The best SMALL Highway Connections - Building Diamond Interchange Variants in Cities Skylines

what is going on here everybody welcome back I'm yumble and today I want to talk about managing Connections in City skylines more specifically I want to talk about smaller interchanges or service interchanges as far as what's happening here I would call this a rural Highway Junction so the the context here and context is everything when it comes to Road Connections the context is a smaller local Road connected with a more major highway route now everything is at grade meaning the vehicles have to cross each other on the same plane so there's a high chance of collision there's a definite chance of slowing down as the Minor Road has to yield this also means that the the major road is definitely not free-flowing they are uh they are often slowing down to turn they're often slowing down to avoid Vehicles Crossing this is extremely dangerous but I have to say it's working traffic isn't backing up everyone's making it through for all its flaws it's doing exactly what is intended at this moment and it's broken our inexpensive rural intersection has now failed due to traffic demands on all sides it's completely backed up nobody can get through not safely at least nobody's happy when cities first observed this phenomenon they had to figure out a way to separate the traffic so the goal now is to get this through traffic separated from the local traffic that's trying to cross this introduced the concept of grade separation where now we're actually going to travel into the third dimension we're going to elevate this Crossroad and we still have to figure out a way for it to connect to the highway this traffic is still going to want to enter and exit the highway this is the heart of the concept of a service interchange as I said earlier context is everything a service interchange is designed for going from a small road to a larger road while allowing the larger road to be a freeway and have free-flowing traffic separate from the crossing traffic going over or under it let me show you what a simple service interchange might look like [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] what we have here is a standard Diamond interchange not to be confused with the diverging diamond we'll get to that later but this is a standard Diamond interchange also known as a typical rural interchange so we've upgraded now we have grade separation between these uh two traffic flows so the free-flowing through traffic can get in and out with no problem we've also moved all of the conflict to these two intersections so there are still left turns that conflict with through traffic on the local Road but we've moved them all into these positions now I want to show you how to set this up in traffic manager so that it actually works All Things Considered it's actually handling traffic quite well considering there's no traffic manager or laws in place at this at the intersections but I'd like to show you how to set that up properly just to avoid all this awkwardness that's going on right now the thing is is actually quite to scale I would say too you could you could make a smaller one but I would say this is similar to how they appear in the real world and if you're looking to make good looking cities I would strongly recommend keeping your intersections realistic in size so the the go-to here is Lane connectors we're going to open up traffic manager go to Lane connectors and I'm going to show you on this one Junction it's the same for both as they are symmetrical but let's start with the left turns coming off the highway we're going to do all three lanes are available for left turning traffic I'm going to pause it that was weird but all three lanes are available to left turning traffic right turning traffic can stay to the right lane I suppose left turning traffic going onto the highway can keep to the closest lane the through traffic going over the overpass can just cross into this I like that a lot now let's do something interesting here I suppose we'll do a right turn that's shared with straight through traffic I like that for this situation this is a common service interchange move if you want to add a turning pocket feel free get a different Road from the workshop and go crazy but for us I think that'll work fine today so this is through traffic as well this one is left turning traffic because this Lane will come out the other side we're gonna have them keep to their Lane in the middle to avoid errors they're going to come out the other side and they're going to have to turn left because this Junction works the same as this one symmetrically one thing that I would do additionally for realism though it is a bit silly in City skylines people make mistakes or so I've heard so I've Been Told I'm going to use this right lane to double as a straight through option for vehicles that mistakenly took this ramp I don't really like that in City skylines but I know someone's going to mention it if I don't do it people often like to have a have a get out of jail free card if they accidentally take the wrong exit and this interchange can allow for through traffic to get back on the highway if they've made an error so some people might make mistakes I don't know about that but this this is what it would look like in real life if you find a lot of through traffic using that lane in City skylines it's actually terrible so I'm going to take it away for now but I figured I'd talk about it at the very least I'm going to do the same thing on the other side and we'll we'll see where we're at things are looking good but there's still a ton of conflict that these at these intersections that really need some traffic Management in this case a signalized junction is in order so we're going to grab our timed traffic light tool as the yields are not doing it the I've got yields at these spots right now and they're not very good but select both of these with your time to traffic light tool because we want this to all work as a single Junction so that it's all timed together and synchronized I'm going to hit setup time to traffic light add step let's pause the simulation because things are about to get messy starting with the configuration I'll just do everything on on one side first the other side will be identical though upside down so let's assume that this direction is north this is south east is over here West is over here and I'll keep it oriented this way for the for the time being let's let's hit change mode to break out these lights I want to have independent right and left hand turns so hit this one once for an independent right turn hit this one once for an independent left turn that's awesome very very good let's address our straight through traffic as that's probably the most aggressive uh direction