Making Traffic Use ALL LANES in Cities Skylines - Understanding the Traffic System 

Good point about the road speed. Actually, I've often found reducing road speed limits very useful for correcting traffic problems. For example, if you've got two similar route options, but one is ever so slightly shorter, you can get huge backups on one while the other is empty. Put in a slower road in place of the one with backups, and you may find the traffic distributes itself more evenly between the two. Putting in bigger, faster roads just encourages more traffic to go that way.

Holy crap, after that 50‘s intro, I wholly expected Ike Eisenhower to pop up and introduce the US Interstate system to us. Good job and another great video.

Managing traffic is one of the things that I really enjoy about C:S. Also vehicular and pedestrian traffic gives the city so much life, and seeing them all go their way with proper road hierarchy and connectivity is bliss :) You explained it well!

I love the way that for a computer game the top tip is always: make sure you have good walking, cycling and public transport links to avoid the need for cars. It's almost like that would be a good model to follow for real life cities!

The principles of road hierarchy can be applied to transit as well. Bike and walking takes the role of local roads, being greatest access, but low range. Your collectors need moderate access, so frequent stops, but greater range and speed than walking. These are typically busses or light rail, or sometimes metro where extra capacity is needed. The collectors function mostly to link local access to arterial routes and other local access. Arterial routes have limited access, so few stops with greater distance between them, and higher speed and range. Modes like trains, monorail, or metro are well suited to this use, but busses can also work, providing they have limited access and cover greater ranges, like a bus with only a few stops across the city. Instead of highways you get external connections, like intercity rail, intercity busses, planes, and ships. These have very little access and should connect to arterial service. The major difference is that all levels of the hierarchy can intersect at the same point. Where a train stops and exchanges with busses, Cims can walk from the area instead, moving straight from arterial to local access or vice versa. This doesn't negate the roll of collectors though, as trying to link all local access directly to arterial service would increase the stop frequency to hamstring the arterial service.

There actually is traffic based lane ai in the game, but it is exclusively being used by the emergency vehicles. They react to traffic on their lane

I have seen a lot of cities skylines tutorials and follow a bunch of RU-vidrs here about managing traffic, but no one is like you. You teach the basics so simply and clearly that I can use them and get good results in my cities. Thank you

Yumbltv... I dont leave many comments on RU-vid, but I wanted to leave this one for you. I really appreciate your content on Cities Skylines. I hope you continue. Your information and explainations are great. Your video titles are clear and cover what is in the video. Your voice is calming. Could watch / listen all day. You do a really good job. Please keep it up. ... and hopefully on into Cities Skylines 2 if they make it.

Here is a tip I use on freeways. Using traffic manager, I change the speed limits on each lane. The slow lane is on the default speed, and each lane up gains ten kilometers of speed. This helps with freeway traffic, especially traffic that is trying to get from one city to another. Through traffic chooses the fastest option, so they don’t get in the way of local traffic that is using the freeway to get from suburbs to downtown for example.

The fun thing about this game is you have to plan ahead. Like, really far ahead. Think about where your traffic will flow to and from and build a road structure to fulfill this demand. But doing so, especially in vanilla, is hard, as you don't get all the road options from the get go. And it is hard to turn local roads into collectors without destroying all that's built alongside it. Planning ahead for 3- or 4-lane intersections make this even harder! Dedicated or combined lanes? Which direction demands doubling up on lanes? Could you achieve higher usage by growing in a certain direction? Man, I love this game.

Hey YUMBL, console player here. It’s been my experience that cims will choose the faster road (within reason) over the shortest distance. Example: a large roundabout with a highway speed overpass will make the frustrating u-turn across traffic instead of exiting onto the purpose-built roundabout under the oncoming highway. Being limited to DLC roads and no traffic manager (to stop turns across oncoming traffic) makes for convoluted solutions.

