Grid lock, how do I prevent and clear???

[WastedMerc]

The problem is gridlock, not too many cars. I need to stop self gridlocking of a single intersection, other intersections next to this one are not lock up like this one or overloaded with traffic

How do I prevent Grid Lock?
How do I clear Grid Lock?

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=510365952

[kelmenwong]

1 of the alternatives - adopt 1 way traffic

[Finwickle]

second alternative: avoid four-way intersections; three-way makes your traffic much more smooth.
third: roundabouts.
fourth: (more) public transport.
fifth: lots of pedestrian paths with bridges/tunnels.
sixth: check where your traffic is going and coming from; create alternative routes, using high speed avenues with only a few intersection, while using low speed roads for local traffic.

[WastedMerc]

So there is no driver eduction to stop blocking themselves in?
When it flows fine there is no problem, its only when they blocked themselves up does it cause a problem

[Jeo Nugu]

That's obviously a bug of a glaring nature. Last time I went driving around a REAL city, there were thousands of 4-way intersections, with multiple lanes, and 2-way traffic, that worked day and night without gridlock! All these alternate ideas, while clever, are just workarounds to avoid the fact that the traffic AI still needs a lot of work.

That's why I hate playing this game, because I can't just make a city in a logical manner and have it WORK. There's always some stupid catch... some convoluted 8ULLSH!7 you have to do, or some mod you have to install, in order to work around every f**ked up little thing!

[Havan_IronOak]

There MAY be some traffic AI needed but as a 20 year resident of Manhattan. I can attest to the fact that traffic jams exist no matter how well planned your traffic patterns are when volume is heavy.

I still haven't played this myself but there ARE a number of you-tube videos dealing with traffic snarls. Check this as only one example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltrpUgePDR0&index=19&list=PLbCLzFKeiWkPKe53RM24qh1vzhn9PBXuf

1) Give the folks alternate routes. Preferably shorter routes.
2) Use trains, busses, sidewalks and subways to keep car traffic down.
3) Make sure that trucks are minimized in your city by giving the industrial areas easy access to the highways. Also district policies may help.
4) Avoid having intersection too close together.
5) Use some one way streets to channel traffic away from your most congested areas.
6) Minimize intersections a bit by merging several traffic flows together and then channeling THAT into a single intersection onto your busiest roads.

[WastedMerc]

The problem is gridlock, not too many cars. I need to stop self gridlocking on a single intersection, I'll re-word the OP
But adding more public transport and walkways seems to have fixed the problem

Like this example... there is traffic because of the single intersection gridlock, traffic is not a problem once this isolated intersection lock clears

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=510789919

[Z.Ibrahimovic]

So far I have not yet seen this happen, but I use right lane driving.

[WastedMerc]

another left lane bug driving bug... :(

[WastedMerc]

LOL, who said t-intersections help?

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=511529332

[Asshat]

I am not criticising you WastedMerc, but try not to describe the traffic AI's behaviour as a 'bug'. Most players on here who are fond of the game recoil at the term 'bug', and will quite frankly be hostile to you. This is not because of your problem/issue, but is due to many trolls over many months trying to debase and damage the game here in the forums which has been unsuccessful, apart from having annoyed everyone with it's incessant ranting! So, please don't take me wrong, as I know the folks on here are awesome at helping out, but just take it as a suggestion buddy ;)

With regards to your intersection problems, yes they do occur quite a lot in the game. The AI is simply that - it is an artificial computing effort to tell vehicles how to get from A to B. Sadly however it uses a lot of processing power, and is atm not tailored to allow vehicles to engineer their route on the fly. This may happen in the future, but many PCs including my own won't be able to handle such an increase in processing demands at this time. This is partly due to the actually large amount of agents in the game - it has a limit of I think 65,536 at present, so each of these entities has its 'journey' mapped at the same time. So, when a car spawns, the AI decides its route, based on journey time [as a function of distance and speed], but doesn't take into account any co-morbid traffic jams. I appreciate this is a little off topic, but if you can bear this is mind when building your city, you will negate many of these traffic jams.

