Why are these trains getting stuck?

[Flembot]

Hi all,

I'm relatively new to City Skylines. Been playing on Xbox Series X (remastered edition) for just over a month, and it's great!

Been having a little trouble with trains lately. Occasionally a train can clash with another, which is strange to me because they usually give way to each other just fine. Sometimes this happens (see screenshot).

Any ideas for a resolution?
For now, I've disabled intercity trains at this station - though I see no reason to do so. There is no congestion on the railway either.

Using CS Remastered on Xbox Series X.

Thanks in advance

 

[RenengadeDragon]

The trains are challenging to work with.
* Your "Y"(the triangle) is to small. Trains do best with room for several trains to stack up if needed.
*The distance between the "Y" and the Station is too short. There should be room for a whole train to wait. The red and green trains near the Station can not pass. There's insufficient space for them to do so.
* If you open your radial menu like you would to turn off traffic lights. You will see you can add stop signs to train lines. You can set priority to some tracks to help control the right of way.
*I usually only allow Intercity Trains access to one Station. Then I schedule local trains to move Cims around in a more controlled manor.
*I would extend the approaches(passing sidings) to the top and bottom of your "Y" to allow 3-4 trains to stack up while waiting for access to the station.
* Biffa has a couple of episodes where he trouble shoots trains. It might help to watch a couple for inspiration.
*I messed with trains for a long time before I became comfortable with them. Give them more space to do their thing. If it doesn't work, delete it and try again.
If you can't figure out a solution, post again.

 

[Ragga Muffin]

I give a bypass to all of my internal freight lines too.
Other than that i think renegade pretty much covered everything

 

[SonicGlitch]

You've created a gridlock. Trains are longer than cars, so if several trains are crossing paths at intersections or stations, there's a danger they could end up blocking each other like in your photo. A surefire way to avoid is is by building a system of flyovers using one-way tracks. That way trains will never cross paths, which means no possibility of gridlocks. Design your intersections and stations like the photo below.

 

[MarkJohnson]

Here's how I make my by-passes for trains, so they don't clog the lines. make sure there is enough for two trains to wait on each side of the station, so they don't backup onto the main track.

 

[SonicGlitch]

Here's how I make my by-passes for trains, so they don't clog the lines. make sure there is enough for two trains to wait on each side of the station, so they don't backup onto the main track.

View attachment 1013404

A simpler setup, but there's still the possibility of gridlock If there are more trains waiting to pull into the station than there is track. Flyovers eliminates gridlocks entirely.

 

[MarkJohnson]

A simpler setup, but there's still the possibility of gridlock If there are more trains waiting to pull into the station than there is track. Flyovers eliminates gridlocks entirely.

Of courser. Everything in the game has limits. but that should go without saying.

In fact, the game will artificially limit the traffic itself, to keep backups from happening. i.e. one lane highway backups.

 

[SonicGlitch]

Of courser. Everything in the game has limits. but that should go without saying.

In fact, the game will artificially limit the traffic itself, to keep backups from happening. i.e. one lane highway backups.

That makes no sense. Using one lane creates traffic back-ups as opposed to spreading out over all lanes.

 

[Meesmoth]

That makes no sense. Using one lane creates traffic back-ups as opposed to spreading out over all lanes.

This is how the game works in the past 8 years, if you can't understand its mechanics, then don't play the game.

You have to adapt to the game, not that the game adapts to you.

 

[MarkJohnson]

That makes no sense. Using one lane creates traffic back-ups as opposed to spreading out over all lanes.

It makes perfect sense from a gaming mechanic standpoint. If traffic is backing up, then all lanes will fill up. So you need to keep the other lanes open somehow, so other traffic can go around and bypass the actual traffic jam and keep the roads semi-clear so you can recover before your city collapses.

Without this mechanic, the traffic will back up all lanes, and all of the way to the outside connection, as you won't be able to fix it. So the despawning vehicles and single lane backup is a savior for this game.

You have to remember, this game was made on the fly as SimCity 2013 was in an uproar from a very poor release. So Colossal Order saw an opportunity to quickly convert their, "Cities in Motion" transportation game into a city builder before Simcity could recover. Luckily for us, CS1 made it and is now the premier City Builder.

