Make Better Freeways! - Exploring the Advantages of "Ring Roads" in Cities Skylines 

The Netherlands uses A for Highways, like in germany "Autobahn". One or 2 digets after the A, means its a "Rijksweg" so a national managed road. 3 digets mean its a "proincial snelweg" so regional managed. The E stands for a long, (trans-)european road.

If you want to really nerd out, they take the "shortest path", as in the game uses a shortest path graph algorithm, (most likely *A-star* or a variant thereof). "Shortest" in this context isn't referring to any sort of physical measurement like a length or speed or whatever, it is just an abstract "cost" or "weight" to go from one node to another and represents whatever the developer wants it to. The algorithm for Cities Skylines takes into account the distance and speed between nodes (and possibly other factors) when calculating a cost, and whichever path between two nodes ends up with the lowest total cost is the chosen path. I think your correction is useful as "shortest path" might be confused by non-programmers or people not familiar with graph theory to be about something else, such as just distance, but calling it the shortest path is technically correct.

You should really be examining Indianapolis with this concept. It is actually commonly called "Circle City" by residents. And this was an intentional nickname from the surveyor/designer in 1820. There is "Monument Circle" right in the center of the city, and as you go out there are more circles in the down town area, and then a major 465 Loop that encompasses the entire city. The state subtitle is "The Crossroads of America" because more interstate highways bisect the city and state than any other in the country, and half the nation’s population is within a days drive of Indianapolis. So there is a ton of railroad and highway infrastructure. And I've never been to a better airport than Indianapolis International. Historically they've been pretty bad at public transit options, but over the last 15 years there has been a major push adding a lot of bike lanes and stronger bus routes/dedicated lanes.

I love this video because Yumbl spends so much time looking at ACTUAL cities using this concept!

This concept also works well for urban railways or metros. Notable cities featuring ring lines are Berlin (S41/S42), Tokyo (Yamanote Line), London (Circle Line - sort of), Moscow (Line 5) or Glasgow.

Quick Guide on the naming conventions in the Netherlands (being a Dutchy myself): the highways in the country itself are numbered with A(number), in the case of the first highway you talked about the A1. The E numbers are highways that cross a national border and thus change number wise. They have them an extra code to make it easier that it will cross a border at some point and continu

I'd be down to watch a city build series with Yumbl using a ring road.

Encircling your city with maximal access roads ensures that whatever direction people are going or coming from, they'll have the option. It takes your road hierarchy up to the max, and pushes the most cars out to the fringes as possible. And the point about keeping through traffic out is great too - you only want people going into your city if they're actually there to engage with your city - no window shopping cims allowed.

Ring roads are really common in the UK because of rules on demolishing historic buildings in city/town centres. The city in which I was born has a roman wall encasing the inner city. There is then an inner ring road not too far outside the roman walls and a bypass further outside the city

As someone who inevitably hates my creations within a week of starting a new city, I recently took this approach and it's kind of changing the game for me. I loaded up a map (Fisher Enclave) in map editor and took out all of the "inner city" highways, connecting all the default highways with a pretty large ring (roughly 4 tiles of area inside) via T junctions. And then I hybridized the ring idea with a train start, running a rail line through the inside and using Find It, still in the editor, to hook up both passenger and cargo stations into the start tile on some dirt roads. I also added a diamond (again, using Find It to place non-highway roads in the editor) onto the ring road and ran it to the very edge of the start tile, but didn't hook it up to any surface streets. My goal was to have the start completely disconnected from the highway network, with all the Cims and traffic spawning from the rail stations, and only hook up to the highway once my city naturally expanded to the edge of the tile. It didn't take very long to modify the map to set it up, and it worked exactly how I wanted it to. I'd imagine most players (maybe with the exception of pure beginners) could whip something like this up themselves, even if it takes a few attempts of trial and error. I wasn't super confident using the editor, or getting the rail start to work, but I figured it out on my second try. It's still early in my build, I just reached Busy Town, hooked up the city to the diamond I built, and I'm getting ready to expand into a second tile, but I'm already liking this about a million times better than basically any other city I've fizzled out on. It's really cool to have a start with just purely local traffic. Even if you don't want to go through the hassle of setting up a train start, you could do something similar with editing a map to have a ring highway, and put a standard non-highway street through the middle of it and through your start tile, hooked up to the ring on each end. That still gets all the dummy traffic away, leaving only the cars that actually have destinations in your city to drive along that slower street that you begin your build off of. Pretty much any map that has four highway connections could be a good candidate for a ring edit, especially if they're spaced out to all four edges of the map.

