Traffic ruins this game

[Axe22]

Traffic does not work. You cannot make a city with high density commercial and residential that also has a road system which has intersections. If you try, the traffic gridlocks and there is no way to fix it. You have the option to turn on stop signs and traffic signals but they make the intersections work way less efficiently than if you simply have no controls at all. Turning on a stop sign in any direction causes the game to allow only one car to occupy the intersection at time. Turning on 2 stop signs does exactly the same thing. As does 3 and 4. It matters not which direction the stop sign(s) face. Using the traffic signal instead does...the exact same thing as the stop signs. There is absolutely no difference between using a stop sign and a traffic signal. You would expect a traffic signal to allow waiting cars to take turns going through the intersection several of them at a time from different directions. Like how they actually work. But no, only one car at a time is allowed through, never will you see two cars, one following the other, ever go through an intersection together. The signal will always permit a car from some other direction go in between the two. And so every line of waiting cars forever remains a line of waiting cars.

The game seems to take the approach that to solve a traffic issue where the intersection controls are so completely useless and unrealistic that they reduce by over 85% the throughput capacity of a road with no controls at all, a wise planner should simply add more and more public transport so there will be less cars. Therefore, all cities you create must have bus, taxi, ferry, aircraft, metro, trams, gondolas, etc etc etc etc etc etc. Leave one of them out, and your city grinds to a traffic halt. Or, alternatively, you have the option of using nothing but one-way roads throughout your build. No one way road may intersect with another, but at least the traffic will keep moving. Of course your transportation network ends up being a giant plate of spaghetti but....well I suppose you can keep playing the city for a little while longer.

Once traffic gets busy, this city is done. Time to start another since there exists no way to fix it other than tearing down the entire thing to throw in buckets of spaghetti roads. Might as well just start a new city until it happens again. In the end, the game is mostly unplayable for long periods of time because it eventually becomes too difficult and wonky to try to build your city in such a way that there exist no traffic intersections. Depending on how fast you expand, you can only get about two to six hours of play on a city before its time to junk it and start another due to no traffic movement.

Also this game has the most silly terrain editing tools I've ever encountered. Evidently, when you make alterations to the terrain the game computes how much dirt you are moving and collects it. Once you have moved a certain amount of dirt, it locks you out from making any more terrain edits until you somehow get rid of all the collected dirt. Only it doesn't tell you how to do this, and it provides you no way to dump it. So you have to go off and find another location somewhere on the map where you can raise up the terrain to dump the dirt. It is so lame I can't even think up a good way to complain about it. Basically here is the pro tip:
If the terrain isn't to your liking, quit the map and try another. Don't waste your time with the landscaping tools they are useless, convoluted, and clumsy which naturally leads to hours and hours of frustrating wasted time where nothing gets accomplished.

[Axe22]

Don't worry about it I'm made of granite and really couldn't care less what some anonymous jerks think of me. But thanks just the same for straightening it out.

I think I understand what you're saying kristofburger, but I don't think that applies here either.

Just to clarify. I do not have the output and input of this highway right next to each other like the game starts you out with. I found out how dumb that was straight away. The outbound lane turns 90 degrees and enters from down the road a bit (it runs parallel to my 4-lane main road). And that lane flows fine. This is just where the inbound highway lane directly intersects, by itself, with a 4 lane road with grass, at 90 degrees. No other roads near this intersection.

But it always backs up. Because only one car at a time is permitted to leave the highway and go onto the 4-lane road. Occasionally, very occasionally, two will go through. The 4-lane road isn't really ever very busy either. Traffic map shows it as mostly green except at the intersection. And it does allow the ones turning right to proceed faster, but they also stop momentarily every single one of them every single time one reaches the intersection regardless of stop sign or traffic signal. If both stop sign and traffic signal are off, then the ones turning right will not stop unless there is a car to avoid. So turning on controls makes right turns worse. Left turning vehicles always go one at a time when the signal or any stop sign is turned on. When they are off it gets pretty chaotic. Sometimes it will flow well, other times it gets backed up. Frankly, I have found chaos to be the most efficient option. But the irregularity of it can result in long long periods of gridlock.

