If traffic lights worked like they should, traffic would be awesome.

[Z28Derick]

So the one thing that's always bugged me about the traffic lights in this game is how they let two FULL direction lanes go at the same time so the straight traffic and turning traffic always run into each other. This causes traffic to not flow smoothly like in real life. I've recently started playing with the timed traffic lights on traffic president since it seems to be working again. I can't tell you the CRAZY difference it makes in traffic flow. I set lights up as realistic where 3 lanes can go straight, left and right from one direction and as in real life, the lane to the left can also turn at the same time because traffic won't hit each other. I don't understand why this can't be the default light setting for the stock game. Instead of having two light priorities per junction you have 4. I also set the pedestrians to have a few seconds each time around to cross while traffic isn't moving. Seriously, this should be the default for every light. An in game traffic manager would be cool sure, but there's no need for it if they would just set the default lights more realistically. If you don't get what I'm saying, I could easily make a video showing what I mean. Perhaps I should suggest this on the official forums. What do you guys think?

[MotownCountry]

that's just one of the problems with traffic. but i see people like you and me get told by others that it's our roads that suck. i just roll my eyes then at those people. and i still wish for emergency vehicles with flashers on to get priority at lights and to see cars pull over for them....LIKE IN REAL LIFE!

[BravoSierraTango]

Same here. I am always looking at my screen and thinking: you little idiots! Don't all enter at the same time! For gods sake! Let the ambulance pass!
And also: why is on a two-lane road at an intersection one lane always for both directions? Many of the ones that want to go straight ahead que in line where only the ones going left/right should be and I get a big jam....

[Saber Kitsune]

Originally posted by MotownCountry:

that's just one of the problems with traffic. but i see people like you and me get told by others that it's our roads that suck. i just roll my eyes then at those people. and i still wish for emergency vehicles with flashers on to get priority at lights and to see cars pull over for them....LIKE IN REAL LIFE!

Eh, I wouldn't say that the roads suck. Just the simple fact that if you're gonna have left turning traffic have it's own light phase seperated from the straight through traffic, you're gonna need a dedicated turn lane, which isn't quite possible in the base game.

That being said, there is a slight workaround to get left turning traffic to avoid conflicting with opposing straight through traffic. It's not an ideal solution, but having the roads be a bit offset from each other so that they join at a slight angle should cause the opposing directions to get a green at different times.

As for emergency vehicles, they'll run reds if there's not a car already waiting in front of them at the light. As for pulling over, I don't think that's possible due to how the pathfinder works. They could change it so they'll just phase through other cars while driving at a reduced pace, but that may defeat the challenges of bad traffic, and may look weird too.

[TDXUK]

Failing that add the mods traffic manager and Traffic++
With Traffic++ you can set lane use/vehicle priorty and Traffic manager allows you to setup timed traffic lights in any combination you want along with many other things.

Yes it should allready be in the game but its not so add them yourself

[MarkJohnson]

The biggest reason you have traffic jams is you have too much traffic on the road. Usual cause is people going crazy on industry. You end up with so much freight it floods your city.

Click on the connections overlay and make sure both import and export tabs are near zero.

otherwise make sure you have easy access access to highways so cims can hit the road ASAP.

Remember this is an agent based simulator and agents (cims) need to get from point A to point B in a TIMELY manner.

Above all else, this is a game. You need to learn the rules like any other game.

[Z28Derick]

Originally posted by rmjohnson144:

The biggest reason you have traffic jams is you have too much traffic on the road. Usual cause is people going crazy on industry. You end up with so much freight it floods your city.

Click on the connections overlay and make sure both import and export tabs are near zero.

otherwise make sure you have easy access access to highways so cims can hit the road ASAP.

Remember this is an agent based simulator and agents (cims) need to get from point A to point B in a TIMELY manner.

Above all else, this is a game. You need to learn the rules like any other game.

Ya I know industry causes a lot of issues. I'd say I'm a veteran at this game and I've built a 200k pop city without using traffic mods and everything flowed smooth. This time around I wanted things to be more realistic when it came to road layouts etc. Not to say they weren't in my other city but even more so. I also didn't feel like working as hard at traffic as I had before. My main point wasn't traffic overall in the game just stop lights and how they work. It makes no sense, game or not to have straight and turning lanes from both directions going at the same time. It would be easy for the developer to set the defaults more realistic. The only difference would be 4 sets of instructions at each intersection instead of two. I hardly think that's too much to ask at this point in the games development. Either way, I've got everything going great with traffic president, I was just sharing thoughts on how traffic lights functioned and how they should be.

[MarkJohnson]

Originally posted by stonecoldtrck:

My main point wasn't traffic overall in the game just stop lights and how they work. It makes no sense, game or not to have straight and turning lanes from both directions going at the same time. It would be easy for the developer to set the defaults more realistic. The only difference would be 4 sets of instructions at each intersection instead of two. I hardly think that's too much to ask at this point in the games development. Either way, I've got everything going great with traffic president, I was just sharing thoughts on how traffic lights functioned and how they should be.

The main reason for the odd behavior, besides it a game and they do it for gaming reasons, is that the game already has 4 game mechanics to keep traffic low so lower system can play, and even high systems that go beyond the 9-tile default limits of the game.

1. Vehicles despawn when traffic interferes with them making their destination. This is an agent based simulator and agents need to get from point A to point B in a TIMELY manner. So it despawns it to save resouces and the game is kept from crashing under its own weight of too many agents on the map.

