This was the most frustrating, and most rewarding, episode of the entire series. So many things Biffa started to do that made me want to yell at the screen...and then he fixed it.
biffa, as someone who lives in chicago, having a kind of "spider" subway system where the lines only meet in one location, it seriously sucks. consider adding at least one outside connecting loop
Yeah, City Planner Plays mentioned that American cities tend to have the hub/spoke model, and it works great for getting folks from the suburbs and into the city center....and not a whole lot else.
@@kevinschultz6091 all the intercity lines follow the hub and spoke model too, not just outside to inside regional lines. if i want to go from southwest chicago to northwest chicago, i have to take a longass bus ride or go northeast and then northwest on the subway
connect the pedestrian roundabout bridge thing to the closest blocks. You could shorten the walking distance for the pedestrians. Now they have to walk along the sidewalks of the mainroads and that is clogging up the intersections. With the bridges to all adjacent blocks pedestrians wouldn't have to cross any major road, only the small ones inside the neighborhoods
@@Bill_Bogan Building and not connecting an infrastructure hub is ok, just remember to turn it off so it's not costing money until you're ready to use it fully
I think the reason no one used the first metro line u put in today is that the spider hub doesn’t have any water of electricity. Hence why it said multiple problems
The people also got on their journeys based on time, to go all the way from that area, to the spider, and back to the main station would take a very long time, it would be faster to sit in traffic.
That and the fact that it will take far longer to get anywhere because they have to travel 10 times the distance because there are no direct connections to anywhere useful.
not only that but theres nothing there! it needs connected to the main train station hub even just temporarily then 30 mins of needless traffic faffery would be saved
Somehow watching Biffa break all his own traffic rules for episodes on end makes it so much more satisfying to watch him finally come back and do a 'fix my traffic' episode on his own designs!
Exactly. Plus the pedestrian path is even more useless; if he really wanted to he could make it just a bike path but it would still be kind of useless.
My internet just went out right at 13:29 when he said "stop" and I waited for like 20 seconds, sure that it was a joke by the editor, before I actually checked if the video was still going :D
17:00 all that traffic could be fixed by one-way roads (one way into the grid area one way out simple!) my suggestion is to add a hiking trail along the ridge of the mountain then make a designated walking tour (or maybe 5 walking tours) you can even make the mountain area a nature reserve .. then name it rooibos natea reserve. bear in mind nature reserves are huge so the mountain area can be used 100%.
HA see same problem, the timed traffic light changed your arrows back to go straight on im having a similar problem with that. u can see it changing the lane arrows back at 36:13
@15:00 just had me wondering if a better way to manage the cars would be making the intersections no left turns instead of lights. Sending the traffic over the Bridges instead of crossing oncoming traffic.
The one-way street model works really well; it just needs to also apply to the roads north of the main drag as well. That way there's only one left turn in each direction, and oncoming right turns can flow into those one-ways at the same time along with the straight traffic accompanying the left turns.
Set policy "Encourage Biking" in all your districts. This boosts the preference much higher in the hierarchy. Cims will bike on sidewalks and paths quite happily , even if there are no bike lanes. Bike lanes will only be used if they provide a continuous path to a destination. A short section of road between intersections or roundabouts will never be used for its bike lanes, because there is no continuous network connection. Cims will instead use the sidewalks, which generally do have a continuous network path for them to follow.
I'm stunned how much that large bottom roundabout made a difference. Cleared all that jam right up and now it looks like the road is barely used at all.
Always lovely when your videos pop up in my feed. A better fit to keep me company while I work is impossible to find! Thank you so much for the series so far :)
There's really no need to increase the minimum time on timed traffic lights, only the maximum should be necessary, keeping it low will make sure other traffic won't have to wait too long needlessly.
The only time I've found I needed to increase the minimum time is when you have a gap situation before the light that would trip the "empty input" sensor on the light the way it spaces the traffic. But even then, usually it's better to fix the nature of the gap (moving, gothru, etc) than increase the minimum times for the sake of the other directions on the light.
Hey, Biffa, some stuff I saw: The change you made at 18:18 broke that road. Both were straight because of the angle of the hoghway ramp, by saying the second lane was to turn right made that one useless. You can see around 33:50 that all the cars are using the center lane, even to turn into the highway. On the roudabout, at the junction going to the right (with the new neighbourhood in front), the two lane righway merges into one lane soon after the traffic splits again, so the two lanes aren't necessary. And as the turn there is sutil, the game understand it as going straight (as it did with the previous intersection), so cars are all messing up the lanes, using the inner lane to turn right and the outer lane to go straight. You'll need to use Lane Management to fix this, as you should've done with the previous intersection as well. I could be mistaken, but I think cars do not change lanes at level crossings, since they undestand that they are junctions. This happens at roundabouts as well, so what you said at 32:40 isn't correct (as long as you don't use TM:PE to allow them to change lanes, at least, wich it doesn't happens automaticaly with the roundabout setup). And at 31:53 you can see that you MIGHT be forcing people coming from the highway ramp to turn into the first right on the roudabout, and forcing the people coming from the city to go through the hole roundabout to turn into that first right.
Anytime roads come in at angles it can be unclear if telling the game right vs straight is actually doing what you want. Often i will map out what i want a lane to do with the lane mgmt lines and see what the arrow changes too, then remove the lines and just keep the arrows so i have minimal impact on lane switching. Only when i specifically want to keep merging or splitting traffic to a lane for a node or 2 do i keep lines in place. My rule of thumb in this game is to make right right lane always dedicated to only turning right, that way straight on traffic never clogs a right turn lane that 9 times out of 10 can drive right on through even on busy intersections similar to real life.
