I play this from the beginning without any mods fot the game. I follow yumbltv and i respect this a lot. I've tried this road mod once or twice but it's way to difficult for me.
If you're on PC I highly recommend getting at LEAST these infrastructure mods. Even if you don't use them much, the few times you do it will make everything so much easier
Big tip: Use Move It export feature to copy this road, import it into the asset editor, then save as an intersection asset. Now you never have to build it again, just plop it down.
I never cease to be amazed by how flexible the road network in cities skylines is (with some mods added to tweak it). It's one thing to have the data model for the intersections and nodes, but being able to use that and dynamically present it without a bunch of visual artifacts is just insane.
I'd be curious to know what a potential Cities Skylines 2 would do with this, including all community-mod hindsight. One thing I'd love to see, for instance, is a road editor that smoothly supports adding or subtracting lanes. Like, instead of having to have a separate road type for every single combination of lanes, just pick a road texture (might come with certain properties in terms of max speed and maintenance cost), and for each node, pick how many lanes there are as you edit the network. Could also put a lot of extra work into maybe more intelligently figuring out what road markings might be, and some of the almost must-have-seeming tools could just be built right into the game from the start.
I've made several of my own roads at this point. Whoever came up with the node system was a freaking genius. There's just a set of rules that "stretch" the road at the node to make the road ends meet. Every road in the game follows the exact same connection method, whether vanilla or not. If the width parameters and connection classes are set correctly in the road asset, everything just works. It really is amazing how elegantly simple it is. I suspect Node Controller works so great because the nodes were already stretched to meet each other in vanilla. The mod is just stretching them more. Same reason Move It works, the mechanics to bend and stretch roads were already in vanilla, the mod just allows you to bend and stretch past the vanilla limits.
I remember being impressed when regular anarchy roads and Move It worked, especially when people like RTGame built vertical roads going up the poop volcano.
1:23 "It's rather techincal compared to what I usually do." Dude, I am watching you because you're the Cities:Skylines RUclipsr who is most technically versed.
This is magnificent! Haven't touched the game in almost two years and I'm just amazed by new possibilities. I remember when I tried to build something like this and how miserably I failed. You, sir, are an artist and your videos revived my passion with Cities Skylines. Thank you for your content!
Not sure I actually like this desgin, but 100% impressed by the idea of parallel roads tied to the same node! Whenever you think you've seen it all, there's something beyond expectations... Nice one, thanks
The CFI is easily my favorite intersection type. I use these all over the place and often there simply is no substitute. One thing I've found is, unless every direction is extremely busy, you don't need traffic lights on the "legs". The crossing left can simply have a yield sign (IRL they'd probably use a flashing yellow arrow) so they can go and load up the leg area anytime there isn't oncoming traffic. However if the intersection is very busy in all directions, then the outflow really is rather continuous, and it becomes necessary to add the additional lights. This is also helpful for pedestrian access, if you want people crossing there. I typically still use a 2-phase light, as most of the time if the yield isn't enough, then it means I have absolutely massive demand on the left turn and they need lots of time. But as with anything, it's valuable to analyze how things are working and rearrange the green-time to where it's needed. Regarding how difficult it is to build, it is MUCH easier if you don't insist on the single center node. If the legs get their own node, there's really almost nothing to do with node controller and most of the work is just setting up lane arrows. If you do yield on the legs, the traffic light is less work than a standard 4-phase intersection.
They just put a modified version of this in a city near me to help manage traffic on the bypass highway. everyone was freaking out because there was 12 instructional videos published by the province showing how the intersection functions from all directions. green means go red means stop watch the light in your lane.. easy peasy. made the busiest intersection in the province flow a lot smoother. great video, i wouldn't have the patience or the skill to make that in CS.
First we get asymmetrical roads. Now it's asymmetrical nodes. I feel like Colossal Order curses every time someone comes up with something like this because now it needs to be a base requirement for CSL2. I feel like this video was a counter to all the suggestions of overbuilding the roundabout with flyovers, pedestrian tunnels, etc. and then comparing it to a vanilla intersection. At 15:22 you can see how it's a shame that you can't adjust yellow light timings as that car gets stuck in the intersection while making a left turn. Maybe a 1 second dummy cycle would fix it.
We've got these all around my city in real life and they work like absolute magic. There's the 2 way versions and 4 way versions, and both have taken traffic from an absolute nightmare and accident riddled mess into something much more pleasant.
This is amazing, I actually needed something like this for a few high volume intersections in my city where there isnt quite enough space for an interchange and a roundabout or timed traffic light are still not quite enough. Gonna try this immediately.
@@YUMBL update: I installed TWO of these in my city at a couple of busy intersections and it brought my traffic back up to 78%-80% after it dropped to 73% when I added some new industry areas.
Interessting! So you basicly offset the crossing left hand traffic to a second junction further back, which allows you to minimize the traffic light time and steps. On the equation of capacity, conflict, waiting time/traffic flow and used space, the only real drawback is the used space. I like it.
Thanks! Yes, the space used is sub optimal. But its usefulness comes in money saved from installing and maintaining an interchange. Some areas need an economical solution.
@@YUMBL Guess people must be approaching it with more respect then? Also, it takes away many directions and most opportunities to get T-boned. Since it removes 1 of the 2 left turn directions (2 straight directions remaining) that cross each straight path; and each left turn crosses only 1 straight path instead of 2 straights and 2 other lefts.
They did something like this on the Indian River and Kempsville Road intersection in Virginia Beach and it has greatly improved traffic during rush hour.
