Mastering Traffic in Cities Skylines: Lane Math Techniques Explained

three two one [Music] everybody welcome back I'm yumble and today's video is all about Lane mathematics in cities skylines now as I explain what this is you're probably gonna go oh wow that's pretty basic and it is but it's a it's an important fundamental concept to really understand to uh in order to manage traffic in City skylines today we are looking at the vanilla Cloverleaf this is that basic basic Cloverleaf that the map that you probably first played started with let's let's all be honest and this has zero Lane math set up on it currently let me show you what I really mean when I say zero Lane math we're going to turn this sideways and there's a lot of traffic coming from this direction so let's really look at what's going on here and why we would want to change this so initially we've got three lanes one departing and that's fine that's a shared Lane that's not that that bad I I can live with that but this one is three lanes of continued through traffic with an additional Lane merging into it question mark that's pretty messy that's a that's a very messy thing because in real life there might be cars in this right lane and then this Lane is merging in without any sort of merging Lane to allow them to get up to speed and that's that's a problem so bad bad Lane math and then here we have the same thing again just like the first example where there's a shared Lane of departing traffic that can be okay so that's you know that's fine but then this one does it again where now we've got a no merge merge situation where this becomes a yield sign presumably in real life if you were to do this to people you'd have to make them yield and then and then you're sitting here sweating you've got your head turned all the way to the left you're magically looking over your shoulder behind you sweating dead stopped with traffic going 70 miles per hour going past so anyway back to the Lane math this is bad one way to improve this would be to modify the number of lanes on a given stretch of road so what I'm going to do initially is what most people do in City skylines this is not how you have to do it but this is what I see most players recommending and even most content creators um telling people to do is this right is this wrong I don't know but bear with as we improve the lane math ready and then we'll do the elevated pieces here oh they're not elevated I lied cool so that should do it what did I do what's changed not much actually not much but hopefully hopefully this helps a little bit in this situation here actually we are going to need traffic manager to solve this in reality some situations vanilla Lane math will save the day and you won't need traffic manager but in this situation here's what's going on this side handled it correctly we want the the far right lane to depart and that is a dedicated Lane now I'm gonna pause it this is really distracting I hate this the right lane leaves so that's awesome which means that these two lanes must continue on through I'm going to hit Ctrl s while using Lane connectors in traffic manager so that actually illustrates what we want this is desirable Lane math and then similarly over here I can also click that with Lane connectors hit Ctrl s and our math checks out so three minus one is two so we have two for this moment and then two plus one is three excellent on the other side we should see the same thing but in Reverse actually no same thing same order one lane departs and then the two through Lanes two into two that's awesome so three minus one is two that's great and then two plus one is three so in principle what we're really doing is creating merge lanes if the traffic is coming in or or perhaps creating a dedicated departing Lane for traffic that is leaving that's really the function of this type of Lane math now this is not the only approach to it this is actually the unrealistic way of doing it right now I'd like to show you the the realistic approach to Lane math in City skylines before we move on I just want to say real quick I know I said to use Lane connectors actually don't do that you can accomplish the same thing and better by going to your traffic manager settings going to the policies Tab and clicking enable Highway specific Lane emerging and splitting rules and and that right there under highways will actually Auto enable correct merging and splitting for these types of nodes so do that and stay away from the lane connectors entirely in the previous example I reduced these three lane segments you can see the these eight little segments here I've reduced those down to two lanes so I would call that subtractive Lane math what I actually recommend doing for for the sake of realism is probably additive Lane math so here we're just get we're going to add just one more Lane a lot of just one more Lane actually because sometimes all you need is one more Lane but everywhere so I'm gonna add just one more Lane on every outside connection here 's the play-by-play what this actually does is it enables that turn pocket to happen so the way that this should work is these three lanes continue on but this one can split and now you've got a right turn pocket as is common on on most freeways that I've been on in the US at least I suspect it's very similar everywhere though where you get a departing Lane dedicated to leaving traffic and that departing Lane is added rather than rather than subtracting the next segment of Road subtracting a lane usually you add a lane and they can turn away um so that's great I did that on the outside of all of these but also let's look at the center here we're going to leave the these middle sections that we turned to two lanes before completely unchanged in favor of adding Lanes everywhere else and of course here on the elevated bits cool so the way this works out now I'm going to use the the lane connectors just for illustrative purposes I do have that setting turned on that automatically accomplishes this but just so you can see now we're going from four lanes one's leaving down to three Elaine is being added from this left turning traffic from this direction and they have space now to merge as you do on a on a Cloverleaf I'm Frenemies with this Cloverleaf I'll be honest I'm it's a love-hate relationship between the Cloverleaf and I I've got some videos denouncing it and some videos showing you how to make one but um love hate relationship don't let the Cloverleaf deter you from using Lane math though even though this thing's a bit of a monster this side same thing four lanes one is leaving to go left onto this road three continue on and then finally this merges into four right so we've got three plus one turning into a four lane segment of Road here and then they can merge down this never does it the way I want it to do it of course the way that I would recommend merging this down is the way that would work in in real life where the last that last added Lane gets to merge in they have an allotted distance distance slash time to get their butts over to the next Lane by this point they better have done it and that's generally how it works in real life that in all directions is often how freeways function uh in the real world so how might Lane math work when applied to a roundabout this is an example of what could be a a turbo roundabout in a little while it's not quite a turbo roundabout yet but hopefully