If you ever decided to go into pure urbanism (think city beautiful, strong towns, city nerd, not just bikes), I'd watch it all day! Brilliant stuff!!

Great stuff! My town is surrounded by a kind of ring-road, sort of "D" shaped. The straight edge of the shape is the interstate, and the curved portion is a 4- to 6-lane; there's a sense of familiarity when it comes to this type of thing! You've inspired me to give this a go in my own build!

I ended up making a sort of square around my city once. Using road hierarchy I made the smaller roads go through the center and the bigger roads feed them from the outside. It worked in a fashion, but this seems like a much better system. I'll definitely try it.

Honestly a 10/10 video for me Man used real life references, this is almost like a short college lecture

Awesome explanation. My city, Rome Italy, has a ring road and pretty much all highways (Highway A24 being the only exception) terminate at the ring road or turn into arterials. Rome has also a highway within its city limits (Tangenziale Est), which is not directly connected to the ring road, which is closer to the city center, though a part of it is tunneled.

I lived south of the Capital Beltway in Virginia for a couple years. While I was to young to remember much of the roads, I do remember mention of the beltway. Also, it’s just a pretty area and nice being able to go into DC for a day because there was a special event going on somewhere or something. We would drive to the nearest Metro station, about 5 mins away, and walk around DC or ride the Metro. It’s the only time I’ve been in a place where public transit was offered at any substantial amount.

Most big cities in China have ring highways, similar to Admterdam. Quite some of them have 2 or more kind of concentric rings. That applies to older, inland cities on plains, such as Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing, Guangzhou. Newer and port cities tent to have grid like highways, such as Shenzhen, Qinhuangdao, Yantai, Weihai. Usually, they are not or have never been the capital city of that province in the recent centuries. Big, capital cities tend to expand outwards radially and get more and more rings. Coastal, port cities tend to expand along the coast line, then radiate inland.

An addition to this: in a lot of cities with ring roads, we also have so-called P+R stations (parking and recreation). These are often located at intersections of the road network and public transit network, where you can park your car for a cheaper price, often combined with a discounted public transit ticket, so that you can continue your journey towards the inner city by public transit. These P+R stations are mostly located near the service interchanges on the ring road.

I'm so glad you highlighted the DC Beltway. I grew up in the Maryland suburbs of DC. DC and Baltimore have a great history of "highway revolts" that stopped some more aggregious highway plans. The spur that heads from the SW corner of the beltway (now 395) was meant to continue right through the city core instead of ending as it does now at New York Avenue. It would have connected with 95 again at the "College Park Interchange" which explains why the modern park-and-ride is there and the interchange is so overbuilt. Likewise in Baltimore, the highway I-83 was stopped before it cut through Canton and Fells which is why those neighborhoods are so old and dense. Instead 83 just kind of ends, just like 70 and Baltimore's 395.

Kyiv has two concentric (sorta) ringroads in the city, though they were made with huge spare capacity in the soviet times of carlessness. It might be more "effective" if the inbound highway ended at the other highway, consecutively making up a ringroad out of themselves.

Nice to see you cover my home town Amsterdam. There are some less obvious reasons why the modern day city planners would want to avoid traffic in the old city center of Amsterdam. Basically the old city center where the canals are were build on a thick package of clay and peat layers with a layer of sand underneath, are slowly sinking. The heavy traffic accelerate the sinking. In the recent years, they had to conduct lots of renovations to the canal quays, and bridges. A necessity to prevent further damages to the residence and businesses. The sinking problem became very apparently during the building stage for a new subway connection between Amsterdam South and Amsterdam North. Talking about road connection to Amsterdam North. The ring road A10 what you see today, is not actually what was originally planned back in the '70. Context: back in the '70, Netherlands was still car centric in their planning and design. So the plan was actually for the A10 to go straight into the city center heart and continue on to go North (starting at what is now the S112 "Gooiseweg"). But during building around Nieuwmarkt, massive riots broke out (just like when the subway was build) because of eminent domain being exercised by the government. They still sorta got their way, Because the road from Gooiseweg, over Wibautstraat and continue on to the IJtunnel was/is a major arterial road. But the use of it got diminished in recent years. Also due to being closed for a long time for maintenance and safety improvements to the now aged and abused tunnel. Unfortunately as a long time residence of Amsterdam. I have to say the public transportation services has been declining in recent years. The North-South subway line was massively expensive overspend. Leaving them no choice but to cut into other lines or even eliminating them.

