In my quest to combat congestion when connecting a zone to a highway I've decided that right-turn only is the way to go and in fact, only way to go. Some time ago I've tested this design:
The idea was simple: no car can cut-off any other car's path. As shown by the Traffic++ (that is essential in those designs), no paths are crossed, totally collision-free. It was compact enough and worked quite well with typical traffic, but got bogged down when handling larger industrial zones, especially on it's own. Main problem with it was that outlet of one lane was the inlet of another, so cars would need to switch lanes right after merging.
That led me to another design I used often:
This was dubbed "vagina interchange", quite aptly by my wife, and it worked quite well even under more pressure, it also solved the problem of having to switch lanes after merging, but had significantly larger footprint, especially if made to look more natural, without sudden curves and drops as pictured above.
Hence another variant of this following my urge to make things look neat:
This design looks better and more uniform and takes ca.60% more space. It also inherits one crucial flaw that bugs those deigns.
I've finally decided to put my Etch A Sketch aside and solve the problem with sharp turns that has bugged me for a long time now. The main problem with keeping the flow fluid and nice was the fact that cars had to slow down to make a 90* right turn. Therefore I've elected to get rid of 90* turns in favor of something more subtle.
And that's how I've ended up with my city under the rule of Spaghetti Monster:
That last one is actually the one with best results as of now. It has nice, long curves, low-angle junctions and cars are able to retain high speeds when moving through it. It's still a collision-free design. Now the only thing that bugs me is AI's inability to plan the route ahead and at the last possible opportunity try to squeeze cars from 3 lanes into one. Same thing happens with roundabouts on a daily basis.
.
.png){kind=avatar}
