Cities Skylines Traffic Help

[MatthewTNT79 6]

I never thought this would be my first message, but...

I've been playing Cities: Skylines for a week now, and I'm really deep into this city. The problem is is that the traffic flow is getting worse and is abysmal in many places. I have literally no idea what to do, and I completely gave up on trying to fix it. I was wondering if anyone on this forum could give me advice on how to fix the problem areas, or better yet, get the file and fix it for me.

Note: If you're going to take the city and fix it, you must know that I have infinite money, everything unlocked, all 25 tiles, a sub-building mod, and the World Trade Center

File here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/845rub3jx6toyck/NewerSave.crp?dl=0

[Turjan 1,048]

I was looking at it and rebuilt some of the roads etc. Anyway, I used some Network Extensions 2 roads and Traffic Manager: President Edition to make one of the replacement interchanges work, so I won't upload it. Needless to say those mods help a lot.

The main issues:

1. Get rid of those traffic lights. You should use wide roads with few intersections, you use them for roads with many intersections and traffic lights every 20 meters. That doesn't work. After I was done, the whole city had two crossroads with traffic lights left. Don't use the stop signs, either (only in very specific situations).

2. You have only very few connections between both sides of the river, or some of them are so far away from the action that they won't be used by the game. You could try a few more parallel bridges.

3. Your highway exits (and entries) usually end very unfortunate, like on T-intersections. You should see that you get efficient distribution. Also, this game unfortunately needs many more highway exits and entries than you would find in real life.

4. You seem to use metros for upgrading, but not to abolish private traffic. I built a metro through the main living, commercial and industrial areas. After that, traffic got somewhat better. I didn't add distribution bus lines in the industrial areas, which would have helped somewhat more.

One other thing was that the city suffered from "not enough raw materials" in the end. As I don't know whether that was my fault or just the result from traffic having bad for a long time, I'm not sure what to say.

[MatthewTNT79 6]

Well thanks. I'll use this advice. Oh, and one thing, could I see some pictures of what you did?...

[Turjan 1,048]

Sure. I'm not sure whether it was strictly necessary, but I changed the intersection between the main industrial areas to this:

Note that I added a one-way road through the industrial area from the main entry in the back. I also changed several roads to small 4-lane roads (from NEXT2).

On the other side of the river, I added this intersection:

This is the road from your river bridge:

Here you need to apply lots of turn arrow changes and speed limits like this (otherwise, the cars all clog up the outer lanes):

I tried a simple roundabout first, but that one didn't cut it. Maybe, if I had built the metro first.

To get traffic from the bridges and from the main road along the coast, I added two metro lines:

I guess the central station should be replaced with a crossing station from the workshop, as it's quite busy (it got even worse after I had taken the screenshot):

I also upgraded the roads to the harbor (all small 4-lane roads from NEXT2). That's it mostly.

If you don't want to spam metros (the most easily abused feature in this game: cheap and efficient), you have to have a denser road network. The coast road was clogged, because there was no alternative. Most of the side streets were cul-de-sacs. The same is true for the main road bridge across the river.

 

Edit: Okay, here is the link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ir98leik0uns30y/NewerSave_01.crp?dl=0

You need TM:PE and NEXT2 for this to work. From NEXT2, you only need the two-lane highways, the four-lane national road and the small four-lane road. You can disable everything else, if you want.

[poshbakerloo 186]

This thread is such a good idea! I have downloaded the file and had a play with it to see what I could do! i actually find it more fun sorting traffic problems in existing cities than I do in my own as I always make my own so there won't be a problem in the first place which makes it more boring haha.

I guess this type of game play only works with people who don't have too many mods and assets!

Here is the updated Dropbox file - I have used Network Extensions and Traffic President Mod which are like NAM for SC4, you just need them to make the name realistic!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/avcvn1x985vab5h/Hadensville.crp?dl=0

I will say, and I don't want to sound mean - the roads were so badly laid out, sorry! I didn't bother relaying the highways as that would take hours, I just mainly rebuilt junctions. Not much new road building except for one road across the river front!