@@ThunderlipsJoeYT I actually prefer exclusive left turns than right turns, since they have harder times going into a junction. But when talking about highway ramps, exclusive right turn lanes are very useful indeed
10:00 - If I had to guess, it's a quirk in the mechanics of Cims path finding; they only look for the bike path if they're faced with a node-choice, and since the path isn't technically connected (it floats in the adjacent building's parking lot), the pedestrians aren't 'fully aware' of their path choices until a recalculation is triggered. And I'm guessing that recalculation happens when the Cims transition between modes of transport or if the street (nodes) get moved/deleted, rather than at every intersection as this would be very CPU intensive. 💖 Love the series Biffa!
Oh Biffa, I'm so glad you fixed that railway junction coming of the roundabout, it really triggered my OCD haha. Oh and that junction you were working on at 37:45, you can help the traffic now coming from the right by giving them two lanes to go straight through, and then one can also go right and one can also go left. Great video as always!!
36:45 there don't need to be any traffic lights on the main road at al, you can force all the oncoming roads to only turn right, because they can use the bridges to cross over and join the road the other way. make it function more like a highway.
39:30 instead of connencting both tubes you simply could rerout the old turn a bit and insert a new sub-station (yellow line) inside the triangle. that way both lines stay disconnected but people can get to the new area quickly too
Fun Episode. Two suggestions: 28:58 The road heading East out of town from the new roundabout can be a 2-lane instead of asymmetrical. Two nodes later it merges down to 1 lane. 8:23 The central ring of the pedestrian walkway around the roundabout can be lowered to the same height as the outside ramps.
Great fix! Delighted to see the arm of the spider connected to the center of the previous expansion AND adding in another metro line to across from the University. I know the new above ground metro stations are stunning to look at and watch, but those little 1 square vanilla stations can fit in almost anywhere to help with traffic flow. They don't congest traffic like a bus stop. Glad you simplified that interchange with a roundabout as well. 👏👏👏👏👏
That was one huge fix there, Biff... Marvellous job. Also, right at the beginning, when you placed that metro stop.... You left the rubbish bins on the stop misaligned by a few pixels with the bin on the path XD Not worth going back, but it caught my eye :D
Node controller at 30:13... the red boundary lines on the two lane road segment indicates a restriction in the network path (glitching), and vehicles will slow down drastically to cross it, then speed up, or come to a complete stop and then proceed. Huge traffic slowdowns occur for no apparent reason unless this is recognized and repaired. Adjust the intersection until all boundary lines are green.
My favourite day of the week. Lots of new CS content to watch. Biffa as always is top of the list. Cuppa - CHECK, Chocolate Digestives - CHECK, Kids occupied - CHECK, BRB set on Teams - CHECK, Home office door closed - CHECK. Time for another great BIffaplays Episode of Newtealand, Yippee!
I've come to the conclusion that we need TM:PE for real life. I saw traffic on the freeway the other day squeezing down to one lane to take an exit while tying up the rest of the travel lanes.
@@betsegg and the malay word "teh" is itself a chinese loanword. every single word for tea outside of china, myanmar and thailand is a chinese loanword. very strange
@@diamdante Which makes sense as the plant originates in Southern Chine, Burma, North East India area and the Tang Chinese made it popular in the area. Depending who introduced it where the pronounciation of the used word and therefore the loan word differs. E.g. it's cha in Japan.
One thing to consider would to be extending your metro line from the capital area down through the high-density residential that is on either side of the train station. Seems like there’s lots of walking between the two areas, and to do trains you’d have to go all the way out to the spider hub and back. It’ll mean a couple metro lines running somewhat near to each other, but you see that in cities all the time. Loving new tealand!
There are tandem-style tram busses available on Steam that can carry up to 180 passengers. There are also metro trains that can carry up to 750 people available on Steam.
The way that Traffic manager sets up the automatic timed traffic lights really needs to have a dedicated right turn lane. With a four-way intersection you get four phases/steps for the light. Without a dedicated right turn cars will only be able to turn right during one of those instead of two. Something else you can do is to go into the Traffic Manager settings and enable turning on red. This can be in addition to the dedicated right-turn lane or in lieu of a dedicated turn lane.
I noticed this issue as well. I never use traffic signals as i haven't grown to densities that i need them, but dedicated right turn only seems to be something this game's traffic algorithm handles really well when pathfinding. I too turn on the turn on red option as IRL turn on red is only really ever restricted when the intersection is massive or is very obstructed, and IRL is the most annoying thing at any intersection when you see "no turn on red"
You could add a train station for the yellow train line, South of Cedar and Lafayette, so that people coming from that side don’t have to go all the way to the main train station to get there. (Also connect up the metro line to that train station in Cedar/Lafayette)
I love that Biffa spent half of the episode redoing the road network trying to get a single timed traffic light to work instead of just trying "one way in, one way out" to start.
I'd recommend setting up the main roads in the new commercial area with one-way roads, and making a rectangle-about out of them. Similarly, the two access roads could be one-way, one in each direction.
Just a quick suggestion, on the main road that services Cedar Hills & Laurel Park (Or whatever their tea related names become), organise the lanes to avoid any crossover. So on main road, allow only straight & left turns, so it avoids any turning across traffic. This way people can turn left into the road, then use the bridges to go to other side of main road. By doing this, a turn around ramp closer to highway section of road towards the spider interchange would need to be added to allow people more accessibility. Loving the videos, good to have a cuppa while watching! Also, a name suggestion for the spider interchange: "Spider Tea-Junction" (Based of the phrase Spider T-Junction)
37:08 When you made those one-way roads, you can get rid of the traffic lights. With one-way roads, the traffic lights are not necessary, and only add to the traffic.