Fun fact about the freeways in the US: they were designed with quick and easy transport of military equipment in mind

The strongest point on the Amsterdam Ring Road for me is the fact that has several Park&Ride locations right where the service interchanges are. This means that many cars simply park at the ringroad and people continue into the city by tram or metro.

In France, we call ring roads "rocades", except in Paris. And it works very well... except in Paris. It is besause of what we call centralization : all transits, trains and highways are converging to Paris. Even jobs, activities and administration are concentrated there, so there is more traffic going in than going through. And compare it to London or Berlin, it is very small for the number of people living there. So thank you to take Amsterdam as an exemple, Paris is just a mess when it comes to traffic ;)

Great video and I concur to ring roads. If you notice the city at the start on the Wikipedia (Sheffield) said "Inner Ring Road", this is because that city has more than one ring road. It used to be one, but as the city grows it now has an inner & outer. More people should adopt ring roads.

Metro Manila is based on concentric ring roads. Living next to C5, the opposite side (Ortigas CBD) is physically close yet so annoyingly far without a car. I hate it, it's supposed to lighten loads on smaller roads but ends up generating so much car traffic and congestion on choke points.

Houston has 2 beltways (I-610 and Sam Houston Tollway), while Phoenix has a few bypasses that are almost beltways (State Route 101 is the closest to a full beltway, and State Route 303 is a full bypass.

Awesome, I asked about ringroads in the comments before, was curious and thought you'd like them. The Dutch city of Utrecht is also a great example of encouraging public transport, biking and walking.

another thing with ringroads, they don't have to be all highways, you can complete a ringroad with just a main road like you see in Utrecht, 's-Hertogenbosch or Amersfoort. this mainroad is just for usage for traffic going into the city and not bypassing it.

Nice to see you pointing out Amsterdam, as I am from Amsterdam myself. I do use a ring road in my newest city, too bad I can't post it here. But besides the traffic in the city center, the reason you also don't want to drive in Amsterdam are the outreageous parking prices :D Thanks again for a nice video @YUMBL

Indeed, personal autos are actively discouraged in Amsterdam. As a side-note, the autobahns have some exceptionally driver-friendly details, the signage in particular.

Many default maps have already a highway network that are halfway a ring road, so a way to build the ring road organically (v.g. without infinity money) is that when the city is big enough, the ring is completed and the initial highway is down-graded.

Although i agree with the general idea of the video, the road lay-out depends on how your city develops, so do not be affraid to remodel your city a few times. Some Cities: Skylines players forget that you can remodel your city ;) (and the speedlimits)

A good example to study is Loop 289 in Lubbock, TX - designated in 1955 and built through the 1960s, it is just about the oldest Interstate-grade ring road ever constructed. (Lubbock also holds the distinction of being the smallest city - not even a metropolitan area, but a single city - to be serviced by a ring road.) In fact US-87, US-84, and US 62 weren't even divided highways at the time Loop 289 was designed, and Loop 289 was nearly 40 years old at the time Avenue H (US-87) was upgraded and expanded to form the I-27 corridor. Though malls get something of a bad rap nowadays, the near-completion of Loop 289 was the primary factor in the location and creation of South Plains Mall in the southwest corner (on Slide Rd near 60th St, built in 1972) as most everything west of Quaker Ave and south of 50th St was much like the northeast corner inside The Loop until the early 1970s. In fact, when Loop 289 was laid out, its route laid roughly two miles beyond pretty much the whole of everything that existed in Lubbock at the time - excepting the Farmer's Cotton Co-Op in the southeast corner, which was actually responsible for the creation of Loop 289; to divert the extensive truck traffic away from the downtown area. Being a city of 260,000 - 10th most populous in Texas and 85th in the US - it has experienced near-linear growth since its founding in 1909, even with sizable influx which came from the construction of nearby Reese AFB in 1941. (Another slight jump came from the opening of Texas Tech University in 1923.) The city's relative youth (as well as being a single city, as opposed to being a metro area) makes it a pretty good reference for how ring roads affect how a city develops.

