Best highway exit ?

[Fluffy The Destroyer]

Whats the best highway exit or entry ? I've seen some guides like soushi's (how to traffic)...and I'm still lost. Good guide but still lost. Some exist, highways or some large roads (6 lanes) seems to be in the red.

Yes I can analyse it with each car so I know where they are going and all but is there anything else I can do or did I miss something...

I saw a elevated highway that exited at a roundabout that turns out great until my city goes about 40k people. traffic seems to stop for miles, hehe. Well any help would be appreciated.

[firesofhades1]

only create off-ramps leading up to the round-about .only create on-ramps after the round-about. use bridges or underpasses to get local traffic from 1 side to the other. this will keep local traffic off of your highway and presumably round-about.

don't make ramps to close to eachother (as with any crossroads).

make sure to use (small) pieces of highway or 2 lane 1 way's as entry/exit points from the round-about, alternate exit and entry, take traffic out of the roundabout before adding more.

don't add to many entry's and exits to a round-about, when cars turn onto the roundabout, there needs to be a buffer so backlog doesn't reach the previous exit, preventing the next part of the round-about to flow.

additionally, by making a non-circular round about i.e: a diamond or hexagon, you intruduce left turns on your roundabout, giving people additional reason to use all lanes more realisticly.

minimizing traffic can also work really well, think public transit, cargo stations, heavy traffic bans.

[BonPadre]

Actually the mistake I very often see is how it is divided *or not divided* for that matter in first intersection.
Then I'm amazed (and truely... it's unbelievable...) at how many roads cross the main avenue in people's cities... try to limit those crossings to the ones you NEED, that will be a main thing at not creating heavy issues... On the link below I already explain a bit for what could be a good grid start, but for you it's more about never ever forgetting the comment about the FIRST intersection
http://steamcommunity.com/app/255710/discussions/0/611702631228059019/?tscn=1428331687

Then it's less about the exit itself than the use of the full area and how you divide traffic in there.
Knowing your main traffic (as for all of us by the way) (and as long as you design a good mass transport for citizens ofc) is created by industries... so Zoning more smaller areas of industries on the left and on the right of your exit will already naturally split that traffic and doing so will use more lanes than the usual one lane many complain about because they have all the industry located on only one side of the road. Once you understand that I can pretty much tell you that 75% of your traffic issues are gone.

Then, still each exit whatever is it's design have it's own critical mass. some are more efficient than others, and them you can zone more industrials for that exit than if you used an other design... but still at some ppoint it will just be a big mess... so adding industrial zoning must be done step by step, to the point you feel your exit can't take anything more... That's your next 15% in my opinion...

Then understand the concept of the *buffer lenght* that some applied with import export tcargo trainstations...) the shorter the traffic has to travel between yoour exit and the first intersection, the more problems you may encounter if something goes form bad to worst... so please never create the intersection too early, and that very first intersection should have no traffic lights... so a good understanding of 6 lanes and one way road outgoing from them is the key... that's your last 10% and traffic should then run smoothly

[BonPadre]

As for roundabouts... it can be a make or break just depending on how you do it... beeing creative and playing with them and you have 3x more effective roundabouts than a usual one multilanes all incoming exiting from the outside ring ;-p think 3 dimensions on this game not only 2...
For me the best higway exiting roundabouts are incoming from Higway from top to the inner ring and then divide traffic already in 2 or 3 inside the roundabout, and the exiting to your city from the outer lanes ;-p
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=418111340

But then you can create a larger roundabout at ground lvl, and having an elevated highway, and exits inside the roundabout and incoming lanes from the outside roudabout to go to highway, and then the usual exits to yor city from the outer lane... works wonders as well

[firesofhades1]

yeah quite some things to keep in mind. its not just 1 thing that makes or breaks your round-about.

i love seeing cars enter from the right lane and then merge to the inner lane because they don't need to take the next exit. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=420145662

this round-about serves only 18k-ish people, but all the cargo traffic is going there because i'm forcing it to go there, i wanted to see what the round-about would do with more traffic. i think that 40k people would be fine as well, provided i give the trucks their origanal route back. ofcourse, once you get around 40k citizens you should really question wether you want all of your traffic going through 1 intersection, round-about or other. try to see if you can hook up your city through a second connection on another side. start the next neighbourhood somewhere next to a fresh patch of highway :P stuff like that.

[Fluffy The Destroyer]

those are great tips. Its true that I don't have any buses or public transport yet (wanted to know if I could go without them) except for cargo boats. I think by having some bus lanes and metros should really help. More exit points at various points in the city should help as well but I'll have to analyse this carefully.

I also removed some exits in my highway in various corners of my cities and did help with traffic on those highways... The traffic is not easy to deal with lol.

[firesofhades1]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Fluffy the Destroyer:

those are great tips. Its true that I don't have any buses or public transport yet (wanted to know if I could go without them) except for cargo boats. I think by having some bus lanes and metros should really help. More exit points at various points in the city should help as well but I'll have to analyse this carefully.

I also removed some exits in my highway in various corners of my cities and did help with traffic on those highways... The traffic is not easy to deal with lol.

"but I'll have to analyse this carefully." <--- this is a great tip as well. ;)

same goes for when you have made a change, give traffic a good while to adjust before making the next. or you are analizing traffic that does not represent how your current road lay-out actually functions.

[BonPadre]

+1 with firesofhades1
How many times I was like..."yeah give them that one way road... can't hurt right ? should even make their life easyer, let's go Mr so smart Mayor..." just to realise it was the worst I could do...
Adding is not always the best option ;-)
IMO going without buses can do if you use Metro. And you give easy short acess by pathway to shortcut if you use huge lenghty blocks while building (I mean really lengthy, if you stick to the usual 16x8 you should not need it) you may want to have a bypass for pedestrians in middle.
If you are like me building some organics roads that are dead ends nearing an other road, you should add a path between them, etc. The pedestrians pathways are still needed to cross highways though, so either an elevated crossing should your higway be elevated, or play underneath the highway is nice too if it's elevated.

But on a 110k city, I have +12k peeps using public transports without any policies helping that, and on those 12k, half of them is bus, other half is metro, and I still haven't mastered trains yet for peeps, as I struggle to have them using it (maybe 120 peeps lol), but I also probably lack good destinations... so all on me on that

[firesofhades1]

hehe i have broken up a road to put a small piece of pedestrian path in between. it was the only way to make a shortcut for some citizens going to/from work, without delivery vehicles jamming the place because its suddenly shorter to commercial than the cargotrain route.

but yeah pedestrian pathways are basicly another form of public transit. be carefull though more pedestrians means more people crossing the roads, stalling your traffic. you will need to provide alternative pathway bridges at busy crossroads. these can be a (slightly?) longer route, people will still preffer the pathways. you can also replace a small section of road with the treed version of the same road(or the other way around), a bit further away from the crossroads. this will create a place for pedestrians to cross the road before they reach the crossroads.

[BonPadre]

Początkowo opublikowane przez firesofhades1:

hehe i have broken up a road to put a small piece of pedestrian path in between. it was the only way to make a shortcut for some citizens going to/from work, without delivery vehicles jamming the place because its suddenly shorter to commercial than the cargotrain route.

Dat trick... doing the same ;-) having 2 parts of cities touching but reaching only with highways to not mess all... stopping one square grid too short to just give the impression it reaches without doing it for real...

[Klingenmeister]

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=415608572
It is not my most effective one, but it is awesome to look at it running :D