I'll always remember the first comment I saw on a video about the continuous flow intersection: "It's amazing the lengths Americans will go to avoid a roundabout"
I've build one of these before with an older version of node controller, but your approach with the current version is much better. This actually looks like a real-world intersection (there's a CFI here in Austin, TX), unlike my clunky effort.
In my city (Tijuana, Mexico) they have almost a whole avenue with only cfis (avenida de los insurgentes). Only that the cfis are better designed than the whole city.
. . . what I can recognize: out of one regular 4-phases 4-ways intersection you made one 2-phase crossing plus additional 4 (2 + 2 opposite synchronous) ) 2-phase crossings . . . so you are trading time consumption (4 phases) against space requests (deskewing / distributing time over space) . . . interesting !
Gorgeous intersection but all I can think about how terrifying those right turning sliplanes would be to pedestrians. If you're crossing from left to right and there's a column of cars waiting at the red light, you have no way of seeing if there's a car tearing down that side and you can't exactly stop in the middle of the zebra crossing the check.
picked this up for my city main road.. I had to build this 34 times total, but hey, it works its magic. traffic went in downtown area from 28% during rush hour to 97%
Simple regular intersection is the way to go. If there’s traffic backed up, there are other factors like zoning, road hierarchy and lack of transportation
I tried yesterday and for the love of everything good in this world, I couldn't make the lights do what I wanted. I tried again today, and it's like magic. Clears the intersection beautifully
I've thought about trying to build one of these several times just to see if I could get one right but never have because trying to visualize how to do the traffic lights always gave me a headache. This was great :)
You can simplify the lights a lot. Unless traffic demand is very high, you can get away with only a single light at the center (if you make a single giant node like Yumbl did) and the "legs" can use yield signs. With that single light, it's just 1 phase for North-South and 1 phase for East-West, done.
@@JETZcorp I've seen several videos of people creating this junction, but this is the only one I saw that connected everything through the central node. All the others connected the left turn lanes a few units away from the center and I never thought about doing it Yumbl's way until this.
In Factorio, this is analogous to a buffered train intersection, specifically the Windcross by Zijkhal. Google "Factorio 3 and 4 way intersections" to see it and other crazy designs. In factorio, train tracks are always "on grade" so crazy intersections are needed to allow high throughput for large factories.
They had a bunch of these along Bangerter Highway in The Salt Lake City area. I always found them kinda neat. They took a lot of traffic flow ideas for the Jordan Valley and just ran with them. Diverging Diamonds kinda spread through the state, but Continuous Flow Intersections and the one single road with flex lanes never really took off. Bangerter has really increased it's traffic flow since I lived in the area back in 2016-2017 so a lot of the intersections are getting turned into On/Offramps. They were starting that process down in Draper. When I was there last year they had gotten up past West Jordan and were working into West Valley City. I kinda miss the area, but at the same time I see the ticking timebomb of californization that will inevitably take over the valley. Farther you get from Salt Lake, the better.
That's great design. I thought skylines will not allow to build interchange like that. Its really pushing limits. This is also only one I know where all rights, and all lefts can go at the same time without collisions.
This build is really breath-taking. And thanks for including remarks about only displacing left-turns for two legs of the intersection, though my head almost exploded trying to think of the changes in lane-math that come with it ;-) I think the weakest point of this design are the four pre-intersections with the crossing lane-connectors of 10:58 with a risk of left-turning and straight-on traffic getting stuck at the traffic light after leaving the main intersection and backing up all the way to the main intersection. Combined with my weakness of configuring traffic lights it would be a complete nightmare to recreate this ... ;-)
@@YUMBL I think you could improve the light sequence with a few small changes. In phase 1 you have the left turning traffic (into the left turn bay) waiting for oncoming traffic which hasn't arrived yet (ignoring the stragglers who just turned left). So I would change phase 1 to allow them through (with oncoming as red) until oncoming traffic starts arriving at that red light (by my count it's about 9 seconds from when through traffic starts moving through the main intersection until it reaches the intersection after). Phase 2 turns green for the oncoming traffic and red for turning left into the bay. This way through traffic won't have to stop once they get through the main intersection. Would be interested to know if this improves anything or if there's something I haven't considered or forgotten.
Money is not the only restriction why overpasses are avoided ... to avoid steep inclines a lot of space is needed. The continuous flow intersection as an alternative to grade separation loses much of its value if the legs are growing and growing ... And even if you space out the intersections of the arterials as road hierarchy tells you to do, two consecutive continuous flow intersections would be difficult to realize.
TDOT completed our first roundabout and is on track to begin construction on our first continuous flow intersection in 2027 with a completion date of 2030. Thank you for the visual.
I actually tried building this on the test map you shared in the roundabout video. But I built it as 5 nodes and lots of timed traffic lights and lane connectors. The 4 phases are not confusing to understand, but they are confusing to time correctly and keep everything free-flowing.
I would have liked to see a comparison to a roundabout, because you aren't getting rid of the left-turn cross over - you are just moving it further away and increasing the footprint of the intersection.
My “roundabouts are not as good as you think” video was done under the exact same conditions. This is better at flowing high density traffic than a roundabout. Every intersection I film on this map is better at flowing high density traffic than a roundabout.
We have one of these in my city! It always felt really over-engineered to me, but this video made it make a lot more sense when I could see what was going on. It makes sense why they would do something like this, too, because two major roads run into each other and the placement of buildings and a major park prevent people from using other roads to bypass the intersection and an interchange would feel really out of place.
