The best part of designing intersections in CitySkylines is how obedient and patient the drivers are. No moving violations. No crashes. No road rage. And I also imagine the drivers being polite enough to thank me for my great design as they pass through. Happy Thanksgiving, YUMBLE!
Well, this isn't realistic. I'm sorry, but I think we need an Accident DLC to match the realism. 😏 We would have the option to "choose" an accident on the road by clicking it on in a spot, or something. The same would be for mass transit and yes, including planes. Imagine the traffic piling up, or seeking alternative routes to go around the accident! It would be GLORIOUS! 😆😈 An plane crash could occur downtown! 😳😏 Of course it would be controversial, especially if citizens would die, but so what? We do it with the Disasters DLC. I tell you, it would be great! 😆
Isn't there actually a setting for driver aggression and law braking, or is that only with traffic manager? I agree accidents would improve the game. Many interchanges like diverging diamond and roundabouts are superior mainly because they avoid fatal accidents, not necessarily traffic flow.
@@stevengalloway8052 l'm not sure that more realism would automatically make the game better. I'm not a city planner, but I would not be surprised if most of the systems in this game were *very* unrealistic. Sometimes for performance reasons, sometimes just to ensure playability. An Accident DLC would be fine, though. Just like with Natural Disasters, if l don't want accidents in my game, l don't have to buy the DLC.
I've been playing Cities since 2016 and I never get tired of roads and traffic management in this game. It feels like an endlessly changing and chaotic challenge that you never quite manage to get perfectly right.
I had a city of about 200k in 4 tiles and with president edition traffic manager I banned every left turn on heavy traffic arteries (4 and 6 lanes roads). Was managing 90-92% traffic flow without left turns.
i have a city that's been having major issues with traffic despite following all of Biffa's advice and converting as much road to bike-friendly roads and encouraging biking, making things walkable, overhauling transit, etc. my biggest pinch points were always interchanges. i used your tutorial to create a parclo from scratch in a really strange section of the map that a symmetrical, 90 degree interchange wouldn't fit, but i was able to manage it and it cleared up traffic significantly. thanks for making such good tutorial videos and explaining your reasoning every step of the way, it's proven really helpful!
From a driver's perspective, I have always loved going through a cloverleaf, especially because of the weave lane. I find that the nature of the weave forces incoming and outgoing cars to actively cooperate with each other to exchange places with each other, which makes for a very smooth transition. Contrast this with ordinary merges, and drivers already on the freeway rarely if ever accommodate new traffic from the merge lane. They can have an attitude of "it's your problem and if you run out of merge lane I don't care" with no negative consequence to themselves, whereas on a weave lane, even a selfish driver must help to create an opening if he wants to receive one. I also find that a cloverleaf's forgiveness of mistakes can be a huge stress relief on the driver. Once you get into the loops, you can completely miss your merge and all you have to do is pass around the other loops to try again. This is silly but it's a lot less silly than going five miles down the road to the next interchange because you made a whoopsie and missed an exit you didn't mean to. This can cut down on dangerous last-second lane changes as people are less desperate to avoid missing their exit when the consequence is not so harsh. It also never forces you to exit from the passing lane, which is harder to do than exiting from the non-passing lane. Getting into the passing lane can be difficult especially when contending with impatient residents of the fast lane who do not care about the fact that they are now sharing space with people who want to exit - they just want to cruise and not be impeded in any way. I don't know how any of this is represented statistically since I'm just a layman, but I suspect that the drawbacks of the cloverleaf may not bear out in practice as badly as they seem like they ought to on paper.
I would like to add to your point about "missing your merge...". As beutifully designed (and practically perfect & free-flowing) as the Stacked Interchange seems to be... left, right, and forward are the only options. A U-turn is impossible! Whereas, a cloverleaf allows you to essentially U-turn on the highway. It is a great option when you have missed an exit.
"Contrast this with ordinary merges, and drivers already on the freeway rarely if ever accommodate new traffic from the merge lane. They can have an attitude of "it's your problem and if you run out of merge lane I don't care" with no negative consequence to themselves, whereas on a weave lane, even a selfish driver must help to create an opening if he wants to receive one." Ironically that is the law, merging traffic must find an opening and legally it is their problem.
@@YUMBL There is some great truck dash cam footage of cars merging onto freeways at 20mph especially in these slip lanes. The lucky ones survived to pay the ticket and the insurance bills to the trucks dash cam owner. But back on point, yea its a mess.
@@zeroibis "merging traffic must find an opening..." You say this is the law. Can you find it in your traffic code? 5 to 10 times, I have scowered/scoured/searched the Motor Vehicle Act (MVA) of my province of British Columbia and I can't find any definitive wording on this subject. Can you show me where it says it "in law" in your state (or where ever you are from)?
My favourite service Interchanges are single roundabouts, where you dump traffic onto an elevated or lowered roundabout to redirect them in other directions, or a turbine / single elevated road turbine managed with TM:PE since you can get some crazy compact, arguably minimal free-flow intersections
I'm an architecture student, and you'd be surprised about how much we learn on the effects of traffic flow and how the design of roads can make a place feel 'beautiful'. nice video man, im with you on the partial clover leaf, i use that in my cities all the time. Also whats your graphic settings??
Good stuff. I think what was left unaddressed was how to classify and solve the problem you initially presented, a high traffic urban intersection of two non-highway arterials? Perhaps a bypass roundabout? The tail on the turbo roundabout's traffic seemed to be primarily from cars wanting to go straight through. I always end up making a spaghetti stack in those situations, and hiding it underground in shame.
With good road hierarchy and attention to connections combined with transit your arterial and collectors intersections should do alright. If its a highways worth pf traffic then vanilla overpass would work wonders.
My personal favorite: the cloverstack hybrid. It eliminates a clover's weaving, but cheaper than a full stack. Also, try using cloverleafs with collector lanes to eliminate weaving. Dual trumpet interchanges are also useful if your roads are tolled.
3:38 that is the simplest type of cloverleaf, and yes, the weave is a problem because it happens right on the main carriageway. the first step to solving the problem is to move the weave away from the main carriageway by splitting the highway into 2 separate, parallel carriageways and then connecting the slip roads to that secondary carriageway. there are many such cloverleaf interchanges in germany, traffic can flow freely on the main carriageway while the weave happens on the secondary carriageway the next step is to eliminate the need for the weave by switching the order of the lanes leading into the secondary carriageway. so when a car comes off the northbound highway onto the secondary carriageway, it finds itself on the right lane of that secondary carriageway instead of the left lane, so no lane change is required. problem eliminated. one example of such an optimized cloverleaf can be found in frankfurt, germany, right next to the airport, where the A3 and the A5 meet. that one is made slightly more complicated by the fact that another junction (A5 and B43) is very close. but you can clearly see that the lanes cross over each other in every leaf. and why the hell can't i post links to google maps???
I hit Megalopolis in my city and can buy all squares now and I built a ring highway around my city. I used your single point parclo AS service interchanges and they work realy well. Thanks a lot.