 

I got the traffic flow from 52% to 69%

Here are some overview maps:

Before

After

 

This was probably this biggest thing I did - the island caused such a problem with the bridges! So I ran the main route under the island which instantly got rid of the traffic queues

 

I got rid of all the excess slip roads here and tied it all up, plus built a bypass around the industrial area to take traffic away from the centre

 

The only new road I actually built was to take heavy goods traffic away from the residential areas

 

There was a huge queue up the hill side here, but I reduced it by rebuilding the roads and making junctions smoother flowing

[MatthewTNT79 6]

Some of the pictures are broken.

[poshbakerloo 186]

13 minutes ago, MatthewTNT79 said:

Some of the pictures are broken.

I can see all of them in all the posts?

[Turjan 1,048]

7 hours ago, poshbakerloo said:

I can see all of them in all the posts?

Three of your pics disappeared for me after the first time I had looked at them. There's only a circle with a bar in the center.

 

Anyway, as I'm here, I had actually checked to replace the station where the two new metro lines meet with a crossing station from the workshop. That increases throughput:

[MatthewTNT79 6]

Update: By the time the first guy replied, I was already working on my city, assuming that noone went to help, and when the first guy replied, I just copied what he did.

Real Update: Traffic is terrible again., sorry about that. https://www.dropbox.com/s/k6ni37mluq1q5nr/Haden City 2.crp?dl=0

[Turjan 1,048]

Heh, I guess you didn't activate Traffic Manager: President Edition's traffic AI. Change the settings like this:

You can uncheck "disable despawning" to make the simulation more lenient.

Also, "bad slip road syndrome" again ;-) .

I did a few changes, and traffic runs okay now. You need a few more roads from NEXT2 (National Road, small heavy one-way roads), and hopefully you have the DLC that gave us bus lanes. If not, tell me, and I remove them. There should be some in NEXT2, but the options menu is screwed up since the update and I could not reach them (I would have to edit the XLM file, I guess).

https://www.dropbox.com/s/4d5r0zammiqhb6m/Haden City 2b.crp?dl=0

You also need this metro station. Don't subscribe to the dependency (that one will break your game), but to this one.

Some explanations:

Use one way roads to keep traffic away from busy intersections. You also need TM:PE's traffic AI for your city, as you have many very short road segments. The vanilla AI doesn't drive into intersections if the next road segment is full. If your road segments only fit three or four cars or trucks, nothing goes anymore. In principle, if you want to stay vanilla, that major road that goes parallel to the river should not be built that way. The whole grid should have a different orientation in that area, with very few intersections with that road. One thing you could do is build a bypass tunnel under the built area.

The big intersections that I used only work if you make the straight roads in the center faster than those in the slip roads. You had it set up the other way round. Even in the vanilla game, you can route traffic by choosing roads according to speeds. You can upgrade roads to make them more popular. I also made a new road to have at least some bypass to your only road along the river, but that was too popular until I partially downgraded it again.

 

[MatthewTNT79 6]

I can't thank you enough. All of this work you do, it really puts into light how bad I am at city planning. And while I'm trying to get past the stage of, "Alot of traffic wants to got to the left, so I'll build a slip road." I still don't know what to do half of the time.

 

[Turjan 1,048]

No worries, after a while you will get the hang of this. Also, it's sure that what I changed won't last. As soon as you grow the city, traffic streams will change. It's always like that, and adapting the traffic network is half the fun of the game.

[MatthewTNT79 6]

On 10/28/2017 at 7:07 PM, poshbakerloo said:

This thread is such a good idea! I have downloaded the file and had a play with it to see what I could do! i actually find it more fun sorting traffic problems in existing cities than I do in my own as I always make my own so there won't be a problem in the first place which makes it more boring haha.

I guess this type of game play only works with people who don't have too many mods and assets!