It's not perfect for sure, but it overcame the odds and outshined Simcity.

 

[SonicGlitch]

This is how the game works in the past 8 years, if you can't understand its mechanics, then don't play the game.

You have to adapt to the game, not that the game adapts to you.

Don't be naive. Of course I understand the traffic AI, but it's still less efficient to congest vehicles on one lane instead of diffusing it over several lanes. Why else would there be traffic mods to alleviate this issue?

It makes perfect sense from a gaming mechanic standpoint. If traffic is backing up, then all lanes will fill up. So you need to keep the other lanes open somehow, so other traffic can go around and bypass the actual traffic jam and keep the roads semi-clear so you can recover before your city collapses.

That still makes no sense. That's like saying the best way to avoid a blood clot is to pump all the blood through one vein instead of spreading it throughout the body. Apparently CO realized this or they wouldn't rework the AI to take advantage of all free lanes in CS2.

You'll only have vehicles despawning on a congested lane if you didn't design your road network to handle the load. My city doesn't have that problem. I don't have despawning issues even when one lane is favoured (I don't use traffic mods). I see a lot of players reach very high populations without capping vehicles, but only because their road networks are so ineptly designed that they have congestion and despawning galore to save them. I've meticulously optimised my road layout and public transportation (and biking superhighway) for efficiency, I just need to bypass the vehicle limit to enable it.

 

[Merlinium58]

Lol, in CS traffic, the long 1 lane line was a result of pathing for agents (ie sims), they chose the straightest path to their destination, and the only way to move them from that path was to break it by removing a section of road so they despawned.

In CS2 they will now reroute if their path becomes blocked, thus no more byproduct of sitting in that 1 lane until the end of time. Thus streets not overloaded with agents sitting in traffic for 16 days trying to get to a convenience store.

 

[MarkJohnson]

That still makes no sense. That's like saying the best way to avoid a blood clot is to pump all the blood through one vein instead of spreading it throughout the body. Apparently CO realized this or they wouldn't rework the AI to take advantage of all free lanes in CS2.

Again, it is a gaming mechanic. If you want more intelligent AI, this is the max you can get out of the CS1 Unity engine:

CS1 chose to use a more stringent pathing to save on agents. 10,000 agents won't be enough for this game.

So the devs chose a GPS routing system, like in your car. It sets a steadfast route that it must obey, base on the quickest route from point A to point B directly by proximity. This way yields an 80,000 agent limit! That's 8x the cims on the map, verses than an intelligent AI.

Remember, CS1 used DX11, which was significantly advanced in AI, but it was still very poorly optimized. DX12 is leaps and bounds better in multi-threading than DX11, so agents shouldn't be a major issue in CS2 for a long while.

You'll only have vehicles despawning on a congested lane if you didn't design your road network to handle the load. My city doesn't have that problem. I don't have despawning issues even when one lane is favoured (I don't use traffic mods). I see a lot of players reach very high populations without capping vehicles, but only because their road networks are so ineptly designed that they have congestion and despawning galore to save them. I've meticulously optimised my road layout and public transportation (and biking superhighway) for efficiency, I just need to bypass the vehicle limit to enable it.

IME, 99% of the time, congestion is caused by poor logistics. You need to balance out districts so they can handle the loads. I find fast expansion the main cause. as you leave a previous district and start expanding to a larger district, the previous district keeps expanding upwards. By upwards I mean buildings keep leveling up. each new building level brings in more demands per building, which brings in more traffic until it collapses and you get jams. Not to mention city service start becoming overloaded and soon complaints from cims, from all of the leveling and services getting overwhelmed over time, then mayors complain of their city suddenly collapsing for no apparent reason.

But I build my roads poorly. zero road priority. I find they cause funneling of traffic to one road, and prevent traffic from going in the opposite direction, where they actually need to go. Not to mention the priority road clogs with traffic jams easily from funneling so many people.

But it's understandable. The main part of city management we see in real life is road construction. So we naturally think this is the key to fixing our cities. Just figuring out the job/worker ratios will clear up your districts quickly.