I play this from the beginning without any mods fot the game. I follow yumbltv and i respect this a lot. I've tried this road mod once or twice but it's way to difficult for me.
If you're on PC I highly recommend getting at LEAST these infrastructure mods. Even if you don't use them much, the few times you do it will make everything so much easier
Big tip: Use Move It export feature to copy this road, import it into the asset editor, then save as an intersection asset. Now you never have to build it again, just plop it down.
I never cease to be amazed by how flexible the road network in cities skylines is (with some mods added to tweak it). It's one thing to have the data model for the intersections and nodes, but being able to use that and dynamically present it without a bunch of visual artifacts is just insane.
I'd be curious to know what a potential Cities Skylines 2 would do with this, including all community-mod hindsight. One thing I'd love to see, for instance, is a road editor that smoothly supports adding or subtracting lanes. Like, instead of having to have a separate road type for every single combination of lanes, just pick a road texture (might come with certain properties in terms of max speed and maintenance cost), and for each node, pick how many lanes there are as you edit the network. Could also put a lot of extra work into maybe more intelligently figuring out what road markings might be, and some of the almost must-have-seeming tools could just be built right into the game from the start.
I've made several of my own roads at this point. Whoever came up with the node system was a freaking genius. There's just a set of rules that "stretch" the road at the node to make the road ends meet. Every road in the game follows the exact same connection method, whether vanilla or not. If the width parameters and connection classes are set correctly in the road asset, everything just works. It really is amazing how elegantly simple it is. I suspect Node Controller works so great because the nodes were already stretched to meet each other in vanilla. The mod is just stretching them more. Same reason Move It works, the mechanics to bend and stretch roads were already in vanilla, the mod just allows you to bend and stretch past the vanilla limits.
I remember being impressed when regular anarchy roads and Move It worked, especially when people like RTGame built vertical roads going up the poop volcano.
This is magnificent! Haven't touched the game in almost two years and I'm just amazed by new possibilities. I remember when I tried to build something like this and how miserably I failed. You, sir, are an artist and your videos revived my passion with Cities Skylines. Thank you for your content!
1:23 "It's rather techincal compared to what I usually do." Dude, I am watching you because you're the Cities:Skylines RU-vidr who is most technically versed.
Not sure I actually like this desgin, but 100% impressed by the idea of parallel roads tied to the same node! Whenever you think you've seen it all, there's something beyond expectations... Nice one, thanks
They just put a modified version of this in a city near me to help manage traffic on the bypass highway. everyone was freaking out because there was 12 instructional videos published by the province showing how the intersection functions from all directions. green means go red means stop watch the light in your lane.. easy peasy. made the busiest intersection in the province flow a lot smoother. great video, i wouldn't have the patience or the skill to make that in CS.
We've got these all around my city in real life and they work like absolute magic. There's the 2 way versions and 4 way versions, and both have taken traffic from an absolute nightmare and accident riddled mess into something much more pleasant.
The CFI is easily my favorite intersection type. I use these all over the place and often there simply is no substitute. One thing I've found is, unless every direction is extremely busy, you don't need traffic lights on the "legs". The crossing left can simply have a yield sign (IRL they'd probably use a flashing yellow arrow) so they can go and load up the leg area anytime there isn't oncoming traffic. However if the intersection is very busy in all directions, then the outflow really is rather continuous, and it becomes necessary to add the additional lights. This is also helpful for pedestrian access, if you want people crossing there. I typically still use a 2-phase light, as most of the time if the yield isn't enough, then it means I have absolutely massive demand on the left turn and they need lots of time. But as with anything, it's valuable to analyze how things are working and rearrange the green-time to where it's needed. Regarding how difficult it is to build, it is MUCH easier if you don't insist on the single center node. If the legs get their own node, there's really almost nothing to do with node controller and most of the work is just setting up lane arrows. If you do yield on the legs, the traffic light is less work than a standard 4-phase intersection.
First we get asymmetrical roads. Now it's asymmetrical nodes. I feel like Colossal Order curses every time someone comes up with something like this because now it needs to be a base requirement for CSL2. I feel like this video was a counter to all the suggestions of overbuilding the roundabout with flyovers, pedestrian tunnels, etc. and then comparing it to a vanilla intersection. At 15:22 you can see how it's a shame that you can't adjust yellow light timings as that car gets stuck in the intersection while making a left turn. Maybe a 1 second dummy cycle would fix it.
