One reason one gets a lot of "returning to facility" cargo traffic is that you import a LOT. I had the issue and after adding some industry 4.0 I produced goods so that I don't have to import as much, this balanced import/export and fixed the issue for me without changing much with the infrastructure.
Sorta proves a point with regards to Cities Skylines traffic. It's all about three main things, road layout (lanes, junctions, type), passenger routes (bus, tram, metro, monorail, train, etc) and cargo distribution (air, sea, train, etc), get one wrong, particularly badly wrong like relying on a single cargo terminal for a large portion or the entirety of a city, and traffic tanks.
And also you will have an issue if you export lots of things. I have a city with TONS of industry, so I export 45000 & make around 400k money per week, but of course I have backed up port and queuing up trains those go outside the city. I have done all the tips, but still have 60% traffic with despawning turned on. So don't build more industry than the city needs.
Where I live there was very poor city planning in a quickly growing area so it's almost impossible to fix the issues without destroying businesses when you click to upgrade roads or add roundabouts.
@@BiffaPlaysCitiesSkylines omg what a relief. I was off sick a few days ago and just binged these videos... the next day I was out saying "pick your lane" to everyone!!
@@tls5870 Yup. It's like that on one of the major roads near where I live. A ton of commercial traffic, poorly planned, not at all walkable or bikeable (and of course buses actually drop off pedestrians on gravel shoulders so my disabled partner has to actually walk in the street to get to where we're going cuz he can't walk through the steep ditch). During rush hour, traffic is often at a stand still all along that road. And of course, that's also where the movie theater is located. There is technically room to fix all of the problems on the road, but the city doesn't really have the funds to do it and none of the businesses care about handicapped ppl that take the bus either. It can be extremely difficult to get around in this town if you're handicapped. I've no idea how a woman I see around town in a wheelchair manages - half of the bus stops don't even have cut curbs (including the new cement pad that was put at a stop right next to Target). And yes, I've seen her riding the bus a lot, so I know this is something she regularly has to deal with.
17:50. Nope, lane switching is disabled there. Probably why all traffic goes straight through. 13:50 Same thing. The green icon is "continue into intersection". 😁
People who complain that the "traffic sponge" is unrealistic probably aren't aware of massive transport hubs. First keep in mind that Cities Skylines puts into a relatively tiny freight hub what should be in an area the size of a small town. There should be a dozen cargo ship or cargo train loading bays, and several dozen truck bays. But there aren't. And even if there were, in the real world we still have lines 100s of trucks long backed up waiting to unload and load cargo. They don't use a "traffic sponge" but it's not far different. It's more like a giant truck parking lot / queueing lot. And Cities Skylines doesn't have an option like that. I think what you're doing is perfectly fine, and is a great solution for what the game developers have presented us with. Good Job! And "Lane Mathematics" is always a classic.
Basically, they'd use something like a truckyard, where the trucks park and wait their turn to be unloaded, usually paired with or very near a truck stop, where they get refueled. Even those, typically have a parking lot just for queuing up waiting their turn if they are willing, (especially if it's the end of their shift, and are about to shut down for the night). So, the traffic "sponge" is basically a low tech version of that.
At our local port, the truck doesn't even stay with the trailer (the most of the time). They arrive and unhook the trailer, and the truck leaves, leaving the trailer in, like what you said, a huge carpark (think the size of airport parking when you see them during take-off and landing) and a similar sized area for the trucks to use when waiting for their pick-up/drop offs. Plus everything is split to the various different ports/companies within our "Harbour Estate" depending on which ship is arriving (dropping off the last of the trailers) or departing (collecting some trailers), but also, to my knowledge, a lot of the work is done overnight (in preparation for the 7am departure, trailers are dropped off before 5am, so they are on the motorways long before commuter/school traffic). If actual transport hubs/ports were "turning over" at the rate of the vehicles going in and out of "Traffic Maker", the entire world would have ground to a halt, not just a few highways around the port! haha
I like it best when you try to work with the existing infrastructure to solve the traffic problems by optimizing what's already there, especially in heavily developed areas. It just feels more realistic and organic. IRL nobody would bulldoze big buildings or move skyscrapers to add in a roundabout or relocate an intersection to a smarter place. IRL they'd look at how to optimize what's already there as best as possible. Some tools i'd like to see you work with in these are the custom traffic lights in the TMPE mod which can fix a lot of problems in an intersection that a roundabout would fix, but without having to resort to bulldozing stuff, just creating better traffic flow and I think that would be fun to see you have to use more of the options available with the TMPE mod and vanilla tools to fix problems. It would also help those of us who like to avoid demolishing buildings unless it's an absolute last resort.
