I have no idea what more I can do to alleviate traffic

[Shiggs]

well it looks like you have an avenue with a boatload of intersection where most of the traffic stems from... Is that clover leaf just really busy or actually getting backed up?

Might try adding more connections to the highway or a little mini highway running into the heart of the industrial area.

Also the highway vs street layout looks like its obviously more direct for the cims to take the straight up and down roads rather than a highway, and they are all very close together, kind of a recipe for bad traffic imo.

You need to make the fastest, highest capacity roads the most direct for moving from district to district basically.

 

[Person012345]

Okay, here's a screenshot of my Industry area.

View attachment 126001

Sunset District is Industry - Forest
Prospect Park is Industry - Standard
Butler Heights is Industry - Ore

This isn't really useful, the traffic view is largely useless imo since it seems to display some sort of hybrid between congestion and volume and idek how it works. Maybe that's just me being dumb, but we need to see the problem areas and the setup that you have. But from that shot, you only have one way on and off the highway into that entire area.

 

[MarkJohnson]

well it looks like you have an avenue with a boatload of intersection where most of the traffic stems from... Is that clover leaf just really busy or actually getting backed up?

Might try adding more connections to the highway or a little mini highway running into the heart of the industrial area.

The clover is pretty busy, but they aren't getting off fast enough and backup.

I been thinking about running the freeway along that railroad track and see if that helps. I think my prtoblem is more too much imports. Maybe I'll just convert my Industry to standard. Or is that already my proble. too much standard and not enough specialized industry?

Also the highway vs street layout looks like its obviously more direct for the cims to take the straight up and down roads rather than a highway, and they are all very close together, kind of a recipe for bad traffic imo.

You need to make the fastest, highest capacity roads the most direct for moving from district to district basically.

I thought I already have the fastest routes. The only way to make them more sperated is by making gigantic squares that are empty in the middle. Maybe I use highway/offramps as main roads? Seems excessive, but maybe my only option.

This isn't really useful, the traffic view is largely useless imo since it seems to display some sort of hybrid between congestion and volume and idek how it works. Maybe that's just me being dumb, but we need to see the problem areas and the setup that you have. But from that shot, you only have one way on and off the highway into that entire area.

Yeah, this is the SW corner, so it's a natural dead end. no other way out.

If you can be more specific about the problem areas you want to see then I can zoom in for a closeup screenshot. What do you mean by, "The setup that you have?"

But realistically, I can only see using the highway tab to make actual roads in my city. Kind of like mini-highways running through my city.

Been avoiding this for too long as I don't want to bulldoze my entire city. But ....

Thanks again for all of the replies.
-=Mark=-

 

[Person012345]

For example, I might recommend trying something like this:

The light blue = highway the dark blue = highway, but optionally something like IVIaarten's single lane rural highways for part or all of it. The yellow things are where I might suggest junctions and their connections, reaching out. The types don't matter. However, this probably won't work if you just lead them down to that mess of traffic lights. The lights would largely need to go. The point is I think you're getting bottlenecked because a single junction is trying to handle almost all of the traffic going into and out of that area and it's not up to the job, imo. You need to spread the load. And at the termination of the roads off and on the junction you might want to consider feeder roundabouts to smoothly distribute and collect the traffic onto several different roads.

There are other options here, but as far as I can tell from your screenshot, your lack of choices for your traffic is the main issue. You know, I also might actually continue the light blue section and carve a road right through the middle of all that, emerging on the other side and doing a similar thing on the other side, giving traffic even more options.

You could also just put the junctions on the existing highway, the dark blue is actually unnecessary but fuck it I'm not going back and changing it now.

 

[masterstatesman]

Totally agree with Person012345. You need to disperse the traffic across multiple entryways.

You should also consider changing the cloverleaf to an interchange that doesn't weave. Meaning, when cars enter the main highway, they immediately have to get to the center lane because the exit comes after the entrance. These are bad for traffic flow and also a pain to drive in real life. The entry-exit on the southbound part of the highway looks like it has a big weaving problem.

 

[takedown47]

100% with person012345 on this. need to build a highway and allow exits into key districts. Personally I would have just gone with a basic freeway exit but roundabouts also do the trick

 

[Person012345]

The yellows aren't necessarily roundabouts by the way, I just circled roughly where I think the junctions should be. You can use a variety of interchanges (though roundabouts will work quite well in some of those situations imo).

 

[Myquandro]

I see that someone else also made a drawing of how he would do it. I've also done this, so take a look and build what you think is best.

Highway is blue, Highway ramps are dark orange and yellow is avenue/six-lane.