I think one of the best things that’s helped me out is giving transit the most direct route, and intentionally making the private car’s route allot more circuitous- metro and dedicated, grade separated tram lines can be really good for this imo; you do need good transit nodes/connections tho

I can't thank you enough. The titles of all your videos are perfect but you always drop in some pearls along the way that answer other problems I bump into in my city builds. This one was no exception. Thank you, sir.

the big mistake people make is to not understand or underestimate the rail network and failing to create in intracity network to move goods off the city core, this is usually cause by early game experience where player will build 1 or 2 station, see it overwhelm by traffic and then concluding rail is too problematic to expand further. however like metro system, rail only shine when it become a matured system. a properly build city should not see any truck on the city core's artery because they should be offload and onload from a nearby depot. think of tokyo great shopping district, they are all build around the rail network as that could move both people and goods. treat the game like you are building an amazon distribution network and you can easily maintain 95% traffic in a 100k+ city. if you watch alot of urban planner discussion, you will hear the argument that "the more road u build, the more traffic u have", and that is true, the goal is not to try and carry all the traffic in the road, the goal is to get traffic off the road, and providing alternative and logistic centers are the way. the more road hierarchy you have, the longer the time it take to travel, the less people will walk, this is why u don't see american walking in cities as much as european, the concept of road hierarchy is actually flaw. you must always ensure there are bypass to keep the city connected without forcing people to use the artery road, that is generally the reason why artery road are overwhelmed.

I love how you are explaining this from the perspective of game mechanics, I've had a hard time getting cims to properly utilize asymmetrical roads and now I see why

Thanks for pointing this out. CS is actually super realistic. There's a reason LA is having constant traffic jams and some European cities can deal with it better. Making a better city makes traffic less of a problem.

Another good video, but what else do we expect from the youtuber from the 50s ;) I really like the road decal you have on your arterial roads ( thin it is them ) and we see when you talk about lane usage around 7:40 just looks so nice seeing that "only" on the road :D

I did know about the road hierarchy, but had no idea about how the traffic system pathing worked, or how road speed affects it. Love your videos, I've learned so much from watching you, and it's really changed my playstyle a lot :)

Generally, I try to avoid using ridiculously wide roads, as they ruin walkability. I usually don't go much higher than a 4-lane road except at major intersections, where I might put a 6 or 8 lane road depending on how busy it is.

Actually i was a little anxious to learn some horrific news about major flaws in the traffic system, which made all the city sims in the last 20 years before Skylines practically broken for good and absolutely unplayable. On the other hand i am a bit dissappointed as the information you compiled here is not very surprising. Don't get me wrong, the information is well presented but most of it can be picked up by many people by just playing the game. In the end i am relieved that i will not have to spend hours fiddling with TM:PE lane connector to overhaul everything. So thanks for that ! :)

I'm so glad you made this video! Too often I see people go straight to suggesting TMPE to solve lane usage issues when road planning is the true fix to the issue.

i couldent tell you how many Biffa videos ive watched where the whole time im yelling "slow down the speed limit" on roundabouts

This game is a full fledged Traffic Simulator in disguise. Still love it. 👍

1. If I'm not mistaken, cars do consider possible jams. To be more specific, they factor average speed on the road rather than maximum, which is determined by traffic jams you have on the road. But there's one problem with that. To factor the traffic jams you actually need to have the jams, and only after a backup is stacked and average speed on the road is recalculated, newly spawn vehicle will consider taking another road. So, building a detour cannot clear your main road off the traffic, only reduce it, because cars will take a detour only if there's a jam on the main road (works IRL as well). And there's a delay in reaction, cars chose their way from the very beginning. 2. About not using other lanes. I used to have that problem before, but somehow I overcome it. At first, use the "dynamic lane selection" option in TMPE. I'm not sure if it helps or if it's a placebo, but I use it anyway. Secondly, you can manipulate with lane connector. How's that? Well, if you have cars stacked in one lane, the chances are they're going the same way. Look that way, as you showed in video, and propose an alternative with lane connector. For example, in your case, you can take your intersection and merge two onward lines into one they are going to. But that won't be enough. Then you go to the previous intersection on their way and split the lane they came from into two lanes you want to use (in your case it’s not the intersection, but the node, where the road switches it's asymmetry). Now that should work, because you literally gave the cars two equal options that they will choose randomly.

