Pushing a node to its LIMIT for the "Continuous Flow Intersection"! (CFI)

ah the world of traffic you want two roads to meet and cross one another but you also want traffic to to flow freely at that point what a conundrum if only there were some sort of intersection that flowed continuously where traffic all moves in conjunction with one another to get around each other to their destination if only there was some sort of a continuously flowing device of some i got it the continuous flow intersection that's what you were thinking of wasn't it that's what it was everyone today we're going to be building the continuous flow intersection it's a bit of a traffic miracle that does not require an overpass and uses several lights in conjunction with one another to move traffic in a high density area everyone i'm yumble let's check it out this will be the location of our continuous flow intersection the reason that cities go to this in real life would be for let's say a high density intersection that's maybe on its way to becoming an interchange or maybe there's not enough traffic to warrant an interchange yet but you still need to solve the the traffic problem that you have at hand this is a very high flow intersection at grade intersection so it doesn't require any overpasses no uh underpasses ramps nothing like that it's all at grade and it's rather technical compared to what i usually do so i'm curious to see how this comes out with the finished product but you will need some custom roads to do it the way i do it you can do it with vanilla roads too but i'm going to be using some custom roads to save a bit of space and also i'll be using fine road tools and find road anarchy we're going to turn anarchy on turn off road bending that's a good start and the star of the show today is actually going to be node controller i'll show you that in just a second this is a new way of constructing this intersection i've seen other people do it but not quite like this so what i'm starting with is actually our displaced left turn this is going to become the left turn from this road it'll all make sense in a moment but what i'm doing is going one unit away from our standard six lane road and then connecting it right to the middle it's gonna get worse and worse before it gets better don't don't worry um the reason i turned off uh road bending is so we can just get a straight shot because these roads once they're once they're in we're gonna want them to look straight ahead towards this intersection which we are about to absolutely transform in just a second here so we made a cool star that's that's nice and fun what i'm going to do next is actually reduce the six lane road down to a two plus three road and it's going to be a no parking road i'm using the these are called ultimate american roads i believe in the steam workshop once again i'll try to link them but we're gonna we're gonna move these move this six-lane road down to a five-lane road to make it a little smaller and that's gonna look all crazy for a second i'll be able to fix that in a moment i think but ignore the mess for now think of the pinwheel roundabout think of how bad that looked before i before i got my hands on it so we're gonna end up offsetting all of these we're going to shift these outer roads the the slip lanes and and oh you'll see the context in a moment but i'm going to look at the dark blue node that is this one here i'm going to shift it to the left i believe 24 will do it 24 nice and if you'll notice the other end of this one looks a bit funky all we have to do to solve that is click on it and that'll solve that issue so we've got that that nice now it looks quite parallel i don't know if it's exactly parallel but it's okay it's going to work for our purposes so negative 24 is the answer for this configuration i'm going to go around and clean this up and show you how it looks so here we have something this is a single node that has been expanded and is accepting one two three four five six seven eight connections i believe that is the max i think that a node actually cannot physically accept more than eight connections all right i'm wrong oh nope it actually can't it literally will not let me add more so we have maxed out this node to its not its size limit but its connectivity limit this is it um it's also enormous but we'll we'll see we'll see how that all pans out in a moment i'll mark it up and make it pretty and all that here is what's going on with the node controller for the displaced left turns they are all at uh for instance this kind of turquoise one here maybe we'll call it that aquamarine fight about it in the comments what color this this is but right here one zero zero seven nine i've put the put the offset to 46 meters and the shift to negative 24.8 i found that those measurements work best here your results may vary i i don't want to i want it to be as as far away as possible without looking asymmetrical and also if i go one unit further it seems to get rid of that curb that nice that nice curb that we have that are gonna form these beautiful islands in the middle beautiful is is relative um also the other nodes are brought back too so these are back to 46 and shift it over the the left turns the large roads are 40 units out so the red one for example is 40 meters offset any less than that and it's a little tight the goal here being to have the right turns that are going to have to happen be somewhat gentle and there's also going to be left turns happening that i don't want to be at 90 degrees but the size of this is correct this is it's a big interchange it's a big excuse me it's a big intersection and uh this is this is how it works now we only have to connect the roads back to the uh sorry the left turns back to their roads of origin at this point i've connected three of the four side roads you can see that these roads are now going back to their connection at the main roads let me show you how i do that so i'm going to take the same network this asymmetrical road which is currently backwards there we're going to fix it in just a second i've measured out 21 units from the middle this doesn't have to be exact by any means i've just i've just picked this somewhat arbitrarily because it works here's a funny thing about shifting the nodes though this road thinks that that's 180 degrees off the end of it because it thinks it's going to the middle like that when really it is it is not anymore a good way to overcome that is to just go back to a road guideline that's parallel and just pick that and use some anarchy to trim the road wherever you want delete the extra roads here's the trick i always use on highways ready freeform road tool click the end of the road we're setting up we're going to connect it to the main road and i've picked a 27 meter so a 3 kind of a 3 by 3 or 27 meter setup so just freeform road tool straight off the end and then hold shift to see the units with precision engineering click it's going to make a mess we're going to fix the mess delete the little node delete the delete the road there we're going to re-add that road as it was but better easy and then a bit of node controller so just click this kind of awkward looking section here and hit make ends straight and that works for now that may change in the future but it's correct for now we're also going to turn this road backwards so just a bit of explanation what we're really getting here oh the whole thing needs to be backwards there we go what we're really getting is a right turn slip lane which you're about to see me set up in a moment as well as two left turns that stay out of the middle very important let me show you some lane connectors we're going to open up traffic manager and go to lane connectors and i think this is going to help everyone visualize what's really going on here pretty pretty vividly right now it's a bit of a mess but just know that off of one of the main roads the left two lanes go straight across and the right