that we have so let's do that first straight through we'll allow them in and out at the same time while that's all going on right turning traffic can do their thing and this right turning traffic is always free-flowing because of the way the lane connectors were just set up so that's totally fine they can make that right as well on this side it should look identical though backwards straight through straight through allow the right turn allow the right turn very good timing wise let's do a minimum time of 10 seconds maybe a Max time of 25 or so after minimum time has elapsed the light will change if there's more waiting than driving as determined by the flow sensitivity which I'm going to put to 0.3 as a starting point so that is the beginning that is the first phase of our light I'm going to hit add to establish that let's hit add add step and we'll do the the second phase now I'm going to leave the timing the same and the flow sensitivity the same for this those may change later but right now let's just get the directionality rate the next thing we want to do is allow left turns to enter the highway to clear out this left turning Bay that just that just filled up probably straight through traffic can continue doing their thing but because of that left turn this through traffic must stop so there'll be the straight throughs will stop here right turning traffic can continue going if it's available that's I'm okay with that and this left turning traffic will remain stopped because that'll be the third and final phase same thing over here lifts enter the highway straight throughs must stop that right turn can continue doing its thing and all the while this straight this uh set of straight Lanes can go straight through conflict-free as they don't conflict with this right turn I'm going to hit add leave the timings the same our third and final step will be left turns coming off the highway so allow the left turn to come off the highway stop the straight and left turning traffic going east and this left turn can continue doing its thing because I'm I'm no hater no haterade from me we'll be fine left turns coming off the highway for this side means that this traffic must stop that right turn can continue add that should be good let's uh let's observe how that looks in its current configuration so I've been watching this operate for a while and the one Trend that I've noticed the one negative trend is that left turning traffic trying to go south on the highway from our original orientation here that southbound traffic coming from the East is consistently backed up so there were a few ways we can overcome this I would say that this interchange is really good in most spots until something like this happens then accommodations must be made there's a few different options One Fine option might be to add an extra turn lane I don't have a problem with that so I think I have a road in here well let's see I'm just looking to add a single Lane so a three plus four do I have a three plus four do I have a three plus four three plus five do we have a three plus four hey we do seven Lane asymmetrical Road so what I'd like to do here is Elevate change that elevated Road so that this direction has two turn Lanes coming off it I might extend this into into this I might make the eight Lane Road happen here so that left turning traffic has a little more space to back up but I'm curious to see what this does now this is not our only option by any means this is not the only solution but it is an interesting one and I'm not sure exactly what will happen I mean all I'm trying to do is is double the capacity the holding capacity of this bridge and I think we'll succeed there as far as exactly what will happen as a result of that it's anyone's guess but either way it should be very fun I've let things run for another 10 or 15 minutes in real time and it's actually working great that second turn lane has worked wonders I will say they they do favor the the middle left lane but overall it's doing what it's supposed to it just doubles the capacity of this uh of this overpass so twice as many cars can be queued up ready to make that left turn when the light changes here's what's happened at this intersection I chose to I did something a little different so the left lane is dedicated to the left lane here and the center lane as you enter The Interchange splits so the right lane is still the right lane the center lane splits so they still have a straight through option if this Lane wants to split to go straight through they totally can but really that's just to to ease all of the congestion that was happening on the left lane splitting at the left lane did not do us any favors so the center lane was the way to go but yeah this is this is sustainable I'm gonna see if I can get a little more traffic into this so we have to figure out an alternate solution let's take things to the next level this is the diverging diamond I think this is a good next option or upgrade when you're looking at the diamond because it uses all of the same ramps and overpasses if you want but it uses a reversed Road you'll notice that these are backwards I have a good video that describes exactly how to build this but really all I did was upgraded this road to the reverse six-lane version I gave an extra turn lane on the the outbound traffic from the highway just because it kind of made sense here like the two left turn Lanes work congruently with the two through Lanes on the uh on the overpass here but yeah I think that's a good kind of intermediate option to add a lot more throughput provided that most of your traffic is interfacing with the highway so I don't think the diverging diamond is a catch-all for for any and all situation if you have a lot of through traffic let's say traffic is trying to use this local road to get to the other side of the local Road and they want to use this ramp this is actually pretty inhibitive to them inhibitive prohibitive it's not good for them that cross traffic is not having as good of a time because they do have to wait for the entering the exiting and entering traffic so it it just kind of gets them hung up a little bit but if you have a lot of traffic that wants to get on and off the highway like if you look at the vehicles that are in the left lane here that want to get on the highway they have a very easy time they only pass through one light and then they get onto the highway for free so that's very nice it's also decent for left turning traffic coming off the highway though they do have to kind of cue up on this overpass if you want to have this a as a two-phase light but yeah I do endorse the diverging diamond I don't think it's a catch-all keep in mind once again it's not good for crossing traffic but it is good for traffic that wants to interface with the highway so if