I've just logged of my Cities after malding with traffic not using all lanes and then this uploaded. What a timing

Very good advice, all of it is very true and applying road hierarchy has helped my cities get much better traffic flow. One thing I've also found helps, for when you still get that 1/3 lanes used the other 2 ignored scenario is to change the TMPE AI system to have it use improved AI, as that can induce vehicles to change lanes based on traffic at higher settings, and thus get lane condensation back-ups to free themselves up simply by allowing the vehicles to spread out and use all the lanes. Dedicated turning lanes at intersections also helps, as vehicles will tend to bunch up on all purpose lanes even when they don't have to and get in each other's way as they all choose the lane that can go left, or straight as that satisfies the needs of all drivers who will be turning left at some point. Same goes for those multi-purpose straight+right lanes. By making lanes that are left turn only, right turn only and straight only, you force the vehicles to spread out and use more lanes, since the middle lane has to turn left, anyone going straight can't use that lane and has to use another lane until they're ready to turn left. Those turning left, have to use the middle lane as they can't turn left from any other lane, and so on. That's a basic and essential part of lane management and though it was shown visually, it was not explained verbally, how and why those dedicated turning and straight lanes were used and how to include them for those who don't know how and why to set that up yet.

Using the traffic policies such as “encourage biking, heavy traffic ban etc” could also work. Great work with the traffic tips, you do deserve more subs

Traffic Manager Presedent Edition is probably the greatest mod ever made for Cities: Skylines.

Great video! I love non-American cities where there is huge amount of streets for pedestrians(half of the streets in my city in the game are like that). Of course if you're doing an American city, this effective way of living it's rare to see xD.

Only started playing CS1, 2 weeks ago.... Don't really like cs2 in its current state but cs1 with all the mods is fantastic.... You make some excellent points and give some food for thought about issues I'm experiencing and they totally make sense... Looking forward to backtracking through your great videos because there is a lot to learn (and have fun in the meantime)

When Billy grew up he became a roundabout. Don't be like Billy.

I have gotten the explanation of traffic (ALL traffic, pedestrian, bike, cars, public transport etc.) that they calculate the pathing by adding a penalty points to the routes. I don't know the exact number added by each entity but it goes like: Bigger roads has less penalty points than smaller roads. Faster roads adds less penalty points than slow. Each intersection/lanechange adds penalty points. Using a car adds more penalty points than public or walking, transferring between public transports adds a tiny penalty (still lower than cars) etc etc. So f ex if you have an intersection you can use increase the speed in one of the lanes and that lane will add less penalty points to the vehicles and they will prefer that road (I think each segment of road adds penalty points, the faster the road, fewer points, the bigger the road, fewer points). So the thinking of traffic as agents is absolutely correct, and each agent calculates the route (when they start) and chooses the route with the LEAST penalty points. You can further modify this by using TM:PE (to change individual speeds in lanes it's needed anyway, as for my example above) and instruct the vehicles to also get penalty points if an intersection is slow with a lot of waiting times. Special lane rules (I think its called) f ex makes it so they never change more than one lane at a time (you have probably seen traffic come to a complete stop on a highway because vehicles comes to a complete stop while changing 2 lanes over, that setting removes that). Otherwise, as usual, a well thought out video from JUMBLAcorp (as me as a swede pronounces it xD)

Solid advice - although i may add that limited access does have one use - i only give neighborhood "branches" one point of access to collecters to prevent through traffic - seems to be working well so far

yumbl always bringing great topics to the table.. this idea hit very close to home as the traffic system is my absolute favorite part of these games. it's a giant puzzle always evolving and growing; for some reason i love to watch it simulate.. the tools mods and vanilla systems really creates a unique play style that not many * if any * other game can provide. But i gotta say simple stuff like cars stacking one lane while another is empty really breaks the immersion. the traffic system in this game paired with mods makes for a diverse and complex mechanic alone; ive spent hours tweaking lanes, speed and restrictions trying to make things flow at a decent rate. sometimes i think i spend too much effort on this games traffic rather than something more productive hahah.

I missed how awesome the vehicles are in this video the last 4 times I watched. They really make the city.