This is amazing, I actually needed something like this for a few high volume intersections in my city where there isnt quite enough space for an interchange and a roundabout or timed traffic light are still not quite enough. Gonna try this immediately.
@@YUMBL update: I installed TWO of these in my city at a couple of busy intersections and it brought my traffic back up to 78%-80% after it dropped to 73% when I added some new industry areas.
In Factorio, this is analogous to a buffered train intersection, specifically the Windcross by Zijkhal. Google "Factorio 3 and 4 way intersections" to see it and other crazy designs. In factorio, train tracks are always "on grade" so crazy intersections are needed to allow high throughput for large factories.
Interessting! So you basicly offset the crossing left hand traffic to a second junction further back, which allows you to minimize the traffic light time and steps. On the equation of capacity, conflict, waiting time/traffic flow and used space, the only real drawback is the used space. I like it.
Thanks! Yes, the space used is sub optimal. But its usefulness comes in money saved from installing and maintaining an interchange. Some areas need an economical solution.
@@YUMBL Guess people must be approaching it with more respect then? Also, it takes away many directions and most opportunities to get T-boned. Since it removes 1 of the 2 left turn directions (2 straight directions remaining) that cross each straight path; and each left turn crosses only 1 straight path instead of 2 straights and 2 other lefts.
In my city (Tijuana, Mexico) they have almost a whole avenue with only cfis (avenida de los insurgentes). Only that the cfis are better designed than the whole city.
They did something like this on the Indian River and Kempsville Road intersection in Virginia Beach and it has greatly improved traffic during rush hour.
. . . what I can recognize: out of one regular 4-phases 4-ways intersection you made one 2-phase crossing plus additional 4 (2 + 2 opposite synchronous) ) 2-phase crossings . . . so you are trading time consumption (4 phases) against space requests (deskewing / distributing time over space) . . . interesting !
I've build one of these before with an older version of node controller, but your approach with the current version is much better. This actually looks like a real-world intersection (there's a CFI here in Austin, TX), unlike my clunky effort.
This build is really breath-taking. And thanks for including remarks about only displacing left-turns for two legs of the intersection, though my head almost exploded trying to think of the changes in lane-math that come with it ;-) I think the weakest point of this design are the four pre-intersections with the crossing lane-connectors of 10:58 with a risk of left-turning and straight-on traffic getting stuck at the traffic light after leaving the main intersection and backing up all the way to the main intersection. Combined with my weakness of configuring traffic lights it would be a complete nightmare to recreate this ... ;-)
@@YUMBL I think you could improve the light sequence with a few small changes. In phase 1 you have the left turning traffic (into the left turn bay) waiting for oncoming traffic which hasn't arrived yet (ignoring the stragglers who just turned left). So I would change phase 1 to allow them through (with oncoming as red) until oncoming traffic starts arriving at that red light (by my count it's about 9 seconds from when through traffic starts moving through the main intersection until it reaches the intersection after). Phase 2 turns green for the oncoming traffic and red for turning left into the bay. This way through traffic won't have to stop once they get through the main intersection. Would be interested to know if this improves anything or if there's something I haven't considered or forgotten.
Money is not the only restriction why overpasses are avoided ... to avoid steep inclines a lot of space is needed. The continuous flow intersection as an alternative to grade separation loses much of its value if the legs are growing and growing ... And even if you space out the intersections of the arterials as road hierarchy tells you to do, two consecutive continuous flow intersections would be difficult to realize.
I've thought about trying to build one of these several times just to see if I could get one right but never have because trying to visualize how to do the traffic lights always gave me a headache. This was great :)
You can simplify the lights a lot. Unless traffic demand is very high, you can get away with only a single light at the center (if you make a single giant node like Yumbl did) and the "legs" can use yield signs. With that single light, it's just 1 phase for North-South and 1 phase for East-West, done.
@@JETZcorp I've seen several videos of people creating this junction, but this is the only one I saw that connected everything through the central node. All the others connected the left turn lanes a few units away from the center and I never thought about doing it Yumbl's way until this.
