map to the other.

Don't place any buildings such as schools, universities, recycling centers ect. on avenues that have high traffic, always create roads that lead away from the avenue and place them on it.

Control your sims by NOT connection every road with every other road, funnel them to a single avenue but don't let them all go into it at the same place.

Zone comercial next to residential so they walk to shops and not drive.

[jpsurratt2005 4]

Excellent tips perablenta.  A grid design is preferred by many but can become locked up if there are too many stoplights. 

[Cob92 360]

Avenue + Avenue = traffic lights = bad, avenue + medium density road = stop signs = good.

 

Not always. If there is enough traffic coming off the medium density roads, it will still hold up traffic on the main road.

[inertSpark 7]

I made a 350k grid city with highdensity roads and avenues.  I tesselated a grid pattern like this:

 

 

Sorry the scale is off, but it's made of 2x1 blocks - one row horizontal. the other verticle, and the other horizontal again.  You can see that it creates a step pattern even after the cul-de-sacs cant you, so surely the shortes path routing would screw this up a little?  Apparently not so much - it appears to work!  Traffic seems to flow in a very natural manner.

 

These were enclosed in a set of avenues which kind of encapsulate them.  With strategic placement of connections and curved roads, I got it to work quite well.  Only buses for transport, no streetcars.

 

To see it in action, or for more info, including zoning etc, I made a journal:

 

[NovaBlazer 10]

Something that I found useful when having a single connection region, is to lengthen the initial amount of road coming off of the highway before letting it come to an intersection.  What I found especially with traffic attempting to leave the city is that there is some kind of funnel happening right before the highway on ramps where a large majority of the cars want to select a single lane to leave the city.

 

Other things that helped me as well:

 

1) Don't put a bus depot near the highway connection. I litterally got in a situation once where I had bus traffic dumping right next to my highway entrance and it completely grid locked, FOR DAYS.  Nothing moved.  I had to destroy the bus depot and put it some place else.

 

2) Move critical services away from the highway connection.

 

3) Move trade depots nearer to the highway connection because Global Market trucks will give up if they get stuck in traffic and your goods will not ship.

 

4) Watch critically what is occurring, who is causing the traffic backup.  As was mentioned above, certain buildings build along the main avenue generate a large amount of traffic.  And this can be bad if people are stopping traffic to make a "left hand turn" into or out of the building.

 

5) Don't be afraid to break out the bulldozer and try again!  Making traffic flow better will only help you in the long run!