Beautiful work man! I had a video come up in my suggested from a Department of Transport looking at this and I thought straight away, Yumbl will do this. Amazing!
A couple years ago they put one of these intersections in about 3 miles from where I live. They actually put it in to reduce accidents rather than improve traffic. It's very interesting, it works pretty well. Definitely confusing if you've never been on it before, as you have to know what's going on and get in the correct lane ahead of time. They have it set up the same as your build, with the sub intersections having their own lights that are perfectly timed with the main intersection to prevent traffic buildup
I worked for days trying to recreate this intersection and failed. You did it with the amazing node trick. I love it! that was so satisfying to watch you work on the past few days! I could watch the traffic go through that intersection for hours.. I really hope you use it at least once in your city, especially now that you have it save and on the workshop. I would really love to see it in action with a beautiful city surround it! Cheers from the Parclo Matrix guy
This looks wickedly useful! Do you know if this is in use IRL somewhere? After driving in South Florida for 20+ years though, I'm pretty sure this could never work down here. Drivers seem to get confused on curved roads here.
They've implemented a bunch of these in Utah. bit wonky to get used to at first. But supposedly they reduce accidents by a significant percent in the long run.
What I'd like to see, would be a version where you displace the left turning lanes on 2 directions, then they do their turn completely outside the intersection and then you do a "reverse displacement" on the other two directions to merge them back in.
My city was going to build one of these, but there was a bunch of pushback because it was so poorly explained. I wish they had just used this video to show how the thing works.
Another amazing creation! I will immediately search for it as an asset in the Workshop, and probably be let down by off-brand creations. And then I'll let myself down with my own off-brand creation. Let the mimicking commence!
For allowing left turn incoming traffic arriving intersection to take preference over straight coming traffic, can you advise try give way i stead of a dedicated traffic light? That way you might get more left turn traffic away instead of having them wait till then green to even arrive the free lane. This way the wastage of time to arrive the free lane will be coped up and more traffic will go through. Yeah there could be issue that the left hand traffic wont ever then allow the straight traffic but advise if we have an alternative over traffic light.
This intersection is used frequently at a local highway near where I live. These are their last stage before turning the highway into a full-on freeway.
I love this intersection! I have a spot in my current city that could definitely use something of this sort, (I might try it without the stop lights first though as I hate setting up the traffic lights). Thank you Yumbl !!
Went through an intersection similar to this on the weekend, Punt Rd & Swan St in Melbourne. Very interesting. Definitely more efficient than a standard intersection.
I made a one-leg 'T' version a while ago in order to decrease the light phase on the through road. These work like a symphony if you time your lights perfectly (I also have another very busy 'T' intersection close to it).
We have one of these in our area. it works pretty well, but it's a lot to take in when you first pull up. Side to side, left turns require a U turn, up and down the left turns have that slip lane lane like in this intersection.
I love this. It's a counterintuitive intersection, but it looks really cool. There only thing I'll say - and this applied to pretty much all the intersections I've seen you do so far - is that, having grown up in a country where turn-on red is not legal, and now having lived in several countries where it is, freeflowing right turns always annoy me. They make it very clear that pedestrian safety is a secondary concern. I always have to dodge scooters and bikes when I cross, even at a marked crossing with the green man showing. Back home, the green man meant no traffic was coming and you were completely safe. I'd be interested to see you tackle an intersection that manages to incorporate safe pedestrian crossings without sacrificing too much traffic flow (and without building absurd pedestrian bridges - there is a huge one near my apartment, and nobody uses it, preferring to chance death on the busy intersection below instead because it's significantly faster.)
VERY slick the way you built this into one node! I haven’t built one of these in a good long while, and Node Controller wasn’t a thing then. I think this is the best way I’ve seen to build this for sure. I will say though that the traffic light phasing is way more complex and a ton more efficient than you have here. It’s even more fun to watch when it’s set up right. Now I gotta make a video 😁 But again...the Node Controller work and those American road assets...great work!
@@YUMBL oooh! Love the pun! 😂 You really make some awesome vids my friend 😊 I appreciate the care and detail you put into these tutorials. You’re a huge asset to the community.
The first time I encountered this intersection in real life, it was a brain-bender - but your explanation makes perfect sense. (It was on the Bangerter Highway in Salt Lake City, Utah,)
i tell you what, i never thought I'd see myself using traffic lights in this game as much as i do now. Many hours in this game i was extremely anti-traffic light. but i got tired of the messy looking intersections and huge interchanges and roundabouts (which really don't work THAT great with a lot of traffic). Now i almost see it as an art form, just like making a nice intersection, adding a proper traffic light with custom settings is my new thing i look forward to when setting up my roads. it's really neat what a couple nice road mods, TMPE and node controller / decorator can do for the game. traffic can still be a pain but the options are endless for getting creative and problem solving.
Real talk - is this (or something like it) available on the workshop? I don't know if I have the patience (or ability for that matter) to recreate this work of art.
Keeping massive traffic moving can mean devoting a lot of real estate to the solution. This intersection uses a bunch. I can't wait to put one in one of my cities.
I love the core trick here, splitting the two left turns before the intersection. This has many more similar applications I bet. I don't like traffic lights, but here you really made it work. I do think at least one overpass (the main road in one direction) will make this a lot better. But do you have a design that has no traffic lights? I see this working excellently in a highly asymmetric traffic flow, like one major straight meets a heavy left turn. But symmetrical ones of course look nicer. You can split the lanes and merge them into two roads, probably a wonky zigzag over one way and under the other. You'll then have four pairs of roads. It could be 2-1+2-3 combo just like you have in this video or any combo of lanes. If there is only one really have left turn you only have to split that one road. You then have a good starting position for a really cool sets of overpasses and underpasses. I'd set the main roads crossing straight through at -6 and +6, the right turns at 0 and pick what looks nice for the left turns depending on what height you connect to. Does this make sense?