In brazil it's called "contorno" a word often used to "returns" or "go back, or around". but it's very common to see this when a highway (in brazil they're usually 2 lanes 2 ways) used to go straight through a city (which was terrible cuz you would have crossing and lights on the highway) and they build a contorno that goes around the city to get that unrelated traffic off the city

I'd love to see you implement this into an existing city in-game, rather than your usual test map. I think exploring the re-use of the former roads/space would lead to some neat discoveries of uses.

Thanks for this video, I loved it! In CS I like to build my city with a ring as soon as I hit 4 tiles and that’s the outer ring at that point but it will be an inner ring as soon as it grows larger. I’ll remove the highway and replace with arterial and transit

Sees YUMBL makes a mini beltway in the middle of a larger beltway. I’m suddenly reminded of the C1 (Inner Circular Route) and C2 (Central Circular Route) beltways of the Shuto Expressway in Tokyo. I may have not dived deep into the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD). When I come to detailing my highway. I come to a stump on how to indicate directionality (Using cardinal directions) on a ring road that’s a complete true loop like the I-495 Capital Beltway or C1 Inner Circular Route in Tokyo (The “4” already clues me in that it’s a spur/auxiliary highway that branches off and reconnects back to I-95 since it’s an even number, Thanks CGP Grey’s The Interstate’s Forgotten Code). I’d end up copying the precedent I-495 set as having the clockwise travel be designated Inner Loop and counterclockwise travel designated Outer Loop.

Thank you thank you thank you for this! Although I've "quit" Cities for a while now (waiting to upgrade PC parts lol), I remember a while back looking into ring roads because I noticed/it was pointed out to me somewhere that most capital cities or big cities in general are surrounded by highways in a ring. Couldn't find any obvious benefit or digestible information at the time but I'm glad I wasn't the only person interested in it.

That’s awesome, man! I’ve been trying to make ring roads and express ways to improve traffic and mobility in my city. I still didn’t find the goldilocks of it, but i think I’m getting there

Bordeaux (Fr) has a similar ring roads, but it's hitting a problem: the flow of cars (and mostly truck) that want to travel from north to south is too big and cannot be efficiently redirects without creating a new highway in the whole country. Today, there are thinking of creating a bypass below the city to remove traffic from the ring roads which is already suffering because of the always increasing traffic.

One thing to consider with a ring road - or really your highway system in general - is that the highway itself has enough capacity that you won't have to worry about it (especially if you have 5- or 6- lane highway roads to upgrade it to death). But your interchanges (especially your service interchanges) might very well be the first roads that get clogged up. This is how the ring road really does its magic. Consider a district just inside the ring, which is connected to it with 1 or 2 service interchanges. Traffic originating from that district that wants to move further into the center of the city (or maybe to the opposite side) will take the local roads. And only traffic that wants to travel away from the city center or to other districts along the ring road will have to use the service interchange(s). Whereas with a network that has a fast highway route going from that district into and beyond the city center, pretty much all drivers will prefer to use it, which multiplies the strain on the interchanges. I am talking about Cities Skylines here, but it's also kind of true in real life. If highways reach US metropolis widths, then your interchanges may require more than 1 lane for its ramps, and that becomes a nightmare safety wise and/or cost wise. The only way to get even close to 1 lane of capacity into off ramps is "trap lanes" which forces drivers to make lane changes, because drivers that can't change out of them are trapped into turning off as the name suggests. Furthermore, you can't use cloverleafs any more, which are the cheapest option.

Really a nicely detailed explanation of road infrastructure design and considerations. It's so easy to miss these details unless you are specifically thinking about them. CS really opens your eyes to what is all around (and under!) you and your videos help make sense of it all. Thanks YUMBL !!!

Ring roads? In my city? It's more common than you think. I'm a fan of these and think of them the exact way you described: they act like a traffic magnet. I still have main highways through the city, I guess because it's American but the game also encourages that. I think next time I'll do the true ring road method rather than the auxiliary beltway. Fun fact, the "Fix The Traffic" scenario can be completed with little more than establishing a ring road plus some development.

In the Netherlands the letters for highways are simple: - A = Local known highway with a corresponding name, like A1, A2 etc - N = Local known freeway with a corresponding name, like (in my neighborhood), N33, N34 - E = Meant for Foreigners to identify these roads in The Netherlands.

here in Munich where I live it is kinda interesting. We have a almost finished ringroad (A99). The incoming highways from the north (A9), south-east and west (A8) and south (A96) don't really terminate in the outer ring-highway but in the "Mittlerer Ring" meaning middle ring. It's the biggest arterial road in the city and probably the most important road for getting someplace. We also have a center ring, but nobody really cares about it because its so small.