Your videos are very enjoyable ... like the Bob Ross of City: Skylines intersections :-) One thing I noticed in several of your videos: if you have a intersection with a traffic light like you have in the beginning of this video, you could force the cars going straight or right into the left two lanes and then allow right turns on all stopped sides.
im so glad that u show interchange systems with actual lane maths. most channels show great designs and ideas, but forget about the most important part for eg. Vanilla based builds it helps so much to include lane math so u dont need traffic manger/lane manager ai. :D Great video
Cities Skylines' biggest drawback isn't the obvious lack of fine tunning you notice when you start modding it, it's the budget. The reason everyone is always full of great ideas for dealing with traffic is because everything there is so cheap. I mean, traffic itself is "nearly optional" when even a city with 50k residents can afford multiple subway lines. No reason not to have endless roundabouts (if you follow the Biffa school of thought) or nothing but colossal stack interchanges regardless of highway throughput. I even tried making a city once without a single intersection, just underground three way interchanges as far as the eye could see, and it worked without a hitch, with plenty of money to spare to increase budgets beyond 100%. What makes these videos great is that they don't offer utopian solutions, but that they have a common sense behind them
@@Mike-ukr If they're there from the start and if the town is relatively small, with low-ish land value on average, sure. Slapping roundabouts in intersections in the middle of city centers would be far too cost prohibitive since you might need to demolish buildings around them and would then need to disregard the existing infrastructure to build the roundabout from scratch. Costs money to demolish buildings and to build new roads, money you wouldn't make back since you'd have a larger area occupied by roads plus the space in the center, where you couldn't zone, meaning less tax revenue; less available land area would then raise the cost of living, driving demand for higher density housing which would then create additional traffict. Roundabouts are great, just not the be all end all solution the game allows them to be. Plenty of small towns on the US have 2+ cars per household; that wouldn't fly on a large metropolis, even if the cars themselves are cheap and people there have more money; fish is "really cheap" on coastal villages, expensive in large desert cities. Price and feasibility are relative.
Its important to note i think, that in City Skylines price of roads isnt as big of a problem as in real life. As much as a clover leaf is crappy, its real cheap whereas a 4 stack is extremely expensive like a loooot
It's also why, at least over here, cloverleaves are developed further to increase efficiency and safety. For example, in Germany the weaving lanes are almost always separated from the through lanes. Also, quite often one of the 'leaves' is turned into a direct ramp like in a stack interchange, or two are, as in a cloverstack.
2:16 I'm now so curious as to how the roundabout would perform if it had the same 4+3 roads as before and two straight-ahead lanes instead of one. (Literally just 'split' the middle lane into two to double the straight-ahead bandwidth and whether that would reduce the tailbacks at all.) I'm not saying the roundabout would perform better but it's not at all a fair comparison having a 3+2 turbo vs a 4+3 lighted intersection and saying the roundabout causes tailbacks. (Not a complaint at all I'm just curious what the results would be.)
The roundabout already had 4 lanes though two were dedicated to right turn exits. It would help, but would still be entirely overwhelmed. Lights perform better when traffic is high on all sides, or if traffic is asymmetrical.
@@YUMBL Yes I suppose it would need the roundabout to be a 5-lane road, or the immediate right-turns to be a separate one-lane slip road, which would be essentially the same thing but allow the roundabout to be built with a 4-lane road. Definitely starts to make things very complicated 😅
I was wondering the same thing. Seems like cars prefer to go straight, otherwise the left lanes would be filled as well, so the roundabout has a clear disadvantage versus the two straight lanes on the lighted intersection.
It's so nice to watch your vids. Nice and even paced. Nothing fast so I have to go back over it (the worst) or, get bored and leave. Before I know it, the video is over, and I watch all the way through. Thank you.
Cool video, but I think that by creating a diverse system of transportation (bus, metro, tram, etc.) will lower the traffic volume way much more effectively than an urban highway, but still cool video
Always, if they're properly planned for distance and future proof for demand. This is valid in game and IRL. Some places have even put some modern trams or light trains, but didn't consider the stations and where the track passes, negating any major improvement in non-individual transportation system, plus the security issues...cough...cough...LA...craptastic urban planning. It's always a balance between where you create what type of demand and how to fulfill it. Longer distances, like cross town and suburbs, you need a express train. Mid distances, standard metro, high volume inner city. Mid to low, trams/light trains. Low volume or short distances, busses galore or trams in major collectors.
The art of turning left is a dark art. Build your grids in hexagons so people can only go “straight” or “right”. Then build subways that take people “left”. These directions don’t exist on a hex grid… but there is a direction that traffic flows easily. And a direction where traffic has to drive further to get to their destination. Make subways that flow along the direction where traffic would have to drive further. Then add some cargo rail in the same direction. Or maybe just separate homes and industry along that direction so trucks are disincentivized in driving through residential.
ive gotten pretty liberal with the modding of a stack interchange in one of my cities. used Move-it and Node controller to make the whole interchange be about 50% wider than just two highways passing over each other. looks really cool in a downtown environment.
We love hearing your detailed explanation and everytime we get learn something about roads and intersections. You wouldn't belive but this topic is very exciting to me. Thank you for your great content. Keep it coming...
Mound and I696 in Warren Michigan (just north of Detroit), a slightly contorted stack as a service interchange. I want to say we have a couple of full cloverleafs connecting stroads. We also have stacks were the lefts leave from the left and join from the left, M10 and I94 in Detroit. Quite a few of those also, but I think those are all system interchanges.
Had the game for some years and didnt gave it much of an opportunity. Now I'm comming back to it and I'm loving it. Looking forward to more tutorials and videos like this so, new sub!
That’s so interesting learning about those system interchanges. I know about cloverleafs before, but not what stack interchanges were. Here in Fargo, there is an interesting interchange between i94 and i29 that is a partial cloverleaf and partial stack. Three directions are cloverleafs and one is a stack. I found it really interesting.
I think a combination of the partial cloverleaf and over/underpass for through traffic will prove to be more efficient. I use such combinations often and have over 89% traffic flow in a city of over 250k.
YUMBLtv: "Roundabouts aren't always the solution." Biffa: "And I took offense to that." Anyway, finally, a C:S RUclipsr who doesn't worship roundabouts as some sort of ultimate traffic panacea.
For getting off the highway, the parclo and dumbell are my go to if i got the place to use them and need to use both ways (dumbell for easy to build and quick to set up and parclo if i need to handle more traffic). They also look really nice when you look at them visually. But if i need to be really compact and i don't have much place, i'll use a three level roundabout. That thing can handle a lot of traffic (with slip lanes and all) and be really compact.
You shouldve mentioned that you can combine intersections and roundabouts. Dumbbell intersections look pretty cool, they are easy to use and efficient, both ingame and irl. I know of one that is somewhat local to me (40 mins away). Its a nice change from all the regular intersections and interchanges.
The best thing to do in Cities Skylines is to make the entire road system, actually just one, one-way road. Just one huge snake through the landscape. Sure, it'd suck to ACTUALLY have a real road like this, but the sims don't care. I like to think of them as always sight-seeing. "Here we go kids, thru the industrial part of town, on the way to school..." jk
The stack interchange isn't the only free flowing interchange, I actually like the dutch approach of having two leaves and only two overpasses, this way you end up with only one level of overpass, hence two levels total. I'd appreciate if you'd be able to show these types of system interchanges as well, I think they are a very cost effective approach especially when it comes to converting clover leave system interchanges into free flowing. I also actually like that their footprint is smaller since you don't need to overcome such massive height differences. What do you think about this approach?
