Cities: Skylines

Kitlope

Hardcore
Yup, liking the early fixes. I have started a new city, much more improved with the layout and all that. Cims seem to like it a lot as a few have even bought me a couple of beer.

Here's a cool shot I took of the residential area, all the houses were close to the final level. I went into Policies and turned on "high tech housing" and that did the trick. Neat watching a few hundred houses all level up at the same time.



In a couple days I'll take a screenie of my old city and this new one once it gets a little more comparable in population (currently at 14000)
 

Shilka

Hardcore
Very nice shot Kitlope! I should try some grid style city one of these days, I bet it provides its own challenges, especially traffic wise, or isn't it that bad? And it will be easier to fit parks in I hope, I often find myself struggling finding suitable places along those curvy roads of mine...

Here's a shot few shots of my new city I started on the map I made. It's quite challenging at times fitting stuff on the irregular terrain...

2015-03-19_00001.jpg

2015-03-20_00001.jpg

2015-03-20_00002.jpg

2015-03-20_00003.jpg
 
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Daunt

MLG Pro
That roundabout / cul-de-sac is awesome. I rigged up a makeshift park in one (had to lay a road in the middle, then delete it to allow me to place a park, because stupidly you cannot lay it without it being on a road.

I'm having a bit of a literal and figurative roadblock in my city. Very frustrated as traffic / pathfinding I'm seeing is breaking down and not working correctly.

I will take screens when I play next, but basically I have 2 roads and only two roads to get into downtown, both are one way 6 lanes (one going to the center roundabout, the other going). Both roads have very minimal intersections, and even when they do, they're intersecting with other major one ways. So this means that theoretically most of the way, there's only two things a car can do, turn one direction, or continue straight. Despite this, all the cars pile into 1 lane and completely ignore the other 5 lanes. This creates massive backups despite my wonderful planning.

Anyone else have obvious traffic issues like this?
 

Shilka

Hardcore
I'm not really having issues yet, but yeah, it's hard to let traffic use those 6 laners correctly. If they turn right onto them, and want to turn right at the end they will all prefer the right lane. 6 laners work best if at the end the traffic can go 3 drirections, left right and straight, and preferably the other roads having at least 2 lanes, so your 6 lanes get divided into 2 for left, 2 for right and 2 for straight. If you end in a roundabout, they will all hang right as there will only be right turn onto the roundabout, and right turns of the roundabout.

Have a good look at this pic, it shows really well, why the shortest/quickest path pathfinding ends up working so bad on 6 laners, but in the right it shows what you can do about it to divide up traffic much better (which basicly boils down to forcing traffic in the center lanes to start with, and by forcing more turning lanes by wisely choosing the amount of lanes for the exits/straights). Hope this will help :)

F8eKjp5.jpg
 

Kitlope

Hardcore
Yeah, and they're going to optimize traffic. Needs to be patched and I'm guessing will be in the second one within a couple weeks.
 

Daunt

MLG Pro
Thanks Shilka, that is a good pic guide. The bottleneck creation at the opposite side of the intersection is pretty slick, I will try that. Still I think they need to patch to really solve it. Especially since if the intersection involves both 1-way 6 lane roads. To me that seems like it would be amazing traffic flow, but it is anything but.
 

Shilka

Hardcore
Yep, they definately should patch it, if theres a lane stuck, and free lanes left in the desired direction, they should definately program the traffic to overtake. I really like the challenge that traffic provides though, I do hope they can fix it without making the A.I. too smart, heh. One thing they definately need to do is to stop sharing straight traffic with the turning traffic if there is a single lane right or left hand turn available, that would already help lots.
 

Shilka

Hardcore
I'm close to finishing the first big expansion of my second city, here's a few shots;

The bottom island is what I built up over the past few days. I still need to work on beautification of the bottom edge. At the left everything is high density, the right tip has low density housing, and thanks to the lack of school coverage there, mostly seniors have moved in.
2015-03-24_00003.jpg

Aview at the downtown entrance from the highway. The middle of the town is all high density commercial, complimented by some parks and reward buildings.
2015-03-24_00004.jpg


A look at downtown over 'not so central park'. Because the walkways in the park provide a shortcut for the low density housing towards the center of town, the paths actually get used too, it's pretty cool to see people stroll in the park. Well, more like speedwalk through it, lol.
2015-03-24_00005.jpg

Thanks to Daunts remarks about the traffic on 6-laners, and the answers I looked up for it I actually managed to get all 6 lanes used by traffic in my very busy downtown. Glad that worked out or this whole traffic design would have to bge scrapped and redone, lol. Phew!
2015-03-23_00001.jpg
 

Daunt

MLG Pro
Glad I could help... I think? Not sure what I did. But I was able to improve my traffic flow as well.