A thing of beauty! Only concern is that the bottleneck is on the junction exit rather than entrance, so it might lock up if the main node is running 100% duty cycle. The straight on/left turn exit lanes are receiving 2 lanes of traffic in both phases, but the lights for getting back out will only be operating 2 lanes on some of the phases. You would need 4 lanes crossing the left turn to have the same throughput. Not sure how they deal with that in reality, but it is quite possible that they just don't, or have pedestrian crossing phases on the main node to match duty cycles. My instinct would be that the pedestrian crossings should be on the main node, counter-intuitive as it sounds.
Hey Yumbl, you probably don't care enough to remember me but I'm sometimes pretty vocally cynical of your videos (not that I don't watch them all and enjoy most of them). Saying that, however, this video was flawless. I knew Node Controller was extremely powerful but even I was amazed at how you used it to such great effect, and how you managed to explain everything you did clearly and concisely. I have built a similar junction in the past and sat and struggled fiddling with Node Controller for much longer than you did I assure you, and the result still didn't come out nearly as well. So yeah, you impressed this cynic, I applaud you!
I only know of one of these intersections in my city.. and it's used in conjunction with a frontage road for a state highway.. so imagine East/West being much wider with a gap that can accommodate a 2 lane divided limited access highway.
i still like the spiral turbo kind of round-about, specialy if they also have the roads between each arm, so you can u-turn. i think you could make a very good one or two. one that is compact and one for highways
As a traffic controller this only works for 40% of drivers. The other 60% never figure it out panic brake and end up in the wrong lane stopped and and trying to get over. Ie backing it all up
When i saw this at first i thought it was weird on how it works because roundabouts are a thing but by the end i remembered why it looked familiar, i have passed through a crossing like this one and all i can say is that it was was a nightmare to walk across
As a new player without mods, making this looked like magic.
I play this from the beginning without any mods fot the game. I follow yumbltv and i respect this a lot. I've tried this road mod once or twice but it's way to difficult for me.
Reasonably sure its possible with mostly vanilla. TMPE & move it mod make it easier. Just about to try it to see if i'm right.
If you're on PC I highly recommend getting at LEAST these infrastructure mods. Even if you don't use them much, the few times you do it will make everything so much easier
It is magic lmao. This intersection is nuts!
@EntropyOnline and it really exists.
Big tip: Use Move It export feature to copy this road, import it into the asset editor, then save as an intersection asset. Now you never have to build it again, just plop it down.
Big brain
.
Wrinkly brain
Or just download the mod 🤷♂
That's what I was thinking.
I never cease to be amazed by how flexible the road network in cities skylines is (with some mods added to tweak it). It's one thing to have the data model for the intersections and nodes, but being able to use that and dynamically present it without a bunch of visual artifacts is just insane.
I'd be curious to know what a potential Cities Skylines 2 would do with this, including all community-mod hindsight.
One thing I'd love to see, for instance, is a road editor that smoothly supports adding or subtracting lanes. Like, instead of having to have a separate road type for every single combination of lanes, just pick a road texture (might come with certain properties in terms of max speed and maintenance cost), and for each node, pick how many lanes there are as you edit the network.
Could also put a lot of extra work into maybe more intelligently figuring out what road markings might be, and some of the almost must-have-seeming tools could just be built right into the game from the start.
I suspect they didn’t expect mods like node controller at all and the fact that it works so well is actually a miracle 😂
I've made several of my own roads at this point. Whoever came up with the node system was a freaking genius. There's just a set of rules that "stretch" the road at the node to make the road ends meet. Every road in the game follows the exact same connection method, whether vanilla or not. If the width parameters and connection classes are set correctly in the road asset, everything just works. It really is amazing how elegantly simple it is.
I suspect Node Controller works so great because the nodes were already stretched to meet each other in vanilla. The mod is just stretching them more. Same reason Move It works, the mechanics to bend and stretch roads were already in vanilla, the mod just allows you to bend and stretch past the vanilla limits.
I remember being impressed when regular anarchy roads and Move It worked, especially when people like RTGame built vertical roads going up the poop volcano.
@@Kram1032 This would be a great way to include separate turn lanes without having to use various asymmetric roads
I'd love to see you try to build Swindon's magic roundabout in Cities.
The AI is so stupid it would probably get gridlocked because they use 1 lane
I think Biffa already has done that
The magic roundabout sign may aswell just read "Americans find another route"
@@RobertDoornbosF1 That's not true. It's just a matter of properly setting up the lane connectors.
I’m sure Americans drive it all the time.
1:23 "It's rather techincal compared to what I usually do."
Dude, I am watching you because you're the Cities:Skylines RUclipsr who is most technically versed.
Idk if thats true, but I appreciate it! 😂
@@YUMBL prett my close my friend ;)
@@YUMBL Its probably true lol
This is magnificent! Haven't touched the game in almost two years and I'm just amazed by new possibilities. I remember when I tried to build something like this and how miserably I failed. You, sir, are an artist and your videos revived my passion with Cities Skylines. Thank you for your content!
Nice! Have fun! :)
All I can say after watching this is that you've clearly set your phases to stun.
;)
OK, you won the internet today.
Not sure I actually like this desgin, but 100% impressed by the idea of parallel roads tied to the same node!
