Yep I use them. I am going so far in that I even think about how much traffic there would be in REAL life, so it looks realistic. But this was the best vid I have ever seen about this topic!
I have been a lot more deliberate with my new build about road hierarchy and when I see I didnt place a road where my cims would like to drive I tear everything out and start again lol
It may not be the most aesthetically pleasing city, but it has rules and will abide by them AND will let you know what the rules are with it's name! Ha!
@@mikeh2850 dirt roads are even, steady, flow. Traffic occurs whenever flow is funneled or slowed, so dirt roads shouldnt ever see much traffic unless you have few access points to a separated zoned area because the traffic never gets fast enough or dense enough to block up
I've enjoyed watching Bluffside Crossing develop, but I'm REALLY into theoretical videos like this one. Roadway hierarchy, intersection design, highway interchange design, dropping the city planner knowledge bombs... that's what I'm after. Thanks for the content!
That's GREAT feedback. I enjoy putting together both types of videos, but I do find this to be a bit more stimulating due to the amount of pre-planning and video editing that goes into it. That said, I'm quiet obviously a novice with video editing... so I better get much better if I'm going to do more of these. 🙂 There will be more in the future though, that's for sure!
the more you practice it, the easier it gets ... understanding where 'freeway' should go is easy, arterials from there lead to the zones where you build/zone on I also find its very helpful to build along the contour of the land, road hierarchy tends to take up a lot of space and its easier to make the space it takes up fit the space it has to go on, than to try to force grids for max building space
I have made mental maps of what my city configuration(s) will be, @@CityPlannerPlays, only to completely forget them all when playing. I typically go for grids for Commercial, Industrial, and low end Residential. The more natural configuration(s) I do for the rich people. Gotta make the rich people happy. Otherwise they will not finance your Mayoral campaigns. Hah! Still my biggest Cities: Skylines sin is I do not often buy up new tiles and branch out that way. I typically stick with the initial tile and wind up cramming *everything* into said tile. Why? I do not know. I have also noticed a long time that it is best to just go with whatever the map needs you to do until you earn your first two or three million dollars. From there you can probably rebuild up to your entire city from scratch to your mental map configuration(s). This is just assuming the in-game random disasters do not happen frequently enough that you are stuck with clean up and a depleted Treasury. I know I have had to abandon some maps purely because the tsunamis were literally lining up. The first two tsunamis caused so much death and destruction that huge Emergency/Rescue building could no longer keep up. By the fourth tsunami on that one map even that building could no longer take it anymore and crumbled then washed away. Ironic, really.
Honestly if I ever was an urban planning student in college, this would be a pretty fun, interactive, and efficient way of understanding fundamentals and principles of roadway hierarchy. It's amazing how much we can learn from these videos.
bro now that I read your comment, both hospitals in my city are placed exactly like this, one right on the corner to an arterial with hw access and one on a sidestreet right next to the biggest collector, sick.
The BEST explained “Road Hierarchy” and “Road Utilization” video I’ve seen yet! Well done!! I have 400 hours in to the game, but have a gift for messing this up on EVERY city 😂
After watching your city building in many of the videos you have, I changed my road building and with that simple change went from 25%-30% to having 80%+ and being able to complete the game. Thank you.
@@CityPlannerPlays And we play with TMPE despawning disabled! No cars will be removed when traffic gets bad. The vanilla game will remove some cars from the roads when there is a major traffic jam. Therefore a gridlock will never occur. With despawning off, gridlocks in badly designed cities are very common in game.
This video caused so much inner dialogue like, "you know you know this, yet here you are not doing it." Sometimes we just need to keep hearing the same message
I loved learning the concepts! I have seen them a lot in Biffa's videos but with a detailed and focused example like this is much clearer. Now I would love to turn my organically messy and disorganised town into a sister city of Roadway Hierarchyville
Having such a quality game for this guy to share his knowledge is a great benefit to the world community. As a kid we learned about “the people in our neighborhood,” but this was an over generalized list of doctors and construction workers. I love that this channel is so entertaining and that it also gives me an appreciation for the people who make significant decisions in my city. Also, knowing more about why roads are designed the way they are makes them much less frustrating to travel on, haha.
Probably the best explanation I've seen about road hierarchy. My only point is regarding noise pollution. What's generating it are the high density comercial buildings, not the roads itself. I know it has some impact, but probably not that much in the game. Also, it seems that the video loops at 4:50 (or close to it). Thanks for sharing ☺️
Noise pollution. high density commercial buildings beget traffic that generates the noise. If anything this year has taught us, the road truly is passive. Manhattan Island (or any city in the world) showed us how quiet it can be when there are no people, cars, busses, trains, etc.