the majority of your cars want to get on and off the highway it's a great option here is what the Lane setup the lane configuration looks like and the light configuration is a little bit different from the previous one I do have a video that goes in depth on this light configuration hopefully I'll have the foresight to put that up in the corner for you but it's a it's a two-phase light left turning traffic just cues up on the bridge uh right turning traffic is always free to go and through traffic gets across in two phases [Music] yeah there is an alternative though there is another this is not the only upgrade that you can do to a diamond Interchange to reinvigorate it once your diamond has run out of steam there's something else you can do and it's for a more urban situation what do you think it is [Music] take a look at the single point Urban interchange it's a good one it's a good one I like this a lot in City skylines I think they tend to run a bit large compared to how wide they might be in real life because the whole point of this is that it brings all of the traffic to a single point at the center where you can use the same Bridge from your diamond interchange so you're developing City can use its Diamond infrastructure again uh to get a little more throughput out of it but it's supposed to not take up very much space that's kind of the goal all of these designs are a battle between space taken up and traffic flow generally larger is better for traffic flow but with diminishing returns and of course you want to save plenty of space for your city so I don't recommend overusing large interchanges but this one specifically is meant to fit within a small area there's a great picture on the Wikipedia page that shows a more compact version of it but the nature of City skylines means it's a bit wider than usual this Center Point is where all of the conflict lives as I mentioned a moment ago you'll see here these are all free-flowing the ends the middles it's just in the dead center where traffic is crossing over itself so this has the advantage of the diverging diamond that left turns can occur at the same time coming from the highway left turns can get on the highway at the same time which is good too and it has the advantage of the diamond that through traffic can have its own phase let me show you what that means for the light setup setup chimed traffic light add step um the timing I'm not really sure of we'll just we'll just make it up 10 to 25 worked well before so I'll do that again this is going to be a three-phase light so three Cycles in real life you can do it a little differently but because the game reads this as as straight roads it does not acknowledge the existence of this left turn because it's not sharp enough what you can do here is say one side gets to go all other sides must stop so that'll be phase one the other side gets to go all other sides must stop and then add another step the lefts from the highway now get to go simultaneously add step start so let's see how this runs I'd love to see a little more traffic build up this thing it has very high capacity I honestly endorse this more so than the diverging diamond I think the diverging diamond is great it's almost a little too easy is the thing this one is somewhat more something I don't know if Elegance the word but the the single point Urban interchange just has a leg up on through traffic so it's all situational if you have too much through traffic crossing the highway a single point Urban interchange will pretty much always win so keep that in mind diamond is also still viable at this at that point the other thing with this is that is it is a three-phase light I think I also did the diamond as three phases so that's worth looking into um I think the main draw to this one is that traffic entering the highway and exiting the highway can make lefts at the same time that's really what where the difference lies between this one and the regular diamond the spooey is the single point Urban interchange is actually a diamond variant according to my sources I'm gonna hit the party button I call this the party button I've been calling it that for years but really it's allow traffic to enter blocked Junction I'm going to do that on all sides like everybody just enter the blocks Junction right now we're seeing a lot of sluggishness at these intersections and I really want to see traffic just pouring through the highways automatically have this toggled on that's why their intersections are so flowish flowish can you tell I'm losing my mind I've seen a lot of interchanges today this is more work than I usually do in a given afternoon but it's a lot of fun all right three speed for a little bit so there's one phase there's the second phase and then there's the traffic coming off the highway and then this will run again so that's it that's the complete that's the whole kit and caboodle as it stands um you can change the lane math on this of course like a four plus two is advantageous if you want to have two lanes of traffic turning to the highway or two lanes of traffic coming off the highway a lot of node controller might be necessary to get the lanes to to miss one another but that's okay it's all it's all quite doable yeah single point Urban interchange intersection marking tool also benefits this massively throw in some markings with intersection marking tool and it's a very good thing you can make it a bit smaller than this too I have a couple examples in the workshop one of them is very squared off and quite a bit smaller so I would recommend that I'll try to link my interchanges in the description as well so you can just download these from Steam if you feel so inclined in the near future I think I'd like to do another video about system interchanges of course today's video was about service interchanges for getting cars on and off the highway and creating a a bridge you know using grade separation that type of thing but in the future I'd like to do larger interchanges designed for connecting Highway systems together so that should be interesting there's also more to be said about Service interchanges as we haven't done any of the variants with loops so you can always add a loop to a service interchange if you want to make a kind of a partial Cloverleaf that's another story for another day everyone I really appreciate your presence here feel free to subscribe to the channel that's all I've got for today everyone thanks for hanging out I've been yumble I'll see you in the next stream or the next video foreign [Music] [Music]

Channel: YUMBL

Views: 167,385

Keywords: spui, diverging diamond, city skylines, grade separation, overpass, highway, spiffing brit, biffa, city planner plays

Id: v_gZwJEm7pk

Length: 23min 28sec (1408 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 12 2022