I know you said that they don't use the shortest route, but I do think it's a factor. I had an issue with everyone taking short cuts through low speed residentials because the distance was actually a lot shorter than the higher speed direct flow main arterial roads, and they were clogging the neighborhoods up. The biggest fix was to simply make the roads that access the hoods directly, a bit longer. From 8u to like 16u. Longer feeder type roads seem to keep the traffic on the arterials because the fixed hood routes are much longer. I think it's a combination of distance AND speed, and there is a value that is being generated using both, where the smallest result determines the path ultimately chosen. Also I like that intro.

i see a lot of players of cities use so much highway through there cities, i live in holland and here highways are at the edge of towns if not a bit away from them, i use the road system i see around me, which is the road hierarchy as you explained, i have a 1 mil city with only a small highway connection on the edge of my map, and i use medium roads to get them into my city. i almost never run into a problem, On every map i play, i always have 85/90% traffic flow, and no backed up traffic. also i use metro and trains, busses i never use. and am a big fan of pedestrian roads. "agents" as you call them will walk half a 25 tile map if you give them the chance.

I am surprised you did not mention lane math here. This can help reduce single lane backups. Since vehicles on a "through" path pick the leftmost lane, having fewer lanes, as well as putting exits before entrances, causes fewer weird merges.

LMAO the intro! I haven't even watched the rest of the video yet but I'm sure it will be great as always

Thanks for not resorting to Traffic Manager in this explaination. :) Us console players can't use it, so understanding the default ai is very handy

#1 Strange... I find a solution to many of my problems by taking part of your posts. And, even more strange, in the end my problems isn't any problems at all. The problem is my thinking... :)) #2 One clou to why roundabouts is so popular in ie Europe is that, as far as I've seen, almost nowhere it's allowed to make a right turn against redlight, as it is in many crossings in the US

Delightful video! I can't believe I'm STILL learning things about traffic after three years playing. Not a complaint. Also, this city is absolutely beautiful. If there was an uncanny valley for simulated cities, I'd say you've successfully crossed over.

You solved the traffic problem, plan route for cims better, and so on and so on, but still you didn't manage to make traffic use all lanes. Sure separating lane exclusively improves the traffic (a little), sure distributing road improves the traffic, but those are not what the problem is. What we really want is that if there is two lane going to the same exact direction, cims will distribute themselves evenly (or at least randomly) in the lanes available. But no they won't they will still use that one lane.

Thank you. For me the key to the whole thing is knowing that their journeys are pre determined. Therefore they won't adjust to the traffic conditions en route. I hope that the CS2 a.i. is updated. Especially now there will be roadworks and more consequences to your actions. Maybe GPS satellites become a DLC 😁

After you build your first couple of cities and want to uninstall the game, (or throw your PC out the window altogether - cause of traffic) this is the video to watch.

You can actually use the speed of a road to control lane usage. Just slow down the overused lane 10-20mph to balance the lanes

Living in Southern California, specifically Orange County, has messed me up a bit with trying to figure out road layouts. You can almost take the speed limits you mentioned and bump them up one level so the highway almost a becomes glorified arterial in some ways. 😅 Hell, what Google Maps insists on calling "Highway 39" is more commonly known as "Beach Blvd," and Imperial Highway and Pacific Coast Highway (90 and 1, respectively) are generally regarded as arterials. I was rather surprised when Google Maps told me to take an *on*-ramp to Jamboree *Road*, although that segment of Jamboree Rd. admittedly is more highway-like than road-like. It all comes down to jurisdiction and who is responsible for maintenance. The part of Imperial Highway that the city of Yorba Linda assumed responsibility for lost its highway designation and was subsequently redesignated a Parkway.

I have this problem and I found that some of it could be solved by turning off those pretty coloured lane connector thingies. I guess micro managing everything doesn't always make it better. Very interresting to learn about road hirarchy. I will have to look into that as I'm sure it's part of my problem. Probably a big part actually :)

1. How do you have left turns only? 2. How do you have fall trees? 3. How are the people and cars moving at normal speed? Awesome video BTW.

