Traffic Manager is a useful but dangerous tool

[Skyd]

With great power, comes great responsibility. So I added Vanilla+ roads and TM:PE to my game. I have a basic understanding of how it works having watched Biffa use it and reading a bit but I bit off a little to much all at once and totally gridlocked my city almost to the edge of the map.....LOL.

So I need a little more practice. The traffic was moving totally vanilla, it wasn't great but it was moving so I'll need to make smaller adjustments and see how they play out I guess.

I'm currently accepting any tips and tricks :) I've poked around the TMPE wiki a bit also.

[Stealthy]

Less is more. Less you do with the TMPE, the better. Excessive lane controls etc. cause easily lot of issues.

I got a pure vanilla city (No DLC, no CCP either) of 160k ppl and traffic flow is 93%. Wouldn't even dream using TMPE on a city like that.

[Skyd]

Ya I feel like it's very useful but also easy to break stuff. I don't like to micromanage my intersections but I also know this city I'm messing with doesn't have great road structure. I'm purposely using this as a way to learn all the mods I want before I start a better project or two.

[infixo]

I was using TM:PE for some time hoping to "fix" the traffic but it actually decreased the efficiency. It is a simple test. Run the same city with TM:PE on and off. With it ON I get approx. 5pp worse traffic.
I decided to not use it simply. Just focus on better city design. My current city has 90%+ entire time. Currently @120k (only 9 tiles).
Edit. Using DLCs like industry which affects traffic very much.

[Skyd]

Ya well part of the thing with TM:PE that I like is it adds a bit more realism especialy with parking AI on and despawning off, so that of course will add more traffic. I also plan to add the Industries DLC soon so ya, I've got my work cut out I guess. haha

[Hedning]

The mod lets you switch between vanilla despawning and no despawning. If you gridlock turn on vanilla depsawning temporarily until the traffic starts moving agan. Do NOT clear all traffic. That makes it easier to find the issue. And yes, like others have suggested don't force lanes too much. Vehicles need some place to switch freely otherwise they will be forced to take long detours and contribute to congestion for longer.

Most likely you just have too many vehicles on the road. With no despawning you need much beefier infrastructure. That means more and better connected metro and more cargo trains and possibly more lanes in your intersections or build larger interchanges.

[MaxFX]

About 'Lane Conections': First it is a good thing to know that road traffic switches lanes on nodes. When you add lane connections make sure there are nodes before and after the location where you've applied them so traffic can get into their desired lanes. This is something lots of people find out when using the busroute tool. They cannot get the busroute to go where they want, because there aren't enough nodes for the busses to switch lanes on.

Good locations for lane connections are: On-, and off-ramps to the highway. And intersections but only if you''ve got nodes before and after them off course.

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About 'Dynamic Lane Selection' (DLS): This gives your traffic a whole lot more realistic look to it, as traffic now uses more lanes. Again, this is where proper use of nodes comes into play. Traffic only uses multiple lanes, whenever there are enough (lane connection free) nodes in front of them. Whenever this is not the case, you'll see traffic using one and the same lane again.

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About 'Realistic Parking AI': This option has it's good and bad sides. The good: Cims do not use 'pocket cars' anymore. This is especially noticable at public transport stops, where cims get out of a bus or tram, and then spawn their pocket car in the middle of the nearest intersection to drive the last to blocks back home... Very unrealistic and quite annoying. The bad: Cims now try 10! times to find a parking spot. This means they drive to a location to park their car, when there's no free spot, they move to a different location nearby and try again, and again, and again, and that 10 times! If there's a continuous lack of parking spaces, they'll keep on driving around. Others follow soon, and before you know it you've got your commercial area's congested with traffic.

Best to enable this option from the beginning of your build, and keep a close eye on this. If you see a traffic congestion somewhere, click on some of the cars. If it says they're looking for a parking spot you know what to do.

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When it comes to traffic I really like the following two mods (you can find these in my collection you found in another thread). The first one is 'Realistic Population 2 2.0.4. This mod applies more realistic number of households to buildings. This means that the low-residential buildings you start with, now only have one household in them. This also gives a more realistic feel to the game, as you can now zone whole neighbourhoods without getting it gridlocked by a huge amount of cars. It also makes reaching the first 5 milestones a lot more challenging, but that's why you play a game right? In short; more buildings, less traffic in the beginning. High-density is the opposite, but when you've reached that you've (hopefully) allready got a good road infrastructure in place.

The second is for when you get the Industries DLC. Like Infixo mentioned above, these industries come with a lot of traffic. This mod: 'Rebalanced Industries' does exactly what the name suggests. It lets trucks carry more amounts of cargo, so less of them are needed. This makes traffic from your industries look more realistic, and it's easier to handle.

[Skyd]

@MaxFX thanks for the great response, a couple of those things I've figured out recently such as the part about cims switching lanes only at nodes. That is good to know for sure. I actually have those mods favorited and I plan to get them once I start a new city from scratch. I like your idea of enabling parking AI right from the get go as well.

[MaxFX]

What I forgot to mention; with the 'Dynamic Lane Selection' enabled, traffic switches ONLY ONE lane at a node. So if traffic needs to get the opportunity to move from the outer most right lane to the outer most left lane on a six-lane road (three lanes in each direction), you'll need to have at least two nodes in between intersections/junctions, so traffic can move from right-to-middle-to-left.