Traffic Control

[hockeyhacker97]

I have seen that you can ban heavy traffic in districts to force industrial traffic to use different routes, has anyone seen if there is a way to do that in reverse, by which I mean allow only heavy traffic in a district?

Yes I realize that people do need to get to work and if you banned regular traffic from industry areas no one could get to work, but what I was thinking is making it so that there is a highway entrance (or more) that bans heavy traffic for residents and tourists to enter the city, while also making a highway enterance that bans light traffic from entering to make it so all my residents have to enter at certain points while all my imports/exports have to enter at a different spot, and I don't want my residentail traffic using the industry entrance just because it happens to be the first exit off the highway.

[SlyBeaver]

From what I know they will try to find the quickest route, so in the case of if going to an industrial area coming in to the city is quickest then they will take that route however people who live in your city will usually tend to prefer public transport if it's available to where they want to go.

It's a good strategy to invest in public transport early in the game especially towards commercial or industrial areas. If people dont take their car to work it will create less chance of congestion and especially in larger cities the 'quickest' option would be public transport in that situation.

[hockeyhacker97]

I know how to fix traffic issues, its just one of those things where I want to be able to stop residence and tourist from being able to enter the city at the industrial area even if it's a bit slower for the residence to get home that way my residents don't slow down import/exports at all since cargo areas have the worst traffic already, I would rather my residents take a minute longer getting home then my imports/exports to get slowed down even 15 seconds.

There are commercial use only roads in real life, I wanted to know if commercial use only roads could be done here as well, or if only residential use only is possible. With that said another traffic restriction that I have not seen as well that I would be interested in having is "emergency vehicle use only" again so that say on a highway I want my police, fire trucks, and ambulences to be able to U Turn while not allowing standard traffic to do so, again its something that exhists in real life I would like to be able to do that type of zoneing as well.

I am not complaining even if neither of those make it into game, in fact I love the fact that even being able to ban heavy traffic in districts is an option, but those two additional traffic bans I would like to see as well which is obviously possible since they already have a heavy traffic ban option.

[DoctorGnome]

This is why I have higher hopes for Cities, mods. Now I don't want the devs to go "Fek it we gave them a game and mod tools, don't need to do squat now let the comunity fix it or add it in" in a Bethesda like manner. With mods the game can be made to almost anyones view of the game.

[SlyBeaver]

I understand but at the moment it's not in the game. Sadly though because like you I also wanted more specific roads like ones with buslanes for example. Which were in CIM, but maybe that will come in the future, I'm just glad they focused on having actual good gameplay.

But in the future more specific roads with buslanes or ways that the emergency services get around better would be nice. Also I'm missing one way 4 lane roads!

[Daggoth]

Specific restrictions for use in small stretches of road don't really fit the policies. You'd almost want to be able to place specific road signs to accomplish the "no light vehicles turning at this intersection" effect.

That said, a "No Through Traffic" policy would probably work to achieve the effect of not having people using the area as a shortcut, while allowing light vehicles that have a good reason to be there. Have it so they'd only drive in if their destination was in the district.

[hockeyhacker97]

Originally posted by Daggoth:

Specific restrictions for use in small stretches of road don't really fit the policies. You'd almost want to be able to place specific road signs to accomplish the "no light vehicles turning at this intersection" effect.

That said, a "No Through Traffic" policy would probably work to achieve the effect of not having people using the area as a shortcut, while allowing light vehicles that have a good reason to be there. Have it so they'd only drive in if their destination was in the district.

Yeah, most the spots I would want "emergency only" roads would be "highway U Turns" or in the middle of two one ways so that emergency vehicles basicly have their own lanes. For example 2 lane 1 way touching 2 lane 2 way emergency only touching 2 lane 1 way the opposite way which would effectivly be a 6 lane two way road where the middle two lanes are emergency only. Same thing could be done with a 3 lane road where 1 goes one way 1 goes the other way and 1 goes both ways but is emergency only. So Emergency only could easily just be an additional type of road.

As for Commercial only, I think while it would be easier on the eyes district wise to just have a commercial only type of road as well, most if not all the spots I would want commercial only would be off ramps since as stated people still need to get to work. But wouldn't be used enough be warrent its own road type, maybe just having a "specialized district" like oil district and farming district, a district that only bans residential traffic to blip down at those off ramps.

Though I do like your "No Through Traffic" idea of making it so that residentail can only drive on it if going to work inside the district, I think that one would be harder to add into the game's AI then just banning x type of traffic since cars you can easily mark as "residential, buisness, industrial, emergency" while you can not really mark cars as "work in district Q live in district R" and have bans of "must work in district Q to drive in district Q" very easily because what happens if their work burns down while they are in district Q, does their car just get stuck in teh district unable to move because when they entered they where allowed to drive there but before they left they where not allowed to drive there..

[Pinard]

The best way to get heavy traffic out of your residential areas is to give them a direct road to those areas from the highway. You can do this with very long offramps. They work fine.

[hockeyhacker97]

Originally posted by Pinard:

The best way to get heavy traffic out of your residential areas is to give them a direct road to those areas from the highway. You can do this with very long offramps. They work fine.

