Why don't they use multiple lanes?

[enchant 2]

Looking at my traffic problems, it seems that my people could get where they're going a LOT faster if they'd just use all of the many lanes that I give to them.  I've got several six-lane roads, but for some reason, everyone wants to be in the right lane, even if they're not taking a right for several intersections.  Is there something I can do to fix this?

[Cool_Z 1,547]

This is due to the way the traffic IA works for now. The IA calculates a route for a vehicle at the start of its journey, so they will mostly all try to use the same lanes, disregarding other options.

There are a few mods that try to fix this (traffic ++, another mod that only changes the IA inner workings without the rest of the traffic ++ mod) but they are quite heavy in terms of cpu usage.

 

We can only hope that CO finds a way to better their own IA (I suggested a random lane choice when calculating routes... but can it work ?).

  Edited August 29, 2015 by Cool_Z  

[boformer 3,169]

AI, not IA

[enchant 2]

Thanks for the info.  So it seems to me that six lane roads are a waste of space to some extent.  I might be better off with four lane roads.

[Cool_Z 1,547]

AI, not IA

ooops... yeah AI. 

[rmjohnson144 39]

Looking at my traffic problems, it seems that my people could get where they're going a LOT faster if they'd just use all of the many lanes that I give to them.  I've got several six-lane roads, but for some reason, everyone wants to be in the right lane, even if they're not taking a right for several intersections.  Is there something I can do to fix this?

I don't really see anything wrong with this picture.  Traffic has nowhere to go but right, but you want them in the left lane for some reason?  try making more ways into the upper right section.  You only have one way into it from this angle.  Or move your road right a couple of blocks, so when it enters that area it will have a need to go left, right, or straight and your lanes should fill up more evenly.  but it everyone is turning right, there is no need to use straight or left lanes.

It you fill up the other lanes they just will all jam even worse trying to merge into the right lane at the last second and traffic will really jam up.

@enchant, switching from 6 to 4 lanes will hinder traffic even more as they are slower roads. I use primarily all 6-lane roads.  as your city grows the demands change constantly causing traffic jams all over the place.  It's a little more expensive, but you don't need to upgrade roads constantly.

[mrsmartman 200]

It looks like the Manhattan Approach to the Triborough Bridge.

[ghosty20 150]

This little mod http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=492391912 created by the same person who created Traffic++ that I posted in another thread goes a long way to sorting that problem out.. And it is a lot lighter on system resources than Traffic++, in fact Traffic++ was a real resource hog and was so glad to see when they released Improved AI (Traffic++)

[enchant 2]

I don't really see anything wrong with this picture.  Traffic has nowhere to go but right, but you want them in the left lane for some reason?

Yes I do!  Otherwise, what's the point of three lanes?  If everyone who wants to take a right is in the right lane and everyone who wants to take a left is in the left lane, what is the point of the center lane?  I don't expect a simulator to be infinitely intelligent, but it seems to me that if I'm not turning right for another half a dozen lights, I should be safe to get out of this stopped traffic and zip up ahead in that totally unused center lane.

If the simulator doesn't have that much AI, well I'll work around it, but I don't think it's an unreasonable expectation.

  Edited August 31, 2015 by enchant  

[Judazzz 1,936]

AI, not IA

Intelligence Artificielle?

[Cool_Z 1,547]

AI, not IA

Intelligence Artificielle?

Oui... désolé 

[Fearlessmayor 44]

I've noticed lots of newbies mentioned the "they use one lane" in the game, I'm a newbie too, but I remind myself the CIMS, are not real ppl (I'm sure we all know this, but I just wanted to make a quick point) they're just trying to get to where they need to go using the shortest route possible. if they can't get to where they want to go, they get struck in traffic, and create a bigger jam. nobody can get to where they want to go, and don't get their garbage picked up. and then complain to you, the mayor.  took me a while to figure out how to make it work for my cities, but I'm doing great now! so, what i've done is click on 3 cars in that jammed lane, figure out where they wanna go, (it's usually the same place or area), and do a few things

1. make an on-ramp earlier in the road to their final destination before they get to the intersection; they can get to where they want to go faster

2. make fewer 4-way intersections- make one road leading into certain districts.   that way you'll be able to tell how many ppl are trying to get in, and make one, 2, or 3 when needed, roads into the district

3. use underground roads for garbage trucks and hearses - less concrete in your city, and more efficient garage and dead people transportation systems. 

sometimes, I just break down and use the "clear traffic" tool on my traffic manager mod. 

I hope that helps some! let me know if this works and your CIMs use your roads smarter =)

thought I'd show you a pic of something I did today. 

 

so the 2-lane road on the top of the pic was the only road out of 2 my Cims were using to get into the downtown commerical district and jamming it up.  I bullbozed part of the road, and extended the middle 4-lane road, now they're suing the middle 4-lane road and the traffic is much smoother.

[boformer 3,169]

Traffic Manager is also a really helpful mod if you want to optimize an intersection. For example I had an intersection with 3 large roads and one small road with lots of trucks turning left.

First I changed the lanes so that there were 2 lanes turning left. Then I used the timed traffic lights feature.

[Cool_Z 1,547]

It's a bit sad that the traffic++ AI takes so much ressources...

 

I see a much lighter idea for the cars to use more of the lanes, why not make cars pick the lane they'll use if there are several lanes available at random ? This would just have to be calculated once, at the start of a journey. Of course this would not be 100% realistic nor efficient, but it would be a way to use more of the lanes with less cpu usage.

I'm not a modder, not at all, so I can only suggest this idea in hopes someone grabs it.