There are many smaller cities in Belgium that have this but they are not highways more arterials depending on where you drive this road can have speedlimits from 70kmph to 90kmph moest of them having two lanes

Thank you for talking about where these have been done in the world. It is important to note that building highways like these too close to the city centre can cause problems accessing the main business district - for example Auckland, NZ has a semi-ring road around the main city that greatly reduces access by walking, biking and bus. Ring Roads still need to be built in the context of the city and have bridges or underpasses that cater to local movement.

4:36 AFAIK london has 3 ring roads: the inner ring, then there are the north circular road (A406) and its southern counterpart (A205) and then there is the M25, the motorway (in germany it would be called an autobahn). and yes, the M25 also connects to other motorways. the M1, M3, M4, M11, M23 and M40 continue on the inside as motorways but the M20 and the M26 do not, although they do continue as smaller roads.

I have been doing a one way three lane elevated highway ring for years now on my builds just outside the downtown area. I also always do a grid downtown with high density Commercial and do a two lane highway(one each direction) backbone underground that connects directly to the normal interstate and a branch that goes to a cargo hub (plane/train/air cargo) and a couple the connect directly to the center of the large commercial areas. I have no traffic issues in large cities where I do this.

Ring road system are very popular in major cities in India. Ring roads are used in my country are 1. Connect major highways without going in the city. 2. Bypass 3. Helps to improve logistics. 4. Avoid traffic happened in the city core. The obvious example is Chennai. The city has 3 ring road system. The ring road looks like semi circular.

A really nice follow up subject on this video would be the city of Houten (Netherlands). This small city has a ring road, called Rondweg. But what it makes the ring road so efficient is the "bloemkoolwijk" (cauliflower-neighborhood) structures inside the ring. Every neighborhood inside of the ring has it's own connection to the ring road. Every neighborhood entrance point is like a stump of the cauliflower structure. From these stumps roads branch off into smaller roads going more inwards the city center. But the different cauliflower structures do not connect to each other. So there is no possibility for cars to go from one neighborhood to another neighborhood, using internal shortcuts. Only lots of walking, cycling and bus routes are connected between the different neighborhoods inside of the ring. Cars allways need to go out to the ring, and then get back in again trough another neighborhood entrance point. This way car based true traffic does not acquire in Houten. Also this way people are encouraged to use more CO2-friendly options for short innercity trips instead of cars.

Hey Yumbl, CityNerd made a video and featured this video there! He says he found your take a lot more nuanced than he was expecting. I love both of your channels so i thought it was cool that you featured in his video

I mostly play on my own maps and always place the highways on the side of the map and connect the city with country roads. This way my cities develop more naturally, and yes, I usually get to a point where you need a ring road.

Another Video for the "fix my Interchange" Reddit posts. You should add a short summary to the Fix my traffic Meta. I like your style a lot - you give insight with real world examples. Connectivity is one thing, but I think you can game the system, by refusing connectivity. E.g. whilst my city has highway connections and interconnection, I will make sure that the distance by road will be longer than the walking distance, metro or bike. Since the algorithm favors shortest distances - people seem to be rather walking.

Today I learned I grew up in the same place as YUMBL, NOVA. Love your video, they are basically required learning for any new city skylines player.

This ring road is also famous for Washington DC, the Beltway. They are even starting to add a subway line like a big ring road outside the city connecting suburbs. Essentially I could see as cities get larger slowly expanding rings, double rings or meta cities of colliding rings with one another

That is the A1 highway that spans across the country all the way to the A10 highway which is the ring road around Amsterdam :) I live close by and drive there regularly.

We have two of them here in the Houston area. The loop I-610 and Beltway 8.

In the Netherlands 'A' are the national highways and 'N' are provincial highways. 'E' highways are national highways that are part of the European highway network. A and N highways can be part of the same ringroad system for a city. Looking at Almere for example, the ring road there is made up of the national highways A6 and A27 and the provincial highways N701, N702 and N305.

In my city, Krakow in Poland, work related to the completion of the city ring road has been underway for several years. Last year, in response to the project of one of the ingerchange, a RU-vid video appeared, which with the help of Cities: Skylines showed errors in the project. The General Directorate of Roads and Motorways, after reading the video, decided to change the project.

Hey Yumbl's back! I like the ring road concept but never used it in my cities. I'll have to try it out. Maybe an elevated ring road so you can run local roads right under the highway.

