Traffic Management

[Tric]

Should have never left Beta Mode. It is by far the WORST implemented system in any sim I have played and it is straight up counter intuitive to use. Turning off any and all road signs will have your traffic move better, albeit not "cleaner", then with signs or lights.

Couple that with the fact that any heavy use lights have a cascading effect of just destroying any and all line spacing you have. I have tried now, every conceivable workaround to getting traffic to move in a coherent manner with lights. And every time it ♥♥♥♥♥ the bed.

That and the fact that people just de-spawn on buses and it makes it ULTRA FUN trying to manage any sort of regular function with the implementation of lights.

Turn off all the lights and signs and BOOM traffic flows correctly. One of the most poorly implemented bits of the game and one of the ones I was most excited for.

[Noob]

You know you can turn it off? And I think that some of the signs are useful.

[Tric]

Originally posted by Noob:

You know you can turn it off? And I think that some of the signs are useful.

Wow that is such a useful comment! I surely haven't tried turning it off like I said multiple times in the post. Maybe I'll try again turning the lights and signs off, based on your suggestion.

[Elessar_warrior]

You can build the new waiting stations and turn off line spacing.
In my expecience lights are not for every crossing, its much better to manage it in other ways.

[ryantheskinny]

Im not sure how you where expecting traffic lights to be faster than complete road anarchy where nothing impedes the movement of the vehicle other than another vehicle?

Advanced traffic management is for greater control and limiting how vehicles move.

[Noob]

Originally posted by T҉̘͙͖̠̓ͦ͑̄͜͜͟͞r⸸c:

Originally posted by Noob:

You know you can turn it off? And I think that some of the signs are useful.

Wow that is such a useful comment! I surely haven't tried turning it off like I said multiple times in the post. Maybe I'll try again turning the lights and signs off, based on your suggestion.

Wow that is such a great idea! If you don't like the traffic management just turn it off. My question is why did you turned it back on (you said that you'll try AGAIN)? If you don't like it just keep it turned off. And do you know that you don't have to put the lights at every crossing?

[4X-Fan]

Originally posted by Noob:

Originally posted by T҉̘͙͖̠̓ͦ͑̄͜͜͟͞r⸸c:

Wow that is such a useful comment! I surely haven't tried turning it off like I said multiple times in the post. Maybe I'll try again turning the lights and signs off, based on your suggestion.

Wow that is such a great idea! If you don't like the traffic management just turn it off. My question is why did you turned it back on (you said that you'll try AGAIN)? If you don't like it just keep it turned off. And do you know that you don't have to put the lights at every crossing?

Maybe the name of that option was the reason - "traffic managment" can falsly raise the expectation that the additional tools (signs/traffic lights) help you to make the traffic run better then without that feature enabled. But in fact enabling is (as usual) increasing difficulty by unlocking another "demand" - here that you cope e.g. with vehicles not being any longer able to drive through each others at intersections as if there were no collisions... The tools you get help you to deal with that challenge, but the result is always "worse" and "more expensive" than just disabling. That is true for any W&R feature (and fine itself), but sometimes the wording of the settings is a bit ambigious.

[Vimes]

I need to spend more time with both traffic lights and zoning. As yet I have not used either much but when I have done so they do seem to have great potential.
I need more time to make use of them but so far they seem a good addition to the game.

[Noob]

Originally posted by 4X-Fan:

Maybe the name of that option was the reason - "traffic managment" can falsly raise the expectation that the additional tools (signs/traffic lights) help you to make the traffic run better then without that feature enabled. But in fact enabling is (as usual) increasing difficulty by unlocking another "demand" - here that you cope e.g. with vehicles not being any longer able to drive through each others at intersections as if there were no collisions... The tools you get help you to deal with that challenge, but the result is always "worse" and "more expensive" than just disabling. That is true for any W&R feature (and fine itself), but sometimes the wording of the settings is a bit ambigious.

Maybe the name "traffic management" is ambigious, but do you have better? Every new feature in this game adds more realism and more challenge, so if you didn't but the game yesterday you should expect that. I think this "traffic management" is a good addition, which will make trams and metro more useful if you don't want to have Cities: Skylines on your roads.