They had a bunch of these along Bangerter Highway in The Salt Lake City area. I always found them kinda neat. They took a lot of traffic flow ideas for the Jordan Valley and just ran with them. Diverging Diamonds kinda spread through the state, but Continuous Flow Intersections and the one single road with flex lanes never really took off. Bangerter has really increased it's traffic flow since I lived in the area back in 2016-2017 so a lot of the intersections are getting turned into On/Offramps. They were starting that process down in Draper. When I was there last year they had gotten up past West Jordan and were working into West Valley City. I kinda miss the area, but at the same time I see the ticking timebomb of californization that will inevitably take over the valley. Farther you get from Salt Lake, the better.
That's great design. I thought skylines will not allow to build interchange like that. Its really pushing limits. This is also only one I know where all rights, and all lefts can go at the same time without collisions.
I would have liked to see a comparison to a roundabout, because you aren't getting rid of the left-turn cross over - you are just moving it further away and increasing the footprint of the intersection.
My “roundabouts are not as good as you think” video was done under the exact same conditions. This is better at flowing high density traffic than a roundabout. Every intersection I film on this map is better at flowing high density traffic than a roundabout.
picked this up for my city main road.. I had to build this 34 times total, but hey, it works its magic. traffic went in downtown area from 28% during rush hour to 97%
Beautiful work man! I had a video come up in my suggested from a Department of Transport looking at this and I thought straight away, Yumbl will do this. Amazing!
I worked for days trying to recreate this intersection and failed. You did it with the amazing node trick. I love it! that was so satisfying to watch you work on the past few days! I could watch the traffic go through that intersection for hours.. I really hope you use it at least once in your city, especially now that you have it save and on the workshop. I would really love to see it in action with a beautiful city surround it! Cheers from the Parclo Matrix guy
We have one of these in my city! It always felt really over-engineered to me, but this video made it make a lot more sense when I could see what was going on. It makes sense why they would do something like this, too, because two major roads run into each other and the placement of buildings and a major park prevent people from using other roads to bypass the intersection and an interchange would feel really out of place.
TDOT completed our first roundabout and is on track to begin construction on our first continuous flow intersection in 2027 with a completion date of 2030. Thank you for the visual.
I tried yesterday and for the love of everything good in this world, I couldn't make the lights do what I wanted. I tried again today, and it's like magic. Clears the intersection beautifully
I love this. It's a counterintuitive intersection, but it looks really cool. There only thing I'll say - and this applied to pretty much all the intersections I've seen you do so far - is that, having grown up in a country where turn-on red is not legal, and now having lived in several countries where it is, freeflowing right turns always annoy me. They make it very clear that pedestrian safety is a secondary concern. I always have to dodge scooters and bikes when I cross, even at a marked crossing with the green man showing. Back home, the green man meant no traffic was coming and you were completely safe. I'd be interested to see you tackle an intersection that manages to incorporate safe pedestrian crossings without sacrificing too much traffic flow (and without building absurd pedestrian bridges - there is a huge one near my apartment, and nobody uses it, preferring to chance death on the busy intersection below instead because it's significantly faster.)
They've implemented a bunch of these in Utah. bit wonky to get used to at first. But supposedly they reduce accidents by a significant percent in the long run.
I actually tried building this on the test map you shared in the roundabout video. But I built it as 5 nodes and lots of timed traffic lights and lane connectors. The 4 phases are not confusing to understand, but they are confusing to time correctly and keep everything free-flowing.
Another amazing creation! I will immediately search for it as an asset in the Workshop, and probably be let down by off-brand creations. And then I'll let myself down with my own off-brand creation. Let the mimicking commence!
A couple years ago they put one of these intersections in about 3 miles from where I live. They actually put it in to reduce accidents rather than improve traffic. It's very interesting, it works pretty well. Definitely confusing if you've never been on it before, as you have to know what's going on and get in the correct lane ahead of time. They have it set up the same as your build, with the sub intersections having their own lights that are perfectly timed with the main intersection to prevent traffic buildup
This intersection is used frequently at a local highway near where I live. These are their last stage before turning the highway into a full-on freeway.
Gorgeous intersection but all I can think about how terrifying those right turning sliplanes would be to pedestrians. If you're crossing from left to right and there's a column of cars waiting at the red light, you have no way of seeing if there's a car tearing down that side and you can't exactly stop in the middle of the zebra crossing the check.
I love this intersection! I have a spot in my current city that could definitely use something of this sort, (I might try it without the stop lights first though as I hate setting up the traffic lights). Thank you Yumbl !!
Went through an intersection similar to this on the weekend, Punt Rd & Swan St in Melbourne. Very interesting. Definitely more efficient than a standard intersection.