lane is a slip lane that gives you a right-hand turn i'm going to do that on this side as well so the main road straight across two lanes into two lanes lane math right lane math now the left turns oh we can do this side as well the left turns are all handled on these little islands that are off the side oh and you too there are a lot of connectors on this setup this is one of the more involved setups i've ever seen and you go right cool so the left turns lane uh use lane math as well where we're going left and left into those two lanes there not the far left but the closer main road left from the offshoot so we can do that on all sides the left goes there the left goes there and of course these are not the only this is not the only intersection in the whole thing this is just sort of the primary focus this is where most of the action is going to be happening this is where most of the traffic is going to be moving to and from is that all of them perfect that's all the left that is actually the entire setup for this thing so you can see by by taking the left turns out of the center it's avoiding the entire crossing traffic normally you'd if you're turning left from here imagine from this point you're crossing over several extra lanes so now the the straight throughs and the lefts can actually happen at the same time let's take you to one of the one of the arms here so i've upgraded this connecting road to a five plus three asymmetrical the reason being i want to have two left hand turns that correspond with these uh with the left turns of this asymmetrical road which is the left turn through the intersection it's a little bit crazy i never could have thought on this on my thought of this on my own believe me so this is the slip lane we want that to go to the right lane the reason i picked a five plus three is because this one is going to lose two to the left to go back down to three on our four plus three road and this one is going to be gaining one and two from the four plus three so that is how each of the external uh the the legs look essentially you can shift this around as much as you want using node controller you can also play with the lane math on the whole thing but what i really want is two left turns if this if you're using this thing it implies that there's a lot of left turning traffic that you want to get out of the equation on a side note you can also just make a make a half like imagine if only one of these directions imagine if only the west and east sides had the displaced left that's valid as well you don't need to do the displaced left on all sides i'm just doing the optimal out of control shenanigans version i think it's going to be really cool to watch by the end let me go around and do the rest of the lane connectors and then we will start working on the light here it is completely set up the continuous flow interchange fully operational with uh with a functional traffic light set up on it and of course special appearance from intersection marking tool and some decorations to make it look a bit more palatable i guess so here to discuss the light as mentioned earlier it's a two-phase light in the middle so there are two phases the lefts are allowed the left's from a given direction and the straight through from a given direction are allowed to go all at the same time we'll see it actually change for this side here in just a moment the left turn traffic and the straight through traffic all has to stop at the same time the right turns are entirely free-flowing so any car that shows up in the right lane is allowed to go and here we see the displaced left turn doing its work so that traffic is allowed to turn left over this traffic because it's already out of the way and that is essentially it it's a it's a very simple two-phase light in the middle in theory what i've decided to do for reasons not necessarily beyond my control but i think if i extended the the legs of the displaced turn to be a bit further i think i could probably do two phases for the whole thing for this kind of compact version of the whole thing the way the light works is actually in four phases so two of those phases so state two and state four affect this light here the middle is is a two phase light phase four is for the left turns on this and then phase two is for the the light here so you'll see ready we'll start at the beginning state one looks like this these sides are both allowed to go so the left turn and the through traffic on this side the left turn and the through traffic that's all gravy this light remains red as the left turning traffic waits to be allowed into the left turning bay once this goes to state two this light is going to turn red let's get it there there we go so now this light has turned red and the left turning traffic is allowed into the left turning bay with efficient timing with different timings i could probably even get all of it out of there but the way it is right now there's always a little bit left but that's okay that'll vary depending on the traffic density and also the length of the displaced left turn legs in this whole situation but that's the light it's two phases in the middle so i've got state one and two are the same and state three and four are the same for the center and the sub phases are to allow traffic into the left turn which will stop the oncoming traffic so yeah there's there's a lot to it there's a in theory it's a two phase light in reality i found it worked better as two phases with kind of two little sub phases for these guys and of course the markings are to just show the the movements of traffic a bit more clearly all of the left turns all that jazz and some decorations all in all i would say that this is a very efficient intersection though not convenient to build at all in city skylines this is almost overwhelming to build i don't know if i'll use it very frequently if ever but it is a great option if you're trying to flow a lot of traffic and you don't want to build an overpass that's really the that's the bottom line with this the way that cities use it in real life is when they're not ready to build an overpass or build a full grade separated interchange they will displace the left turns usually only on two legs so maybe on the one side of the main road and the other side of the main road they'll displace the lefts and then the other two are are more normal light cycles so it ends up being probably a three-phase light i would assume don't quote me on that though but yeah very fun to build the big takeaway of this is that the node controller shift option is incredibly powerful if you're about to make an intersection that's too close to another intersection consider sending the road right to the center and then shifting it out so that it actually is just one intersection which is better for the node system and city skylines in my opinion the the game really doesn't like nodes that are too close together they will act up they will clip they will look all kinds of weird but everyone thank you for checking out the continuous flow intersection it's a it's a fun to build once i don't know how many times i'm going to build this in my life but very fun to do once glad i'm glad i can check it off my list um everyone thank you for hanging out i've been yumble i stream twice a week on twitch i try to make two youtube videos a week as well so of course feel free to subscribe here we have an awesome community discord as well post your builds ask questions talk traffic all that kind of stuff that's that's all i've got for today everyone thank you so much for hanging out i've been yumble i'll see you in the next stream or the next video

Channel: YUMBLtv

Views: 98,457

Keywords: roundabout, mods, city skylines, detail, vanilla, smooth, smooth roads, node controller, intersection marking tool, move it, anarchy, fine road, pinwheel, interchange

Id: z5wI-wXdfyU

Length: 16min 39sec (999 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 09 2021