Whenever you think you've seen it all, there's something beyond expectations...
Nice one, thanks
The CFI is easily my favorite intersection type. I use these all over the place and often there simply is no substitute.
One thing I've found is, unless every direction is extremely busy, you don't need traffic lights on the "legs". The crossing left can simply have a yield sign (IRL they'd probably use a flashing yellow arrow) so they can go and load up the leg area anytime there isn't oncoming traffic. However if the intersection is very busy in all directions, then the outflow really is rather continuous, and it becomes necessary to add the additional lights. This is also helpful for pedestrian access, if you want people crossing there. I typically still use a 2-phase light, as most of the time if the yield isn't enough, then it means I have absolutely massive demand on the left turn and they need lots of time. But as with anything, it's valuable to analyze how things are working and rearrange the green-time to where it's needed.
Regarding how difficult it is to build, it is MUCH easier if you don't insist on the single center node. If the legs get their own node, there's really almost nothing to do with node controller and most of the work is just setting up lane arrows. If you do yield on the legs, the traffic light is less work than a standard 4-phase intersection.
not using a single node would also allow for staged pedestrian crossing
They just put a modified version of this in a city near me to help manage traffic on the bypass highway. everyone was freaking out because there was 12 instructional videos published by the province showing how the intersection functions from all directions. green means go red means stop watch the light in your lane.. easy peasy. made the busiest intersection in the province flow a lot smoother. great video, i wouldn't have the patience or the skill to make that in CS.
First we get asymmetrical roads. Now it's asymmetrical nodes. I feel like Colossal Order curses every time someone comes up with something like this because now it needs to be a base requirement for CSL2. I feel like this video was a counter to all the suggestions of overbuilding the roundabout with flyovers, pedestrian tunnels, etc. and then comparing it to a vanilla intersection. At 15:22 you can see how it's a shame that you can't adjust yellow light timings as that car gets stuck in the intersection while making a left turn. Maybe a 1 second dummy cycle would fix it.
We've got these all around my city in real life and they work like absolute magic. There's the 2 way versions and 4 way versions, and both have taken traffic from an absolute nightmare and accident riddled mess into something much more pleasant.
I would love to see those implied islands in the middle of the intersection filled in with greenery.
This is amazing, I actually needed something like this for a few high volume intersections in my city where there isnt quite enough space for an interchange and a roundabout or timed traffic light are still not quite enough. Gonna try this immediately.
Good luck! :)
@@YUMBL update: I installed TWO of these in my city at a couple of busy intersections and it brought my traffic back up to 78%-80% after it dropped to 73% when I added some new industry areas.
Interessting! So you basicly offset the crossing left hand traffic to a second junction further back, which allows you to minimize the traffic light time and steps. On the equation of capacity, conflict, waiting time/traffic flow and used space, the only real drawback is the used space.
I like it.
Thanks! Yes, the space used is sub optimal. But its usefulness comes in money saved from installing and maintaining an interchange. Some areas need an economical solution.
One downside in real life (though not in C:S, if you build it right) is that it's confusing, so increased risk of accidents.
@@Pystro
Accidents occur due to bad drivers’s bad habits. Not the design itself.
Nope. Statistically its safer than a normal intersection.
@@YUMBL Guess people must be approaching it with more respect then?
Also, it takes away many directions and most opportunities to get T-boned. Since it removes 1 of the 2 left turn directions (2 straight directions remaining) that cross each straight path; and each left turn crosses only 1 straight path instead of 2 straights and 2 other lefts.
Why does your traffic manager lines look so funky ( 8:40 ), for me, they show exactly which path the car is going to drive.
You may have only played on the latest tmpe update. They used to look like that.
They did something like this on the Indian River and Kempsville Road intersection in Virginia Beach and it has greatly improved traffic during rush hour.
I'll always remember the first comment I saw on a video about the continuous flow intersection:
"It's amazing the lengths Americans will go to avoid a roundabout"
A roundabout cannot do this. I promise.
We only went to the moon because someone put a roundabout outside NASA.
I've build one of these before with an older version of node controller, but your approach with the current version is much better. This actually looks like a real-world intersection (there's a CFI here in Austin, TX), unlike my clunky effort.
I just started tampering with node controller and I think here I just stumbled into the most advanced tutorial for it.
In my city (Tijuana, Mexico) they have almost a whole avenue with only cfis (avenida de los insurgentes). Only that the cfis are better designed than the whole city.
Woah finally a continuous flow intersection I think I can build. The options these mods make possible is actually amazing.
Much better than the old way :)
. . . what I can recognize: out of one regular 4-phases 4-ways intersection you made one 2-phase crossing plus additional 4 (2 + 2 opposite synchronous) ) 2-phase crossings . . . so you are trading time consumption (4 phases) against space requests (deskewing / distributing time over space) . . . interesting !
Gorgeous intersection but all I can think about how terrifying those right turning sliplanes would be to pedestrians. If you're crossing from left to right and there's a column of cars waiting at the red light, you have no way of seeing if there's a car tearing down that side and you can't exactly stop in the middle of the zebra crossing the check.
Id probably add a cycle to let them out. Wouldnt take long.
picked this up for my city main road..
I had to build this 34 times total, but hey, it works its magic. traffic went in downtown area from 28% during rush hour to 97%
Simple regular intersection is the way to go.
If there’s traffic backed up, there are other factors like zoning, road hierarchy and lack of transportation
This is a viable option instead of (or on the way to building) an overpass. Its for buying time and saving money.