5:50 The traffic light settings on the ParClo can be adjusted such that the surface road traffic coming off the overpass in each respective direction never has to stop. The ramps allowing a right turn off the highway can likewise flow freely if they get an additional lane on the surface street. If each onramp has two lanes initially, the right turn onto the highway can flow freely as well. The only stops are the surface street as it approaches the interchange from the outside ->
Also putting stacks everywhere is unrealistic. I like realistic building in cities skylines, which mean the traffic flow should be as good as possible with a minimum budget. In my city with over 300.000+ I only use stacked interchanges at the cities entry's, everywhere else just traffic lights and some roundabouts here and there
Take your biggest most traffic intense road and build a bridge so the right side of the road can be on the left side. Take it around the outside of your city. Do the mirror of that on as the road exits you city and run that incoming road around the other side of your city… Now you have the worlds largest double diamond interchange, a very low conflict exchange. It also may look like an inverted roundabout to some. But whatever you call it, it solves many traffic problems cheaply.
In your first example right turn traffic should have a green light at all times. Since straight through traffic is only two lanes and leaving streets have three lanes and right turn traffic does not conflict with any other traffic. Further optimization would be left turns with two lanes.
the main reason cloverleafs were so popular is that they're probably the cheapest system interchanges. It's becuase they only have two relatively short overpasses were the roads crossover. the rest of the road is either at grade or can have the grade modified to support it which reduces concrete use.
I do feel like the roundabout could still improve matters if it is built larger. The benefit of a roundabout is it increases the number of vehicles passing through the intersection at the same time, but the relatively small roundabout you had, would probably only handle arterial road traffic. Obviously you don't want to stick a roundabout on a highway though. Common design in the UK as you probably know is to have a roundabout above the highway and have slip roads leading to/from the roundabout to the highway and connect your arterial roads to the roundabout as well.
Yes. Lights are better on arterials. Lots of people seem to want to save face on behalf of the roundabout and alter it to improve it, but when hit with traffic on all sides (as on an arterial) a light is much better.
Guy, since I discover your channel, I can't resist to watch new of your videos. You're really interesting and this way you have to explain it's just absolutely awesome. It's very inspiring and improve thinking about traffic management. Love from Belgium man, keep it up !
Have gotten a chance to watch yet, but saw that you updated and wanted to be sure to comment to satisfy the algorithm. Happy Thanksgiving. I'll let it play in the back ground.👍
Though it's not perfect, the oval-about works pretty well as a service interchange. And it circumvents having two different roundabouts fairly close to each other.
On the roundabout it was clear, that only moving forward vehicles were stacked, even the ones who turn left were ok. So I wonder, what if you tried the roundabout with forward overpass, that you demonstrated a while ago? Doing the overpass even just for one road would drastically reduce the amount of cars on the roundabout and might even help to clear the other road.
Can you not apply grade separation to the turbo roundabout plan to get something both compact and free flowing (albeit with sharp turns)? The idea would be that the roads would both be 3:3, the E-W arm would see inbound lanes 1 & 2 (of 3) elevated a little less than a full level (say 6-8m) on the approach, and the N-S arm would see inbound lanes 1 & 2 similarly depressed. You've got a half rotation of the ‘roundabout’ for each of these to return to grade, which should suffice.
We have only a single stack interchange in all of Germany, despite being known for our Autobahns. And it a rather useless Stack interchange. It connects Autobahn A45 with Autobahn A480 but A480 is just 3.6 km (2.2 mi) long. While a 2km (1.5 mi) extention to the south is considered. As a replacement, because the city where the stack is located is considering to demolish an elevated through road through the city, but the extention to the north is canceled. It's basically a stack for an service interchange, at the moment and for the foreseeable future.
@@YUMBL Yep, saw the thumb. Honored. Did you give the suggestion about the Pinwheel a try? Really wonder what you think about it, and how you can use it.
I love the pleasant curves and design of that stack. It even traces an Iron Cross, a common symbol of Germany, historically. One thing that irks me a bit in City Skylines is how one can get away with completely unrealistic interchanges with short, sudden ramps that look hideous. The standard cloverleaf shown here is unfortunately an example with how sharply the loops bash into the mainlines. It’s like the final 20% or so of each loop needs to be completed. But this is an excellent video! Loved that super turbo roundabout with the protected right turns-prevents so much weaving.
Been looking at Google maps a lot recently for inspiration for this game, and looking along the east coast of America I see a lot of these absolutely enormous, spaghetti like monstrosities right in the city centers, I was wondering if you could maybe do a video covering these? Maybe going over the design principles and history behind why they're like this,, because they seem to exist counter to what you've described here regarding service interchanges. Thank you :)
my personal favorite: public transit that carries 100 times the amount of people over these single occupancy vehicles. I use a mod where I can adjust the passenger count for each transit vehicle to be more realistic. 30 on a bus is vanilla, but irl if people are standing it can be around 45, etc
@@YUMBL No, I get it. Making complex, flowing interchanges are fun and i'd be lying if I don't do it either. The difference, and what I would call the problem is people over-rely on them and use them all throughout their cities cores where transit can easily take the burden off. I do mine at the edge where all the main arterials meet and have had no problems with just relying on transit, walking and biking. Kind of like real life haha.
You missed the standard British roundabout interchange, which is our stalwart service interchange (this is not a dumbbell) When they get congested, cover them in pretty traffic lights :)
Also personally I’m a fan of diverging diamonds in high traffic areas where you don’t have a slot of space for high speed entrances and exists such as a busy area under the major highway. We’ve implemented a few of them and you can make them pretty small and it helps traffic a lot. The only thing I’m not a fan of is how confusing it is for people the first few times
I would say i don't know why that appeared in my recommendations, but i can imagine (Thank you, motoway Matt kkkkk). But great video anyway. Super interesting
In the UK, from my experience, the primary junction/interchange used is a grade separated roundabout, though there is a great example of the stack junction you mentioned just outside Bristol where the M4 and M5 converge, it's honestly quite beautiful looking at it on google maps! :-P If you wanted to see the most insane junction in the UK though, it's the A38(M) joining the M6; Gravely Hill junction, also known as Spaghetti Junction! You could say, this is what happens when stacks go mad! :-P
What about the following intersection. The left and the right side of the road are grade separated. Ramps occurring on both sides. I think a missed opportunity is that one side of the road never has any form of connection.
I think the roundabout has to be linearly bigger to the amount of traffic going through it. The reason is that there have to be enough space on the roundabout itself to fit enough traffic. It basically have to fit as much cars on the roundabout as the timed traffic lights let through in one sequence :) (at least that seems logical from math point of view) Defintely roundabouts are not something you want to have in the center of the city on main roads if you don't have the space, but i think that you shouldn't have to have such traffic in center anyway :D
The flaw with the roundabout at 1:24 is that you have single lane for each direction. Notice only middle lane on each entry is congested. The fact that the left lane is not means you have way more traffic going straight than turning left, yet you have only one lane for each. I'd say, allowing the left two lanes to weave both on entry and on the roundabout should increase its traffic throughput because traffic now centered on the middle line will spread over two lanes. Now, of course a roundabout with cars crossing will slow the traffic down compared to the further designs. But it doesn't have to be as bad as in your example.
I upped the capacity as an experiment due to another comment. Created an extra turn lane. Two lanes entering in all sides. Same result. I would invite you to experiment, but a light is better on an arterial road.