2. Workers get teleported to work if they can't make it on time to prevent the game from crashed from abandonment cause they can't get to work.

3. Vehicles won't spawn if it is predetermined that they cannot make it to work on time.

4. Agents don't seem to be spawned in mature areas on very large maps to keep agent limits down that would otherwise overload the game and crash it.

So you see, the traffic is left this way to let you know there is an issue. It's a gauge to let you know something isn't right and needs attention before something bad starts happening.

When your city is in balance (agents under control), then there will be little to no traffic at all. The traffic lights just turn out to be more cosmetic and traffic flows fine.

This game isn't designed to have a lot of traffic on the road, and if you do have a lot of traffic on the road then there are problems and it's you job to get them off the road.

Mods will alter this and speed up traffic to let everyone get places on time. Change routes constantly so they can avoid traffic jams. Alter light, turn lanes, stop signs, etc.

None of these things are needed when you learn the game the proper way (the vanilla way) and then you can just use mods and assets for cosmetic enhancements.

[Stevizzle]

I think traffic in general needs to be overhauled but this is why traffic lights in the game make the situation worse. There are mods like traffic control and traffic president that fix this but its still a pain to set up timed lights for each intersection and set up dedicated turn lanes. However, it does help i usually only do it for intersections that are having issues. The only issue with these mods is that the light cycle is not in sync with your timed lights. Hence why the developers need to fix this and allow us to adjust the cycle if need be.

Im tired of people saying its the players fault and you need to read guides and watch videos on how to alleviate it. Its actually the game there is just way too much traffic now matter what my population is and the AI is not very intelligent i get that its an agent based simulator and they are coded to get from point A to B in the shortest amount of time but can there not be any deviation from this? In real life if traffic is backed up people change lanes and find a different route and thats kind of the issue with traffic no matter what cars dont change course.

Another thing that would help is dedicated school buses that only pickup students as it seems like this would alleviate traffic and free up space on public transit as well.

I love this game and the developers but i feel like we spend way too much time trying to fix the traffic and when we should be worrying about buidling our cities and getting everything exactly how we want.

I feel like they are not focusing their efforts in the right places there is so much user made content in the Workshop we dont need assets we need new gameplay features and core improvements that modders cant do.

[MarkJohnson]

They key to traffic is rule #4 above. As your city matures the traffic stops spawning. Just move on and don't worry about it and it will clear up on its own 99% of the time. I'm at 550k pop and my traffic is mostly clear. The only parts that get really red are the current sections I'm working on as they are new, young, and still growing. After a year or so of game time and I've expanded it has all cleared up.

[Stevizzle]

I reached out the developer and they stated they are happy with the way traffic management is and have no intention of improving it.

I guess they want the community to improve the game for them.

[treker4747]

I guess part of the problem with this game is figuring out how to design roads for the traffic AI and not base it off real-life. The biggest problem I have is traffic going into the lane it's going to eventually need, at some point, way down the line and and sticking with it. Instead of, "Gee, this lane is jammed. I'll go into the empty lane next to me, speed to the front of the line/where things clear up, and then get back over before my exit/turn."

But then there is problems where it's like the logic of the traffic lights don't entirely work "realistically" I've yet to mess around much with the timed traffic lights from Traffic Manager as I've not gone that deep into yet and the first time I tried it I messed things up big time.

So I need to toy with it.

And it does really bug me that emergency vehicles have to wait in traffic instead of getting priority, vehicles pulling over to open up the lanes and allow the emergency vehicles through. But then there's times I wonder how "well" that would work considering I once saw pretty much an entire fleet of ambulances in a pack along a road so I wonder how much traffic would have stopped and been broken to allow for so many ambulances. But I've no idea how long it took for the ambulances got that backed up or what caused it.

If there's at least any "improvement" that needs to be made either by the Devs or the Modders is emergency vehicles getting priority; but I've no idea how the game's AI would need to be changed to allow for that to happen and for traffic to "still work."

[ErickaUnlimited]

Originally posted by stevizzle123:

I reached out the developer and they stated they are happy with the way traffic management is and have no intention of improving it.

I guess they want the community to improve the game for them.

Or it is that they are happy with where it stands and see no reason to change it.

I don't really see too many issues with traffic at this current stage and I don't use traffic mods.

[Stevizzle]

Originally posted by 💝💝ErickaUnlimited💝💝:

Originally posted by stevizzle123:

I reached out the developer and they stated they are happy with the way traffic management is and have no intention of improving it.

I guess they want the community to improve the game for them.

Or it is that they are happy with where it stands and see no reason to change it.

I don't really see too many issues with traffic at this current stage and I don't use traffic mods.

They stated there are mods for most of the improvements I suggested. However, they did not acknowledge that there is an issue with traffic management which is what bothers me.

[maculator]

I use Traffic Manager + Improved AI, BUT for traffic lights and traffic in general the best thing you can do is to give them enough space to change lanes before and after intersections. Learned that pretty late. Traffic lights only work if they have enough lanespace before them. And most of the issues I had could be fixed with improved layout. Also changing lanes is the most important feature of the mod I use.

[Z28Derick]

Originally posted by maculator:

I use Traffic Manager + Improved AI, BUT for traffic lights and traffic in general the best thing you can do is to give them enough space to change lanes before and after intersections. Learned that pretty late. Traffic lights only work if they have enough lanespace before them. And most of the issues I had could be fixed with improved layout. Also changing lanes is the most important feature of the mod I use.

I agree. Changing the lane arrows in some situations really helps.