I tried yesterday and for the love of everything good in this world, I couldn't make the lights do what I wanted.
I tried again today, and it's like magic. Clears the intersection beautifully
Glad it worked! Nicely done :)
I've thought about trying to build one of these several times just to see if I could get one right but never have because trying to visualize how to do the traffic lights always gave me a headache. This was great :)
You can simplify the lights a lot. Unless traffic demand is very high, you can get away with only a single light at the center (if you make a single giant node like Yumbl did) and the "legs" can use yield signs. With that single light, it's just 1 phase for North-South and 1 phase for East-West, done.
@@JETZcorp I've seen several videos of people creating this junction, but this is the only one I saw that connected everything through the central node. All the others connected the left turn lanes a few units away from the center and I never thought about doing it Yumbl's way until this.
In Factorio, this is analogous to a buffered train intersection, specifically the Windcross by Zijkhal. Google "Factorio 3 and 4 way intersections" to see it and other crazy designs. In factorio, train tracks are always "on grade" so crazy intersections are needed to allow high throughput for large factories.
They had a bunch of these along Bangerter Highway in The Salt Lake City area. I always found them kinda neat. They took a lot of traffic flow ideas for the Jordan Valley and just ran with them. Diverging Diamonds kinda spread through the state, but Continuous Flow Intersections and the one single road with flex lanes never really took off.
Bangerter has really increased it's traffic flow since I lived in the area back in 2016-2017 so a lot of the intersections are getting turned into On/Offramps. They were starting that process down in Draper. When I was there last year they had gotten up past West Jordan and were working into West Valley City.
I kinda miss the area, but at the same time I see the ticking timebomb of californization that will inevitably take over the valley. Farther you get from Salt Lake, the better.
Next: Median U-Turn intersections? These have two-step traffic lights as well. Would be a great sequal to this vid. Greetz, MaxFX
Maybe I will :)
Hah yes! The good old fashioned Michigan left! As a Detroit area native, most major left hand turns are displaced to median u-turns
Michigan Left!
@@YUMBL It's almost 10 years old, but here's an example. It also is next to a SPUI!!!
ruclips.net/video/e-sVkjKQqFc/видео.html
@@YUMBL I didnt quite follow your guide for the traffic lights as mine look quite different
i'm just amazed how you keep up with these designs
I literally sat with my mouth open, watching this. Awesomeness.
That's great design. I thought skylines will not allow to build interchange like that. Its really pushing limits. This is also only one I know where all rights, and all lefts can go at the same time without collisions.
I love how the patterns look while you're making things.
This build is really breath-taking. And thanks for including remarks about only displacing left-turns for two legs of the intersection, though my head almost exploded trying to think of the changes in lane-math that come with it ;-)
I think the weakest point of this design are the four pre-intersections with the crossing lane-connectors of 10:58 with a risk of left-turning and straight-on traffic getting stuck at the traffic light after leaving the main intersection and backing up all the way to the main intersection. Combined with my weakness of configuring traffic lights it would be a complete nightmare to recreate this ... ;-)
Its a bit hellish, yes. Would work even better if i made the legs longer.
@@YUMBL I think you could improve the light sequence with a few small changes. In phase 1 you have the left turning traffic (into the left turn bay) waiting for oncoming traffic which hasn't arrived yet (ignoring the stragglers who just turned left). So I would change phase 1 to allow them through (with oncoming as red) until oncoming traffic starts arriving at that red light (by my count it's about 9 seconds from when through traffic starts moving through the main intersection until it reaches the intersection after). Phase 2 turns green for the oncoming traffic and red for turning left into the bay. This way through traffic won't have to stop once they get through the main intersection. Would be interested to know if this improves anything or if there's something I haven't considered or forgotten.
You’re probably right. The legs also need to he longer for true two phase operation i think.
Money is not the only restriction why overpasses are avoided ... to avoid steep inclines a lot of space is needed. The continuous flow intersection as an alternative to grade separation loses much of its value if the legs are growing and growing ...
And even if you space out the intersections of the arterials as road hierarchy tells you to do, two consecutive continuous flow intersections would be difficult to realize.
I built one of these with discrete nodes and liked how it worked. but now I'm definitely going to build one this way. That just looks amazing.
TDOT completed our first roundabout and is on track to begin construction on our first continuous flow intersection in 2027 with a completion date of 2030. Thank you for the visual.
I actually tried building this on the test map you shared in the roundabout video. But I built it as 5 nodes and lots of timed traffic lights and lane connectors.
The 4 phases are not confusing to understand, but they are confusing to time correctly and keep everything free-flowing.
I would have liked to see a comparison to a roundabout, because you aren't getting rid of the left-turn cross over - you are just moving it further away and increasing the footprint of the intersection.
My “roundabouts are not as good as you think” video was done under the exact same conditions. This is better at flowing high density traffic than a roundabout. Every intersection I film on this map is better at flowing high density traffic than a roundabout.
We have one of these in my city! It always felt really over-engineered to me, but this video made it make a lot more sense when I could see what was going on. It makes sense why they would do something like this, too, because two major roads run into each other and the placement of buildings and a major park prevent people from using other roads to bypass the intersection and an interchange would feel really out of place.
I went through one of these earlier this year turning left. It was wild.
My hometown built one of these. It greatly decreased accidents as there are now fewer intersection points. Well done!
Much appreciated :)
Beautiful work man! I had a video come up in my suggested from a Department of Transport looking at this and I thought straight away, Yumbl will do this. Amazing!