When you re-added the timed traffic lights, it reverted your lane changes. I think this happened because you were in pause, and the game info does not update until it is in motion. Then the timed traffic light used that outdated info and changed things back around. All at 36:30 ish. Given you later changed the roads, it does not matter too much, but that is what happened.
I played this map too. The biggest two things i can say is to make a temporary road running to the other prebuilt highway junctions and put a lot of temporary parks by the spider junction because it incentivizes them to travel over there. Then just delete them later
When your setting up a timed traffic light if you check out the check mark boxes at the bottom when your editing a step. one of the last options is to change when there are no more vehicles. sometimes that helps because the light will change when there are no more vehicles moving threw the junction, there are a whole bunch of options that you can use like there are more cars waiting than moving.. and more! so check those light options out for some of your timed traffic lights esp in areas where your having an issue with cars not making it threw the junction. I beielve the opt I told you about will force the light to wait to change until the max count if there are cars moving threw the junction! Thanks so much for the AWESOME CONTENT!! I also noticed that your "spider station" doesnt have water or power which might be why no one was originally using that line because the other station doesnt have water or power! much love Mr. Born
33:44 highway config: - all from right coming only at one lane and second is not used because there's no right turn (ramp is also marked as straight) - need to do 'HuGo' lane switcher not arrow change - forcing all from down in h-way taking ramp->roundabout to go into industrial area since they have no nodes between to change lanes (at least all from-left coming can go in inner lane all the time they need) - unnecessary transition to h-way ramp in bottom left and then back again? 42:28 junction traffic lights can be removed - flow will be more better. btw I would link some extensions to district corners from roundabout pedestrian bridge. ;)
The level train crossing that's at the edge of your traffic fix was originally built many episodes back at that angle because of the city boundary at the time. I think you could elevate that train line and curve it around to meet the rest of the line at a more reasonable angle, and without the level crossing.
I think a good option to help mass transit would be to run an exterior loop connecting all your district hubs. This would help cut down on traffic for adjacent districts while also allowing the spider hub to be a quicker solution for those going all the way across the area!
Loving the series so far - need to create a green somewhere so you can be all it gunpowder green. With the entry to the new area you Could take the connections out of the main road and use the bridges to create slip roads up to them and potentially drop a raised island to connect them up to. That then frees up the road and a tram would look great going around the centre of the new area running from the train station
Edit: you did it later 😊 A solution for the junction at 15:00 would be to add a dedicated right turn lane as most of the cars want to enter the new area there. This way they won't stop on red, because you have a separated right turn traffic light
Haha, which panel ? The one that looks like tiles from the gate controler on Atlantis or the one from the weapon on Dakara ? It is really nice to still see references !
Hey biffa really nice city your building! Love it! :) You might want to consider building a bypass from the highway below "teatris" to the teatris district. The only way cars can enter that district atm is driving all the way around through the roundabout etc. (I think you had the idea in a previous video as well) With another added bypass/way for cars to enter that district you might be able to remove most of the traffic lights.
The little metro shuttle is an amazing idea. I do hope you'll extend that line when you start expanding the city that way instead of forcing people to change over there. Then again I highly doubt anyone will want to take the bypass train over the express. So maybe having that stop as a transfer station is the right thing to do.
Wow, after so many great fixes, this was hard to watch, made me wonder "WHY?! WHAT?!" like: train blocking road -> stop swtiching lanes lanes?! why not raise train above road level and avoid barriers? like: counting lanes art roundabout, not noticing 2 lanes away merging in to a single (just outside the picture) micromanaging rather than zooming out to get the big picture... Beauty is, there is not THE ONE way, but infinte solutions and >80% flow is very impressive After all, the joy of gridlock disappearing never gets old!
With dedicated traffic lights for a 2 lane road, always have the crossing directions in one lane ( straight and left) and non-crossing in the other. You can change the lane directions again after putting the dedicated traffic lights. This way, right turning traffic at the next road in sequence of the traffic lights get green only because it doesn’t cross the intersection
Although by the end of this episode it was no longer an issue, the new highway roundabout probably follows the advanced highway merging rules in TMPE if you have that option on. I had an issue with it some time ago that meant that they ignored priority signals on the highway roundabouts. My cobbled solution was a standard road with highway speeds on the roundabout to ensure the merging rule was ignored. Also, regarding the crossroad that was giving your grief, an interesting possibilty to possibly keep in mind is dedicated turns along the kerb when you have lights (optimised flow as you showed in this episode) as opposed to the dedicated turn cutting across traffic when there are no lights (which seemed to work well on another junction last episode). But then again, maybe it's case-by-case depending on the heaviest flow of traffic... what do I know! I barely understand my own city! lol As always, great fun to watch your build and fixes, Biffa! Take care!
One small comment about the new roundabout: that one road going from two separate roads into one, back into two grinds my OCD to no small degree.. On a sidenote I would have put a nice subway circle in the new area with stops on the triangle pieces around. I would also have made the green area on the outskirds a nice park.
I agree on the roundabout, it would look much nicer if the two carriageways to the 'right' of it stayed separate, there's no reason for them to merge into a single highway road.
I understand that you were unwilling to connect the new metro line to the central station tracks. There had been alternatives: a minor adjustment of the metro tunnel seen in the very first scene of your video to add in a station there; or just adding a passenger rail station (with bypass tracks). 1:49 The new metro line could run through Crest Height (behind the Central Station) instead and connect to Stadium Line in a new interchange station between Stadium and industry - where it either ends or continues to offer a transfer to you trams ... 37:45 Downgrading these access roads to one-way shocked me a little bit - but now my idea seems less radical: If you change both one-way to a one-lane-each-way you can put Ctrl-S on the intersections. Vehicles that wanted to go left will now use the bridges and produce routes that rather remind of cloverleafs and trumpets.