[SiberianDev]

Traffic lights are most useful in cases where there either is not enough room for a roundabout, or when the traffic mostly flows in one direction, in which case there will not be enough left-turning and right-turning vehicles to create gaps for waiting vehicles to take advantage of.

They also are great if you were to coordinate them. That way, vehicles only stop once, and after that, they'll keep getting green.
I'm still in the process of writing a guide on how to do that, it's not that easy especially for beginner players.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Workers_And_Resources/comments/vmqyi1/6intersection_80_kmh_green_wave/

[Tric]

Originally posted by Elessar_warrior:

You can build the new waiting stations and turn off line spacing.
In my expecience lights are not for every crossing, its much better to manage it in other ways.

This was a good post, I had forgotten about the waiting stations. The rest seem to not have reading comprehension.

See the problem is. The lights do not function correctly as is, and it feels half implemented. A great point of this is that the green - yellow - red phase is about a millisecond. Which leaves cars in the intersection. This causes you to have to implement full stop cycles yourself. That and cars still do not use 1 way roads properly. Prefering to sit in the left lane until 10 feet from an intersection than crossing infront of the right lane to merge to go right. While the right lane tries to do the same thing to go left. Fully stopping traffic for a second or two each time.

This and the fact that there are no signages specifically for junctions on intersections. No turn right on red, no turn lanes only, no only straight, ect; This should be included in the UI for the lights as just another phase on the cycle rather than just having green or red.

I think my biggest problem with it so far is that it just shows how bad the traffic overall is and it could really use some TLC for how it works, which would just vastly improve the game overall since it is one of the core things managed in the game.

Originally posted by Build The Builder:

Traffic lights are most useful in cases where there either is not enough room for a roundabout, or when the traffic mostly flows in one direction, in which case there will not be enough left-turning and right-turning vehicles to create gaps for waiting vehicles to take advantage of.

They also are great if you were to coordinate them. That way, vehicles only stop once, and after that, they'll keep getting green.
I'm still in the process of writing a guide on how to do that, it's not that easy especially for beginner players.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Workers_And_Resources/comments/vmqyi1/6intersection_80_kmh_green_wave/

Have done this, it still does not solve the line spacing issue causing anything under 1.5km from a mega city to do nothing but clump up every cycle and ruin line spacing. That and they only use 1 lane 90% of the time in a one way still causing it to be straight up worse in everway if you would instead just let them slam into each other in the middle of an intersection. The only real use of this is to use the signage to forbid certain traffic from areas, which is a great tool. The rest is not as it currently only objectively makes things worse, and not better.

[SiberianDev]

It definitely would've been better if the red+yellow and yellow periods were longer (2s and 3s respectively), but you have to remember that speeds and distances in this game are slightly overestimated, given the relatively small size of the map.
Right turn on red is a car-centric American concept; it was relatively uncommon in post-Soviet and Warsaw Pact countries until recently.
We definitely need some way of restricting available routes at junctions. The best way IMO is to do it like in the C:S TM:PE mod, where you either connect or disconnect nodes to force or prohibit cars from taking that path.
Speaking of coordinated traffic lights, are you sure you're doing it properly?
Here's a time-distance diagram. https://imgur.com/a/xVKbnBv

[Nokia 3310]

There are only 5 things required to make new traffic system awesome.
1. Additional signal section (left/right green arrow)
2. Direction by lanes sign (turn left from left line, go forward from right line)
3. Wide road section (place that near road cross to make 3 lines from 1)
4. Allow more than 2 signs at the same point
5. Add “No pedestrian REGION” sign (currently you have to spam that sign a lot)

[4X-Fan]

Originally posted by Noob:

Maybe the name "traffic management" is ambigious, but do you have better? Every new feature in this game adds more realism and more challenge, so if you didn't but the game yesterday you should expect that. I think this "traffic management" is a good addition, which will make trams and metro more useful if you don't want to have Cities: Skylines on your roads.

Complex traffic...but you can pretty much forget what I wrote - it is exactly called that way in the game setup...only the announcement talked of "managment" in that context (and it is probably not worth to correct the expression in a past annoucement now)