Thanks a bunch :)
I may put it up :)
Its up! Links in description :)
Just came across one of these for the time in real life yesterday and today this shows up in my feed.
@RoadGuyRob did a video on the real world version of these. Quite fascinating stop gap solution.
A couple years ago they put one of these intersections in about 3 miles from where I live. They actually put it in to reduce accidents rather than improve traffic. It's very interesting, it works pretty well. Definitely confusing if you've never been on it before, as you have to know what's going on and get in the correct lane ahead of time. They have it set up the same as your build, with the sub intersections having their own lights that are perfectly timed with the main intersection to prevent traffic buildup
Glad its worked!
They added one recently in my town. Thanks for explaining the reasoning.
I worked for days trying to recreate this intersection and failed. You did it with the amazing node trick. I love it! that was so satisfying to watch you work on the past few days! I could watch the traffic go through that intersection for hours.. I really hope you use it at least once in your city, especially now that you have it save and on the workshop. I would really love to see it in action with a beautiful city surround it! Cheers from the Parclo Matrix guy
Thanks TwoC!
It's fascinating as an engineering problem and cool as a model.
This looks wickedly useful! Do you know if this is in use IRL somewhere? After driving in South Florida for 20+ years though, I'm pretty sure this could never work down here. Drivers seem to get confused on curved roads here.
Theyre big in Utah
They've implemented a bunch of these in Utah. bit wonky to get used to at first. But supposedly they reduce accidents by a significant percent in the long run.
Quite safe from what ive heard.
still prefer having one direction flow straight, the other split into over and under
What I'd like to see, would be a version where you displace the left turning lanes on 2 directions, then they do their turn completely outside the intersection and then you do a "reverse displacement" on the other two directions to merge them back in.
My city was going to build one of these, but there was a bunch of pushback because it was so poorly explained. I wish they had just used this video to show how the thing works.
I saw you building this live. Absolutely incredible work!
Another amazing creation! I will immediately search for it as an asset in the Workshop, and probably be let down by off-brand creations. And then I'll let myself down with my own off-brand creation. Let the mimicking commence!
For allowing left turn incoming traffic arriving intersection to take preference over straight coming traffic, can you advise try give way i stead of a dedicated traffic light? That way you might get more left turn traffic away instead of having them wait till then green to even arrive the free lane. This way the wastage of time to arrive the free lane will be coped up and more traffic will go through.
Yeah there could be issue that the left hand traffic wont ever then allow the straight traffic but advise if we have an alternative over traffic light.
That would certainly be easier
This intersection is used frequently at a local highway near where I live. These are their last stage before turning the highway into a full-on freeway.
Exactly. Its on the verge of becoming an overpass.
I would say the aquamarine colour is about a 25CDA3
Would the intersection have any zoning on it? If so, how would it work?
No, i wouldn’t recommend it.
You know you're good at the game when all of this makes sense
I need to incorporate this intersection into my city. Such a Beautiful intersection
I love this intersection! I have a spot in my current city that could definitely use something of this sort, (I might try it without the stop lights first though as I hate setting up the traffic lights). Thank you Yumbl !!
Went through an intersection similar to this on the weekend, Punt Rd & Swan St in Melbourne.
Very interesting. Definitely more efficient than a standard intersection.
I made a one-leg 'T' version a while ago in order to decrease the light phase on the through road. These work like a symphony if you time your lights perfectly (I also have another very busy 'T' intersection close to it).
The Learned Doctor demystifying another intersection! Love it.
Awesome - Personally I wish you’d show the marking phase on these videos (or at least some of it), it’s so satisfying to watch them come together!
We have one of these in our area. it works pretty well, but it's a lot to take in when you first pull up. Side to side, left turns require a U turn, up and down the left turns have that slip lane lane like in this intersection.
I had no idea how much potential for crazy intersections Node Controller gives a player
I love this. It's a counterintuitive intersection, but it looks really cool.
There only thing I'll say - and this applied to pretty much all the intersections I've seen you do so far - is that, having grown up in a country where turn-on red is not legal, and now having lived in several countries where it is, freeflowing right turns always annoy me. They make it very clear that pedestrian safety is a secondary concern. I always have to dodge scooters and bikes when I cross, even at a marked crossing with the green man showing. Back home, the green man meant no traffic was coming and you were completely safe. I'd be interested to see you tackle an intersection that manages to incorporate safe pedestrian crossings without sacrificing too much traffic flow (and without building absurd pedestrian bridges - there is a huge one near my apartment, and nobody uses it, preferring to chance death on the busy intersection below instead because it's significantly faster.)
A red right turn on a ped cycle solves this. This was just a test in a vacuum. These are also not generally meant for populated areas.
Yes! I was wondering when will you cover displaced left turn and here it is!
You do an amazing job! I learn quite a bit from your videos. Keep up the good work!
Man i like these intersection videos and all but it's been a while since you've done a newmarket or any creative city video, really missing those!
When I saw road guy Robs video about these I didn't think there would ever be q way to build one in cs
RGR is my homie!
I have never seen a more colorful set of lane connectors at a single intersection before.
Its certainly something.
Sorry, I'm new to the continuous flow intersection concept, but how is the flow here continuous when half of the traffic is always stopped?
Thats what the design is called. There are many videos on it. This is just how to build it in cities skylines.
VERY slick the way you built this into one node! I haven’t built one of these in a good long while, and Node Controller wasn’t a thing then. I think this is the best way I’ve seen to build this for sure.
I will say though that the traffic light phasing is way more complex and a ton more efficient than you have here. It’s even more fun to watch when it’s set up right. Now I gotta make a video 😁
But again...the Node Controller work and those American road assets...great work!
