Is there a way to see underground traffic and capacity better?

[alf810]

So I've become more and more interested in building highways, ramps, etc... underground, sort of intrigued by some of the things Elon Musk has said about that sort of infrastructure building. Anyway, right now seeing traffic and capacity is pretty poor and it makes me avoid building roads underground. Is there a fix for this?

A mod or anything?

[onezerorising]

Try looking at the terraforming overlay.

I know right? Why would it be there?

Anyway, the point is, when in one of the terraforming views (I forget which, maybe there is more than one), you get to see not only the underground roads, rails, etc, but that the cims are coloured. I admit to not having delved deeper here, but appears that the colours are related to the cim's routes - bus/metro/etc and might help you gain an understanding of the way the game is parsing the transport needs of your 'underground denizens'.

[grapplehoeker]

Overground or underground, it has never made any difference to me. Avoid focusing on the roads themselves and just learn to identify the sources of traffic and their destination points. They all calculate their itineraries at the origin point and use whatever infrastructure exists to get them where they need to go in the most optimal way. This applies whether the conduits (ie.roads) are overground or underground.

So, build your roads or tunnels wherever you see fit if it enables the traffic to go where you want it to go. And as for monitoring it, if that's your intention, then since the Mass Transit update, the tools to do so are already in the game. There are no mods required.

For example, I made extensive use of underground roadage here. This was before the Mass Transit update and so those tools weren't availabe to me, but that didn't matter because I already understood the mechanic involved regarding traffic behaviour.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=648764149

[mbutton15]

It's the Traffic Routes overlay that grapplehoeker is refering to.
Here's an example screenshot: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1343987847 Just click a bit of road to see it's use. The more intense the colours, the more heavily used it is. You can also click buildings and paths, anything really as it also works for individual cars and people,