London was supposed to have four (almost) concentric ring motorways. They only ended up with one and a half. The problem with using highways for inner rings is that they end up just being a concrete collar, constraining the city centre with a strip of urban blight. Modern designs tend to use surface level ring roads as distributors to maintain connectivity and cohesion.

Moscow is pretty interesting example of ringroad, to be clear, there are few of them with different sizes. Saint Petersburg has a weird one, with sea part

YES !!! I’ve been saying this for years; the default highways actually make the game harder not easier. Bulldozing them and building a ring road will make your city function so much better.

Copenhagen would’ve been a brilliant example with its four ringroads. O2 being a regular primary road, circling inner Copenhagen, while the rest are circling Copenhagen from its outskirt towns as either highway roads or primary roads. The city is also planning on building an additional two ringroads, one of which would continue to Helsingborg, Sweden through a bridge or tunnel, to better connect the Öresund Metropolitan region.

As somebody who is studying civil engineering, and a massive fan of this game, the only (widespread) method of transportation design that is constantly used is both euro-centric design and American design, is ring roads. I live in Canada, very close to Ottawa, and they (without going into it) did not build a ring road and instead built an express-way, and a couple cities in Canada did this, although you would have a hard time finding a large urban American or European city without a ring road, redirecting heavy traffic and creating a corridor for traffic from external locations integrating into local roads almost makes arterial roads only necessary for local traffic, and in a million+ city that is invaluable to ease congestion. We can clearly see with the 401 in Toronto that expressways don't do it for large cities. Compound Ring Roads are also used commonly in Europe because they don't sprawl the same way the US does, which is counter intuitive because compound ring roads are perfect for dividing suburbs but US is always been ass backwards in road design sadly.

Houston has likely the most extreme case of beltways in the US. Four utterly massive highways encircling the metro area.

I live a couple of miles outside the Sheffield Ring Road from the picture you showed on the wiki, Ours does not work. Public transport is a joke, costs more to get to the city than it does to run a car for a week, trying to get to the public transport is a feat in itself. Also Sheffield City Council needs lessons in TM:PE and Intersection Marking Tool then people who are not used to the journey would know how to there destination and not hesitate at every junction. Nice video as always 👍

Living in the Netherlands, ringroads work, but there is always adjustment and maintenance going on about every 5 to 10 years, I have seen major intersections reconstructed repeatedly just in Groningen. Can't imagine how bad Amsterdam sometimes get 🤭

Here in Illinois around Peoria IL we have the central highway designated as I74. The bypass is designated as I474. I like that. It is easily recognizeable

E is the european name, A is the national name for the road. I've always seen the ring roads as a kind of net to capture and distribute a stream of cars. London, Paris, Rotterdam and Amsterdam all have ring roads that eventually terminate highways. In London it's a bit harder to see, and it's also more pacman shaped, and Paris has it creep up too far to the centre, but the idea is there. Increasing surface area to lower pressure. Those highways that cut through the ring will cause extra stress on the system. The belt is an integral part of getting around in a car in the Netherlands. Especially in Groningen I hear a lot about it, with how they quartered off the centre from cars, leaving you no choice but to use the ring. It's also SUPER important that they don't cut through the ring here because this allows for fastest routes by car, which is what we want to avoid. NJB's video on hoofdnets shows it and in most of the car trips he uses the ring. I really would go so far as to say that a ring road is a vital part of infrastructure for a human-centric city in a car-centric world.

Nice video. Wanted to write how ring roads are used in the city I live in, so here is a small wall of text if you feel like reading. Ring roads are nice for sure to move traffic around in a city. This small city I am from in Denmark, we have 3 rings in for about 190k citizens where the outer ring called Ring 3 ( yeah very imaginary and the other two are called Ring 1 and Ring 2 😊) connects to the highways that goes north and south of the city and connects to other places/cities It does soak up a good deal of traffic, but in the morning and afternoon it will have larger ques as well for sure when people need to go to and from work The inner road, Ring 1 is about 5,5 km long and is around the most inner city The middle ring, Ring 2 is about 18 km long and is about 3-4 km further out from ring 1 and some major places are near that ring, such as the current hospistal ( they are building a new bigger one that should be ready in 2024 now, they started in 2019 and were exspected to be done 2022 ). This ring is the one that is used by most, and has the most traffic on it during the day along with all the problems that gives The out ring, Ring 3 is about 8 km long, it is shorter due to it not going all the way around, it actually only covers about 1/3 of the ring on the southern east/west side of the city where we have a shopping mall, a hyperstore, the university, congress center and a larger area with transport companies having their HUBs placed. Below google map of the city, and the Ring 2 is the roads marked o2 And to the right you have the Ring 3 marked o3, that shows it does not go all the way around the city. Now Ring 1 is not on the map, since due to some rebuilding in the center some of the roads have been closed, so it isnt really there anymore, but it was about halfway between o2 and the city center Again just to show you a smaller town, having multiple ring roads www.google.dk/maps/@55.3910828,10.4687854,12.71z