We have seen many textbook intersections in skylines. However, the real intersections in big cities are usually much more complicated. The reason I guess is that those intersections are added with functions of both systematic intersection and highway exit to city roads. Could YUMBLtv teach us to build those?
Looking at the roundabout, it looks to me like you've cut the straight through traffic down to a single lane, where the other intersections always had at least 2 lanes of straight through traffic. I think it'd flow better if it had 3 lanes going into the roundabout with the outermost lane serving both 1st and 2nd exit, and the right turn slip road being split off earlier along the feed road. Or if the amount of traffic that wants to turn left is relatively small, use the innermost lane of the feed road to also serve straight through traffic and have 3 lanes on the exit roads as well.
@@YUMBL Which is odd in my experience, because when comparing Takenhofplein and Nelson Mandelaplein in Nijmegen (both are part of the S103), Takenhofplein is the more efficient intersection of the two. So the roundabout wins out over the large lights controlled intersection. But I suppose that it also has a lot to do with the AI of the traffic. That AI clearly wasn't designed with roundabouts in mind. Though I don't really mind that, the entire game is about building a North American style city, so it makes sense that traffic would behave like North American traffic.
No, i mean a roundabout breaks down mathematically when hit with too much traffic. In the real world. Lights hold up at much higher volumes. It has nothing to do with countries.
On one of the main highways from one city to another in my country we have the clover intersection. It looks to have been designed in 1970s, just like pretty much all of Poland and it now supports 2021 traffic. The amount of space for weave is very little and combined with the speeds of 80-120kmh, makes this stupid ass intersection my most hated in real life.
@@YUMBL thankfully I've never experienced an actual traffic jam there and not a single accident, which is frankly surprising! I have also checked the length of the additional lane used for merging, it is 105m, while the speed limit on the highway is 140kmh and on the other "express" road it is 120kmh.
@@YUMBL It must have been an old road. Current regulations state that for 120 and 140 km/h roads the merging lane must be have a shared edge of at least 250m (and that excludes the additional wedge at the end where the lane narrows and disappears). 140km/h roads cannot have weave lanes, unless they are separated from the main through traffic (they unmerge and merge with it some distance from the interchange itself). The weave area must be between 150 and 300 meters, "depending on the conditions" (so for 120 km/h speed limit, I would expect it to be closer to the upper limit, if it isn't separated from the main through traffic anyway, like it has to be on 140 km/h roads).
Thanks for the great video! I have a question. How do you generate the desired amount of traffic on intersections for your videos? I've tried to find a mod that allows to generate an arbitrary traffic between arbitrary points on a map and had no success.
this makes me think back in simcity 2013. what a nightmare... anyways, just the other day i went all in on my first couple custom timed traffic lights for a few main intersections. Im trying to recreate the area where i live and there's mostly traffic lights so im really trying to make them work but i dont have a large population yet. (less than 20k) so far there is no problems. For me the traffic light is very satisfying to watch lol
also traffic lights use to be a big hinderance for my builds. they always seemed to not work right (vanilla) and cause more traffic. so now im actually trying to make traffic lights work so i dont have to spam a huge interchange at every major intersection.
The best part of designing intersections in CitySkylines is how obedient and patient the drivers are. No moving violations. No crashes. No road rage. And I also imagine the drivers being polite enough to thank me for my great design as they pass through. Happy Thanksgiving, YUMBLE!
Happy Thanksgiving! :)
Well, this isn't realistic. I'm sorry, but I think we need an Accident DLC to match the realism. 😏 We would have the option to "choose" an accident on the road by clicking it on in a spot, or something. The same would be for mass transit and yes, including planes. Imagine the traffic piling up, or seeking alternative routes to go around the accident! It would be GLORIOUS! 😆😈 An plane crash could occur downtown! 😳😏 Of course it would be controversial, especially if citizens would die, but so what? We do it with the Disasters DLC. I tell you, it would be great! 😆
Isn't there actually a setting for driver aggression and law braking, or is that only with traffic manager?
I agree accidents would improve the game. Many interchanges like diverging diamond and roundabouts are superior mainly because they avoid fatal accidents, not necessarily traffic flow.
@@joa8593 Only with traffic manager, and it still won't cause accidents to my knowledge, it only has some drivers exceed the speed limit.
@@stevengalloway8052 l'm not sure that more realism would automatically make the game better. I'm not a city planner, but I would not be surprised if most of the systems in this game were *very* unrealistic. Sometimes for performance reasons, sometimes just to ensure playability.
An Accident DLC would be fine, though. Just like with Natural Disasters, if l don't want accidents in my game, l don't have to buy the DLC.
I've been playing Cities since 2016 and I never get tired of roads and traffic management in this game.
It feels like an endlessly changing and chaotic challenge that you never quite manage to get perfectly right.
The traffic makes the whole game work imo.
Perfection, moving target. Can chase; cannot catch.
I had a city of about 200k in 4 tiles and with president edition traffic manager I banned every left turn on heavy traffic arteries (4 and 6 lanes roads). Was managing 90-92% traffic flow without left turns.
Well because it's almost exactly like real traffic. Finding a solution for traffic in the game would mean finding it also for the real world
@@alessiobenvenuto5159 in all honesty we are monkeys driving so even with the perfect solution there will be traffic issues.
i have a city that's been having major issues with traffic despite following all of Biffa's advice and converting as much road to bike-friendly roads and encouraging biking, making things walkable, overhauling transit, etc. my biggest pinch points were always interchanges. i used your tutorial to create a parclo from scratch in a really strange section of the map that a symmetrical, 90 degree interchange wouldn't fit, but i was able to manage it and it cleared up traffic significantly. thanks for making such good tutorial videos and explaining your reasoning every step of the way, it's proven really helpful!
I’m glad to help! :)
Alternate British Title: The Art of turning Right.
underrated
Lol
Some country like indonesia and japan too lmao
Inb4 someone posts an unprompted essay on why one is better than the other
@@ivanaldorino india too
From a driver's perspective, I have always loved going through a cloverleaf, especially because of the weave lane. I find that the nature of the weave forces incoming and outgoing cars to actively cooperate with each other to exchange places with each other, which makes for a very smooth transition. Contrast this with ordinary merges, and drivers already on the freeway rarely if ever accommodate new traffic from the merge lane. They can have an attitude of "it's your problem and if you run out of merge lane I don't care" with no negative consequence to themselves, whereas on a weave lane, even a selfish driver must help to create an opening if he wants to receive one.
I also find that a cloverleaf's forgiveness of mistakes can be a huge stress relief on the driver. Once you get into the loops, you can completely miss your merge and all you have to do is pass around the other loops to try again. This is silly but it's a lot less silly than going five miles down the road to the next interchange because you made a whoopsie and missed an exit you didn't mean to. This can cut down on dangerous last-second lane changes as people are less desperate to avoid missing their exit when the consequence is not so harsh.
It also never forces you to exit from the passing lane, which is harder to do than exiting from the non-passing lane. Getting into the passing lane can be difficult especially when contending with impatient residents of the fast lane who do not care about the fact that they are now sharing space with people who want to exit - they just want to cruise and not be impeded in any way.
I don't know how any of this is represented statistically since I'm just a layman, but I suspect that the drawbacks of the cloverleaf may not bear out in practice as badly as they seem like they ought to on paper.