42:36 I think the roundabout should be connected straight to the highway, instead of having to yield on the way out. The other road is smaller so it should be the one yielding.
Another great episode Biffa, must admit I had a good chuckle at the bike lane next to the bike lane and the constant British confusion working with right-hand traffic lane management coming into roundabouts (which plagues me too) 😉 As a thought, it seems like you could ditch those timed traffic lights now that you've changed those roads to one-way in/out.
When you put in the aligning roads in preparation for the roundabout at 26:01, I thought you were going to stick in a "capsule-a-bout" (which would have looked neat IMO). It would have also avoided the "nodes too close" issue mentioned at 33:00.
Been looking forward for this the whole day! After this i will try creating my own city on the same map...will probably copy you completly...just so you know.
If you put a one-way slip lane between the T-junction and the roundabout you could massively reduce the traffic in that sector. It's not an elegant solution but it works!
Dear, dear dear Biffa ;-)… Of all people… aren’t you the one that warns in EVERY Traffic Fix to watch out to NOT force the traffic in a specific direction when you set up the coloured ‘You Go There’-lanes ;-) Now you did it by yourself 🙈 the moment you set up the roundabout at 32:17 it seems you force everyone joining the collector under the bridge towards the roundabout to keep right (in combination with the connectors you set up seconds before), so they are forced to go towards the Cargo Train Station and maybe turn there somewhere instead of switching lanes. Don’t think you meant to do that because it will add pressure in your Cargo area ;-). Makes my day to see Traffic King Biffa to make a rookie traffic mistake against his own rules 🤣 happens to the best ;-)
I recomend you try the "Stops & Stations" mod by dymanoid to set the max amount of waiting ppl at a stop. Like in real life, if you saw 250 ppl waiting at a bus stop you would consider walking or other means instead, that's what that mod does. :)
In my game the citizens prefer to walk everywhere.
In real life I just watched my neighbor drive ten feet to check their mailbox.
🤣 (I don't know feet to meter but I think it's not to far)
@@sannebov7935 just over 3 feet to a meter
Walking or cycling is difficult to start with, once you start doing it however it becomes easier and easier.
@@omnious1982 really close approximation is that 3 metres is 10 feet.
Last year, I saw someone drive across the road to use the gym. Bleeding irony.
This was the most frustrating, and most rewarding, episode of the entire series. So many things Biffa started to do that made me want to yell at the screen...and then he fixed it.
I'm watching this 2 years later and this comment was relieving to me because there's definitely nothing I can do about it :')
The list of arbitrary numbers in the back of Biffa's head consist only of 5, 8 and 12 😂
Apparently so :P
I call them Biffanachi numbers
age of the kids?
@@RaymondHonderdors been that age for a long time then 😂
@@soberhippie love this :-)
biffa, as someone who lives in chicago, having a kind of "spider" subway system where the lines only meet in one location, it seriously sucks. consider adding at least one outside connecting loop
Yeah, City Planner Plays mentioned that American cities tend to have the hub/spoke model, and it works great for getting folks from the suburbs and into the city center....and not a whole lot else.
@@kevinschultz6091 all the intercity lines follow the hub and spoke model too, not just outside to inside regional lines. if i want to go from southwest chicago to northwest chicago, i have to take a longass bus ride or go northeast and then northwest on the subway
@@aquakroot There definitely needs to be a loop line. in Glasgow Scotland we have a looping bus line, but like you say it takes FOREVER
connect the pedestrian roundabout bridge thing to the closest blocks. You could shorten the walking distance for the pedestrians. Now they have to walk along the sidewalks of the mainroads and that is clogging up the intersections. With the bridges to all adjacent blocks pedestrians wouldn't have to cross any major road, only the small ones inside the neighborhoods
Exactly what I thought too!
@@HenrikOlander same
Also making a connection over the big road going north to south to the west of the new district might help.
I think place the bridge on the outer lane of the roundabout is better, and then can use the ramp for it.
Yes! Can connect right to the bridges
3:48 the spider metro hub has no electricity. This must be the reason why nobody is actually using the long line
Came to say the same thing
and no water
Just noticed that too. No power nor water. May be why the metro from it was empty.
Multiple problems is what I saw very quickly.
I noticed Biffa didn't do any connections when he built it.
@@Bill_Bogan Building and not connecting an infrastructure hub is ok, just remember to turn it off so it's not costing money until you're ready to use it fully
The new area looks like tetris. Teatris?
I think the reason no one used the first metro line u put in today is that the spider hub doesn’t have any water of electricity. Hence why it said multiple problems
The people also got on their journeys based on time, to go all the way from that area, to the spider, and back to the main station would take a very long time, it would be faster to sit in traffic.
That and the fact that it will take far longer to get anywhere because they have to travel 10 times the distance because there are no direct connections to anywhere useful.
not only that but theres nothing there! it needs connected to the main train station hub even just temporarily then 30 mins of needless traffic faffery would be saved
Somehow watching Biffa break all his own traffic rules for episodes on end makes it so much more satisfying to watch him finally come back and do a 'fix my traffic' episode on his own designs!
Biffa: “I’m recording this in the future!”
Doc Brown/Marty: 🤔🤔🤔🤔
I was frowning at that comment as well. He recorded this in the past to upload it in the future.
Or he has indeed a time machine.
Great Scott!!!!
