Offramp and traffic issues

[Revanaught]

I keep having an issue with traffic on highways when it comes to offramps. For whatever reason, traffic will NEVER ever travel stright on an area that can also merge onto an offramp. This causes traffic to merge into the outer lands, clogging up traffic and messing up the city. I'll often have points where cars will just do quick swerves to avoid an area with an offramp.

http://i.imgur.com/fDZVbNg.jpg
This is an example of one of the areas with the issue, but every single area with an offramp, or a road leading off the highway has this issue. There is an arrow on the road saying they can either travel straight on that road or get off on the offramp, but cars will never ever travel in the area I have circled.

I don't recall them doing this before the update, I seem to recall them driving on all the lanes available.

I would also like to mention that I don't have any mods running in this city, the picture provided is from a city that was started with no mods and has never run with mods active.

[Mister Dawg]

I understand exactly what you mean - I too have seen this. Perplexing indeed... well, more like frustrating, and perplexing, lol.

Maybe someone will have some answers.

[BonPadre]

I usually do not see that kind of behavior, and anyway what's causing this is indeed further on your highway... so a larger pic could provide hints for us to help you solve this... But for me it seems your issues lay in the fact that all your left lane is jammed anyway, and is not flowing properly (so after the *merging* point you find problematic...) If the traffic would flow normally, you'd have your backing before the merging point, and after the merge, you should have space between vehicles..

So for me, I know I'm not a *conventional* C:S player, and I tend, on the contrary of many other players commenting on highway issues, to minimize the use use of highway to city connections... I prefer a better working design that can completely absorb the traffic of the area, than trying to not deal with the main issue, and finding *tricks* to eventually get if working... It's like trying to cure a serious disease with aspirin...

And doing so... seriously, I have not since my early cities had a traffic jam on off ramps on my highways and as you I play vanillia as far as traffic goes (besides even worst a no despawn traffic mod)

It's really hard to again help you here due to your pic only, but I will still try some guess (that may happen to be completely wrong as they will be guess due to the only info we have).

I see a lot of mixed traffic, so it's not related to only one specific huge zoning (like we could see on an industrial favorite destination...)
So question is : What's the state of the help you provide to your traffic ? Cargo train station ? Mass transport ? about what % of mass transport you provide related to your city size (hint anything near 10% is already a good help to your traffic) ?

[Sharpie McSharp]

Build more highways. I've never seen traffic that bad.

[BonPadre]

Originally posted by NOOGIE:

Build more highways. I've never seen traffic that bad.

Lol that helpful... no really ? *yeah man drop more highways...* and no reciepie ? wow that's like telling someone's who's hungry.... *go cook yourself something* while you don't know it he knows how to cook or if he has the money to buy something to eat...

Dropping more highways will not solve anything if you build them without a purpose... maybe you know it, but you can't assume that the one experssing his problem here is knowing how to do it properly, so he needs help to understand how to to it

[Revanaught]

Originally posted by Thadian:

The best answer is to realize that most of your highway traffic will only need one lane for its destination - I like to have the highway bend a little before intersections so that I can have an off-ramp on the left side for left turns - while not ideal in real life, in the game, this forces the traffic logic to use the entire highway.

About your problem, with traffic merging to the left - This is probably because the traffic logic tells non-turning vehicles to lane-change left. This lets them get out of the way of turning vehicles. One thing you might want to consider is upgrading the first link of your branch-off to a highway which might force traffic to behave normally?

Another option might be to use one-way street instead of off-ramp. Whenever an off-ramp connects to any non-highway road, there is ALWAYS an issue, either at the get on or get off point. You might even consider turning the 1-2 links of road before your off-ramp connects to being a one-way road.

I've tried one way roads, same effect. I've also tried having ramps on both sides, this just causes all the traffic to pile into the middle lane, as opposed to the left and middle, which just makes the problem worse.

Yeah, I know the traffic logic is trying to get out of that lane so that people can turn there, but it really doesn't make sense for them to do that. The lane allows for both exiting and straight through traffic, and the straight through traffic isn't going to affect the exiting traffic at all.

[Revanaught]

Originally posted by BonPadre:

I usually do not see that kind of behavior, and anyway what's causing this is indeed further on your highway... so a larger pic could provide hints for us to help you solve this... But for me it seems your issues lay in the fact that all your left lane is jammed anyway, and is not flowing properly (so after the *merging* point you find problematic...) If the traffic would flow normally, you'd have your backing before the merging point, and after the merge, you should have space between vehicles..

So for me, I know I'm not a *conventional* C:S player, and I tend, on the contrary of many other players commenting on highway issues, to minimize the use use of highway to city connections... I prefer a better working design that can completely absorb the traffic of the area, than trying to not deal with the main issue, and finding *tricks* to eventually get if working... It's like trying to cure a serious disease with aspirin...

And doing so... seriously, I have not since my early cities had a traffic jam on off ramps on my highways and as you I play vanillia as far as traffic goes (besides even worst a no despawn traffic mod)

It's really hard to again help you here due to your pic only, but I will still try some guess (that may happen to be completely wrong as they will be guess due to the only info we have).

I see a lot of mixed traffic, so it's not related to only one specific huge zoning (like we could see on an industrial favorite destination...)
So question is : What's the state of the help you provide to your traffic ? Cargo train station ? Mass transport ? about what % of mass transport you provide related to your city size (hint anything near 10% is already a good help to your traffic) ?

