Cities Skylines 2 must have the ability for smaller, actualy realistic roundabouts. Most places dont have an entire state like Wyoming to waste for a single roundabout.
We have a few cases of trams through roundabouts in Melbourne. Most of them aren’t nearly busy enough to need lights, let alone barrier gates; signs saying GIVE WAY TO TRAMS are enough. Melbourne drivers of course are used to dealing with trams sharing the road; in a city with a less extensive network it might be harder. The exception is the enormous and notorious Haymarket roundabout, which has a tram junction in the middle and several sets of lights. St Kilda Junction used to be similar, but the tram junction and highway were both grade separated decades ago, so it’s now a three-level monstrosity.
Haymarket is an absolute nightmare sometimes. I remember when I moved to Melbourne a few years ago, it confused the hell out of me. That exit onto Peel St is super slippery on the bike, too.
@@OzzieJeza02 Yes indeed. I was wondering why they were still moving, though, and not broken down in the middle of an intersection. Or being blocked by a beached fire truck.
I live in a European city with a lot of tram routes. The.first two intersections are pretty much how it works in reality too. We don't use any barriers in the roundabouts,.it would take too much time to lower and raise them. The traffic lights in the roundabout don't have a green light in them, only yellow and red, and are only for the the traffic inside the roundabout. Entering traffic have a yield sign. The last intersection isn't used in reality, not here at least. It's because trams have a difficulty dealing with steep gradients, so this type of intersection would use up too much space.
@@LittleRedLemon04 You could argue that the C-train is a light rail system and not a tram system. But judging from Google Maps the C-train illustrates what I mean here. Those intersections where it tunnels under it are huge to keep the gradients at at a reasonable level. There is no room for that in the city center.
17:05 I actually managed to fix this. So what you can do is give the incoming traffic a red light but also the ability to turn right on a red light. This makes them behave as if there was a blinking yellow light and the traffic in the roundabout is prioritized.
I would love to see even more complicated junction or a roundabout combining car traffic with trams and bikes. I have tried to do that myself but it doesnt even come close to your work :)
Not only have you got me back into Cities Skylines, you've made me feel guilty about having terrible traffic and terrible looking intersections. I now spend more time designing intersections and coercing nodes into doing my bidding than I do actually building the city. Thanks for breathing new life into the game for me.
I live pretty much in front of "tram roundabout". I actually use it almost everyday (either as a pedestrian, driving or in the tram). It works exactly as you programed it. And I have to say I disagree about the need for the rail barrier (the one here doesn't have it). And this is because the tram goes through the roundabout very slowly and would easily be able to stop in time if needed. A barrier would slow the whole process a lot. I actually found the hardest as a driver until you get used to that light that is always green but can sometimes be red. I think 19 out of 20 times I drive around it, it's green.
That was hands down the BEST and most useful tutorial on Traffic Manager’s timed traffic lights. Thank you so much. I love using public transit in my cities but have had issues with getting the tunnels right and running them under roads without bumps and the ability to continue the road. Here in Toronto the streetcars fo into tunnels at two places- one running in the middle of a road and one on the side. One of those even has a stop underground before getting to the subway station. We have a new light rail line going in that’s underground for a ton of stops across the middle of the city.
You can improve the traffic lights setup by splitting the 5 seconds for tram timing into two. For the trams: first make a 1 sec phase for only trams entering the roundabout, that followed up by a 4 sec phase with only the inner tram lights green, so that trams can exit the circle. This way there will be no trams entering the roundabout at the last moment of the tram sequence.
I use that a lot and it works great but in this case the cars will have to stop again after one second to let the next tram through. You could try a longer maximum time and 'no one is driving' though. By the way, traffic manager has a setting to 'follow traffic rules at timed traffic lights'. Maybe that + a yield sign could work for the cars? Haven't tested that though
Yes, usually trams go through roundabouts. In Stockholm there is a tram going around it. Or well, to be honest its not a real roundabout as it has traffic lights but it looks like a roundabout and the tram goes around it. Maybe because there is a superellipse-shaped fountain and a glass obelisk in the middle :) But then, again, in Oslo they have trams going through a fountain. The water stops flowing as the tram enters. Or at least its supposed to :)
Calling a collision between two high-capacity steel boxes at moderate speeds filled with people a "unique interaction" is possible the funniest thing I can imagine in city planning. I hope to avoid having too many unique interactions in my own city
Really nice, but you need to turn the tram lights to red in all your 3.8 steps (otherwise an arriving tram would have a green light, and potentially interfere with car traffic). Keep the advanced stuff coming!!