Maybe if he changes the speed on the new roundabout to 88mph.
ahhh, let me grab a cuppa tea and get watching! :)
I had to pause the video for a quick tea brewing break when I read your comment. :D
you shall get biscuits too
"all the people are walking"
Remember, 10 thousands steps a day keeps the doctor away
8:50 theres a bike-lane in the road right there!
Exactly. Plus the pedestrian path is even more useless; if he really wanted to he could make it just a bike path but it would still be kind of useless.
he noticed it later
My internet just went out right at 13:29 when he said "stop" and I waited for like 20 seconds, sure that it was a joke by the editor, before I actually checked if the video was still going :D
17:00 all that traffic could be fixed by one-way roads (one way into the grid area one way out simple!)
my suggestion is to add a hiking trail along the ridge of the mountain then make a designated walking tour (or maybe 5 walking tours) you can even make the mountain area a nature reserve .. then name it rooibos natea reserve.
bear in mind nature reserves are huge so the mountain area can be used 100%.
Did you watch to the end of the video?
@@gormster yes i did but as time goes you will see the point I'm trying to raise?
I like this idea a lot. Whenever I've done nature reserve parks in my game I've always tried to put them in mountainous areas too.
@@Myne1001 im glad you like it.
Why not make that railroad that goes over the road, and makes traffic, go under the road?!
Ditto...even if there's no train, they're slowing down going over the tracks
He probably thinks the crossing looks good
He already said before he wanted to keep it as long as possible
That'd be the easy way out, not the Biffa way. He might as well put despawning on then ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@@richy77 it does look good
HA see same problem, the timed traffic light changed your arrows back to go straight on im having a similar problem with that. u can see it changing the lane arrows back at 36:13
Do we know if there is a solution for this? I have the same problem in my city
@@thelostusername5013 there is the manual timed traffic lights you can set up yourself, i guess thats what they are for, the weird setups ? ^^
@@raistormrs ahhh. I hadn't even thought about that. I will look into it thank you
@15:00 just had me wondering if a better way to manage the cars would be making the intersections no left turns instead of lights. Sending the traffic over the Bridges instead of crossing oncoming traffic.
The one-way street model works really well; it just needs to also apply to the roads north of the main drag as well. That way there's only one left turn in each direction, and oncoming right turns can flow into those one-ways at the same time along with the straight traffic accompanying the left turns.
Set policy "Encourage Biking" in all your districts. This boosts the preference much higher in the hierarchy. Cims will bike on sidewalks and paths quite happily , even if there are no bike lanes. Bike lanes will only be used if they provide a continuous path to a destination. A short section of road between intersections or roundabouts will never be used for its bike lanes, because there is no continuous network connection. Cims will instead use the sidewalks, which generally do have a continuous network path for them to follow.
I'm stunned how much that large bottom roundabout made a difference. Cleared all that jam right up and now it looks like the road is barely used at all.
Always lovely when your videos pop up in my feed. A better fit to keep me company while I work is impossible to find! Thank you so much for the series so far :)
Happy to help!
Me, shouting at a screen: „Make it an effing roundabout!“
3:29 Welcome to the year 2100!!!! Thanks for all your hard work Biffa!
Oh yeah! yw :-)
That was a fantastic traffic fix! I figured early on that the odd junction near the cargo hub would be changed to a roundabout. That was awesome!
10:38 You could have a path connecting directly to the roundabout overpass, same on the other side…
I totally thought he was doing to do that.
A Traffic Fix and also on a Thursday?! What a treat!
So pleasing to see all this people going into the metro station ☺️
There's really no need to increase the minimum time on timed traffic lights, only the maximum should be necessary, keeping it low will make sure other traffic won't have to wait too long needlessly.
The only time I've found I needed to increase the minimum time is when you have a gap situation before the light that would trip the "empty input" sensor on the light the way it spaces the traffic. But even then, usually it's better to fix the nature of the gap (moving, gothru, etc) than increase the minimum times for the sake of the other directions on the light.
Hey, Biffa, some stuff I saw:
The change you made at 18:18 broke that road. Both were straight because of the angle of the hoghway ramp, by saying the second lane was to turn right made that one useless. You can see around 33:50 that all the cars are using the center lane, even to turn into the highway.
On the roudabout, at the junction going to the right (with the new neighbourhood in front), the two lane righway merges into one lane soon after the traffic splits again, so the two lanes aren't necessary. And as the turn there is sutil, the game understand it as going straight (as it did with the previous intersection), so cars are all messing up the lanes, using the inner lane to turn right and the outer lane to go straight. You'll need to use Lane Management to fix this, as you should've done with the previous intersection as well.
I could be mistaken, but I think cars do not change lanes at level crossings, since they undestand that they are junctions. This happens at roundabouts as well, so what you said at 32:40 isn't correct (as long as you don't use TM:PE to allow them to change lanes, at least, wich it doesn't happens automaticaly with the roundabout setup).
And at 31:53 you can see that you MIGHT be forcing people coming from the highway ramp to turn into the first right on the roudabout, and forcing the people coming from the city to go through the hole roundabout to turn into that first right.
Anytime roads come in at angles it can be unclear if telling the game right vs straight is actually doing what you want. Often i will map out what i want a lane to do with the lane mgmt lines and see what the arrow changes too, then remove the lines and just keep the arrows so i have minimal impact on lane switching. Only when i specifically want to keep merging or splitting traffic to a lane for a node or 2 do i keep lines in place. My rule of thumb in this game is to make right right lane always dedicated to only turning right, that way straight on traffic never clogs a right turn lane that 9 times out of 10 can drive right on through even on busy intersections similar to real life.