The lane's already backed up because there's an identical issue further down. After that it flows just fine, but that's mainly because there are so few cars actually moving at that point. The reason I took hte picture there was simply because that had a better view of what was happening.

Now, public transport is something I hadn't considered. I don't know how much that will help, but I can give it a try.

[BonPadre]

Oh implement public transport as soon as you can... that + also give sometimes some path for your cims to walk... you might be totally amazed of how many will still walk... and all that is less cars in your roads...

And then again, don't dismiss train cargo... lower as many trucks as you can... you'll still have , but the less the better. try to gather as much learning as you can with the great tutos...

Just to give you a compare idea... city of +80k pop... 6 higway to city exits currently.
So if done correctly you don't need that many highway ramps... but again, any solution that works for you is a nice one... I just base my exits on the fact that they can absorb the traffic and deliver multiple parts of an area...
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=483969196
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=483969425
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=483969553
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=483969763
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=483969919

[forceinfinity]

So to summarize (potentially what others have already said here)
- When a car merges onto a freeway, it seems as though it'll stay in the right lane unless it comes upon an exit ramp it doesn't want.
- When a car in the right lane hits an exit ramp it doesn't want, it'll dart to the center lane
- It will stay in the center lane until the ramp it wants is nearby, then it'll switch lanes and depart the freeway

From the picture, you got some good spacing, it's just you have what I call a 'ramp to nowhere' (at least that's what I call ramps that few people use). Since that ramp is not one that anyone in the traffic wants, they will depart the right lane as they come upon it thus creating that bottleneck in the center.

Your best bet would be to eliminate that ramp and force the traffic into a more popular ramp, either ahead of the freeway from your screenshot or somewhere further back. Or in the absence of eliminating that ramp in the picture, maybe eliminate the next ramp off the top of the picture that the traffic wants, thus forcing them to use the ramp in the picture. At least that's my best guess given the limited field of view on your traffic.

[Mister Dawg]

I haven't read all the responses however... I had a case today where a clogged up onramp was being causd by a lot of truck traffic immediately changing TWO lanes to the left when getting on the highway... basically making two 90° turns LOL - ... just to travel a rather long distance across the city to exit on the right. Made no sense :).

I haven't found a way around this behavior - when no other courses of action mentioned work.

Lots of alternatives routes... underground possibly. Sloppy but effective, and if you place them in the right spot you remove the traffic from the problem intersection :)

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=484749966

[BonPadre]

Wow wait... hard to tell just with that shot... but aren't you trying to minimise the traffic with some good cargo train ? you really want to try all that indy surface... just with trucks ???

[Rush]

Some reasons that can cause this:
You have heavy trafic on ramp on the other side of water
You are using highways to connect near by districts
Your highway structure is too thin
Too many vechiles is trying to go from the on ramp before this image to 2nd off ramp after this image.

Fix might be:
Improve your highway (check that you dont have traffic loop)
More cargo stations
Improve public transport

Luckily right lane is avoided (top red circle), this was issue when game was released and all vechiles used left lane (because they were using off ramp (no matter is it next or 10th). This behaviour also allows us to use smooth on ramp just after off ramp.

Please provide wider screenshot with traffic.

[Revanaught]

I think a lot of you guys are getting a bit confused with the purpose of my post. I'm not nessicarily trying to fix my traffic problem (I ended up just abandoning that city and starting again). It was more to alert the issue of traffic completely ignoring a lane that they shouldn't be ignoring.

[Rush]

I think traffic worked first few days as you described/want, but this caused problem when no one used left lane. While it works like now is good thing, for ex if 1st and 2nd turning uses only right lane you would have massive traffic on right lane, mid lane (tuning 3rd and 4th) some traffic, 5th ..n few cars.
BUT lets say you have on ramp below bottom red circle, then some cars would use right lane to go forward.

IRL, why would i use left lane if im not using next off ramp and i want to avoid off ramp traffic or next on ramp traffic.

[Revanaught]

Originally posted by Rush:

I think traffic worked first few days as you described/want, but this caused problem when no one used left lane. While it works like now is good thing, for ex if 1st and 2nd turning uses only right lane you would have massive traffic on right lane, mid lane (tuning 3rd and 4th) some traffic, 5th ..n few cars.
BUT lets say you have on ramp below bottom red circle, then some cars would use right lane to go forward.

IRL, why would i use left lane if im not using next off ramp and i want to avoid off ramp traffic or next on ramp traffic.

IRL, why would you merge over a lane when the lane your in doesn't require you to go on the offramp? When that lane still allows you to go straight to your destination? That just means you'll have to merge back into that exact same lane you were just in later on.

[grapplehoeker]

Originally posted by Revanaught:

IRL, why would you merge over a lane when the lane your in doesn't require you to go on the offramp? When that lane still allows you to go straight to your destination? That just means you'll have to merge back into that exact same lane you were just in later on.

I do that quite often actually. There are plenty of occasions where I'm familiar with certain traffic behaviours of some stretches of road where I know most of the traffic in my lane will opt to take the right turn off and slow down in order to do so, causing me to have to brake and slow down behind them. This applies to all situations, not just on the highways. So, I use a little forethought and change lanes ahead of time, and yes I know I'll return to that lane again after passing the turn off.