I would like to add to your point about "missing your merge...". As beutifully designed (and practically perfect & free-flowing) as the Stacked Interchange seems to be... left, right, and forward are the only options. A U-turn is impossible! Whereas, a cloverleaf allows you to essentially U-turn on the highway. It is a great option when you have missed an exit.
"Contrast this with ordinary merges, and drivers already on the freeway rarely if ever accommodate new traffic from the merge lane. They can have an attitude of "it's your problem and if you run out of merge lane I don't care" with no negative consequence to themselves, whereas on a weave lane, even a selfish driver must help to create an opening if he wants to receive one."
Ironically that is the law, merging traffic must find an opening and legally it is their problem.
Yea, but try proceeding while someone is merging. If you hit them then… you hit them.
@@YUMBL There is some great truck dash cam footage of cars merging onto freeways at 20mph especially in these slip lanes. The lucky ones survived to pay the ticket and the insurance bills to the trucks dash cam owner.
But back on point, yea its a mess.
@@zeroibis "merging traffic must find an opening..." You say this is the law. Can you find it in your traffic code? 5 to 10 times, I have scowered/scoured/searched the Motor Vehicle Act (MVA) of my province of British Columbia and I can't find any definitive wording on this subject. Can you show me where it says it "in law" in your state (or where ever you are from)?
My favourite service Interchanges are single roundabouts, where you dump traffic onto an elevated or lowered roundabout to redirect them in other directions, or a turbine / single elevated road turbine managed with TM:PE since you can get some crazy compact, arguably minimal free-flow intersections
I'm an architecture student, and you'd be surprised about how much we learn on the effects of traffic flow and how the design of roads can make a place feel 'beautiful'. nice video man, im with you on the partial clover leaf, i use that in my cities all the time. Also whats your graphic settings??
Haha I'm a City Planner student and I learned the same thing. Fun to see there are some similarities in our studies
@@RobertDoornbosF1 That there is. Architecture is very much becoming more of an urban study rather than just the design of buildings.
Thanks! I think use relight natural lut and nature reserve T map theme
@@YUMBL okay thank you
@Richard Cranium looking forward to it
Good stuff. I think what was left unaddressed was how to classify and solve the problem you initially presented, a high traffic urban intersection of two non-highway arterials? Perhaps a bypass roundabout? The tail on the turbo roundabout's traffic seemed to be primarily from cars wanting to go straight through. I always end up making a spaghetti stack in those situations, and hiding it underground in shame.
With good road hierarchy and attention to connections combined with transit your arterial and collectors intersections should do alright. If its a highways worth pf traffic then vanilla overpass would work wonders.
Dealing with residential traffic is one thing, building an interchange for a large industrial park is the real challenge.
My personal favorite: the cloverstack hybrid. It eliminates a clover's weaving, but cheaper than a full stack.
Also, try using cloverleafs with collector lanes to eliminate weaving. Dual trumpet interchanges are also useful if your roads are tolled.
Love a cloverstack. I have a vid on that too :)
3:38 that is the simplest type of cloverleaf, and yes, the weave is a problem because it happens right on the main carriageway.
the first step to solving the problem is to move the weave away from the main carriageway by splitting the highway into 2 separate, parallel carriageways and then connecting the slip roads to that secondary carriageway. there are many such cloverleaf interchanges in germany, traffic can flow freely on the main carriageway while the weave happens on the secondary carriageway
the next step is to eliminate the need for the weave by switching the order of the lanes leading into the secondary carriageway. so when a car comes off the northbound highway onto the secondary carriageway, it finds itself on the right lane of that secondary carriageway instead of the left lane, so no lane change is required. problem eliminated.
one example of such an optimized cloverleaf can be found in frankfurt, germany, right next to the airport, where the A3 and the A5 meet. that one is made slightly more complicated by the fact that another junction (A5 and B43) is very close. but you can clearly see that the lanes cross over each other in every leaf.
and why the hell can't i post links to google maps???
If not for vanilla, you should enable the TMPE option for not stopping at intersections at 2:00 for the turbo roundabout.
Just yesterday I was trying to find videos about this, great timing!
Thanks for watching! :)
I've been religiously using your SPUI parclo interchange in my cities. I love it! Amazing traffic flow and almost no traffic problems.
Glad to help!
I hit Megalopolis in my city and can buy all squares now and I built a ring highway around my city. I used your single point parclo AS service interchanges and they work realy well. Thanks a lot.
You’re welcome!
Your videos are very enjoyable ... like the Bob Ross of City: Skylines intersections :-)
One thing I noticed in several of your videos: if you have a intersection with a traffic light like you have in the beginning of this video, you could force the cars going straight or right into the left two lanes and then allow right turns on all stopped sides.
Thank you!
im so glad that u show interchange systems with actual lane maths. most channels show great designs and ideas, but forget about the most important part for eg. Vanilla based builds it helps so much to include lane math so u dont need traffic manger/lane manager ai. :D Great video
Thanks a lot!
Cities Skylines' biggest drawback isn't the obvious lack of fine tunning you notice when you start modding it, it's the budget. The reason everyone is always full of great ideas for dealing with traffic is because everything there is so cheap. I mean, traffic itself is "nearly optional" when even a city with 50k residents can afford multiple subway lines. No reason not to have endless roundabouts (if you follow the Biffa school of thought) or nothing but colossal stack interchanges regardless of highway throughput. I even tried making a city once without a single intersection, just underground three way interchanges as far as the eye could see, and it worked without a hitch, with plenty of money to spare to increase budgets beyond 100%. What makes these videos great is that they don't offer utopian solutions, but that they have a common sense behind them
endless roundabouts are really cheap though, plenty of European cities have tons of them
@@Mike-ukr If they're there from the start and if the town is relatively small, with low-ish land value on average, sure. Slapping roundabouts in intersections in the middle of city centers would be far too cost prohibitive since you might need to demolish buildings around them and would then need to disregard the existing infrastructure to build the roundabout from scratch. Costs money to demolish buildings and to build new roads, money you wouldn't make back since you'd have a larger area occupied by roads plus the space in the center, where you couldn't zone, meaning less tax revenue; less available land area would then raise the cost of living, driving demand for higher density housing which would then create additional traffict. Roundabouts are great, just not the be all end all solution the game allows them to be.
Plenty of small towns on the US have 2+ cars per household; that wouldn't fly on a large metropolis, even if the cars themselves are cheap and people there have more money; fish is "really cheap" on coastal villages, expensive in large desert cities. Price and feasibility are relative.
Its important to note i think, that in City Skylines price of roads isnt as big of a problem as in real life. As much as a clover leaf is crappy, its real cheap whereas a 4 stack is extremely expensive like a loooot
Yes, especially grade separation
Yep. Overpasses are insanely expensive.
It's also why, at least over here, cloverleaves are developed further to increase efficiency and safety. For example, in Germany the weaving lanes are almost always separated from the through lanes. Also, quite often one of the 'leaves' is turned into a direct ramp like in a stack interchange, or two are, as in a cloverstack.
2:16 I'm now so curious as to how the roundabout would perform if it had the same 4+3 roads as before and two straight-ahead lanes instead of one. (Literally just 'split' the middle lane into two to double the straight-ahead bandwidth and whether that would reduce the tailbacks at all.) I'm not saying the roundabout would perform better but it's not at all a fair comparison having a 3+2 turbo vs a 4+3 lighted intersection and saying the roundabout causes tailbacks. (Not a complaint at all I'm just curious what the results would be.)