That park looks awesome! I think a great idea right off the top of my head (you heard it here first) you should be allowed to "zone" or use the district tool to mark areas like your awesome park as a park, so they actually count as a park. When marking it, you'd need x amount of trees and ploppable items (like benches, etc) for it to count and then with size it increases the land value proportionally.
 
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Shilka

Hardcore
That would indeed be cool!, And if they can't make it happen, they should just give a tree a park effect of 1, then plopping down 400 trees in a park will count as a regular park anyway...
 
E

ElektroVodka

Hmm judging by all the food vans one would think this depicts an american city? ;-)
 

Shilka

Hardcore
Very nice Shilky. So how did you get the traffic on the 6 laner to work like it should?
Well, as you can see on pic 2 and 3 I used large roundabouts to feed traffic from the highway/main arteries onto the six laners. In pic 2 you can see how I use a short stretch of one way 2 laners to feed traffic onto the center of the 6 laners. Would I have connected the 6 laners directly to the roundabouts, traffic would all pick the right lane as they turn right of the roundabout. And not only that, I would have had traffic lights too.

The construction with the short 2 laners not only feeds traffic on the center of the two laners, but also prevents there being traffic lights. No trafficlights on the the roundabout now, but also no trafficlights on the one way 2 laners connecting both 6 laners at the ends. This is extremely important to keep the roundabouts from clogging up.

Then at all junctions with the 6 laners I made sure that all side roads have at least 3 lanes. All the roads inbetween the 6 laners are one way 6 laners too. All roads on the outside of the 6 laners are 2x3 laners. This causes a lot of dedicated turning lanes dividing up traffic so nicely.

Hope that makes sense lol, when I have time I'll post a pic straight from above :)
 

Shilka

Hardcore
Ok, here's pics to clarify my above writing;


2015-03-25_00001.jpg
(pic 1) Here is one of the junctions of my 6 laners. Since all connecting roads are minimum 3 lanes, you get plenty of dedicated turning lanes dividing traffic up nicely. And, since all nearby junctions are designed the same way, you can also see that traffic will use all turning lanes, as they predivide to go left/straight/right at the next junction.


2015-03-25_00002.jpg
(pic 2) Heres my 'feeding sytem' for my 2 central 6 laners. The road coming in from the right leads directly to my industrial area, and with downtown consisting of high density commercial it generates a lot of traffic. At the left you can see the short 2 lane sections that feed traffic to the center of the 6 laners, which causes traffic to use more lanes from the start. Non of the crossings you see have trafficlights, which is important for a good in and outflow of the busy downtown.
The 2 laner at the left connecting both 6 laners is there to prevent traffic that want's to turn around coming from the left to use the roundabout, but can take the shortcut instead. It's a 2 laner to prevent traffic lights.
One more thing to notice is the two 2x3 laners connecting to the top and bottom of the roundabout. Since it uses 3 laners, it causes a dedicated turning lane on the roundabout itself, which in turn causes traffic to use both lanes on the roundabout, alleviating pressure on the roundabout. Without those 2x3 laners connecting, all traffic would only use the outer lane of the roundabout.


2015-03-25_00003.jpg
(pic 3) Here's the feeding sytem on the other end of the central 6 laners. It connects directly to the highway (which is at the bottom of the pic, running left to right out of sight). It was even busier then the other one, and was suffering from minor traffic jams. To alleviate pressure, I made 2 shortcuts through the middle of the roundabout to seperate straight from turning traffic on the roundabout. I used highway onramps for the shortcuts, as they have a higher speedlimit, so they will be preferred by traffic going straight. (or else straight traffic might as well opt for using the rounddabout itself.)
These shortcuts cause no traffic lights, because the feed from/onto one way streets. They don't work if you connect them to a two way, because they will cause traffic lights then. Then I also made seperate offramps for traffic wanting to go left from the highway, so that traffic bypasses the roundabout completely.(seen at the left bottom)

It might seem complex, but I'm only applying a couple of basic rules to regulate traffic with my 6 laners;

- Have trafficlight free in and outflow
- Use 2 laners to feed traffic into the center of your 6 laners
- Have minimum 3 lane junctions to create dedicated turning lanes

It's good fun playing around with traffic! Really loving it :)
 
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