You explained this very well!! You can see you have lots of experience in real life. Congrats on nearly 1K, and I just want to let you know that when I finish school I want to be a city planner myself!
I thought this video was easy to follow and well explained. I do think, though a counterexample would make it even more effective. I used to be horrible at this when I started playing. I'm not sure what made it finally click for me, but road hierarchy is vital for me now. I guess doing it wrong so many times gave me a good framework to know what bad design looked like.
@@CityPlannerPlays That scenario annoys me because it's not the way I usually see people fail at this. Half the problem in that city is the highway junction is just unrealistically bad -- it has two ramps for the same direction, and none for the other one. (That then causes traffic to make two lefts in a diamond service interchange elsewhere to U-turn, which is about the worst possible traffic pattern you can have in CSL.) Since it's not hard to make a bad one, I think it's better to just make it yourself to demonstrate. Then you can have all the usual things, like inexplicably using a grid of 32m roads in low-density residential, having the zoning in massive blocks instead of mixing them, having the residential close to the highway and the industry far from it, a big block of specialized industry on a resource field far from the rest of the city, ... (Most of which I made in my first city 😬)
Paused the video at 2:24 and just kept glancing at my other monitor while I built my city, not to exact replica of course, but I used the hierarchy and relatively the same roads. Currently have 3,000 population and 90% traffic flow. Best road layout video guide I've watched. Beginner tips especially for new cities, interchanges, interchanges, INTERCHANGES. Highway/Arterial speed is crucial.
Seems he added the first piece twice, that runs up to 4:50 and the second piece goes at 10:27. Anything in between is just a repeat of the first piece, so either skip to 4:50 and watch from there, or jump to 10:27 if you started from zero.
Super helpful information in clear, concise language. I went from having a hundred on and off ramps to having an effective network of varying levels of roads.
Didn't even notice i did something similar in my cities, i did watch some planning tips and did hear about road hierarchy but as i understood is just big road with acess to small road, with more access to smaller roads, and to avoid many connections on the larger ones. This more detailed explanation is nice to know, your layout does look like something more realistic compared to mine that had something that looked off Great video!
Wow I finally get it! I have been playing this game for years, and now I'm going to start from scratch. This puts all my old Cities to SHAME! Thank you!
I do take these into consideration. Then I learned more about how the Netherlands do their roadways and applied their methods with what I knew in the past into conideration. Highways: Fast and connected large areas, few connection and bike highways that are separated. Roads: Fast, more connections than a highway, connecting communities, little to no driveways, separated bike lanes and no street parking. Streets: Destination, usually 30-40km streets, street parking, sometimes separated bike lanes and people-oriented traffic calming measures.
This video was mindblowing for me, it really change my way of building cities, i always had traffic's mess and the game experience was desmotivating. Now, with medium cities (60k-100k cims) my traffic flow is upper 80%-85% and the game is again really fun. Thanks a lot!!! (Regards from Argentina)
This video alone helped me get my traffic from 46% up to 83%!! Thank you! It's such a simple thing but so easy to overlook. This game keeps amazing me with its depth
City planner you are awesome my love of this game has been rekindled. I'm an old school sim city player sim city one way back in the back back day. Eventually, around 2013 or somewhere there in, I swit her to skylines. I know have skylines on ps4 and it had been so long since I played and city building games I was just not feeling it. However, after I found your videos I'm back at city building! Thanks for all the info and the gameplay!
Well done and well explained. I just started the game a month ago and just found your channel today, thanks to Biffa, so I am going to be busy watching a lot of your videos!
@@CityPlannerPlays I have sunk a tremendous amount of time in it! I am trying to recreate the greater Youngstown Ohio area based off a map I downloaded from the workshop that used a height map. I thought that would be a good way to start, base it off of a real town (my hometown) but the struggle is real.....lol I wanted to take Urban Planning at Akron (this was 15 years ago) but life threw me a curveball and I could only take one class. What you do, is so fascinating to me
I would never have known this if I didn't play this game. The amount of micro-knowledge you can get from playing different kinds of games is just staggering.
I downloaded the game to try it out and put it back down after building one (not so functional) city. I watched one of your vids and I've been hooked since. I didn't initially realize the depth to which you could go in the game - it's actually a lot of fun to build a city with all functions running efficiently - industries, roads, commerce, etc. Your vids have helped to improve my enjoyment of the game tenfold, so thanks :)
Best example of road hierarchy plus the examples of how the roads are best used. Even though I already use this system of roads, this video has shown me how to better utilize the system!