The roundabout already had 4 lanes though two were dedicated to right turn exits. It would help, but would still be entirely overwhelmed. Lights perform better when traffic is high on all sides, or if traffic is asymmetrical.
What you’re asking for is a 5 lane roundabout unfortunately
@@YUMBL Yes I suppose it would need the roundabout to be a 5-lane road, or the immediate right-turns to be a separate one-lane slip road, which would be essentially the same thing but allow the roundabout to be built with a 4-lane road. Definitely starts to make things very complicated 😅
I was wondering the same thing. Seems like cars prefer to go straight, otherwise the left lanes would be filled as well, so the roundabout has a clear disadvantage versus the two straight lanes on the lighted intersection.
Roundabouts generally have a disadvantage against lights in high traffic scenarios. Except in terms of safety.
It's so nice to watch your vids. Nice and even paced. Nothing fast so I have to go back over it (the worst) or, get bored and leave. Before I know it, the video is over, and I watch all the way through. Thank you.
Much appreciated :)
Cool video, but I think that by creating a diverse system of transportation (bus, metro, tram, etc.) will lower the traffic volume way much more effectively than an urban highway, but still cool video
I don’t recommend urban highway, and didn’t here. Always use service interchanges to bring traffic into the city.
Always, if they're properly planned for distance and future proof for demand.
This is valid in game and IRL.
Some places have even put some modern trams or light trains, but didn't consider the stations and where the track passes, negating any major improvement in non-individual transportation system, plus the security issues...cough...cough...LA...craptastic urban planning.
It's always a balance between where you create what type of demand and how to fulfill it. Longer distances, like cross town and suburbs, you need a express train. Mid distances, standard metro, high volume inner city. Mid to low, trams/light trains. Low volume or short distances, busses galore or trams in major collectors.
The art of turning left is a dark art. Build your grids in hexagons so people can only go “straight” or “right”. Then build subways that take people “left”. These directions don’t exist on a hex grid… but there is a direction that traffic flows easily. And a direction where traffic has to drive further to get to their destination. Make subways that flow along the direction where traffic would have to drive further. Then add some cargo rail in the same direction. Or maybe just separate homes and industry along that direction so trucks are disincentivized in driving through residential.
ive gotten pretty liberal with the modding of a stack interchange in one of my cities. used Move-it and Node controller to make the whole interchange be about 50% wider than just two highways passing over each other. looks really cool in a downtown environment.
I wished you talked about the interchange in your thumbnail :( This video was still very interesting and inspiring
Oh, that is a butterfly. Its a weave machine 😅
We love hearing your detailed explanation and everytime we get learn something about roads and intersections. You wouldn't belive but this topic is very exciting to me. Thank you for your great content. Keep it coming...
Thank you! :)
It's always fascinating to hear someone talk about things their passionate about when it's a topic most people would take for granted.
My family even liked this one 😂
Mound and I696 in Warren Michigan (just north of Detroit), a slightly contorted stack as a service interchange.
I want to say we have a couple of full cloverleafs connecting stroads.
We also have stacks were the lefts leave from the left and join from the left, M10 and I94 in Detroit. Quite a few of those also, but I think those are all system interchanges.
The best part of this is how the pedestrians are not even considered. Great work. Now build the dedicated transportation system for pedestrians.
I’ve made that video too. This just isn’t that video. Now make a comment that isn’t rude 😂
i love how tidy those lane markings on the roundabout look
My personnal totally unbiased opinion: This is your best video yet!! Especially that stack interchange looks cool!!
Had the game for some years and didnt gave it much of an opportunity. Now I'm comming back to it and I'm loving it. Looking forward to more tutorials and videos like this so, new sub!
Thanks for the knowledge about the interchange. I now have some understanding of what the traffic is all about.
That’s so interesting learning about those system interchanges. I know about cloverleafs before, but not what stack interchanges were. Here in Fargo, there is an interesting interchange between i94 and i29 that is a partial cloverleaf and partial stack. Three directions are cloverleafs and one is a stack. I found it really interesting.
Ah, a cloverstack! I have a video about those as well :)
I think a combination of the partial cloverleaf and over/underpass for through traffic will prove to be more efficient.
I use such combinations often and have over 89% traffic flow in a city of over 250k.
YUMBLtv: "Roundabouts aren't always the solution."
Biffa: "And I took offense to that."
Anyway, finally, a C:S RUclipsr who doesn't worship roundabouts as some sort of ultimate traffic panacea.
;)
For getting off the highway, the parclo and dumbell are my go to if i got the place to use them and need to use both ways (dumbell for easy to build and quick to set up and parclo if i need to handle more traffic). They also look really nice when you look at them visually. But if i need to be really compact and i don't have much place, i'll use a three level roundabout. That thing can handle a lot of traffic (with slip lanes and all) and be really compact.
Thank You, important for urban planning. I suggest you do a video on the complexity on New Jersey interchanges.
Us kiwis have perfected the art of turning left! We hardly ever cross traffic when turning left in New Zealand....
😂
You shouldve mentioned that you can combine intersections and roundabouts. Dumbbell intersections look pretty cool, they are easy to use and efficient, both ingame and irl. I know of one that is somewhat local to me (40 mins away). Its a nice change from all the regular intersections and interchanges.
I did say you can change the ends of a parclo into roundabouts, but its ok. This wasn’t a video about every junction
The best thing to do in Cities Skylines is to make the entire road system, actually just one, one-way road. Just one huge snake through the landscape. Sure, it'd suck to ACTUALLY have a real road like this, but the sims don't care. I like to think of them as always sight-seeing. "Here we go kids, thru the industrial part of town, on the way to school..." jk
Even the dirt road is good for everything, apart from emergency vehicles. There's no hierachy.
i feel like a nerd excitingly watching this and I love it
The stack interchange isn't the only free flowing interchange, I actually like the dutch approach of having two leaves and only two overpasses, this way you end up with only one level of overpass, hence two levels total.
I'd appreciate if you'd be able to show these types of system interchanges as well, I think they are a very cost effective approach especially when it comes to converting clover leave system interchanges into free flowing.
I also actually like that their footprint is smaller since you don't need to overcome such massive height differences.
What do you think about this approach?
Whats that called?
@@YUMBL I am afraid I don't know, it's a partial turbine interchange with a partial clover leave. So it's a combination of both.
Oh, a cloverstack! I have a video about those :)
@@YUMBL yeah a cloverstack, I've watched a lot of videos from you, I missed it then, I'll watch it now!
@@YUMBL Oh yeah but your cloverstack actually is different than the one I am referring to.
5:50 The traffic light settings on the ParClo can be adjusted such that the surface road traffic coming off the overpass in each respective direction never has to stop. The ramps allowing a right turn off the highway can likewise flow freely if they get an additional lane on the surface street.
If each onramp has two lanes initially, the right turn onto the highway can flow freely as well. The only stops are the surface street as it approaches the interchange from the outside ->
Yep. I have a video about parclos that explores lane math and traffic lights. Feel free to check it out!
Also putting stacks everywhere is unrealistic. I like realistic building in cities skylines, which mean the traffic flow should be as good as possible with a minimum budget. In my city with over 300.000+ I only use stacked interchanges at the cities entry's, everywhere else just traffic lights and some roundabouts here and there
My personal favorite is the single-point. I used that whenever I can because it's compact and looks good.