What I'd like to see, would be a version where you displace the left turning lanes on 2 directions, then they do their turn completely outside the intersection and then you do a "reverse displacement" on the other two directions to merge them back in.
A thing of beauty! Only concern is that the bottleneck is on the junction exit rather than entrance, so it might lock up if the main node is running 100% duty cycle. The straight on/left turn exit lanes are receiving 2 lanes of traffic in both phases, but the lights for getting back out will only be operating 2 lanes on some of the phases. You would need 4 lanes crossing the left turn to have the same throughput. Not sure how they deal with that in reality, but it is quite possible that they just don't, or have pedestrian crossing phases on the main node to match duty cycles. My instinct would be that the pedestrian crossings should be on the main node, counter-intuitive as it sounds.
I'll always remember the first comment I saw on a video about the continuous flow intersection: "It's amazing the lengths Americans will go to avoid a roundabout"
Simple regular intersection is the way to go. If there’s traffic backed up, there are other factors like zoning, road hierarchy and lack of transportation
I made a one-leg 'T' version a while ago in order to decrease the light phase on the through road. These work like a symphony if you time your lights perfectly (I also have another very busy 'T' intersection close to it).
Recently I've seen this intersection in my recommendations all the time. Honestly looks like a nightmare for everyone who isn't in a car. As always a nice video, though
@@YUMBLIrl no intersection should have that amount of traffic. A properly walkable intersection makes it possible to cross diagonally with at most two crossings, better would be a single pedestrian phase permitting diagonal crossing. In rural areas where you can have cycle and walking infrastructure well separated you shouldn't need that many lanes anyway. It's technically impressive but shouldn't really exist since you should never come to a point where it would be needed. It is probably a lot better than many current intersections in heavily car centric areas though. All talking about irl though. CS is a different beast.
VERY slick the way you built this into one node! I haven’t built one of these in a good long while, and Node Controller wasn’t a thing then. I think this is the best way I’ve seen to build this for sure. I will say though that the traffic light phasing is way more complex and a ton more efficient than you have here. It’s even more fun to watch when it’s set up right. Now I gotta make a video 😁 But again...the Node Controller work and those American road assets...great work!
@@YUMBL oooh! Love the pun! 😂 You really make some awesome vids my friend 😊 I appreciate the care and detail you put into these tutorials. You’re a huge asset to the community.
Perfect I'll have to watch your video 10 times to be able to recreate it. With your explanations I also understand why something works and that helps me. Thanks and have a great day.🙋♂️
The first time I encountered this intersection in real life, it was a brain-bender - but your explanation makes perfect sense. (It was on the Bangerter Highway in Salt Lake City, Utah,)
Hey Yumbl, you probably don't care enough to remember me but I'm sometimes pretty vocally cynical of your videos (not that I don't watch them all and enjoy most of them). Saying that, however, this video was flawless. I knew Node Controller was extremely powerful but even I was amazed at how you used it to such great effect, and how you managed to explain everything you did clearly and concisely. I have built a similar junction in the past and sat and struggled fiddling with Node Controller for much longer than you did I assure you, and the result still didn't come out nearly as well. So yeah, you impressed this cynic, I applaud you!
We have one of these in our area. it works pretty well, but it's a lot to take in when you first pull up. Side to side, left turns require a U turn, up and down the left turns have that slip lane lane like in this intersection.
I love your videos. You're showcasing things I haven't even seen IRL or in game for that matter. Really cool road architecture and amazing game tricks, all very well explained. And on top of that you're really easy to understand. I'm not a native speaker so it's difficult for me to understand people sometimes. Keep up the great work. 💙
im actualy amazed what you can do in CS big inspiration, now im playing with some custom intersections and they realy do work in actual built city and helps with trafic too (plaing with real time mod) so Thank you for inspiration and showing me this kind of thing is possible.
i tell you what, i never thought I'd see myself using traffic lights in this game as much as i do now. Many hours in this game i was extremely anti-traffic light. but i got tired of the messy looking intersections and huge interchanges and roundabouts (which really don't work THAT great with a lot of traffic). Now i almost see it as an art form, just like making a nice intersection, adding a proper traffic light with custom settings is my new thing i look forward to when setting up my roads. it's really neat what a couple nice road mods, TMPE and node controller / decorator can do for the game. traffic can still be a pain but the options are endless for getting creative and problem solving.