Making sure drivers use all available lanes

[otis1099]

I noticed that when I zone the 6-lane avenue, the cars always drive on the far left lane of the road and the two on the right are not being used. Am I able to do something so that the vehicles can use all available lanes?

[Metacritical]

build stuff on the right so that they have a reason to use those lanes.

[otis1099]

I do have stuff on the right

[lozacenz]

otis1099 eredeti hozzászólása:

I do have stuff on the right

He doesn't just mean zone the right side of the road. Cars will get into the lane they want Unreasonably early. If they're all in the left lane, it's because they wall want to turn left at some point and the left lane will allow straight through traffic until it gets to the intersection they want to turn left at.

There are a bunch of guides, tutorials on youtube, etc explaining how to work with and/or around this.

The simplest thing to do is to follow the traffic in that left lane to the first intersection. How many of the cars are turning left there? If it's all, or a vast majority, of them, you probably need alternate routes into that area to distribute the traffic better based on where it's coming from. If it's few or none, you probably don't even need that road (of course, that's not garanteed) and traffic flow will improve if you get rid of the intersection entirely. If it's a fairly even split? well, you want to force the traffic which Isn't turning left out of that left lane. And the way you do That is by replacing the section immediately on the other side of the intersection with a four lane road instead. This will result in the left lane being changed from 'left and straight' to 'left only' so anything Not turning left will use the next lane over instead.

Well... ok, the automatic process for assigning lanes is a bit questionable. The left lane may stay as 'left and straight' while the Right lane switches from 'right and straight' to 'right only'. If that's the case, the only thing you can do is use a Two lane road on the far side of the intersection instead. Of course, that may cause traffic flow problems in the lanes headed the Other way (there is a 3 lane road with two lanes one way and one the other which might help there).

The workshop has a Many road assets which provide various asymetical options suitable for fixing this problem if you either can't work it out with the basic stuff, or have specific plans which would be better with other options. And there's always Traffic Manager (whatever the most recent version is), which lets you asign the lanes Manually... that said, Traffic Manager also has a whole lot of Other functions which are of little or no benefit to most users and will absolutely tank your system performance if you use them, so keep an eye out for that. (the manual lane setting is Also great if you're trying to merge two three lane highways into one six lane road. You'll notice that by default the game always wastes a lane on the inbound highway to allow traffic coming from it to turn onto the Outbound highway? Yeah, it can sort that out.)

But yeah, the thing to remember is Branching. If all your traffic is piling into one lane it's because that lane would be the optimal route for them if there were no other cars on it. Adjust your roads (and thus what the optimal route is) accordingly and they'll stop doing that.

I strongly recomend tracking down those tutorials though. They'll do a much better job of explaining this, with examples, than I have.

[grapplehoeker]

A 6 lane one way road that has exits on both sides will effectively be 2 lanes to go left, 2 lanes to go straight on and 2 lanes to go right.
So... if you want traffic to use all 6 lanes, then give them a reason to go left, straight on and go right. This means of course, that you need to understand where the traffic is coming from and where it needs to go. For example, if the bulk of the traffic is commercial delivery vehicles coming from industry, then you need to ensure that there is commercial to the left, straight ahead and to the right. Then the delivery traffic will use all 6 lanes to reach their destination.

If on the otherhand you believe that providing 6 lanes means that traffic will use extra lanes to avoid congestion in the others, then this is incorrect thinking. Traffic plots its route from A to B at the start of its journey and will not deviate unless you physically change the road layout. So, it will not change route on the fly. In fact it won't even recognise congestion and will stick to its predetermined route.

[otis1099]

Got it. Thanks guys. My city is very new. Only 828 people there, so that's probably a reason as well

[bmrigs]

This game doesn't utilize all of the lanes. You need the Traffic Mod to assign all of the lanes.

[grapplehoeker]

bmrigs eredeti hozzászólása:

This game doesn't utilize all of the lanes. You need the Traffic Mod to assign all of the lanes.

I beg to differ ;)
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=423560766

[Metacritical]

bmrigs eredeti hozzászólása:

This game doesn't utilize all of the lanes. You need the Traffic Mod to assign all of the lanes.

no, you just need to learn the rules of the game.

[bmrigs]

I beg to differ also. I seen a whole line of cars trying to merge into one lane when up the road there is two turning lanes to the right. The mod cleared that up. Seen it too many times in my games. Metacritical, I also seen too many time on these boards that your're just a wise ass little punk that wouldn't dare be that way in front of someone.

[grapplehoeker]

bmrigs eredeti hozzászólása:

I beg to differ also. I seen a whole line of cars trying to merge into one lane when up the road there is two turning lanes to the right. The mod cleared that up. Seen it too many times in my games.

Further reading for you since this topic has been rehashed and this saves a lot of repetition...
https://steamcommunity.com/app/255710/discussions/0/365163537818810005/

[Metacritical]

bmrigs eredeti hozzászólása:

Metacritical, I also seen too many time on these boards that your're just a wise ass little punk that wouldn't dare be that way in front of someone.

then i guess we have never met. now instead of relying on mods, learn the rules of the game.

[ancienthighway]

otis1099 eredeti hozzászólása:

Got it. Thanks guys. My city is very new. Only 828 people there, so that's probably a reason as well

IMO, will only 828 people, it's far too early to be using 6 lane, or even 4 lane roads. Maybe a short 4 lane road connecting to he highway stub, but that's it.

bmrigs eredeti hozzászólása:

This game doesn't utilize all of the lanes. You need the Traffic Mod to assign all of the lanes.

TM:PE won't solve the problem. TM:PE allows you to designate how a lane will be used, but it doesn't force traffic to go from point A to point B.

You may be able to assign turn lanes and places where lane changes may occur, but if all the traffic wants to turn left and then turn left again, they will get in the far left turn lane. If they all want to turn left and then turn right, they will get in an inner left turn lane if there is one. If they want to turn left at the next left turn down the road, they will still get in the left turn lane that also goes straight.

[MarkJohnson]

bmrigs eredeti hozzászólása:

I beg to differ also. I seen a whole line of cars trying to merge into one lane when up the road there is two turning lanes to the right. The mod cleared that up. Seen it too many times in my games.

There are many problems doing this. The first is you have forced a cim off the road and into your city, only to have to zig-zag through your city to get back on the same road again.

Remember, this game runs on timers, and you possibly caused those cars to despawn and fail their missions that causes other issues.

Also, the single line backup in intentional. It is a red flag (like red traffic roads) to let you know you have issues. Would you rather all 3 three lanes were backed us from all trying to exit the same off ramp? It would take forever to clear up and starve your city to death. This way other can still go straight in the center lane or right in the right lane for other duties.

Fixing a single lane is a huge blessing, over fixing multiple lanes for the exact same issues. It just doesn't make sense to clog up all of your lanes. Look at SC2013, It would use all lanes and your city would collapse fast and burn your whole city down in the process. all because of one small issue of a single overloaded intersection.

Metacritical, I also seen too many time on these boards that your're just a wise ass little punk that wouldn't dare be that way in front of someone.

Did you really need to troll your own post?