SPUI is a mainstay for me :)
@@YUMBL Yeah, I saw that in your video. Thank you.
In the end it all comes down to the space you got and how much traffic you anticipate will be using the said road/intersection.
Take your biggest most traffic intense road and build a bridge so the right side of the road can be on the left side. Take it around the outside of your city. Do the mirror of that on as the road exits you city and run that incoming road around the other side of your city… Now you have the worlds largest double diamond interchange, a very low conflict exchange. It also may look like an inverted roundabout to some. But whatever you call it, it solves many traffic problems cheaply.
In your first example right turn traffic should have a green light at all times. Since straight through traffic is only two lanes and leaving streets have three lanes and right turn traffic does not conflict with any other traffic. Further optimization would be left turns with two lanes.
I appreciate your take on roundabouts. They are useful, but are by no means a magic bullet.
People often don’t like to hear it, but this is certainly the case
the main reason cloverleafs were so popular is that they're probably the cheapest system interchanges. It's becuase they only have two relatively short overpasses were the roads crossover. the rest of the road is either at grade or can have the grade modified to support it which reduces concrete use.
I do feel like the roundabout could still improve matters if it is built larger. The benefit of a roundabout is it increases the number of vehicles passing through the intersection at the same time, but the relatively small roundabout you had, would probably only handle arterial road traffic. Obviously you don't want to stick a roundabout on a highway though. Common design in the UK as you probably know is to have a roundabout above the highway and have slip roads leading to/from the roundabout to the highway and connect your arterial roads to the roundabout as well.
Yes. Lights are better on arterials. Lots of people seem to want to save face on behalf of the roundabout and alter it to improve it, but when hit with traffic on all sides (as on an arterial) a light is much better.
Guy, since I discover your channel, I can't resist to watch new of your videos.
You're really interesting and this way you have to explain it's just absolutely awesome.
It's very inspiring and improve thinking about traffic management.
Love from Belgium man, keep it up !
Thank you very much!
My favourite intersection is definitely the cloverstack, best of both worlds!
Have gotten a chance to watch yet, but saw that you updated and wanted to be sure to comment to satisfy the algorithm. Happy Thanksgiving. I'll let it play in the back ground.👍
Happy Thanksgiving! :)
Though it's not perfect, the oval-about works pretty well as a service interchange. And it circumvents having two different roundabouts fairly close to each other.
On the roundabout it was clear, that only moving forward vehicles were stacked, even the ones who turn left were ok. So I wonder, what if you tried the roundabout with forward overpass, that you demonstrated a while ago? Doing the overpass even just for one road would drastically reduce the amount of cars on the roundabout and might even help to clear the other road.
That would work great, but the light kept up without needing to be converted to an interchange ;)
what about the full diamond interchange? its smaller than the stack but still free flowing
I’m surprised you didn’t pitch your SPUI service interchange, which is my go-to for all service exists. It’s infinity good.
Oh, I did! When the parclo was on screen :)
@@YUMBL awesome job.
Can you not apply grade separation to the turbo roundabout plan to get something both compact and free flowing (albeit with sharp turns)? The idea would be that the roads would both be 3:3, the E-W arm would see inbound lanes 1 & 2 (of 3) elevated a little less than a full level (say 6-8m) on the approach, and the N-S arm would see inbound lanes 1 & 2 similarly depressed. You've got a half rotation of the ‘roundabout’ for each of these to return to grade, which should suffice.
We have only a single stack interchange in all of Germany, despite being known for our Autobahns. And it a rather useless Stack interchange. It connects Autobahn A45 with Autobahn A480 but A480 is just 3.6 km (2.2 mi) long. While a 2km (1.5 mi) extention to the south is considered.
As a replacement, because the city where the stack is located is considering to demolish an elevated through road through the city, but the extention to the north is canceled.
It's basically a stack for an service interchange, at the moment and for the foreseeable future.
2:38 they can still turn left and right they will just have some “minor” damage afterwards
You are good at explaining things and have a nice calm voice good job 👌👍✔
Thank you :)
I was just thinking I haven't felt personally attacked about roundabouts yet at the beginning of the video but it was just a premonition.
Sorry. I wish they worked as well as people think they do in heavy traffic.
My personal totally unbiased opinion: Best video yet!! That Stack Interchange looks very cool! Keep it up!! -MaxFX
Thanks for making the good ones! Did you see the weave machine thumbnail! 😂
@@YUMBL Yep, saw the thumb. Honored. Did you give the suggestion about the Pinwheel a try? Really wonder what you think about it, and how you can use it.
I forget what you suggested 😅
I love the pleasant curves and design of that stack. It even traces an Iron Cross, a common symbol of Germany, historically. One thing that irks me a bit in City Skylines is how one can get away with completely unrealistic interchanges with short, sudden ramps that look hideous. The standard cloverleaf shown here is unfortunately an example with how sharply the loops bash into the mainlines. It’s like the final 20% or so of each loop needs to be completed. But this is an excellent video! Loved that super turbo roundabout with the protected right turns-prevents so much weaving.
@@YUMBL About adding straight pieces between the bends, creating a 'one-way city block' as you called it.
I've become a fan of the single-point parclo. Great flow and only a single light to deal with.
It works very well :)
Been looking at Google maps a lot recently for inspiration for this game, and looking along the east coast of America I see a lot of these absolutely enormous, spaghetti like monstrosities right in the city centers, I was wondering if you could maybe do a video covering these? Maybe going over the design principles and history behind why they're like this,, because they seem to exist counter to what you've described here regarding service interchanges. Thank you :)
my personal favorite: public transit that carries 100 times the amount of people over these single occupancy vehicles. I use a mod where I can adjust the passenger count for each transit vehicle to be more realistic. 30 on a bus is vanilla, but irl if people are standing it can be around 45, etc
Indeed, but saying “add a bus line” isn’t as fun of a video as explaining how conflict is handled in road networks.
@@YUMBL No, I get it. Making complex, flowing interchanges are fun and i'd be lying if I don't do it either. The difference, and what I would call the problem is people over-rely on them and use them all throughout their cities cores where transit can easily take the burden off. I do mine at the edge where all the main arterials meet and have had no problems with just relying on transit, walking and biking. Kind of like real life haha.
This channel really deserves way more subscribers. Top notch!
Much appreciated :)
You missed the standard British roundabout interchange, which is our stalwart service interchange (this is not a dumbbell) When they get congested, cover them in pretty traffic lights :)
Did you study civil engineering? Or did you just do a lot of research? As a civil engineer myself, your explanations are very good.
Also personally I’m a fan of diverging diamonds in high traffic areas where you don’t have a slot of space for high speed entrances and exists such as a busy area under the major highway. We’ve implemented a few of them and you can make them pretty small and it helps traffic a lot. The only thing I’m not a fan of is how confusing it is for people the first few times
Just an avid cities skylines player who found his way into the engineering videos. Thank you very much :)
I would say i don't know why that appeared in my recommendations, but i can imagine (Thank you, motoway Matt kkkkk).