You've described my exact daily route from A1 to Amsterdam-Noord by the Ringweg (A10), that's wild! It's about 5 minutes from the T-section to Noord, it's such a breeze to drive there. Quick and easy access to anywhere from that Ringweg.

The A1 in the Netherlands is my home away from home. Quality of the roads here are of the highest standard. When you cross the border to Belgium or Germany, you will literally see and feel the difference.

I believe it's Saskatoon (or Moosejaw) in Saskatchewan, Canada that has a ring road, but they never finished it, so it only goes around 3 quarters of the city, causing endless confusion to non-locals trying to take the ring road and suddenly finding the ring end.

Absolutely fantastic video - you have gained a new suscriber! Great work, loving the parallel with real life, the Google maps and the explanations 👍

I usually employ ring highways in my cities. Sometimes an inner belt and an outer belt for the suburbs. I will also often tunnel the starting highway that gets too close to my city centre when I have enough money. That way I can build right over it. One or two exits will rise up from the ground into round abouts.

Philadelphia has no beltway, but there are bypasses that serve a similar purpose. I-276 (PA Turnpike) is the northern bypass and main east-west traffic route across PA. I-474 (Blue Route) serves as the western bypass. The NJ Turnpike and its parallel I-295 are the eastern bypass. Together, I-276 and I-476 form a partial ring in the PA suburbs. In NJ, the Turnpike handles through traffic while I-295 handles local traffic. Then, I-295 bends around the north Trenton to form a partial beltway.

I'm from Canada and we have ring roads too. Saskatoon, SK is actually called ring Rd. Regina, SK is called circle Dr. Winnipeg, MB is perimeter hwy.

For what I know (I live in Spain), most country highways are named like A-number. European highways, those which goes through many countries are called E-number - E for European Route. In the case of Catalonia (NW of Spain) the regional highways begin with C. Also we try to remove national roads through towns to allow more walkable towns. Also many Spanish capital cities have the ring roads, but mostly with notorious annoying traffic jams.

Love the concept, thx for f showing. I guess you'll find it in many places where authorities did not allow to demolish the (old) town for high capacity traffic. Using this layout in CS made me hate Vanilla interchanges and build custom ones🤩 Check out Munich, Germany: In addition to a large highway ring, there's an arterial ring within city limits. In CS, it's even better than IRL due to no maintenance roadworks

There are also cities in The Netherlands which have a square 'ring'road, called a 'ruit' - 'diamond' (Rotterdam and Eindhoven come to mind, although Eindhoven has an incomplete one) but the idea is the same.

I'm from TX. In San Antonio, they have 2 larger loops and one small one made up of 3 highways. 410 loops around San Antonio, and Loop 1604 loops around 410. If you connect 37, 35, and I10, it makes a small "loop" inside of 410.

I like using ring roads to get around the city. Dallas has 1 complete, ring highway 635 and a few incomplete slower rings. Charlotte had an incomplete 485 for so long that was only completed a couple years ago. That helps to take traffic out of the city center where 77 & 85 intersect