Hey I've been binge watching your videos and its super interesting watching you play city skylines and seeing your though process and how you approach the game. I'm really suprised how more people haven't heard of you yet. I just wanted to let you know that your content is amazing and I hope your channel grows quickly! Keep it up! 😊
Once I learned it, its a great system! I was watching someone else's skylines vid and they were saying 'i really try not to have the industry trucks get in the way of everything else as best I can' Road Hierarchy solves that issue.
Thank you! I was expecting the game to explain the basics of roads, but it immediately wanted me to build one and I just...had no idea what kind of road I needed or what layout to do yet because I didn't know anything
This is the first principles of roadway hierarchy tutorial I've seen that used as an example a city that I found appealing. Maybe it's that I actually like gridded cities and I remember some of them being written from a perspective that stuff which looked like a suburban development hellscape to me is appealing because of its wavy roads, but I'd like to think it was because you put some time into what kinds of stuff wants to be zoned near what kind of roads. I also have to admit that I tend to go straight from local to arterial roads, with one or the other pressed into service for double duty doing collector stuff, though. It ends up looking similar, but it mostly comes from a perspective of wanting to reduce the number of places there is (when I was playing on the Switch, where you can't them off) or ought to be stoplights.
I played cities skylines a little when it came out but recently got back into it. And I have to say that your videos really helped me understand the game better and I'm building my city with a lot more ease and more profit as a result :) Thanks for these great videos!
I observed it myself during my years of playing this and have been following it through trail and error, but you have articulated it nicely, it makes sense.
This is awesome. I've been into city builders for a while now, starting with the classic Sim City, but I always winged it, and when things didn't pan out I'd seek out walkthroughs and tips. I've only recently discovered this channel, and it has helped so much. I'm still learning, but knowing how things work has made playing Cities: Skylines even more enjoyable than ever. Awesome videos and thanks for your work.
I still struggle with road hierarchy but I feel like each time I build a new city or new area, I get a little bit better at it. This video helps but I feel like I'm going to have to watch it several more times in the future.
I love going through and doing that! I think it's a tune of fun to keep iterating on things that I've built. The space constraints that you generally have in a built up city keep things interesting, too.
@@namelessfellow I always thought that I could just make one big road with a few 2 way roads junction will work. But they always ended up using the closes 2 way road junction and get stuck. But learning this. I just redesigned everything and they flow much better. I lost like 45k people but it much better to make plans using this method.
@@juliusbenter2369 Yeah, a big part of the problem IMHO is that the speeds of the different roads aren't different enough. The small 2-lane road is 40 km/h and the medium 4-lane road is 50 km/h, and that's just not enough of a difference to get traffic to stay on a collector rather than just winding through the local roads. (And the 6-lane road is 60km/h, so they won't really stay on the arterials either.) The last city I was playing with I ended up making some of the junctions one-way near the highway exits to force traffic elsewhere...
Cheers for this, road hierarchy is something I've known about for a while but not really bothered with because it sounded like a hassle, this visual breakdown certainly gave me some tips on getting more serious with it. Subscribed!
Thank you so much for this information. I'm newer at building in Cities and have been laying out my roads all wrong. I have a city that I was scratching my head on how to make traffic better and was actually making it worse. Time to fix based off of this. Thank you so much.
Really awesome and easy-to-follow advice. I love how this game just continues to get better the more you play. there’s so much theory that can lend to learning how to “build better”, but a total newb can still have fun starting too
the first video of yours i stumbled across was the tutoria series and while i was faring ok just based off fixing my own daily gripes with connectivity and accessibility, definitely was making the error of putting the ploppable facilities on main roads which i realized from watching that series. have had 0 traffic issues since i started putting them on locals with good access to collectors. it is such a blast seeing my cities bustling with activity and good traffic flow 🤭
I'm a civil engineering student myself and I take my major on Transportation and Traffic Management. This game is one of the reasons that makes me want to learn this in college LOL. I've got the basics, I try to use the hierarchy and it works the same as the theory, but I still sometimes can't decide to place some of the buildings on the road. Your zoning makes sense, but for the aesthetic of the game sometimes it's a bit tricky to place some things that can make traffic jam, and now I know why there are still some traffic jam close to my public services. Thanks a bunch Bro for the tip. For the upcoming content, can you please discuss about modes (Transit Oriented Dev), I know how they function in real life but I haven't been able to applied it correctly in the game (Especially Air and Water Transportations).
that's an excellent approach to a subject many youtubers approach, but you addressed it much more professionally (referring to this essential access/mobility concept)
I feel like highways by in large are too prominent a feature in the wider landscape. They're entirely devoid of access function and have a variety of sub classes that mar everything from rural spans to the densest city hubs. I'm certain progress toward an in-between for highways and arterial is being well considered by some but on the whole the idea of a highway is still that through put giving way to nothing. It would be excellent to see an increase in flanking roads and slipways and to translate our very widest of roadways servicing the the commercial sprawl sector. It's obvious that many major roadways are used as the go between from local to highway and while traffic can enhance a business district I think those enlarged road ways cause more problems for passage as well as patron access. Hoping some day to get my hands on CS to test some options on improving fading the boundary between different road transit systems.