One of the overlooked things people don't seem to often mention is enabling dynamic lane selection in TMPE mod, and setting it to the highest level your hardware can support. It's a free world but I wouldn't play this game without it. It doesn't make the cars behave like human drivers in terms of lanes but I found noticeably less or shorter single-file lane queues at intersections, with intersections being generally easier to micro-manage depending on design and location in the network. I could be wrong on this but I think I started using dynamic lane selection in a previous YUMBL video.

if you have xbox version, you can make a two lane road or one lane offramp that turns off to the side a short distance to make a "turning lane" only do this on the rigjt lane otherwise it looks weird

You really should have talked about lane mathematics. That has a major impact on traffic. A bit trickier is paying attention to node spacing. Putting exit ramps too close to another node can cause problems with wanton lane switching. Pretty much always best to avoid using short segments when possible.

I like to think of fixing traffic as reducing conflict points. The only reason vehicles back up is because they're trying to be in the same place at the same time. By conflict points, I'm referring to two things here: first, conflict points as typically defined are places where two different routes cross. This could be a left turn in an intersection (which causes conflict points with oncoming traffic, cross traffic, and both left turns starting from the perpendicular directions), right turns at an intersection (can run into cars going straight into the lane they're trying to enter), and especially merges (two lanes of traffic either joining into one or having to cross over each other, like on the bridge of a cloverleaf interchange). There are many other examples of this, but these help highlight my point. The second type of conflict point has more to do with congestion. In the example shown in the video, many vehicles wanted to be in the left lane, thus they have to pile up like that because they can't move closer to the intersection in that lane. Imagine yourself as a car on that road, but limit yourself to using the lanes you'd choose if there were no other cars--are you going to end up in the left lane there to take the ramp? Probably, so a situation like this (assuming it was happening with the highway intact) might mean it's time to either get them on a different route entirely, or it's time to add a second lane to the ramp, further ahead. Another great thing to think about when fixing traffic is to find the bottlenecks. This is something you'd be doing anyway, if you're following my advice above, but still worth mentioning nonetheless. Usually the best way to go about this is to start by finding a place at the head of the traffic (i.e. further in the direction of travel, where the traffic gets stopped up) and work on opening that up. This is something you have to be careful with, as widening roads will induce demand, but if you do this with simple things like using traffic manager to create dedicated turning lanes, different streams of traffic have a chance to separate from each other prior to the point of conflict. For anyone that's driven on a two lane road with no turning lanes, you probably know what I'm talking about here, since vehicles turning left have to sit in the way of traffic.

One thing to add, about road hierarchy not always working, is that you can adapt the roads according to how they are used. If a ton of traffic is using a local road because it’s much shorter than the collector/arterial option, then perhaps that local road should be upgraded to a collector. The point is that you can’t always dictate what the traffic should do, sometimes you need to adapt to what the traffic is doing.

American road systems mainly end in the 5s. Road coming off the interstate is usually 45mph. Interstate range from 55mph to 70mph, and rare to go higher than that. Some through roads can vary from 35mph up to 55mph and depends on the situation of surrounding areas and use of the road. Highways that have more traffic lights than interstates can vary from 25mph (in town) to 70mph (outside in the rural) and all depends on the same factors as through roads. I have driven a lot in real life along the mid Atlantic east coast of the USA.

enjoyed the beginning, made me laugh this morning. took me back to the good ol' days.

Not sure if it exists already, but do you know Total War Warhammer and LegendofTotalwar? He has a series where he saves "disaster campaigns" of people sending him the save file. Mostly a really tough battle that Legend then wins with maximum cheese 😉, although sometimes the economy, two many armies, the wrong units etc. tl;dr This would be a great idea for City Skylines, you getting save files and trying to make the cities work again! Mostly people will have traffic problems, or something else is poorly designed. Could be extremely educational and fun! Alternatively with viewers help you could come up with challenges, like isolated city parts only connected by train, a long city with a maximum width, all industry confined to a very small area, you name it.

My main issue is I usually forget about arterials. My cities usually have just 3 levels of hierarchy, straight from highways to collectors, and while that works just fine for small cities, it becomes a major issue late-game

do more of the skits, truly an outstanding performance

Love the series! I know US cities are quite flat in gerneral, but I always wondered if u plan to do some terrain adjustments?

I find often the issue is sims tend to want to work and buy goods from specific places and if you don't make note of it it can cause major backups because all the Sims are trying to go to that location and regardless of how good you setup your roads and transit it can cause major back ups

Excellent explanation of the traffic system in Cities Skyline. Thank you!