@@ThunderlipsJoeYT I actually prefer exclusive left turns than right turns, since they have harder times going into a junction. But when talking about highway ramps, exclusive right turn lanes are very useful indeed
10:00 - If I had to guess, it's a quirk in the mechanics of Cims path finding; they only look for the bike path if they're faced with a node-choice, and since the path isn't technically connected (it floats in the adjacent building's parking lot), the pedestrians aren't 'fully aware' of their path choices until a recalculation is triggered. And I'm guessing that recalculation happens when the Cims transition between modes of transport or if the street (nodes) get moved/deleted, rather than at every intersection as this would be very CPU intensive.
💖 Love the series Biffa!
Oh Biffa, I'm so glad you fixed that railway junction coming of the roundabout, it really triggered my OCD haha. Oh and that junction you were working on at 37:45, you can help the traffic now coming from the right by giving them two lanes to go straight through, and then one can also go right and one can also go left. Great video as always!!
You got perfect access to trains around there, maybe you could add a train station in "Cedar Hills"?
Yeah, getting some access from the south would make a lot of sense. Question would be if he can cram passenger trains and cargo trains in the area.
Was gonna comment the same thing, that poor cargo train terminal will kill any traffic ambitions if it has to handle that whole new area by itself.
Every time you say "no problem at all", I always think, no Biffa that's another part of the city. lol
Ceder Hill should be called "Repeti-tea" cause the buildings repeat
It's an office area. Shouldn't it be called "Tea Leaf Counting District".
Its biffa just sitting their on his phone/computer waiting for new comments to heart? Thanks Biffa, i said that because i got a instant heart
After 28 minutes of me shouting at the screen "Why has Biffa not connected the metro the other Way" He does 👍
36:45 there don't need to be any traffic lights on the main road at al, you can force all the oncoming roads to only turn right, because they can use the bridges to cross over and join the road the other way. make it function more like a highway.
39:30 instead of connencting both tubes you simply could rerout the old turn a bit and insert a new sub-station (yellow line) inside the triangle. that way both lines stay disconnected but people can get to the new area quickly too
Fun Episode. Two suggestions:
28:58 The road heading East out of town from the new roundabout can be a 2-lane instead of asymmetrical. Two nodes later it merges down to 1 lane.
8:23 The central ring of the pedestrian walkway around the roundabout can be lowered to the same height as the outside ramps.
Using the dirt road to put the roundabout in rather than using freestyle is a nice bit of info thx !
Great fix! Delighted to see the arm of the spider connected to the center of the previous expansion AND adding in another metro line to across from the University. I know the new above ground metro stations are stunning to look at and watch, but those little 1 square vanilla stations can fit in almost anywhere to help with traffic flow. They don't congest traffic like a bus stop. Glad you simplified that interchange with a roundabout as well. 👏👏👏👏👏
At 33:30
Biffa: "Don't stop till you get enough"
Loved the disco music reference :D
That was one huge fix there, Biff... Marvellous job.
Also, right at the beginning, when you placed that metro stop.... You left the rubbish bins on the stop misaligned by a few pixels with the bin on the path XD Not worth going back, but it caught my eye :D
Node controller at 30:13... the red boundary lines on the two lane road segment indicates a restriction in the network path (glitching), and vehicles will slow down drastically to cross it, then speed up, or come to a complete stop and then proceed. Huge traffic slowdowns occur for no apparent reason unless this is recognized and repaired. Adjust the intersection until all boundary lines are green.
My favourite day of the week. Lots of new CS content to watch. Biffa as always is top of the list. Cuppa - CHECK, Chocolate Digestives - CHECK, Kids occupied - CHECK, BRB set on Teams - CHECK, Home office door closed - CHECK. Time for another great BIffaplays Episode of Newtealand, Yippee!
I've come to the conclusion that we need TM:PE for real life. I saw traffic on the freeway the other day squeezing down to one lane to take an exit while tying up the rest of the travel lanes.
Name suggerstion: "Herbata district"
herbata is Polish word for tea, it's one of few European languages, where word for tea isn't Chinese loanword
Actually it is from Chinese too, it's from Latin herba ("herb") + Malay teh ("tea")
@@betsegg and the malay word "teh" is itself a chinese loanword. every single word for tea outside of china, myanmar and thailand is a chinese loanword. very strange
I was waiting for someone to include some herbata into this
@@diamdante Which makes sense as the plant originates in Southern Chine, Burma, North East India area and the Tang Chinese made it popular in the area. Depending who introduced it where the pronounciation of the used word and therefore the loan word differs. E.g. it's cha in Japan.
@@kaltaron1284 exactly, well said bro (Y)
One thing to consider would to be extending your metro line from the capital area down through the high-density residential that is on either side of the train station.
Seems like there’s lots of walking between the two areas, and to do trains you’d have to go all the way out to the spider hub and back. It’ll mean a couple metro lines running somewhat near to each other, but you see that in cities all the time.
Loving new tealand!
There are tandem-style tram busses available on Steam that can carry up to 180 passengers. There are also metro trains that can carry up to 750 people available on Steam.
The way that Traffic manager sets up the automatic timed traffic lights really needs to have a dedicated right turn lane. With a four-way intersection you get four phases/steps for the light. Without a dedicated right turn cars will only be able to turn right during one of those instead of two.
Something else you can do is to go into the Traffic Manager settings and enable turning on red. This can be in addition to the dedicated right-turn lane or in lieu of a dedicated turn lane.