But great video anyway. Super interesting
Thank you :)
In the UK, from my experience, the primary junction/interchange used is a grade separated roundabout, though there is a great example of the stack junction you mentioned just outside Bristol where the M4 and M5 converge, it's honestly quite beautiful looking at it on google maps! :-P If you wanted to see the most insane junction in the UK though, it's the A38(M) joining the M6; Gravely Hill junction, also known as Spaghetti Junction! You could say, this is what happens when stacks go mad! :-P
Diverging Diamond Interchanges are the best. No left turns into crossstraffic anywhere which reduces crashes.
DDI is a great option. Its not ideal everywhere, but its a great upgrade from a diamond.
@@YUMBL Springfield Missouri near where I live upgraded alost all there intersections around the edge of the coty to these
My favorite CS vanilla highway interchange is the windmill. Playing on console some of the more elaborate things are harder to do.
A great choice for a system interchange :)
What about the following intersection. The left and the right side of the road are grade separated. Ramps occurring on both sides. I think a missed opportunity is that one side of the road never has any form of connection.
I quite like the 3 layer roundabout for my interchanges personality although I have to try out that b4 clover
I think the roundabout has to be linearly bigger to the amount of traffic going through it. The reason is that there have to be enough space on the roundabout itself to fit enough traffic. It basically have to fit as much cars on the roundabout as the timed traffic lights let through in one sequence :) (at least that seems logical from math point of view) Defintely roundabouts are not something you want to have in the center of the city on main roads if you don't have the space, but i think that you shouldn't have to have such traffic in center anyway :D
The flaw with the roundabout at 1:24 is that you have single lane for each direction. Notice only middle lane on each entry is congested. The fact that the left lane is not means you have way more traffic going straight than turning left, yet you have only one lane for each. I'd say, allowing the left two lanes to weave both on entry and on the roundabout should increase its traffic throughput because traffic now centered on the middle line will spread over two lanes.
Now, of course a roundabout with cars crossing will slow the traffic down compared to the further designs. But it doesn't have to be as bad as in your example.
I upped the capacity as an experiment due to another comment. Created an extra turn lane. Two lanes entering in all sides. Same result. I would invite you to experiment, but a light is better on an arterial road.
I then re replaced the roundabout with a light and the traffic reduced back to steady levels. I’m sorry you dont like it, but thats how it works.
Learned about innerchanges on the innernet.
This channel has convinced me that roundabout aren’t that great.
They are, but only in the right place. They cannot do it all.
I am using the last one as my service interchange style.
So Biffa is the round-a-bout person, CityPlanner is the waterpipe person guessing you will soon be known as the interchange person :D
I’ll absolutely take it
We have seen many textbook intersections in skylines. However, the real intersections in big cities are usually much more complicated. The reason I guess is that those intersections are added with functions of both systematic intersection and highway exit to city roads. Could YUMBLtv teach us to build those?
CAN YOU PLEASE DO A VIDEO ON THE MID-HUDSON BRIDGE IN POUGHKEEPSIE NY!!!!! Its a 1 of a kind intersection that they are asking nation to help fix
Looking at the roundabout, it looks to me like you've cut the straight through traffic down to a single lane, where the other intersections always had at least 2 lanes of straight through traffic. I think it'd flow better if it had 3 lanes going into the roundabout with the outermost lane serving both 1st and 2nd exit, and the right turn slip road being split off earlier along the feed road.
Or if the amount of traffic that wants to turn left is relatively small, use the innermost lane of the feed road to also serve straight through traffic and have 3 lanes on the exit roads as well.
You should try it, but I have yet to see a modern roundabout that beats a light at high density traffic.
@@YUMBL Which is odd in my experience, because when comparing Takenhofplein and Nelson Mandelaplein in Nijmegen (both are part of the S103), Takenhofplein is the more efficient intersection of the two. So the roundabout wins out over the large lights controlled intersection.
But I suppose that it also has a lot to do with the AI of the traffic. That AI clearly wasn't designed with roundabouts in mind.
Though I don't really mind that, the entire game is about building a North American style city, so it makes sense that traffic would behave like North American traffic.
No, i mean a roundabout breaks down mathematically when hit with too much traffic. In the real world. Lights hold up at much higher volumes. It has nothing to do with countries.
On one of the main highways from one city to another in my country we have the clover intersection. It looks to have been designed in 1970s, just like pretty much all of Poland and it now supports 2021 traffic.
The amount of space for weave is very little and combined with the speeds of 80-120kmh, makes this stupid ass intersection my most hated in real life.
If a cloverleaf backs up its hell. Its fine until that point, but extra bad if overwhelmed.
@@YUMBL thankfully I've never experienced an actual traffic jam there and not a single accident, which is frankly surprising!
I have also checked the length of the additional lane used for merging, it is 105m, while the speed limit on the highway is 140kmh and on the other "express" road it is 120kmh.
Sounds unsafe
@@YUMBL It must have been an old road. Current regulations state that for 120 and 140 km/h roads the merging lane must be have a shared edge of at least 250m (and that excludes the additional wedge at the end where the lane narrows and disappears). 140km/h roads cannot have weave lanes, unless they are separated from the main through traffic (they unmerge and merge with it some distance from the interchange itself). The weave area must be between 150 and 300 meters, "depending on the conditions" (so for 120 km/h speed limit, I would expect it to be closer to the upper limit, if it isn't separated from the main through traffic anyway, like it has to be on 140 km/h roads).
The best solution for the problem of left turns is to live in a country where cars drive on the left! :) (Makes right turns a problem though!)
Always loved the parclo since you inspired me to start using them awhile back but pretty sure your lights can be set up better
Thank you! It was a quick setup for the video :)
Thanks for the great video! I have a question. How do you generate the desired amount of traffic on intersections for your videos? I've tried to find a mod that allows to generate an arbitrary traffic between arbitrary points on a map and had no success.
Thanks! The map is called “interchange test map”. Unlimited traffic.
@@YUMBL wasn't thinking in the direction of a special map. Make sense. Thanks a lot!
this makes me think back in simcity 2013. what a nightmare... anyways, just the other day i went all in on my first couple custom timed traffic lights for a few main intersections. Im trying to recreate the area where i live and there's mostly traffic lights so im really trying to make them work but i dont have a large population yet. (less than 20k) so far there is no problems.
For me the traffic light is very satisfying to watch lol
also traffic lights use to be a big hinderance for my builds. they always seemed to not work right (vanilla) and cause more traffic.
so now im actually trying to make traffic lights work so i dont have to spam a huge interchange at every major intersection.
Traffic lights are an excellent option! Would recommend :)
I would be interested to see you make a typical British service interchange, which is a grade-separated roundabout with ramped sliproads to get on!
Good distinction to point out :)
Thank you :)
Cloverleaf is simply the best. You can always get on your route by turning right until you drive on the lane you wanted.
Even if you want to make a U-turn
I prefer the diverging windmill interchange. Sure the standard one merges on the left, but you can choose where, to minimize conflict.
Does anyone use this game using actual city layouts and traffic patterns to see how they might improve traffic flows IRL?
I really like a 3-level stack DDI, it has no lights and is about the same size - except for one extended bridge. Though you do end up with two weaves.
Ive heard it called a DCMI. That would be a system interchange
Architects & engineers: ~years of study on traffic and cities.~
Dubai politicians: "Yeah I would like a grid layout please...."
Learning a lot from your videos. Thank you
You’re welcome!
I allways try to be compact. Small (service-) interchanges with high capacity are the best.
Agreed!