Here is the updated Dropbox file - I have used Network Extensions and Traffic President Mod which are like NAM for SC4, you just need them to make the name realistic!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/avcvn1x985vab5h/Hadensville.crp?dl=0

I will say, and I don't want to sound mean - the roads were so badly laid out, sorry! I didn't bother relaying the highways as that would take hours, I just mainly rebuilt junctions. Not much new road building except for one road across the river front!

 

I got the traffic flow from 52% to 69%

Here are some overview maps:

Before

After

 

This was probably this biggest thing I did - the island caused such a problem with the bridges! So I ran the main route under the island which instantly got rid of the traffic queues

 

I got rid of all the excess slip roads here and tied it all up, plus built a bypass around the industrial area to take traffic away from the centre

 

The only new road I actually built was to take heavy goods traffic away from the residential areas

 

There was a huge queue up the hill side here, but I reduced it by rebuilding the roads and making junctions smoother flowing

What theme do you use? because I don't have that theme, and whenever I try to open the file, I constantly get an error message.

[Turjan 1,048]

3 hours ago, MatthewTNT79 said:

What theme do you use? because I don't have that theme, and whenever I try to open the file, I constantly get an error message.

Use this mod to change themes on load. This one also lets you just load the file with one of the default themes.

Be warned though: The Loading Screen Mod tells me that he also used at least 253 assets that I don't have. I can see on the pic that still works that the buildings in your city look vastly changed in his case.

[MatthewTNT79 6]

On 10/28/2017 at 10:38 PM, poshbakerloo said:

I can see all of them in all the posts?

Also, I was hoping for you to repost the three pictures or posting them somewhere else and giving us the link.

[poshbakerloo 186]

On 10/11/2017 at 6:55 PM, MatthewTNT79 said:

Also, I was hoping for you to repost the three pictures or posting them somewhere else and giving us the link.

I can do but I can see them and I have tested it on my phone and other PCs so I'm not sure why there is a problem.

 

 

 

 

[MatthewTNT79 6]

I hope you can help again. I made a new city and no matter what I do, this entryway gets clogged.

 

[poshbakerloo 186]

^^ Where is the download link? I actually like these 'solve my traffic problem' games haha

[Ocram's Razr 963]

I just found this:

Hopefully it helps!

[Turjan 1,048]

22 hours ago, MatthewTNT79 said:

I hope you can help again. I made a new city and no matter what I do, this entryway gets clogged.

 

Same issue as before: At the end of those two roads from the highway, you have a very short, large, two-way connecting road where all the traffic has to squeeze through. The game hates those. You even use it as a four-directional distributor. Make that one-way, replace by a roundabout and/or add alternative routes that are faster, the usual stuff.

[MatthewTNT79 6]

I feel like this is a ticking time bomb.

Oh, and for you, poshbakerloo https://www.dropbox.com/s/r4hqjas7slf8ycg/Candle Falls 2.crp?dl=0

  Edited December 14, 2017 by MatthewTNT79  

[MatthewTNT79 6]

Update: Traffic is getting out of hand again https://www.dropbox.com/s/tjcb2ma3nageob3/Candle Falls 3.crp?dl=0

[Turjan 1,048]

I looked at this. There are two main issues.

1. The way you set up your train network doesn't work in this game. You have the passenger station and the freight station (those near the map center) in line on the same track, and even all through traffic has to go through the stations. Separate passenger and cargo traffic. I put both of them on different tracks (I used a sunken passenger station), and this helps. Also, allow only one passenger station to accept outside traffic (I chose the one close to your high unique buildings). When your city grows, you also need to separate the through traffic. Also, get rid of the two level crossings close to the stations. The third one on the edge has to go when the city grows.

2. The idea to separate parts of the city into pods without much interior traffic is principally a good one, but you have to interconnect them better. I put a few extra roads, and everything worked out nicely.