I really like trams and used them for my last few builds, but the awkwardness of the junctions were always an issue - for my new build I decided to exclusively use busses because of that. Well now I have to go back and change everything to trams in my new build. Thanks a lot, YUMBL 😉
The city I'm most familiar with with mixed modal traffic is Bonn Germany. There are no barriers to non-light rail traffic, only lights are used to control flow.
In my experience in C:S I avoid use Trams/Trolleybus in high density regions. I leave these to use in low density areas only. In high density I use Monorail instead. They do not suffer problems in crossings and so on (if you are trying to make your public transportation at surface level). Or subway if you not care about maintain everything on underground. I prefer to play with little to no mods at all. But is a great video, for sure. Thanks again to share your knowledge and experiences with us!
Thank you for sharing this with us and showing how to do it. Also a special thank you to you for telling us the name of the individual who created this mod that you also used in this video. More than often I come across content creators showing us the work that they do in city skylines introducing a new mod but never mentioning the person who created that mod and in my opinion this is wrong. You are one of the few people out there that actually tells other people who created this mod and you take a time out to thank them for it which is great. More content creators should learn from your example.
A great guide for some more advanced concepts. Especially multi-node timed traffic lights. I would be more than happy to see a few more guides like this.
Keep these videos up man, your Parclo video was the reason why I got into modded Cities Skylines and your videos have been nothing but quality. Oh and that Adelaide Metro livery looking nice, don't let the name fool you though, unfortunately we don't actually have a metro in Adelaide haha
This is great! Definitely going to be incorporating this into my city. Might take awhile given the amount of intersections my tram lines cross but will be totally worth it. I just recently did an extensive overhaul of my bus routes and saw an increase to traffic flow and a good population bump. I'm hoping/imagining this would have a similar effect.
I've had ideas of what it would be like to recreate major cities as accurately and faithfully as possible, and your command of the mods that do finer control of nodes and custom multi-modal roads that split in weird ways has shown me how it could possibly be tackled
You speak of adding a rail barrier on the roudabout to protect the tram, but unfortunately it isn't the case in real life, or at least in France for tram crossings on roundabouts. There is only a red light for people already on the roudabout at the level of the tram crossing (and yeah, accidents happen unfortunately for people not used to it and not paying attention...)
@@YUMBL I'm sure it is, but it may be too much for a place that needs the trafic to flow as it could block all the other entries of the roundabout with backing trafic for too long
Yeah, I've never seen it anywhere in reality. Trams aren't trains... they're expected to mix with traffic, and traffic is expected to deal with that... barriers would just be a pain in the ass for everyone, an expensive bit of machinery to maintain, for little real benefit.
Wow! Awesome job! I think this needs to sent to my transit agency and the local cities we run through. Our light rail was built haphazardly. There's a few intersections where there should've been an overpass. One intersection is a very busy, multi lane road. The last few days, I've lost 2 to 4 minutes off my schedule at that intersection. The cities in the area treat us like a redheaded stepchild. Sometimes we get the timing and sometimes we don't. There's a few places we get our signal a few seconds before the parallel traffic does to our right. A little background on how our light rail system works (not sure about others) is we have "loops" between the tracks. These loops read a device under the head end of the train. They have set up two loops in each direction at intersections, one before and one after. We call them recall loops. The one after the intersection sends a signal to set up the next intersection, based on our speed. The one before the intersection recalls the signal as we pass through. You also mentioned a crossing gate, the CPUC (California Public Utilities Comission) regulates light rail in California. They require the use of a controlled gate when speeds exceed 40 mph and where the tracks cross a road on a separate right of way. Now, for one of my cities, I did what you did here and built a couple round abouts with the Tram going through the middle and a couple where I build it the wrong way. I did that because I was trying to save a few rocks. I will fix those
I want more ideas for trams because I use them all the time in my cities. I love watching them move around the city vs metros that aren't visible. I'd particularly like intersections where the tram turns rather than continuing straight, or intersections where multiple different tram lines cross through the intersection perpendicularly or with some of them turning.