Hi I want to put a disclaimer that a highway is also considered an arterial. What was described as “highway” is a major arterial, which will always have controlled access (interchanges) and a minor arterial, in which access is signalized. I know I’m being super pedantic but I’m currently pursuing a PE with my focus on highway design and it is an important distinction.

The Intro ^^ --- absolutley love it And as always very good video. Your explanation changed my way to play these game.

Here's the problem I have, which this video did not address: I have a long arterial. It has a major point of entry. Let's say a highway. And after that point, there are maybe 10 or 12 other arterials and collectors intersecting it. Maybe you can make a left turn at all of them.And since this arterial is toward one side of the city, most of its traffic will EVENTUALLY be making a left. So what happens? EVERY GOD DAMN DRIVER GETS IN THE LEFT LANE. It doesn't matter if they're taking exit 1, exit 10, or exit 999. They want to be in the left lane and they DO NOT CARE about anything else. The fact that your arterial is a 6-lane one-way road, and they have literally four middle lanes to choose from is irrelevant. The only deviation from this is if the roads being turned onto are more than one lane. Then you have multiple left-turn lanes, and thus all but the last cannot go straight. For the sake of argument, let's say you have lights with two-lane-each-way traffic. So the traffic not turning there doesn't get into lane #6...it gets into lane #5, which is also a left-turn lane, but has the potential to go straight. And you would think, okay, well, if the traffic turning there has a lane to exit from, at least *THAT* traffic isn't going to be in the column of death, right? Wrong. Because any cars getting off at this point then ask, "Which lane do I want to be on in the new road?" And if the answer is the right lane, then they say F U to the left-most lane because the second-to-last lane corresponds to the right lane on their new road. It doesn't seem to matter what kind of outflow you have from these roads. Any sort of impedance whatsoever will result in this major, major traffic snarl. If you're lucky, and plan well, it often clears before becoming a 10-mile one-lane traffic jam. But this is a circumstance that, really, either shouldn't happen or that there should be some sort of recourse for beyond downloading mods like TM:PE. Is there?

I got recommended this after watching Call me Kevin ban all cars in his city lmao

I have a proposal for a rule of thumb, to know how often certain types of roads should have junctions. Start from local roads, and number the road hierarchy as set out in this video. Local (1), Collector (2), Arterial (3), Highway (4). Then multiply the speed limit on the road, by its hierarchy number. In this video the roads would have scores of 25, 60, 120, 280. This is how many zoning squares should be between junctions, minimum. how does this sound?

when i see a car destination "residential" and the fact that car is banned at some point of its gps direction (because i made a pedestrian residential area), makes the car turning around for a while, stopping and despawnning, even when despawning is disabled through traffic manager.

I was hoping to find out why my highway traffic will move to the left most lane ignoring the other lanes then shoot across the entire road to take an exit. But nice informative video anyways.

Streets: local roads for local needs, many access points. Roads: long distance connections, more limited access than streets but less limited than highways. Highways: very long distance connections, most limited access points

The best way to fix traffic I've found is mixed use zoning for most things, and then I turn the industries into conveyor belts.

Ah, how I wish to play again :) But I'm just too lazy to sort out which mods and custom assets did I regularly use. and I use quite a lot of them lmao My PC's OS has been broken back at September so I had to reinstall my windows. And I forgot to make a backup of my "ModsListing" mod lists.

The most gamey part about CS is the assumption that people would WALK period uh *cough* ok maybe not that strict but the distance they do in CS is out of the question as soon as people have access to a personal vehicle ;D

Add to point. If you have more connectivity to your highways, you can alleviate bottlenecking.

Nice video, thanks. Have to ask - where did you get those shared-wall rowhouses/townhouses? The ones in your residential district that are basically a solid block of townhouses. Is that a mod, or where? Thanks! Also great intro style, that was funny :D

I prefer to feel like I'm the mayor of Dallas. More mega highways for me please. haha

Your knowledge and tips are remarkable but you haven't truly provided a real suggestion on how to make traffic use all lanes, instead you just gave some valuable tips on how to avoid the need. Traffic coming from 1 lane road to, let's say, 6 lanes road won't ever get distributed. They will pick a lane based on the exit (the closest possible) and sticky to that. The only option you have is to force traffic to go straight and keep traffic from different merged sources on separated lanes but at some point you would have to allow it to change lanes so they can exit on wherever they want. I'd like to see some more tips on how to fine tune lane usage as I have never seen a 6 lanes road which wasn't a waste.