Oh my god yes, him saying "set the junction to pick your lane, as you can see" had me questionning myself on wether he might actually be right the third time he made the mistake. Biffa you get a bit loopy when you haven't put down a round about in a long time !! Love ya anyway :D
He also forces traffic to go certain ways by removing all options for them. He does that very very very often, almost every video. Case in point at 18:30, where traffic that came off the highway is forced to then make a right afterwards.
@@hkr667 I have no idea which highway you mean, there are like 15 roads intersecting everywhere, most of them highway segments, post a link to a picture explaining what you mean if you can please
THIS. This is what I came down here to say after the third time Biffa says the "pick your lane" is set correctly. "NO. No it isn't, you're looking at the 'enter blocked junction' symbol you twit!" I screamed at the computer screen. Clearly, both he and I need a couple more cups of tea.
The interchange you didn't like was a DCMI, and are one of the smallest continuous flow interchanges that don't add a lane to take it away. As long as you use lane mathematics and give a bit of space between to get in to the right lane, they are fantastic.
18:17 the traffic coming in from the left hand slip road (orange lane management) can't get across to the first right exit (dark purple lane management), there's no node in between. Apart from that, bloody good show sir.
Curse you Biffa, I am now unable to look at my cities without getting disgusted with how bad I made them, I am now painstakingly fix each and everyone of them! Consequentially 2 of my cities I thought lost causes were saved thanks to your tips and tricks! ;)
Thinking of one particular exit on I-95 South in Philly (Girard)... What actually happens is that people use the "empty" exit lane to dive around a few hundred feet of backed up traffic. The big difference between the game and real life is that people naturally try to get into the lane with the least traffic in real life, while the sims are more than happy to queue up forever in 1 lane if it cuts 10 ft off of their trips. In other words, real people value their time, and sims only value total distance traveled.
@@JCPRuckus we're actually a living sims in ShangHai, no one dares to cut the queue because it would get your driver's license point deducted. So yeah, traffic isn't so bad in here
I love how the fly through at end of video shows how much growth and upgrading is done after traffic is fixed to above 75% . Great job Biffa. Looking forward to more.
The city was at 130k when the traffic maker hits with all its rage. Then it drops to 60-70 during hopeless attemps to solve this problem. It just back on tracks
@@BiffaPlaysCitiesSkylines If you want to be judged to a lower standard, you shouldn't do such a good job all the time ;-P Also, as @Tsz Fung Li said, I can never tell when you're trolling after the roundabout debacle!
The AI is interesting at least. I have seen a car (A tourist) diving from the right most lane down an off ramp on the left side and I have lane mathematics, three lane highway going into two lane highway (right and middle lane) and the offramp (left lane), there were nodes allowing lane switching, but no management, due to my PC being barely able to handle the game as it is. The biggest problem I have is trains unable to despawn at the end of the map, as Biffa has shown previously in a TeaVille episode, but that is only a problem because litterally every train goes that direction, despite a second route on the other side being available. And you misstook Enter blocked junction with Pick your lane.
This video is calming for me almost terapeuthic. There is something that just makes this so satisfying and calming to watch so you watch more and more. This happened to me and i was just recommended a video of Biffa fixing traffic out of nowhere (RU-vid algorythm is wierd. I know.) and i just wanted to watch more!
Whenever you fix the roads with lane mathematics & traffic goes from a standstill to moving is so satisfying to see. Also every time Biffa says horky borky take a drink 😜
Another great job in clearing the traffic, Biffa. Those snake roads going to the cargo terminal were hilarious! 😆 My favorite shots in these videos are the Before and After ones... 😌
@@Tfin Well, you also have the fact that only so much can be stored inside, and having very slow(but consistent) ships that are not relyable on emptying it at all, meaning that the only other way is cars, and if they get stuck in a traffic jam, you only have the ships. Adding trains to it, means that there always is an option for a train to lower the storage at all times. Which, on its own, allows for the average speed to be faster.
Most of my playtime in CS was in this map (Islands)... I love seeing what ppl do with this map. and I really loved the looks of this author. Good job to you both for a great looking, traffic free, city !