Awesome vid and perfect timing, I was struggling with tram intersections! 😄
2 года назад
I have to point out that here in Germany Roundabouts with Trams arent having any railway barriers. We just have traffic lights here. Your Tram Roundabout is almost perfectly Simulating a German Tram Roundabout.
I don't think barrier gates on a roundabout are a good idea. Having the barriers go up and down will add to the time of cars not being able to move through the roundabout and at that point a fully lighted junction probably is a better option for traffic flow. Instead of barriers it seems more reasonable to add sound with the traffic light signaling a tram will be coming through. it will create alertness in the drivers and doesn't increase the time cars will have to stop.
Yeah, I don't think I've ever seen barrier gates for a tram anyway. The only exception being the rare train/tram intersection where the gates stop trams and cars going onto train tracks.
An idea for an at-grade intersection with trams I haven't had an opportunity to really mess with: a hybrid continuous flow/Michigan left. Cars turning left from the tram road cross the tram tracks and opposing traffic before the intersection proper as in a CFI, while cars turning left from the cross street turn right and then make a U-turn across the tracks. These two crossings could potentially use a reverse-traffic road. And yeah it'd be nice if TM:PE traffic lights had the option of flashing yellow yield and flashing red stop-sign phases.
I was hoping you would go for an asymmetrical road at the intersection for left turning traffic. Seems like a better use of a space than the grass median.
No, i think its the nature of nodeless pieces and node controller. They arent friends. Build something with “vanilla overpass” and click it with node controller. Then enjoy rebuilding it 😂
So in my city there is a tram "roundabout" in a district and there the tram actually goes around the roundabout as well and sharing lanes with traffic. It goes from three lanes to two lanes I think. Gotta take a look at it. And then all of them enter a big intersection as well.
Fantastic video once again! I don't even have the game but watching your tutorials is still super fun! Looking forward to more possible future variations, maybe with bikes and trams combined? 🤔😅
I was so excited about that last version, then just d*mn, gotta have mods. Ugh. Thanks for the info though, it made my brain think outside the box a bit.
In option #2, you describe you would want a railroad crossing style bar. I've never seen these anywhere for trams. In The Netherlands we use only lights. And sometimes a bell to alert pedestrians and cyclists. But I've never seen a bar anywhere in Europe. We do use railroad crossing style bars for metros crossing at ground level, but their speed is much greater and the crossings are less integrated in the normal road, a metro is basically just a fast light train when driving on ground level...
In Nantes (France) you guys can see interesting examples of roundabouts and trams integration. A surprising one is a double round about with through tram lanes next to station "Michelet Sciences"!
I use no one is driving for pretty much all of my timed traffic lights. I have found it resolves many of my congestion issues when you have one road that constantly stacks up compared to all the other lines.
The opening bridge mod has lowering barriers to stop traffic just before the point the bridge moves. Check it out. Maybe a modification of either TMPE or Node Controller would add lowering barriers as both of those Mods are QOL mods that almost everyone uses.
there are loads of accidents involving cars and trams with no barriers. I think things flow better id imagine without barriers and trams go relatively slowly so collisions with cars are probably relatively safe.
Ive never actually seen cars being stopped by a rail barrier on a tram crossing, it may be a thing outside of Europe, but here trams are more often than not treated as busses in terms of how they flow with the traffic, these kinds of traffic circles with trams crossing straight through them are quite common in Poland and they do not really have barriers like that
I'd be curious to see a video exploring the different traffic light "tactics" for regular intersections. For example, at the end of this video, you showed the intersection working where all the lanes from each individual side were green at the same time (so East was all green, then North, then West, then South, etc). What are the pros and cons of that method, vs, say, North-South left and right turns + East-West right turns are all green, then the left turns switch off in favor of the straight traffic, then the whole concept rotates 90deg and repeats.