I noticed this issue as well. I never use traffic signals as i haven't grown to densities that i need them, but dedicated right turn only seems to be something this game's traffic algorithm handles really well when pathfinding. I too turn on the turn on red option as IRL turn on red is only really ever restricted when the intersection is massive or is very obstructed, and IRL is the most annoying thing at any intersection when you see "no turn on red"
You could add a train station for the yellow train line, South of Cedar and Lafayette, so that people coming from that side don’t have to go all the way to the main train station to get there. (Also connect up the metro line to that train station in Cedar/Lafayette)
I love that Biffa spent half of the episode redoing the road network trying to get a single timed traffic light to work instead of just trying "one way in, one way out" to start.
you know how to do it right?
you complicate things first,
and when it all goes to hell,
then you take the simplest solution that is also the best
I was just thinking about the need of a new Biffa video and here it comes. Great timing, thank you Biffa! :)
My pleasure!
I'd recommend setting up the main roads in the new commercial area with one-way roads, and making a rectangle-about out of them. Similarly, the two access roads could be one-way, one in each direction.
Whenever I'm stressed out, I see you had uploaded a video and my day gets better ☺️ I love your work
Thank you so much 😀
Thank you for the ending Metro fix, I was loudly talking to my screen the whole episode about it:)
Cedar Hills name: Libertea Square
Classic Biffa, and why we love ya, "let me add a bike path to the road with bike paths" DOH
Yo dawg, I heard you like bike paths
36:20 You can optimise it. Run it on 3 phases- Main road through and right, Main road left turns, side road left and right turns.
Just a quick suggestion, on the main road that services Cedar Hills & Laurel Park (Or whatever their tea related names become), organise the lanes to avoid any crossover. So on main road, allow only straight & left turns, so it avoids any turning across traffic. This way people can turn left into the road, then use the bridges to go to other side of main road. By doing this, a turn around ramp closer to highway section of road towards the spider interchange would need to be added to allow people more accessibility. Loving the videos, good to have a cuppa while watching!
Also, a name suggestion for the spider interchange:
"Spider Tea-Junction" (Based of the phrase Spider T-Junction)
37:08 When you made those one-way roads, you can get rid of the traffic lights. With one-way roads, the traffic lights are not necessary, and only add to the traffic.
Amazing video biffa, so cool to see all the citizens using the mass transit, really making me want to jump back in
When you re-added the timed traffic lights, it reverted your lane changes. I think this happened because you were in pause, and the game info does not update until it is in motion. Then the timed traffic light used that outdated info and changed things back around. All at 36:30 ish.
Given you later changed the roads, it does not matter too much, but that is what happened.
The change happened at 36:10 just as he added the new traffic light back in.
Man I was screaming for you to put that metro bypass in for the whole episode hahah, thank god you finally did I would've gone crazy
I played this map too. The biggest two things i can say is to make a temporary road running to the other prebuilt highway junctions and put a lot of temporary parks by the spider junction because it incentivizes them to travel over there. Then just delete them later
When your setting up a timed traffic light if you check out the check mark boxes at the bottom when your editing a step. one of the last options is to change when there are no more vehicles. sometimes that helps because the light will change when there are no more vehicles moving threw the junction, there are a whole bunch of options that you can use like there are more cars waiting than moving.. and more! so check those light options out for some of your timed traffic lights esp in areas where your having an issue with cars not making it threw the junction. I beielve the opt I told you about will force the light to wait to change until the max count if there are cars moving threw the junction!
Thanks so much for the AWESOME CONTENT!!
I also noticed that your "spider station" doesnt have water or power which might be why no one was originally using that line because the other station doesnt have water or power!
much love
Mr. Born
Biffa: Has one connection into a part of the city.
Also Biffa: Wondering why traffic has built up at that connection
You should start banning crossing traffic. This "new" area is perfect for that as people that want to turn left can use the bridges.
33:44 highway config:
- all from right coming only at one lane and second is not used because there's no right turn (ramp is also marked as straight) - need to do 'HuGo' lane switcher not arrow change
- forcing all from down in h-way taking ramp->roundabout to go into industrial area since they have no nodes between to change lanes (at least all from-left coming can go in inner lane all the time they need)
- unnecessary transition to h-way ramp in bottom left and then back again?
42:28 junction traffic lights can be removed - flow will be more better.
btw I would link some extensions to district corners from roundabout pedestrian bridge. ;)
30:30 "..don't stop..." was wondering if you'd make the 'get enough' reference...you did LOL. :)
😳 Wow! Those people really created a stampede when they went to the metro, Biffa! 😆 🚇🚉
The level train crossing that's at the edge of your traffic fix was originally built many episodes back at that angle because of the city boundary at the time. I think you could elevate that train line and curve it around to meet the rest of the line at a more reasonable angle, and without the level crossing.
I think a good option to help mass transit would be to run an exterior loop connecting all your district hubs. This would help cut down on traffic for adjacent districts while also allowing the spider hub to be a quicker solution for those going all the way across the area!
Loving the series so far - need to create a green somewhere so you can be all it gunpowder green.
With the entry to the new area you Could take the connections out of the main road and use the bridges to create slip roads up to them and potentially drop a raised island to connect them up to.
That then frees up the road and a tram would look great going around the centre of the new area running from the train station
Edit: you did it later 😊
A solution for the junction at 15:00 would be to add a dedicated right turn lane as most of the cars want to enter the new area there. This way they won't stop on red, because you have a separated right turn traffic light
That new district reminds me of ancient control panels from Stargate series.
Haha, which panel ? The one that looks like tiles from the gate controler on Atlantis or the one from the weapon on Dakara ? It is really nice to still see references !
Hey biffa really nice city your building! Love it! :)
You might want to consider building a bypass from the highway below "teatris" to the teatris district. The only way cars can enter that district atm is driving all the way around through the roundabout etc. (I think you had the idea in a previous video as well)
With another added bypass/way for cars to enter that district you might be able to remove most of the traffic lights.