You are one of my top ten favorite RU-vidrs with a name that starts with Yum

I have 2 two-lane highways merging to become a four-lane highway. Traffic from all 4 oncoming lanes is fighting to all go immediately into the left hand lane, causing horrendous backups at the merge point. All the traffic stays in the left-hand lane until the next intersection, which is a turn-off from the right-hand lane of the four-lane highway. So those cars which wish to exit cut across 4 lanes to exit the highway. It's such weird behaviour - cars fight across up to 3 lanes to get into a queue of traffic to then cut back across four empty lanes to exit. I wish the cars would use all the lanes.

this was very helpful, thank you

useful as always YUMBL, and with a proper expalin in this messy game XD

If a cim will choose non-vehicular transit given the opportunity, then to what effect does the “free public transit” policy have on their choice? This policy seems to imply it’s not a total given that people will choose their leggos to move around.

Hey I’m Monty from the livestream sorry I missed it I got busy

I'm wayyyy too high for this 1940s intro

The source of the problem is still the game. If every sim is programmed to ignore each other and use the same lane, then what are all of the other lanes for ?

Thinking about road hierarchy and speed limits, will you demo how Express Lanes work on the highway for traffic that's just passing through? That ought to remove some traffic from the "local highway." (Also might work with intercity trains, which seem to cause a lot of problems for people.)

That intro was gold

One issue I can't seem to figure out is I have cims on a busy collector road that has a connection to a suburban area that cuts through small roads with traffic lights to get home. But I already have that same busy collector connecting to a collector that goes to the home suburban area. It has less turns, higher speed limit, and less junctions but they still use the inefficient route. I don't understand. I don't even think it's logically shorter so I don't get why they just take two big roads to get home rather than 8 small roads.

Me with my highways at 55mph and my main road at 70mph *makes sense*

Nice video! Keep up the good work!

I have a cronic issue bc one city wants to go to the other city's markets and industry and the trunks deliver and come back with loads so that puts some Traffic and no trains only reduce bc some want to go on highway and i havent got any rail outside connection only road the road they came is a 2 way 4 lane road with 2 way 2 lane road

Very clever intro😉…. excellent video 👍🏻

Great video. Worth being a Patreon.

Speed limits are often done poorly IRL. Everywhere in a city (except school zones) is 50 km/h. You drive done major roads at 50, then turn onto smaller road which are also 50 for some reason????? I don't know how this translates to miles I think it's 1.6 km/mile so that works out to 40 miles/h maybe? Most highways are about 90 km/h

This traffic is totally crazy about what drivers do.

this is useful but very hard when my citizens tend to stay in one lane to later on do a 3 lane switch in one go to get to the right lane instead of just being in the god damn right lane from the beginning so everyone does not have to be in the same lane om hohmofdgsfkkdokfdsopfkddfs

Actually, traffic system in CS is really broken. Honestly, it's totally unrealistic shit. But it's a price to low CPU consuption.

Awesome video explaining a lot of important stuff, but still there is a problem with the traffic mechanic. Citizens very often do dumb stuff which sometimes contradicts the theory of "choosing the shortest/fastest route". Let's say There are 2 lanes for turning left into 2 lanes after the intersection and then they split into left and right turn. A wise thing to do would be to choose the left lane at the first intersection if you want to turn left at the second one. But in my city I observe a complete madness, where the guy that was on the left lane, after the first intersection changes the lane to go right, and the other one that was on the right lane, changes to the left. And they stop in the middle of the road and the intersection is stuck. There is no game mechanic or a mod that allows you to fight that if you want to make a free-flowing right turn from the opposing side, because if you prevent them from changing lanes after the first intersection, cars from the opposing side turning right won't be able to turn left at the second intersection. It doesn't make any sense.

Hi beginner here. At 2:07 there’s a pedestrian crossing in the middle of a road nowhere near an intersection. How is that done?

Great intro!