A general suggestion: Connect your city parts across highways  with fast roads without highway entrances at some points. If all your traffic from and onto highways has to take your only intracity connections, this leads to lots of conflicting traffic.

[MatthewTNT79 6]

Could you give me the link to the file by any chance?

[Turjan 1,048]

Do you have Mass Transit and Green Cities? If not, I would have to remove a few things.

[MatthewTNT79 6]

No

[Turjan 1,048]

Okay, I hope I caught everything I used from those extensions. I used the National Road, the highway with two lanes in both directions and the small 4-lane one-way road from Network Extensions 2 in addition to what you had already used. My apologies regarding your village on the other side of the river. You used some road I had not activated, which means most stuff was gone and I made something up instead. Other than that, I didn't change much.

You need to subscribe to this station: Sunken Train Station (Concrete)

Here is the link to the file: https://www.dropbox.com/s/96k9tblacils0s9/Candle Falls 3.crp?dl=0

I hope this works.

Edit: I forgot I also added this (but it's not necessary): BTB City Recycle

Edit 2: I just noticed that I had used the old file of yours (#2). Oh well. Don't overwrite your new one (rename mine when you look at it). I guess you will want to make any changes yourself anyway, so it should be okay.

[MatthewTNT79 6]

I'm sorry to bug you again, but traffic's spiraling out of control. It's gotten to the point where part of my city is developing gridlock and it's overwhelming.

Also, those roads you had off were the two lane roads with medians (all of them) and you might need to turn all of the roads on (and maybe the World Trade Center).

https://www.dropbox.com/s/l1c9qqnyypk1zna/Candle Falls 5.crp?dl=0

 

[Turjan 1,048]

Your city is developing nicely! Traffic isn't too bad actually.

You don't need the save for this, as this is essentially just about a single crossroads where all traffic for several directions has to go through.

The issue was the intersection in the left center. I changed the small road in the NW to a one-way road in order to move some traffic away from the intersection. I disconnected the small road directly south of the intersection and connected it to the next small road. I added that second W-E connection road. The last change is the small four-lane road that connects the new bypass road to the western large road. I would probably change this to another six-lane road and move the connection one further west, as it's heavily used. The overview of that intersection area, which also shows the road types used:

The thoughts that come into play here:

1. Provide alternative routes.

2. Don't have short road segments close to major intersections.

3. Disconnect superfluous side roads and/or turn some of them into one-way roads away from the intersection.

In the end, you have to observe where the traffic actually wants to go. This is why I said that my solution can still be improved on.

[El Furibondo Serna 0]

Great job!

BTW, which is the UI mod you are using? Seems great!

 

On 28/10/2017 at 9:18 PM, Turjan said:

Sure. I'm not sure whether it was strictly necessary, but I changed the intersection between the main industrial areas to this:

Note that I added a one-way road through the industrial area from the main entry in the back. I also changed several roads to small 4-lane roads (from NEXT2).

On the other side of the river, I added this intersection:

This is the road from your river bridge:

Here you need to apply lots of turn arrow changes and speed limits like this (otherwise, the cars all clog up the outer lanes):

I tried a simple roundabout first, but that one didn't cut it. Maybe, if I had built the metro first.

To get traffic from the bridges and from the main road along the coast, I added two metro lines:

I guess the central station should be replaced with a crossing station from the workshop, as it's quite busy (it got even worse after I had taken the screenshot):

I also upgraded the roads to the harbor (all small 4-lane roads from NEXT2). That's it mostly.

If you don't want to spam metros (the most easily abused feature in this game: cheap and efficient), you have to have a denser road network. The coast road was clogged, because there was no alternative. Most of the side streets were cul-de-sacs. The same is true for the main road bridge across the river.

 

Edit: Okay, here is the link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ir98leik0uns30y/NewerSave_01.crp?dl=0

You need TM:PE and NEXT2 for this to work. From NEXT2, you only need the two-lane highways, the four-lane national road and the small four-lane road. You can disable everything else, if you want.