For your tram roundabout light phase two you should have made the interval 5 to 12 seconds, with the exit condition of nobody driving. That configuration means that any one tram can get through independently, and there's no way that two trams end up with one going through late and messing up the flow. That maximum interval gives the trauma chance to take its five seconds to make its trip, a second for the switch over to be considered in which a tram can be arriving, then five more seconds for that tram to go through and we're at 11 seconds. So you said it 12 so that it can decide early or tune that last bit. You don't know how much slack you get for when the rules engine will consider the tram present. So you'll never stop the trams passing through that intersection.
Only things I'd have to say is for the roundabout; 1) Upgrade the roundabout itself to a 3 lane for the 1 through 2 on flow of it. 2) Make the roundabout a little wider, maybe a 5 or 6 unit radius instead of 4. 3) Small slip lanes for right turns so they don't interfere with people trying to go straight through, though its less important if you have a 3 lane instead of a 2 lane.
1:44 actually, this is realistic. This is exactly how it is set up in my city. As soon as a tram arrives, the signal turns green, often even before it stops. The cars that go in the direction also get a turn though. We don't have roundabouts at major intersections where the trams are, however.
This probably only applies to train railroad crossings, because trains shouldn't stop too often. Trams however stop very frequently, so I guess the warning times could be reduced quite a bit. Lowering and raising the barriers would still require a lot of time though.
I would have done a very minor adjustment to this, I would keep the tram underpass, but I would lift the terrain so that the tram doesn't slope down and up again, this will punish car traffic just a little more, to a greater adventage of the tram. Sloping the tram down like that is even more expensive to construct, and actually do impact both travel speed and maintenance on the fleet
i discovered clus's tram roads about a week ago , and my literal only gripe with it is ... the texture doesn't match perfectly with vanilla roads , and i dont use them at all , i guess thats what happens when you are an artist with OCD lol
Trams don't need barriers, as they can stop quickly, and are also generally slower, and easier to see coming than trains. That's just overkill to start using barriers, and makes trams seem way more dangerous than they are, psychologically.
Now, Michigan left, with trams in the middle lane and through the crossing, also being able to turn each way. Or less if you really just do not need that, will only make the 1 or at most 2 phase tram signals easier. The cars in the Michigan Left bit will just always give priority to trams i think. Should be doable. Will get slightly bigger. At that point you might do it differently, letting trams go from the middle to the outside well before you enter the whole Michigan Left intersection, and they cross the road just before the Michigan Left bit so they do not interfere. Still big, BUT, only a small bit where trams cross the road, and might be just handled with priority and not even traffic lights. Depending on the amount of trams. Even easier is adding an underpass on all sides, and since the middle node is quite big you can have a tram only underground roundabout or just each way going each way since it will generally not be too busy with trams there and they will figure it out most likely anyway. I just like cool intersections, even when they're not always the best. Looks can count too.
YUMBL! Have you heard of hook turns? they're a staple in my city of melbourne australia. they tend to trip up new folk but they're pretty good IRL. no clue how you would make them in city skylines haha
I usually end up having to grade separate my trams at really busy intersections; the vanilla overpass method seems nice, but I don't use that mod, so I tend to end up just building a big, elevated half-circle like 10 units back from where the car road is. Problem with that is the bit where the separate tram track merges back into the main road, since the trams have to completely cross over one half of the car traffic... I really wish you could run trams in the outer lanes, rather than the middle of the road...
This junction actually comes closer to a light metro I think it’s called. Trams usually don’t get any priority in junctions. (At least not in Bucharest)
@@YUMBL This might now be an exception, but in Bucharest our tram line 41 is considered light rail, and stays on road. It’s illegal to drive on it’s rail, and to my knowledge it also gets priority in junctions, similar to the roundabout in this video. Line 41 is a very controversial subject over here though.
Could you do a video about the choice between big interchanges: stack, clover stack, turbine. What are the benefits, cons. They do the same job in term of traffic