Also the highway bends around the corner of my city. At this corner is where industrial areas are zoned. And I put another highway junction on the other side around the corner. This lets off map inbound traffic from one direction use one interchange and that from the other direction uses the interchange leading to the messed up intersection. So only half the inbound traffic is coming in this way. Likewise for outbound, but outbound is not problematic. I have the same setup at the other interchange but it doesn't back up as much. I see similar behavior over there however. There is just less traffic there because that one is much closer to the edge of the map. Opening this alternate way in really helped since initially all inbound traffic went though just the one problem child. But the help was mostly in the form of shorter waiting lines, not better inbound flow. Still backs up, just not as far.

[MarkJohnson]

Of course traffic traffic ruins the game. It's a traffic simulator.

I think your issue is you focus on roads to fix your problems

While you need a decent road layout, the issues are always zoning. Each building you place in your city creates traffic. So you need to build with purpose. It helps to zone like things together, and in proportion. Cims want to walk to work at a distance about 1km (half a map tile long). So try to keep workers near jobs.

Transportation can help if you want to make large districts of one type and move cims to another district or two.

If too far away cims will spawn a pocket car and attempt to drive to work.

Pro tip, share your city and we can offer advice on how to fix your city properly. Otherwise, we can only guess.

From the game's main menu, go to content manage> savegames and find your city and click share button, make sure it is set to public. Then copy the link address and we can see it firs hand and offer specific advice.

Plus it's much quicker resolution than playing 20 questions for days.

[Axe22]

Sorry I rage quit and the game is gone, heh.

Please clarify "half a map tile". How big is that in comparison to an oil generator?

I'd go along with that logic at later stages when my city is big and dense. But this city is only about 12 k population. There are pretty big un-zoned areas where I've laid the roads but nothing else yet. Only about 5% of my zones are high density ones. Maybe 10% at most. Traffic around the city is very very light except at about 4 or 5 key points. The flow meter regularly says traffic flow is above 80, and typically its above 90. The entire size of the city occupies only about 2/3 of the initial square you get, although I've already purchased 4 of the adjacent ones. One of which I only needed in order to add the second highway interchange in. There are no districts, no industries I haven't learned how to do those yet. I made only one tiny zoo area. I am not rushing to expand fast is what I'm getting at. So I am not overburdening things by laying down huge zoned sections all at once. I am playing very slowly and methodically adding only a few new zones at a time, then analyzing the effects, changing what needs changing, then expanding again according to the demand meters.
As far a zoning, I pretty much had all the industry in one corner by the highway, then all the residential on the other side of town from that, with commercial and office and parks and services sandwiched in between. Scattered some taxis around and put in 4 bus routes. There is no rail on this map.

[GoingSpark]

Yeah also recommended is TMPE combined with Rush Hour, this creates your most realistic traffic systems.

One - When building industrial, I ALWAYS have at least 6 in/outs from the main throughway (highway), and direct connections to all commercial areas. I add multiple public transit options from residential neighborhoods to commercial/industrial zones so that citizens are more likely to use public transit. I also promote biking and free public transport. It usually amounts to close to 50-70% of my citizens biking/taking public transport keeping the roads clear for public services and commercial vehicles.

I also like turning 4 square blocks in the center of my main downtown/commercial zone into a transportation hub, connecting rails, subways, busses, and usually a express subway to the airport - Honestly your job is to limit traffic, not create it.

[Axe22]

TMPE is an anagram that stands for ? Searched TMPE found nothing.

Also I disagree. My job isn't to prevent traffic, it is to handle it effectively as it gets more necessary.

[Meesmoth]

Originally posted by Axe22:

TMPE is an anagram that stands for ? Searched TMPE found nothing.

Traffic Manager President Edition

[Axe22]

Ok found it. Thanks I'll check it out. If I turn this on though then I can't get achievements anymore right? I usually like to do some of those when I first purchase a new game.

[Meesmoth]

Originally posted by Axe22:

If I turn this on though then I can't get achievements anymore right?

Yes, mods can disable achievements. But there is another mod that turns it on again.

[Stealthy]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1576239422

Vanilla city, needs DLCs mentioned but 0 mods or assets used. Traffic flows very nicely.

Traffic simulation itself is perfectly fine, but i do agree that allowing left turns and straight at the same time with traffic lights is silly.

[MarkJohnson]

Originally posted by Axe22:

Sorry I rage quit and the game is gone, heh.