we can make some adjustments to it just to show you what's going on this is the priority Road it's not a Road to Nowhere ignore that it's a real road that really goes somewhere so the priority road is four lanes it's bigger it's wider there's going to be a lot of cross traffic going through on this one so keep that in mind but that road has to interface with a smaller road going in this case East West I guess we'll call it if I leave the camera oriented like this that is a two-lane road a lesser road crossing a larger Avenue of sorts the way that I would set this up as a turbo roundabout and there are many ways to do turbo roundabouts from what I've observed this is just the way that I would do a priority road crossing a non-priority road the two lanes are going to go right into the two-lane roundabout road that I've already constructed here and this one is correct the the left lane will keep to the left lane and can go straight through the right lane will keep to the right lane and has the option to turn right or they could go straight through whatever they prefer that's that's all fine by me now on this one this is where it gets a bit different the thing here is we have one lane partially dedicated to right turning traffic and I've acknowledged that this priority road is going to have a massive amount of through traffic probably compared to Turning traffic so with that in mind this actually becomes a the left lane becomes straight and right and the right lane becomes Right Turn Only cool so I'm going to make that same change on the other side this one is already perfect this one is straight and right and right only and that is it that's basic Lane math or basic turning Lanes I feel like it's Lane math related and a lot of people like roundabouts so I wanted to include this this section here but this is how you make sense of the lanes of this of a small two-lane roundabout bigger than a one lane roundabout which doesn't have any Lane math at all it's just one lane but uh the two-lane roundabout there's a little Nuance to the setup of it and this is how it works so two lanes of traffic can come in one side and go out the other side on a priority road while also allowing a smaller road to interface with that larger Road and and connect with a roundabout this set of Concepts also applies to normal intersections I absolutely love doing intersections I'll be honest I've built so many of these in this game and I love it every single time today though we're doing it with Lane math specifically in mind so I've got our same four-lane road four lane bi-directional and two-lane bi-directional road now they're just connected instead of a roundabout Junction like we had it's just a regular intersection and when I see this I see I see traffic backing up depending on the traffic volume I see it backing up because of cars waiting to go left or right blocking the through traffic at the same time or other potential conflict issues so we're going to go back into our bag of tricks and we're going to pull out just one more Lane repeatedly just one more Lane we'll solve traffic this time I swear so I'm going to take a few of these These are built into the game now by the way if you have mass transit you own this it's awesome asymmetrical five-lane Road just get mass transit it's so good it's honestly so helpful so I've increased the number of lanes on the right side here to three lanes with two lanes on the opposing side and I just did the other side up to match so the reason I've done this is this allows for a left turn pocket now if you have traffic manager it's really really easy but you can make a left turn pocket and this is for the lane math here I would make the right lane so Lane three here have a have straight through traffic aloud and right turn traffic aloud so what this implies is that there are two lanes of traffic that need to get through which is true there is one lane of traffic dedicated for left turns so as the light cycles through its phases the left turning traffic can stack up in this I'm not sure exactly how long this is maybe 10 units this bit of space here so it gives traffic a place to queue while waiting for its left turn to to be allowed okay so I've made the same change on both sides we've got a a combination right turn and straight through Lane on both directions I'd also like to address the the Minor Road as well there are three directions that the Minor Road can go in that is they can go straight left or right but right now they only have one lane to do that from so depending on your traffic volume it may be a nice idea in terms of Lane math to use an asymmetrical Road here as well and this is as needed everything I'm doing here is as needed it's not like you have to over build all the time you really don't but as needed if you find that dedicated right turning traffic should have its own lane let's say most of the traffic from this direction is turning right you want a dedicated right turn lane there if you find that the majority of traffic is turning left then perhaps you want a a dedicated left turn right and maybe the right lane allows for straight and right at the same time if you need three dedicated directions then you you have to change gears and do a totally different road so maybe you're going up to uh to this three plus two Road here or uh I wish I had a three plus one you can get these from the workshop all these configurations that you see here are built into the game currently through DLC or updates but the Steam Workshop is also filthy with solutions to these problems so keep that in mind so in this situation maybe I want a dedicated left turn lane and a combination right straight Lane and this one maybe the circumstances are different over here where the majority of traffic is is turning right so they get a dedicated right turn lane and this one gets a left and straight it's whatever you want really and I I do have some great videos that go in depth on heavy hitting traffic lights large intersections full of cars with with traffic lights running in all directions is a beautiful thing this is more of a low to medium traffic solution but really if you if you can design your city effectively I would wish upon you to only need to solve low to medium traffic if your Transit is on point if your pedestrian situation your bike ability if everything else is on point you may not need to overbuild these intersections but anyway I think I've given you enough to sink your teeth into for today just to kinda get a grasp on Lane Math and how that affects intersections roundabouts as well as interchanges let me know if you have any questions in the comments please feel free and and give me some inspiration for new videos I've got all of these like skills that I've amassed over time and I don't tend to sit down at my computer as much as I used to but I do still love the game of City skylines I do still love the community I'm really excited for the future including City skylines 2 as well as the rest of the DLC for the for City skylines we know and love so there's a lot going on and I'm really glad to be a part of it everyone thank you so much for hanging out let me know if you have any questions in the comments but that's all I've got for today I'll see you in the next stream or the next video

Channel: YUMBL

Views: 61,295

Keywords: city skylines

Id: E1mbIeJQDDk

Length: 16min 15sec (975 seconds)

Published: Sat May 06 2023