How do you start? Opening highway intersection

[ayryq 9]

At the beginning, you get three-lane one-way highway stubs. You can't extend them, you don't even have one-way roads yet.

 

So how do you hook up, in a way that is effective, and upgradable, when the game first starts?

[iceanimator 6]

Building your first road, just a small part of it will unlock the one way roads for you.

[perafilozof 143]

Build a single piece of two way, bulldoze it, that will unlock the one ways. Extend the highway entrance with 2 lane one ways. Take the one entering your city and split it, one part going into RandC other one into I. The one exiting your city connect with your I but on the opposite side of the road that is carrying the entering traffic. 

[ayryq 9]

The easiest - but soon problematic - solution is to use two short one-way roads to an avenue:

 

You can cross them both with an avenue too:

 

Or start with a roundabout:

[ayryq 9]

Build a single piece of two way, bulldoze it, that will unlock the one ways. Extend the highway entrance with 2 lane one ways. Take the one entering your city and split it, one part going into RandC other one into I. The one exiting your city connect with your I but on the opposite side of the road that is carrying the entering traffic. 

 

So the first part will look something like this?

[perafilozof 143]

Yes. Try it out. But remember one thing. That is your start, don't get attached to it. You will be buldozing it once your city grows to around 10k and when you unlock the tile next door that has the highway so that you can make multiple entrances and exits to and from your first tile.

[BorisS1990 27]

I never played any of the vanilla maps that have the silly stubs in them. First thing when I bought the game, before even building a city, was go into the map editor and make my own map. There, the highway just runs straight through the staring tile from one end to the other and a simple diamond interchange to give access to the streets. The diamond is not the most efficient way of getting cars on and off the highway, but works well enough to start with and is alot more realistic looking than having an entire highway just dead-end into your little podunk town.

 

So if you want to use the vanilla maps, I personally would just load them into the map editor and readjust the highway around the starting tile to something that makes a little more sense.