Most European countries (at least on the continent) use a "A" marker for freeway type roads, so in the case of your example the A1 starts in Amsterdam at the A10 ring road, and heads all the way to the German border to the east. The A2 also starts in Amsterdam and ends all the way down in Limburg near Maastricht where it enters Belgium. The A3.... does not exist. It was a road planned in the 1960s as a secondary road between Amsterdam and Rotterdam, but it was never built. The primary road from Amsterdam to Rotterdam is the A4, and passes by Den Haag. Now, you may have noticed the problem already, and that is where the "E" numbers come in. The "A" number roads end at the border, and then the NEXT country (Belgium or Germany for the Netherlands) takes over and has its own "A" number for the road. And that might get a little confusing.... so long before the EU was even a thing, a bunch of European countries got together and devised a "E" road numbering system. The thing that may be slightly confusing here is that the E roads, do not necessarily follow the A roads within countries.... they were more designed for truckers so they could follow a single route and get to the country they need to go to. For instance, the "E30" runs from Cork, Ireland to Omsk, Russia and runs through Wales, England, Netherlands, Germany, Poland, Belarus, and Russia. In the Netherlands it runs from Hoek van Holland (a big ferry port for ferries to England) to the German border. Typically, most people ignore the E routes, unless they are on a multi-country vacation trip, and they know that a certain route will get them to the country they need to go to, and from there they will use the local road system. This is in large part a "relic" these days because of GPS, but in the 1960s, 1970s it was of massive importance to trucker traffic. The roads were guaranteed NOT to end up in old city centers, and would always (or in most cases) bypass city centers. Although in Amsterdam the freeways all end/start at the A10 ring road, that isn't always the case.... and a road could end up in an old city center, and as a 10-wheeler big rig truck..... you might not be happy. Follow the E-routes though, and you are virtually guaranteed to not end up inside a city, but be guided around it, or at the very least guided via roads through a city that can accommodate trucks until you get out again on the other side. Just a little insight in the E road system. :)

houston has several ring roads, with hwy 99 being the newest and largest

E roads are long distance European roads, that go cross countries and maintain the same numbering scheme. Each country has its own numbering system for highways, and The Netherlands uses A as the prefix for highways (as opposed to somewhere like Czechia which uses M or USA which uses I).

Holy shit I didn't know Amsterdam was so damn well planned. Beautiful!

I'm dubious of ring roads in the US because, in a majority of cities that I have seen, the most direct route through still goes through downtown. I recommend reading the persuasive Strong Towns article about bypasses, which highlights design considerations.

I don't really know why they use 2 names, but he A is the National letter of the highway and the E is used Internationally. You also see the E's in Belgium, France and Switzerland for example. I don't know why they don't use it in Germany though.

Ringroads are definitely not car-centric design, as you say, they're the exact opposite. They route cars around the city, rather than making them go through the city; or even if cars want to enter your city, you give them a route that allows them to spend as little time actually inside the city as possible. That's about as non-car-centric as you can get!

E in Europe is used as transeuropean road network and goes thru more countries. A is for a National highway, former Czechoslovakia uses D. E road goes let’s say from Spain on A1, then goes thru France as A3, changes to A6 somewhere But it’s still the same E road.

This isn’t necessarily related to the newer highway “rings”, but many European cities have grown in a ring-like structure because they used to have *walls*. The word “boulevard” for a wide road comes from this (related to “bulwark” in English). In German, arterials are called “Ausfallstraße”, which literally means “sortie road”. Cologne, Germany is an example.

Interstate 220 KINDA does this around Jackson, MS. If you include the sections of I-20 and I-55 they do form a complete-albeit wobbly- ring around most of the city. And it’s fun to speed down…

London has 3 Ring Roads (they would of had more, concentric ones if the Ringways scheme was approved.) The M25/ London Orbital Motorway, the North and South Circular Roads and the London Inner Ring Road. Only the M25 and North Circular have highway-style roadways though.

Dublin, Ireland has a ring road (half ring, it's on the coast). It's 3 lanes most of the way with additional slips where needed. But it's absolutely pushed to it's limit at the moment with traffic in both directions and is now notorious for rush hour accidents which exacerbate the problem. It needs an a new concentric ring further out or additional lanes. Although development space in the area is almost non existent. Time for some eminent domain? 🤔Hope they don't bulldoze my house 😅

I have a city called Eastfield, with 150k population and it has a ring road around it and a motorway/highway not through the city but at the northern outskirts where traffic can flow through easier to the more northern industrial areas. I think that cities that have a proper City Centre and have a ring road with a proper road system around it look quite pretty and make a lot of money!

In Mexico, CDMX, Merida, and Guadalajara (cities where I've lived) have ringroads too. In Mexico City unfortunately, the latest ringroad has actually been absorved by urbanisation, and although it has been enhanced with a second floor, it mainly serves a as a mutated avenue.

I moved the original motorway around the outside of my current city a bit ago. It's a coastal city so I can't build a true ring road, although there is sort of an inner ring road. As well as opening up a lot of space near the river, I decided to pretend it was a real city and converted the huge bridge in the middle of the city to bus, metro and cycling. And I think the traffic congestion dropped when it was finished