Your picture is indicative of a classic traffic jam that I have created oh so many times, where you have lanes of vehicles crossing each other mid-intersection, which then causes a slow down in traffic and hence a backlog or jam. As the other contributors above have mentioned, the only real way to avoid these instances is to plan in advance where the traffic will be coming from, and provide it with alternative routes to the one you have - in essence, you have the majority of traffic wanting to pass through the same intersection at the same time, and crossing through itself. Now I haven't taken much heed of YT tutorials, but I did spend a long time flickign through multiple guides here on Steam. I found them to be a god-send tbh, and I cannot recommend them enough; coupled with some good YT tutorials. Some people on here may be able to point you in the direction of some good channels but sadly I would be giving you false information if I tried!! There is a beautiful guide on here written by a guy who is a civil engineer specialising in road construction - it baffled me at first, but once you play around in the game you can actually create bad traffic jams, then find ways to solve them! I know the AI may be frustrating at times, but sadly a PC game can't truly replicate the way that humans behave in vehicles. Certainly not for stupid human drivers!!

For your example above I would take Kaldir's advice and plop a roundabout in there to free it up, but you'll get used to what works where as time goes on. I would also second the concept by stephen_knapp that traffic problems can never not exist, as they are a fundamental result of traffic on the roads! With regards to Mr gamezalot; you're just a knob - please don't try to inflame a thread that has been asked by the OP with the best intentions; dumbass.

Good luck WastedMerc and always search here or re-thread if you need help, as the community here are awesome; good luck mate :)

[WastedMerc]

Traffic volume is not the problem or solution, its just afects the chance.
The traffic getting stuck that is the issue. I have the hard mods to stop cars dissapearing on me. If you notice in my screen shots, traffic is light everywhere, except when the intersection gets stuck.
What if I called it a defect caused by a fault.
Defect: I expect cars to not get stuck at intersection, actual result a possible fault in the programming logic causes the cars to get stuck, deviating from the expected result which is just flow through the intersection, which happens perfectly fine 99.99% of the time

Lowering traffic just decreases the chance cars get stuck, it does not actually fix the fault which causes the defect that cars sometimes get stuck at intersections
or to put it another way
If this defect never happened I would not have any traffic problems.

This game is great. I play this game a lot compared to other games i play.

[Asshat]

I do understand now more where you are coming from, so please don't think I was being patronising in what I wrote above.

Do you mean you can visibly see vehicles stopping mid-intersection despite their route being clear? I used to notice this and I thought it strange, until I increased my graphics options, zoomed in a wee bit more, and found that it was actually pedestrians crossing the road that was causing the cars to stop. I even had it happen on a long stretch of road that bisected two areas of development, and the only resolution was to put a pedestrian underpass beneath the road. Once I had done this and let the pedestrians find their route, the effect on the vehicles slowly began to cease and the traffic moved more freely again.

Once again I know not if this is the actual case for you, but it may be a contributing factor. I was surprised to learn that pedestrians will walk an awful long way [up to 128u] without using any other transport methods. If you could take some close-up images of the troublesome intersections it may help us on here to diagnose the problem moreso. I am not an expert on the game by any means, but I have played enough to spot things that are wrong, and there are many folks on here who honestly are experts!!

I really hope we can help you get to the bottom of this, as it's nice being able to help players who actually care about the game like you do! I get bored of the trolls on the forum at times, and then don't visit here for a week or two and I think many players are the same, but helping someone who actually wants help is a much nicer environment to comment in!!!

[WastedMerc]

Not a pedestrian issue either, the last pic I took was with a t-intersection on a rural highway, no pedestrians can walk on the road and there is no crossing anyway
The cars literally gridlock themselves, literally block and stop each others from moving
If i took a video it would look the same as nothing moves

Same intersection as above with no self gridlocking
http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198136766800/screenshot/428194896589873335

[Saber Kitsune]

I wouldn't say anything is a defect with the game itself. If anything, it's more a fault with mods. Adding traffic lights or other traffic control stuff would probably solve this. As it is now, it appears there's no form of traffic control at all, so traffic from all directions enters at the same time, blocking each other.

[WastedMerc]

The same happens on regular roads with regular traffic lights, Its not a lack of traffic light issue either, any other ideas?