Oh that before/after time-lapse was incredible!!! In time with the music and everything. It’s amazing also to see how the buildings upgrade with better traffic
For more compact traffic sponges, you can use a six lane one way road in a circle, with an input and output on opposite sides (one on the inside, one on the outside) of the same node, and set all other nodes to stay in lane. It acts like a spiral and is far more compact than single lane roads, and if you need less of a sponge later on you only need to change one node in traffic manager.
I saw this city in on the workshop yesterday and loaded it up. Yeah, I fully expected this to become an episode after looking at it! Great job. I did some fixing myself for fun, but I learn so much from your videos as I'd never of thought of moving cargo by rail. I clearly need to continue building my own cities and learning the ins and outs of the game, but I am glad you make these videos so I can learn ahead of time. Whoever authored that U interchange that is common in this city needs to fix their asset. Every one of them that was plopped in this city had a hidden stop sign!?
Horky Borky… a phrase I'll probably never use... but never get tired of hearing you say it :) I've watched about 20 of your vids after finding your channel about 1.5 weeks ago... love it. Looking forward to more Teaville and Surviving the Aftermath. Thanks for putting out content for city builder lovers.
I played cities again after watching your videos for a while and thanks to the things I learned by watching I have absolutely no traffic issues anymore. Thank you!
18:15 again forced people not to use the junction. I know you're probably doing so many of these, it makes sense to miss a few, but YT comments are here to always point that out :p (p.s. I think you may have missed some lane management on the swindon randabout)
Love watching your city fixes Biffa. Very informative. Though I’m sad that my 1st city needs almost double the RAM that I have to run 😭 Was thinking of asking you to help my factory supplies routing
dang there is a lot of those videos, finely watch em all. love em. Dont have the game myself yet but love those games. And the way that your tea is overrouling everything is wonderful to hear. your defently have me hanging around
I enjoyed seeing the changes to the buildings as the montage played, maybe showing some of the cities growth as traffic and shipping is fixed would allow for us watching to understand how that helps. Love the videos, always watch with my Aunt now, she waits to hear it and is disappointed when you don't make her giddy.
@ 23:38 did you notice the boat sank in the river on the left? I was fighting my city ..... traffic was absolutely great like 90% (I like heavy industy load) and all of a sudden there was traffic on all the highways coming into the grids I had purchased from off grid and about a zillion cars just packed my city to a standstill. ... my laptop I think is the culprit. ... 100% CPU usage, 100% RAM usage and the dual GPU set up was reported as 410% usage with 4 FPR.... new computer supposed to be here tomorrow, wish me luck! And Biffa.... you got me into this mess getting me hooked on Cities Skylines, thanks for the tutorials and the addiction! Lol
I must say as well... I love that you didn't need to touch every single junction in this city to get stuff working. Interesting to see something that wasn't just all correcting lanes & roundabouts.
Well that being said, he didn't need to touch any junction. Just delete all that messy lane management and get rid of truck traffic either by setting more cargo terminals or by fixing import problems (or both). Also that 4 way highway junctionts are not designed well in general and can't hold much traffic.
That moment you find yourself mumbling in Biffa's tone while playing Cities Skylines... Thanks for the helpful video's Biffa, My Cities crashed from 105k people to 35k because off trafic, your helpful tips saved the citie!
Hi Biffa, where did you find the music at the end ("Easy Tales" by Michael Flory"? I've checked the three songs you listed in the description but they don't appear to match. Googling "Easy Tales" didn't help either. :(
Oops silly question. It was "Melissa" haha! Gonna leave this comment up though to show you how much I appreciate that you shared that info with us in the description.
Hey Biffa, I’m tying to get started at Cities and so far I think my city’s not too bad. But I was wondering if you could make a video on general tips at getting started - not just traffic tips, but general city planning tips. Also what DLCs do you recommend as must-haves?
I'd just like to say, thank you for getting me interested in this game (and consequently spending a ton of time with it) and worrying about traffic more than I have ever done in my life XD I get worried if I see my traffic dip under 80% lol But you'd be disgusted by my underground roads :P
@@petrgrebenicek1067 My first "well done" city has a HUGE number of underground roads...it's horribly messy BUT it keeps my 1 highway main access working fine XD
@@sweetchik460 I placed cargo trains to edge of map. City is separated to districs. Did over 15 metro lines connecting districs and others running around in the district. Tree industry is separated circuit, ppl travel there through metro. It is my first city and going fine. Traffic is just busy, but flowing giving me 75% after fixing some issues with one cargo station that was spaming trucks. It is rather small city with 40K ppl now, but also provides like avg. 30-60K weekly income. However I am more focusing to learn than to grow.