Like I always say, nothing good will ever happen from deleting stuff. Files are tiny and have zero affects on you PC.

Please clarify "half a map tile". How big is that in comparison to an oil generator?

That's you tiles you buy. You start with only one 2km x 2km tiles. You can buy 8 more. So they can walk half the tile in any direction.

I'd go along with that logic at later stages when my city is big and dense. But this city is only about 12 k population. There are pretty big un-zoned areas where I've laid the roads but nothing else yet. Only about 5% of my zones are high density ones. Maybe 10% at most. Traffic around the city is very very light except at about 4 or 5 key points. The flow meter regularly says traffic flow is above 80, and typically its above 90. The entire size of the city occupies only about 2/3 of the initial square you get, although I've already purchased 4 of the adjacent ones. There are no districts, no industries I haven't learned how to do those yet. I made only one tiny zoo area. I am not rushing to expand fast is what I'm getting at. So I am not overburdening things by laying down huge zoned sections all at once. [quote[I am playing very slowly and methodically adding only a few new zones at a time, then analyzing the effects, changing what needs changing, then expanding again according to the demand meters.[/quote]

I recommend ignoring demand meters. They are useless as commerce is optional, and if you keep building commerce constantly, then your city will collapse from freight traffic.

Start building offices ASAP. The build commerce where you want them only. Not because meters say to build them.

[qupte]As far a zoning, I pretty much had all the industry in one corner by the highway, then all the residential on the other side of town from that, with commercial and office and parks and services sandwiched in between. Scattered some taxis around and put in 4 bus routes. There is no rail on this map.

If on only 1 tile, that should be fine.

But watch your unemployment. Keep it 5% or above. I shoot for a steady 10% early on. So when you build jobs, then it won't unemployment drop very low.

Always keep residential demand low as possible. There is no bad effects from high unemployment.

[Meesmoth]

Originally posted by sebastian.me:

The poster was attempting to explain that it sounds like you have created a city without public transport and without a good road layout, much like Manila in real life. Another post might have used another real world example. Think of it as illustrating the point with a real world example. It's not that hard to understand their post and see that they were trying to help you.

Basically, I agree with him. I was using a real-world example of your issue, and since there were no screenshots, the only way we can do is to "guess".

[SilverAgeFan]

I'd argue that traffic actually IS the game.

I agree with others here who assert that at its heart, CS is a traffic simulator.

The game really started working for me when I started taking much more advantage of the foot and bike path tools. Pedestrian shortcuts woven throughout your city can give it great flavor and incentivize your Cims to travel by some means OTHER than personal automobile.

Some networks in this game work better when thought of as branching hierarchies ending in dead ends, such as the pathways in your lungs. Others work better when designed more like the lymph system or nerves with redundant and looping paths. IMO, a big part of the joy of this game is experimentation, and watching complexity of the overlapping networks emerge from what began as planned simplicity.

That said, I agree with you that the simulator does punish reliance on traffic lights pretty harshly. But FWIW, IRL, I live in NYC and I'd much rather walk, bike, or take transit than drive. Because it takes FOREVER to get anywhere by car, simply because of traffic lights. So PDX's numbers might not be as unrealistic as you are claiming.

[BucketBrain]

Originally posted by Axe22:

Now we're getting somewhere. That's gonna at least help me work around the bug with the traffic signals. Grateful!

But really I just came here to make the devs aware that they aren't working right. I thought that's what you're supposed to do if you want something fixed. Evidently they know, have known for some time, and don't care enough to fix it. How could I have known that? Seriously, how? I just got this thing two days ago. Why wouldn't I assume that if there is an option for a stop sign and one for a traffic signal that they would work differently? Didn't you when you bought this game? Are you a moron for not knowing they don't? Because apparently I am. City Skylines IQ test. Learn where it's broken before you buy and play or else you are an idiot.

But even after all this I still say the traffic signals don't work right and it causes gridlock. They work like 4-way stop signs or blinking reds.

You can upgrade the lights to 3way-traffic-lights if you choose different angles at the intersection to avoid the trouble


https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1647262643

[Glen_Runciter]

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[Dave]

The game was ruined for me when they added that launcher. I'm just glad I never got around to buying all the DLC. I had planned on it :(