Firstly, the easiest way to get heavy traffic out of residentail is to district the area and ban heavy traffic, which is already in game. The question was for the other way around. But secondly it's not so much a question for "optimzing game mechanics" stand point but rather a "If you can already "pass laws" to ban heavy traffic in game, is there a way to do the two other forms of traffic ban of banning residents and having emergency only, which both exsist in real life, and mechanicly it is already possible in game since they already have a way to ban heavy traffic in areas.

For example "Emergency only" U Turns on the highway would not be needed since I don't think accidents can happen and so there would be almost no reason for an Ambulence or Firetruck to be on a highway, but asteticly I would like my highways to have the Emergency only U Turn spots since it is a common feature of real highways and looks more natural.

[Pinard]

I suppose it's a matter of where you are referring to. In my area (Pacific Northwest) It's quite rare to have "Trucks only" lanes unless they are built so the trucks can have a lower grade of turn (so they don't tip over) but very common to ban certain braking methods and vehicles that are very loud or damaging to the road. I've only seen emergency only lanes around hospitals and not actually anywhere on the highway. Of course there are U-turns but emergency can ignore just about any sign on the road to get to their destination.

That being said, I wouldn't mind designating roads to trucks only. But currently you can't do that. And well...there are a few things about road building that could be tweaked. One ways are kind of annoying to build so I usually avoid them.

[hockeyhacker97]

Originally posted by Pinard:

I suppose it's a matter of where you are referring to. In my area (Pacific Northwest) It's quite rare to have "Trucks only" lanes unless they are built so the trucks can have a lower grade of turn (so they don't tip over) but very common to ban certain braking methods and vehicles that are very loud or damaging to the road. I've only seen emergency only lanes around hospitals and not actually anywhere on the highway. Of course there are U-turns but emergency can ignore just about any sign on the road to get to their destination.

That being said, I wouldn't mind designating roads to trucks only. But currently you can't do that. And well...there are a few things about road building that could be tweaked. One ways are kind of annoying to build so I usually avoid them.

And it would be rare to use "Commercial Only" restrictions as well since people still need to get to work, the main use for them would be off ramps from the highway into an area that is industrial and cargo so that residents don't cut through there to shave time off of their drives but increasing the back up of traffic in those areas, as said I would rather my residents take 60 seconds longer to get home using the residental/tourist highway entrance then have my improt/export entrance slowed down due to residents cutting through.

And as for emergency only lanes, they do exsist and as said on the highways it wouldn't make a difference other then astetics, but in town since traffic AI doesn't pull over for emergency vehicles, having a Emergency only lane would effectivly allow Emergency Vehicles to get through traffic more like they would in real life without having to re program all the AI to pull over for sirens to pass, though emergency only in the real world is mostly used for highway U turn spots becasue accidents can happen in real life where I don't think they can here and near hospitals, it would effectivly fix the AI having their own houses burn down because they don't pull over for the firetrucks issue without having to add any new AI and the only cost would be roads taking one extra grid width to allow that extra Emergency only lane.

[Daggoth]

Originally posted by hockeyhacker97:

Though I do like your "No Through Traffic" idea of making it so that residentail can only drive on it if going to work inside the district, I think that one would be harder to add into the game's AI then just banning x type of traffic since cars you can easily mark as "residential, buisness, industrial, emergency" while you can not really mark cars as "work in district Q live in district R" and have bans of "must work in district Q to drive in district Q" very easily because what happens if their work burns down while they are in district Q, does their car just get stuck in teh district unable to move because when they entered they where allowed to drive there but before they left they where not allowed to drive there..

The agents already know their destinations, so it'd be easy to look up if the destination is in the restricted district they want to drive into. And of course you'd make the restriction on entry only, anyone in the district can drive around and leave the district, no matter how they got in there.

[hockeyhacker97]

Originally posted by Daggoth:

Originally posted by hockeyhacker97:

Though I do like your "No Through Traffic" idea of making it so that residentail can only drive on it if going to work inside the district, I think that one would be harder to add into the game's AI then just banning x type of traffic since cars you can easily mark as "residential, buisness, industrial, emergency" while you can not really mark cars as "work in district Q live in district R" and have bans of "must work in district Q to drive in district Q" very easily because what happens if their work burns down while they are in district Q, does their car just get stuck in teh district unable to move because when they entered they where allowed to drive there but before they left they where not allowed to drive there..

The agents already know their destinations, so it'd be easy to look up if the destination is in the restricted district they want to drive into. And of course you'd make the restriction on entry only, anyone in the district can drive around and leave the district, no matter how they got in there.

Oh yeah, that is true, that was stupid of me to over think the way it would work. Anyways some way to "fix" Emergency vehichles getting stuck in traffic that won't get out of the Ambulence way, and a way to make it so residents cann't clog up a import/export hub would be nice, and as said since you can already do Heavy truck ban shouldn't be to hard to add (though Emergency only lanes would be more of a road type and not district laws.

[RZ_new]

I still guess that traffic light must have 3 time steps to avoid cross traffic.
And would be great if we could edit per lane, giving control to us to disable some lanes.