Thanks Lee. Show me the light! 😂
@@YUMBL oooh! Love the pun! 😂 You really make some awesome vids my friend 😊 I appreciate the care and detail you put into these tutorials. You’re a huge asset to the community.
Ive had it working well on a 2 cycle light, but the legs have to he a bit longer. The rate of the cars over distance matters massively here.
ngl that looks like a pedestrian nightmare
Agreed, it needs ramps/overpasses, or separate stage in the lights, but even then because it's huge it'll take a long time to cross.
Eh, not necessarily? At least not compared to a comparable conventional intersection.
@@Cynyr
You mean footbridges?
It has islands. Peds can cross to the island easily from any direction. Its also a two cycle light. Constantly opening up for them.
@@VestedUTuber yes
Theres an intersection near my house just like this. Always thought it was wild to look at.
I WAS WONDERING HOW TO MAKE THIS WITHOUT IT BEING A MESS, THANK YOU YUMBL
The first time I encountered this intersection in real life, it was a brain-bender - but your explanation makes perfect sense.
(It was on the Bangerter Highway in Salt Lake City, Utah,)
i tell you what, i never thought I'd see myself using traffic lights in this game as much as i do now. Many hours in this game i was extremely anti-traffic light. but i got tired of the messy looking intersections and huge interchanges and roundabouts (which really don't work THAT great with a lot of traffic). Now i almost see it as an art form, just like making a nice intersection, adding a proper traffic light with custom settings is my new thing i look forward to when setting up my roads.
it's really neat what a couple nice road mods, TMPE and node controller / decorator can do for the game. traffic can still be a pain but the options are endless for getting creative and problem solving.
I’m glad to hear it! Lights add a lot of dimension to the game imo :)
Drove through these intersections in Mexico. First they bent my brain, then they were awesome.
Real talk - is this (or something like it) available on the workshop? I don't know if I have the patience (or ability for that matter) to recreate this work of art.
Linked in the description.
This is exactly i saw when i went to Tampa, FL. Great video
Thanks :)
Keeping massive traffic moving can mean devoting a lot of real estate to the solution. This intersection uses a bunch. I can't wait to put one in one of my cities.
I used to live by one of these. The locals hated it when it was first proposed, but it wasn't bad to use.
I love the core trick here, splitting the two left turns before the intersection. This has many more similar applications I bet. I don't like traffic lights, but here you really made it work.
I do think at least one overpass (the main road in one direction) will make this a lot better. But do you have a design that has no traffic lights? I see this working excellently in a highly asymmetric traffic flow, like one major straight meets a heavy left turn. But symmetrical ones of course look nicer.
You can split the lanes and merge them into two roads, probably a wonky zigzag over one way and under the other. You'll then have four pairs of roads. It could be 2-1+2-3 combo just like you have in this video or any combo of lanes. If there is only one really have left turn you only have to split that one road.
You then have a good starting position for a really cool sets of overpasses and underpasses. I'd set the main roads crossing straight through at -6 and +6, the right turns at 0 and pick what looks nice for the left turns depending on what height you connect to. Does this make sense?
A thing of beauty! Only concern is that the bottleneck is on the junction exit rather than entrance, so it might lock up if the main node is running 100% duty cycle. The straight on/left turn exit lanes are receiving 2 lanes of traffic in both phases, but the lights for getting back out will only be operating 2 lanes on some of the phases. You would need 4 lanes crossing the left turn to have the same throughput. Not sure how they deal with that in reality, but it is quite possible that they just don't, or have pedestrian crossing phases on the main node to match duty cycles. My instinct would be that the pedestrian crossings should be on the main node, counter-intuitive as it sounds.
Correct. The legs need to be a bit longer, and the light needs work. It runs on two phases irl, but its also much bigger.
Good luck crossing this as a pedestrian 💀
Hey Yumbl, you probably don't care enough to remember me but I'm sometimes pretty vocally cynical of your videos (not that I don't watch them all and enjoy most of them). Saying that, however, this video was flawless. I knew Node Controller was extremely powerful but even I was amazed at how you used it to such great effect, and how you managed to explain everything you did clearly and concisely. I have built a similar junction in the past and sat and struggled fiddling with Node Controller for much longer than you did I assure you, and the result still didn't come out nearly as well. So yeah, you impressed this cynic, I applaud you!
Much appreciated :)
I only know of one of these intersections in my city.. and it's used in conjunction with a frontage road for a state highway.. so imagine East/West being much wider with a gap that can accommodate a 2 lane divided limited access highway.
i still like the spiral turbo kind of round-about, specialy if they also have the roads between each arm, so you can u-turn. i think you could make a very good one or two. one that is compact and one for highways
As a traffic controller this only works for 40% of drivers. The other 60% never figure it out panic brake and end up in the wrong lane stopped and and trying to get over. Ie backing it all up
Bad drivers never miss their exits. Good drivers do.
Impressive, like the marking tool really makes the flow pop out.
That's amazing, we can also use underpass for the left turn and those intersections literally only use two phase red light.
This is amazing, I wanted to see it in cities but knew I couldn't do it justice.
When i saw this at first i thought it was weird on how it works because roundabouts are a thing but by the end i remembered why it looked familiar, i have passed through a crossing like this one and all i can say is that it was was a nightmare to walk across
this is a nightmare for pedestrians and bicycles, not a place where you'd want to live
Don’t move to Utah 😂
Amazing. I absolutely love seeing strange intersections like this. Great video dude