  Edited September 4, 2015 by Cool_Z  

[boformer 3,169]

Are you talking about the "Improved AI"? In my experience it is very lightweight.

[Cool_Z 1,547]

Are you talking about the "Improved AI"? In my experience it is very lightweight.

Oh... so I'll give it a try. (I don't have big cities yet, I don't play a lot, I spend more time building and testing stuff  )

[ghosty20 150]

Are you talking about the "Improved AI"? In my experience it is very lightweight.

 

Oh... so I'll give it a try. (I don't have big cities yet, I don't play a lot, I spend more time building and testing stuff  )

The Improved AI mod is better in that it does not have the large system overheads that Traffic++ can have.. The problem for me anyway was that after awhile when using Traffic++ is that my system would start lagging and when the population got bigger the time speedup options would stop working..

But the best thing with Improved AI is that the cims do use all the lanes which makes things much better and as long as the road layout is well thought out less traffic buildup..

  Edited September 5, 2015 by ghosty20  

[subyng 4]

All your Cims are trying to turn right, and the right lane is the only lane that allows right turns, therefore they all pile into the right lane. It's pretty simple. Even if they spread out across all 3 lanes they would eventually have to merge back to the right lane in order to turn right. You have a bottleneck that needs to be solved by either creating more routes for your Cims or use a mod like Traffic++ to designate additional lanes to allow right turns.

[rsc204 21,806]

I don't really see anything wrong with this picture.  Traffic has nowhere to go but right, but you want them in the left lane for some reason?

Yes I do!  Otherwise, what's the point of three lanes?  If everyone who wants to take a right is in the right lane and everyone who wants to take a left is in the left lane, what is the point of the center lane?  I don't expect a simulator to be infinitely intelligent, but it seems to me that if I'm not turning right for another half a dozen lights, I should be safe to get out of this stopped traffic and zip up ahead in that totally unused center lane.

If the simulator doesn't have that much AI, well I'll work around it, but I don't think it's an unreasonable expectation.

Turning lanes are not there to funnel the traffic at the end of a long road, their purpose is to funnel traffic into multiple lanes to increase the capacity of traffic able to wait at an intersection without causing tailbacks. If all the traffic spread across the full 6-lanes and then when they got 100m from the intersection tried to "zip" into the two right turning lanes all you've succeeded in doing is moving the traffic jam slightly. The principles of fluid dynamics dictate if all the traffic goes right there is little point in having 6 lanes at the junction.

[MushyMushy 3,617]

I'm of the opinion that the game should have support for multiple turn-lanes at intersections. Several major intersections in my city have a setup like that.

Here's the example I'm going to use:

Now, here I've marked the paths (red = left turn, yellow = straight, green = right turn):

The traffic lights at this intersection are timed in such a way that each of the 4 sides all go individually, as to cut down on accidents. The road coming from the bottom has 3 lanes that let you turn left. The two main points of interest are the light green dot and the orange dot. The light green dot marks the spot where you can turn right from the road on the left onto the road on the bottom without having a green light and without stopping, since the slip lane has it's very own lane. The orange dot points out that you can either turn left or go straight in that particular lane on the bottom road. I realize having options like this in a game would be complex, but since C:S is so focused on traffic, I'm surprised it doesn't have some form of support for complex intersections to keep traffic flowing and avoid bottlenecks. If this was in C:S, people turning left from the bottom road would have to file into one lane, but here they can be in 3 different ones, which has a very noticeable effect on traffic flow.

[rsc204 21,806]

Absolutely proper dedicated slip lanes for turning and the ability to adjust how many lanes go in which direction would be useful, although for the latter I believe it can be accomplished with mods right now.

Even with three lanes going left though, at the intersection the user pictured, all the traffic is only going to use the lanes where they will go left eventually. The point here is simply that such a complicated setup doesn't make any sense if all the traffic is turning left. In real life the intersection you pictured only makes sense when traffic is coming and going to different points of the junction. Often it's the case that during the morning/evening rush hour two or three roads leading to the interchange will suffer the bulk of the congestion. But if all the traffic comes along and goes left, what would better is a simple curve where all the lanes went left.

[Linoa06 1,374]

Looking at my traffic problems, it seems that my people could get where they're going a LOT faster if they'd just use all of the many lanes that I give to them.  I've got several six-lane roads, but for some reason, everyone wants to be in the right lane, even if they're not taking a right for several intersections.  Is there something I can do to fix this?

I don't really see anything wrong with this picture.  Traffic has nowhere to go but right, but you want them in the left lane for some reason?  try making more ways into the upper right section.  You only have one way into it from this angle.  Or move your road right a couple of blocks, so when it enters that area it will have a need to go left, right, or straight and your lanes should fill up more evenly.  but it everyone is turning right, there is no need to use straight or left lanes.

It you fill up the other lanes they just will all jam even worse trying to merge into the right lane at the last second and traffic will really jam up.

@enchant, switching from 6 to 4 lanes will hinder traffic even more as they are slower roads. I use primarily all 6-lane roads.  as your city grows the demands change constantly causing traffic jams all over the place.  It's a little more expensive, but you don't need to upgrade roads constantly.

I don't see a lot of difference between 4 and 6 lanes, actually. Then again I don't mind the traffic jams either.

I still wish said AI was improved as those cars could still, in theory, take advantage of all three lanes. By current AI rules, though, you do need a simpler setup :/

  Edited September 7, 2015 by Linoa06  

[ReneXL 16]

Traffic Manager + Improved AI -mod is one of the hottest traffic mods now and in future, as it has plans for similar stuff that in Traffic++ - but much more lightweight.

They really tuned the IAI into much better now - and there's an UI to configure it.