My plan is to build a dedicated highway for mainly Butler Heights, Prospect Park and Sunset District. This would take a lot of intensity away from the current highway. The cloverleaf could then be used to combine to the northern point of Sunset District and it's southern point (northern point of Prospect Park). It might also connect to the Residential/Commercial area in the north. The second part is the sort of frontage road for the new highway starting at around the North of Prospect Park all the way up to the start of the Residential/Commercial area.This would be used to get to the three roundabouts. This concept would separate through traffic coming from Butler Heights going North and Vice Versa from the more local traffic. The last two thing are to make an expressway on the southern part of Sunset District and the northern cloverleaf should be replaced by a stack or turbine interchange. There are good interchanges of these type designed by Timboh's in the workshop.

 

[MarkJohnson]

Thanks for the help everyone. I tried the diagram layout with pretty much the same result. My issue seems to be more about the importing too much freight than poor road design.

I've rezoned industry and now things have improved greatly, but still a lot of red throughout my whole map from poor road layouts.

I guess I'll slowly redo all of my roads little by little after I fill in most of the area. So I can see how traffic flows before modifications, otherwise demand will keep changing as my city grows and it will end up being an endless job. lol

Again, thanks for everyone's help.
-=Mark=-

 

[morriswalters]

This or something like it was used to create large cities without traffic in SimCity. The problem appears to be the temptation to use large industrial and commercial zones. So you end up with too many trucks in too small an area. Add in poor traffic AI. And you have a perfect storm.

 

[IVIaarten]

Traffic AI isn't poor, the road designs are

 

[Person012345]

Thanks for the help everyone. I tried the diagram layout with pretty much the same result. My issue seems to be more about the importing too much freight than poor road design.

I've rezoned industry and now things have improved greatly, but still a lot of red throughout my whole map from poor road layouts.

I guess I'll slowly redo all of my roads little by little after I fill in most of the area. So I can see how traffic flows before modifications, otherwise demand will keep changing as my city grows and it will end up being an endless job. lol

Again, thanks for everyone's help.
-=Mark=-

Again, did you get rid of the traffic lights? Because if you have these junctions going down to traffic it won't help at all.

 

[Myquandro]

Again, did you get rid of the traffic lights? Because if you have these junctions going down to traffic it won't help at all.

It might solve problems, but my city is full of traffic lights and they don't cause problems.

 

[MarkJohnson]

Again, did you get rid of the traffic lights? Because if you have these junctions going down to traffic it won't help at all.

I haven't been able to get rid of the traffic lights. Not sure how. It seems every road I try has them.

Is there some magic combination I am missing. Is there only one way to do this? I haven't been able to find a clear explanation anywhere.

 

[Myquandro]

If you build intersections with "Small Roads" they never get traffic lights. Also if you have "Medium Roads" or "Large Roads" with a one way roads away from it there won't be traffic lights. Highways and Highway ramps won't create intersections with traffic lights in most situation. There are a few other situation in which intersections create without traffic lights.

 

[IVIaarten]

I haven't been able to get rid of the traffic lights. Not sure how. It seems every road I try has them.

Is there some magic combination I am missing. Is there only one way to do this? I haven't been able to find a clear explanation anywhere.

Guess I'll post this again:

 

[Shiggs]

simple terms, basically don't use avenues (4-6 lane roads) unless you know what you are doing.

 

[MarkJohnson]

simple terms, basically don't use avenues (4-6 lane roads) unless you know what you are doing.

Yeah, I just figured this out.

I decided to start a new tile and test, instead of upgrading my existing network. This time I decided to use a pre-made roundabout and after connecting to my all 2-lane roads I noticed there were no stop signs at all.

I went and looked at my home made ultra large roundabout I made myself and traffic lights were everywhere.

I went back to the prefab roundabout and notice they had 3-lane one way roads. I figured out those are freeway roads! I upgraded my homemade roundabout to one-way freeway roads and all stops signs are gone!

So apparently you can only use 2-lane and freeway roads plus the on-off ramps. It seems all of the 4-lane and 6-lane roads have stop lights at any intersection. It seems kind of strange, and not sure of any real use for 4-lane or 6-lane roads?

I can't think of any reason why I'd want to have traffic lights? I suppose I'll find out as I build this next plot. lol

But, again, thanks everyone for your help.
-=Mark=-

 

[Shiggs]

traffic lights aren't the end of the world if they are spaced out appropriately. The problem most people run into is putting the intersections too close together and that will seriously hinder a traffic lights max capacity. Literally a stop light with 16 tiles in between intersections can handle twice as much as one with only 8 tiles of spacing. Of course left turns and other factors can effect this as well.

Also you can use avenues without traffic lights if they are connected by the ramps on both ends...

I do that sometimes for my bridges that go over the highway or whatever. basically only use avenue for the bridge itself.

 

[MN121MN]

Well, if you're really "gamey", there's a mod in Steam Workshop that gives you the option of adding or removing traffic lights in an intersection.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=411833858