The little metro shuttle is an amazing idea. I do hope you'll extend that line when you start expanding the city that way instead of forcing people to change over there. Then again I highly doubt anyone will want to take the bypass train over the express. So maybe having that stop as a transfer station is the right thing to do.
Wow, after so many great fixes, this was hard to watch, made me wonder "WHY?! WHAT?!"
like: train blocking road -> stop swtiching lanes lanes?! why not raise train above road level and avoid barriers?
like: counting lanes art roundabout, not noticing 2 lanes away merging in to a single (just outside the picture)
micromanaging rather than zooming out to get the big picture...
Beauty is, there is not THE ONE way, but infinte solutions and >80% flow is very impressive
After all, the joy of gridlock disappearing never gets old!
With dedicated traffic lights for a 2 lane road, always have the crossing directions in one lane ( straight and left) and non-crossing in the other. You can change the lane directions again after putting the dedicated traffic lights. This way, right turning traffic at the next road in sequence of the traffic lights get green only because it doesn’t cross the intersection
Named it "The Tea Capital"or Named it "The Capi-Tea
The Capi-Tea TD (td = trade district)
Although by the end of this episode it was no longer an issue, the new highway roundabout probably follows the advanced highway merging rules in TMPE if you have that option on. I had an issue with it some time ago that meant that they ignored priority signals on the highway roundabouts. My cobbled solution was a standard road with highway speeds on the roundabout to ensure the merging rule was ignored.
Also, regarding the crossroad that was giving your grief, an interesting possibilty to possibly keep in mind is dedicated turns along the kerb when you have lights (optimised flow as you showed in this episode) as opposed to the dedicated turn cutting across traffic when there are no lights (which seemed to work well on another junction last episode). But then again, maybe it's case-by-case depending on the heaviest flow of traffic... what do I know! I barely understand my own city! lol
As always, great fun to watch your build and fixes, Biffa! Take care!
One small comment about the new roundabout: that one road going from two separate roads into one, back into two grinds my OCD to no small degree..
On a sidenote I would have put a nice subway circle in the new area with stops on the triangle pieces around. I would also have made the green area on the outskirds a nice park.
I agree on the roundabout, it would look much nicer if the two carriageways to the 'right' of it stayed separate, there's no reason for them to merge into a single highway road.
At around 29:45-29:50 I was starting to question what Biffa puts in his tea
"You haven't seen this video yet I'm recording in the future." 🤨 Um, okaaaaay, Biffa... 😆
I understand that you were unwilling to connect the new metro line to the central station tracks. There had been alternatives: a minor adjustment of the metro tunnel seen in the very first scene of your video to add in a station there; or just adding a passenger rail station (with bypass tracks). 1:49 The new metro line could run through Crest Height (behind the Central Station) instead and connect to Stadium Line in a new interchange station between Stadium and industry - where it either ends or continues to offer a transfer to you trams ...
37:45 Downgrading these access roads to one-way shocked me a little bit - but now my idea seems less radical: If you change both one-way to a one-lane-each-way you can put Ctrl-S on the intersections. Vehicles that wanted to go left will now use the bridges and produce routes that rather remind of cloverleafs and trumpets.
42:36 I think the roundabout should be connected straight to the highway, instead of having to yield on the way out. The other road is smaller so it should be the one yielding.
Another great episode Biffa, must admit I had a good chuckle at the bike lane next to the bike lane and the constant British confusion working with right-hand traffic lane management coming into roundabouts (which plagues me too) 😉
As a thought, it seems like you could ditch those timed traffic lights now that you've changed those roads to one-way in/out.
When you put in the aligning roads in preparation for the roundabout at 26:01, I thought you were going to stick in a "capsule-a-bout" (which would have looked neat IMO). It would have also avoided the "nodes too close" issue mentioned at 33:00.
Agreed, an elongated roundabout would have looked cool and probably worked better.
Been looking forward for this the whole day! After this i will try creating my own city on the same map...will probably copy you completly...just so you know.
If you put a one-way slip lane between the T-junction and the roundabout you could massively reduce the traffic in that sector. It's not an elegant solution but it works!
Biffa: adding a cycling path next to a BICYCLE ROAD
Me: Anxiety fit
"Dedicated traffic lines" LOL that's a new one
Name: “The Cuppa-Tea Capital”
15:00 I keep saying to myself... dedicated right turn lane... especially if you're going to use a 4-phase version...
Dear, dear dear Biffa ;-)… Of all people… aren’t you the one that warns in EVERY Traffic Fix to watch out to NOT force the traffic in a specific direction when you set up the coloured ‘You Go There’-lanes ;-)
Now you did it by yourself 🙈 the moment you set up the roundabout at 32:17 it seems you force everyone joining the collector under the bridge towards the roundabout to keep right (in combination with the connectors you set up seconds before), so they are forced to go towards the Cargo Train Station and maybe turn there somewhere instead of switching lanes. Don’t think you meant to do that because it will add pressure in your Cargo area ;-).
Makes my day to see Traffic King Biffa to make a rookie traffic mistake against his own rules 🤣 happens to the best ;-)
I'm sad when the episode ends and I have to wait for a new one
I recomend you try the "Stops & Stations" mod by dymanoid to set the max amount of waiting ppl at a stop. Like in real life, if you saw 250 ppl waiting at a bus stop you would consider walking or other means instead, that's what that mod does. :)
🤔
I love catching the obscure song lyrics! 33:30
Three episodes of Biffa on the trot, awesome!