Show me your offramps

[Shiggs]

hoping to see some of the most efficient, compact and repeatable designs you have come up with. I have this nice little highway offramp system that I made in the asset editor, its probably similar to some of yours, nothing fancy really.

It is pretty good for the residential and commercial areas. Its compact, easily made one sided, and pretty easily adjustable. If I connect the secondary roundabouts with ramps it moves traffic better, and i can even extend it for a mini highway, or I can connect it with regular roads for extra zoning and helping my grid line up.

But it doesn't do so hot in the industrial area sometimes. Traffic can back up pretty bad on the highway at times, waiting to get to the main roundabout. So I was just curious if any of you had some really efficient designs. And yea that jagged line in my highway will be fixed, I know its hideous lol.

 

[generalolaf]

I'll be curious to see what people post... I think I've been doing mine horribly wrong.

 

[masterstatesman]

I find having the diamond interchange come out onto a large square as opposed to a two-way road does wonders for flow.

Diagonal diamond onto square

Diamond onto square (at the border, but would make it obviously more symmetrical if it were in the city)

The other off ramp I like to use is far more compact and useful for shoreline freeways. I elevate one of the highways and then have four ramps connect with one way roads in the grid.

Single-sided ramps

 

[Shiggs]

Those look great masterstatesman! I'll have to try that squared off one way approach. It looks neat.

Meanwhile, I found another one, somebody listed a similar one their city journal with a link, is how I found it, just thought I'd share..

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=418804898

 

[NZSimplicity]

Well personally I hate those tiny offramp roads, so I came up with this:

I find the traffic behaves a lot better now and doesn't get caught up.
Sorta a bit like the square one up above, except that my square is on top not on the ground.

 

[IVIaarten]

Main thing I noticed is that compact normally isn't efficient. The really short off and on ramps mean you don't have any buffer room, quickly escalating a small back up into a huge traffic jam, especially when you add traffic lights in the mix. Try to make sure you have enough buffer room on the ramp to make sure things keep flowing until the light turns green again or any other obstructions (turning traffic, pedestrians on crossings, merging traffic) get resolved.

 

[negandhi]

Has anyone come with an offramp that merges onto a four or six lane two-way street and forces the traffic to only go one way (i.e., no traffic lights, no quasi U-turns, just yield if necessary and go straight).

 

[CaesarVincens]

Main thing I noticed is that compact normally isn't efficient. The really short off and on ramps mean you don't have any buffer room, quickly escalating a small back up into a huge traffic jam, especially when you add traffic lights in the mix. Try to make sure you have enough buffer room on the ramp to make sure things keep flowing until the light turns green again or any other obstructions (turning traffic, pedestrians on crossings, merging traffic) get resolved.

This is something I think many people fail to understand. Roads are about throughput, and buffering is part of that. Traffic lights are not bad, in fact they are quite good. The problem is when you have too many un-sync'd lights (which is currently not-possible, AFAIK) close together and therefore little buffer room. More lanes are only helpful if they are useful. And for C:S that generally only applies when they go to different places.

Has anyone come with an offramp that merges onto a four or six lane two-way street and forces the traffic to only go one way (i.e., no traffic lights, no quasi U-turns, just yield if necessary and go straight).

Unfortunately, without mods this is not possible at the present. At least if you want to merge onto a street rather than continue your off-ramp as a street.

 

[generalolaf]

Has anyone come with an offramp that merges onto a four or six lane two-way street and forces the traffic to only go one way (i.e., no traffic lights, no quasi U-turns, just yield if necessary and go straight).

You can always just do side-by-side one-way streets.

 

[simonmd]

I like to keep things simple,

 

[CaesarVincens]

I like to keep things simple,

Seems straight-forward enough for me, especially for three freeways and a surface street.

 

[sgcase]

Those look great masterstatesman! I'll have to try that squared off one way approach. It looks neat.

Meanwhile, I found another one, somebody listed a similar one their city journal with a link, is how I found it, just thought I'd share..

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=418804898

That is gorgeous! Thanks for sharing the link!

 

[negandhi]

You can always just do side-by-side one-way streets.

Appreciate the idea but the issue with that is the speed of a two-lane one way is only 40 km/hr and a six-lane one way is overkill. Plus it's not really realistic (I know, I know, it's a game). The same problem occurs with on-ramps. I guess this is a wishlist item - true merging roads for bi-directional roads.

 

[Tim Bo]

Upmarket innercity offramp ...

Double-roundabout with connectors offramps. Seems to work well.

 

[Bautz]

Appreciate the idea but the issue with that is the speed of a two-lane one way is only 40 km/hr and a six-lane one way is overkill. Plus it's not really realistic (I know, I know, it's a game). The same problem occurs with on-ramps. I guess this is a wishlist item - true merging roads for bi-directional roads.

Yes, we need more road options. 2and 4-6 lane highways, 3 lane oneways and so on.

 

[Ln X]

Dayana Roundabout, a major interchange in outskirts of the city of Brendon.

 

[DECRO]

For maximum capacity.

 

[Shiggs]

Thanks for all the responses everyone! Mostly looking for highway to street offramps though, the highway to highway ones probably belong in the junctions thread.

I've been playing around with this quite a bit, and I think I have found the most efficient design possible for a roundabout on/off ramp system. This thing is a traffic clearing machine. I rezoned a bunch of the city to high density and only allowed them one exit to put some really heavy stress on it, and there is not even a chance of it getting backed up.

It works really well because the on/off ramps are completely separated and do not share an intersection with the cross ramps leading to the zoning areas. Also the 2 on ramps are actually on the inside of the roundabout, making merging easy for the cars coming from the off ramps. Longer ramps than before and completely modular, I can put these all over the place. Fairly small footprint, especially considering it is the single most effective ramp system I have yet to see in action for myself, and I have tried quite a few on the workshop.

and yea, I have all kinds of problems there in the picture... lol it was a pain to even get it there because there was a graveyard that took forever to move, I guess I just got excited lol.

 

[masterstatesman]

That's actually pretty awesome. Outer lane ramps with no weaving on the highway and no weaving on the roundabout!

Right now I'm working on Waterside Drive (https://goo.gl/maps/Pf3mU). It's not terribly compact or efficient, but love the way everything just curves. Very picturesque drive.

 

[IVIaarten]

Hmz Shiggs, I very much like that idea. looks like that would force proper lane usage, an no crossing/merging between traffic wanting to go 1/4 and 3/4 around it.

The only thing I don't really like about it is that it doesn't look like something you'd find in real life (well, turbo roundabout comes close, but that's normally not highway based).

Just wondering, do people that come from the 'north' in that picture have to drive almost a 360 before they can go 'west'? Wouldn't adding 2 sliplanes to the north and south part not be a lot easier on the roundabout?