I had a ton of traffic "returning to the facility", so I built a one-way loop with two harbours in it and restricted trucks to go past the first harbour of the loop. Automatically, the first harbour only exports and the second one only imports with no returning traffic on either. Traffic went down a lot and the industry kept doing its thing. (Traffic manager mod required)
Biffa's tips help me a lot in managing my traffic but I also found some nuggets of wisdom on the steam support boards. 1) Do not mix cargo and passenger trains. This stops cargo trains from clogging your passenger network (forcing people back into their cars). 2) Passenger trains should have a few dedicated train stations connected to the outside, and a separate internal system.This prevents your passenger trains from getting blocked by intercity trains. 3) Try to keep your imports of goods down. Raw materials is so far fine. The internal transport of your own produced raw materials is much heavier traffic (lorries, not small trucks). 4) If you do create train (t-)junctions, keep a train length between crossings. This gives them a place to stop without blocking a junction.
Biffas videos have helped me so much, I've never had a problem with city traffic since following his videos except for the new one I'm building, gonna have to dig deep and find the root of the problem (it's only 50% traffic)
I dont even play this game, i have never played it, but somehow watching you fix fictitious traffic problems is very relaxing. Would you be able to get a hold of a real city in the future? "A biffa a day keeps the hypertension away"
Hey Biffa, with the terminal at 6 minutes, wondering why when you were redoing the road, why didn't you remove the road from the second terminal and weave the road in a way that the same road went by both? Terminals?
I've sat through 4 of your videos already and I have no Idea why! I don't play this game, really don't ever intend on playing it but for some reason I find this sort of city planning fascinating to watch. Only thing that bothers me is you say "give way " yet here in the US we say Yield. all in all great videos!
Not really, giant blocks of single use zoning is not good for traffic. It means everyone has to drive to work or to the shop and all industry has to drive to and from commercial areas. Mixed use zoning is super beneficial in decreasing traffic.
I am pretty sure that the only things that matters on roundabout settings is the giving/having priority and "moving on a blocked junction". For example: "Allow/disallow lane changing for vehicles going straight on" does not really affect the way cars swap lanes when inside the roundabout(they do no matter what) or when they are entering the roundabout(because they are not going straight)
18:25 The problem I see many people "solving" is the one featured at this particular moment in the video. The different connectors are so close to each other than even with line math you can't solve. In this particular example, you have a 2 and a 1 line joining into a 3 line on the right and setting it to go each to one line, and without any node in the middle, you'll get to the next junction in which you force the rightmost line to go away to the right exit. Similarly, the ones joining from the left can never go right in the next junction. The traffic flows, yes, but there are impossible routes.
a fast and easy way to build a puffer would also be to (mis)use a 4+ lane roundabout leadig the traffic inwards in a spiral and build an exit from the innermost lane. (or the other way round - however you like it most)
I've watched so many of his videos that lane mathematics has been ingrained into my head. XD Now whenever i design a city I always use it on my highways. Even the ones when i custom build a map.
In France, we have a song about a caterpillar. It says it: "C'est la chenille qui se prépare En voiture les voyageurs La chenille part toujours à l'heure" In english, it says something like this: "It is the caterpillar who prepare In cars, travellers The caterpillar go always on time!" The first picture of the video remind me this. :)
Biffa, where can I find this harbor with train connection? I need it so bad for my city, I play Mass transit, please advise. I found one in the workshop but for another version of the game.
The first time I made a dock it was like that but recent cities don't have this problem. I think it is caused by either not having enough or having too much domestic industry. Too much and you get too many trucks exporting excess goods, too little and you get too many commercial trucks importing goods which go back to the dock. The second scenario might be the case here. It's also possible that I just give trucks more options now since I usually have some cargo rail and air stations as well like what you did
Rather than use just lane mathematics to shape traffic, I have a rather efficient method based on fluid dynamics. If traffic moves out of an area faster than it can come in, it can never get filled up. To achieve this, I set the speed limit higher on departing lanes than on arriving lanes. A difference of five or ten across the busy area can be enough to keep things moving. I still like to force drivers to stay in their lane when passing junctions but I also like to make the traffic fan out and fill available lanes. Thus, more lanes means more traffic can move through. I merge underused lanes into one and allow a choice of two lanes for busy lanes.