I did not think I would be so engaged by this. I love city builders and something about hearing the real-life application makes it even more interesting
Was sent here via a Biffa recommendation and thoroughly enjoyed it. The best demo of road use that I have seen. You seem to really know your stuff. Subscribed.
Your videos have helped me alot. Even though I don't have the mods that you used on Bluffside Crossing I still feel like I'm improving. I did know how to play cities skylines but only at a pretty much basic level. Your district zoning video and this one have helped me significantly. Keep up the good work.
Thanks so much for the video, I have entire neighborhoods where I just divided it with the large roads and then used the small roads for everything. I’ll use this in my next city ty!
Oh cool I think I just became your 1000th subscriber! Loving the channel so far. Can't wait to see what else you put out. As a console pleb it's always nice to see tutorials that don't use 100+ mods
Woot woot! Thanks so much for subscribing! Especially being #1000! I have an Xbox Series S coming on launch day and plan on starting a series there. We'll see how the transition goes.... 😀
Would love to see you take a look at the roads in Manila where it's notorious for traffic jams. A 15-minute drive from Quezon City to Makati would take 4-5 hours because of traffic, particularly if you're going through the main arterial road of Metro Manila: EDSA. The main solution they are doing to remedy the traffic is to build lots and lots of flyovers. It would be great seeing you come up with better road layouts :D
@@CityPlannerPlays Yes! Would love to see that. Can be any city with bad planning/ traffic jam then you can show how it could be better using CS. I tried doing that to my city but I don't know anything about city planning 😂
I feel like I am using this video as a course book with my game as a midterm project... I appreciate your effort in educating us here! Love your unbelievable level of patience and dedication! I can only hope that every city in the world has at least one person like you! Thank the City Planner! PS How useful would it be to have in-game road selection menu follow these principles? I just realized I have no idea what roads are arterials, what are collectors...
Great video man, I utilize road hierarchy in my builds as best I can but your explanation definitely helped me understand how to implement it better. Appreciate the information!
@@GoneGamingBadfishBiggest piece of advise is something you probably already do - make sure that you have a couplet pair in most situations unless you're trying to direct traffic away from some place specifically. Also, if you're going to use them like they are collectors or arterials, minimize crossings to the greatest extent you can.
One of the advantages of your build is that it occurs out west. When I lived out there, I was amazed how easy it was to learn cities because of their layout and use of hierarchy principles. Seems like you've done a great job of doing that in your videos, too!
That was very, very, very informative and easy to follow. Thank you! Now, I just need to see if I can put into practice in a game starting from scratch and going thru each milestone. Using these ideas plus what I've learned from Biffa should get my cities to have 85-90% traffic.
Absolutely! You can always start out with locals (even dirt roads) and upgrade them over time, so long as you know the end-stage classification of the roadway so you set access appropriately. Good luck!
Going back and playing some SC4 and wow, I need to somehow take the knowledge you have and plant it in my brain somehow. This is something I would love to get a grip on as my current level of planning is ... rather lacking to say the least.
Nice explanation of the theory and use cases for different road types! Btw I've been placing services like hospitals on local roads since I noticed that vehicles have problems entering the buildings. If they have to turn left to enter the building, they can only do that on local roads. On roads with more lanes, they have to circle around the block in order to turn right to get in. I think that causes unnecessary delays for the service vehicles and more road traffic.
Yeah Cities Skylines, i'm in love with this game and laughing because if you saw my city you would probably go crazy - I mean there's tunnels and highways everywhere because of the intense traffic LMAO, but i'm learning a lot too :D thx
might've helped to use game terminology to define the roads for casual players like myself. great video though, thanks for trying to explain this. i always screw up traffic.
Same. Technically Highways are arterials, so skipping to collectors isn't a problem. I do it all the time and it happens all the time in the real world!
Do you use the principles of roadway hierarchy when you design your roadway networks?
Yep I use them. I am going so far in that I even think about how much traffic there would be in REAL life, so it looks realistic. But this was the best vid I have ever seen about this topic!
Nope but I probably should..
I haven't finished the video yet, but I wanted to point out that at 4:48 the video restarts back at the beginning.
I have been a lot more deliberate with my new build about road hierarchy and when I see I didnt place a road where my cims would like to drive I tear everything out and start again lol
Nope, but perfect video, that might expain why my baby with 500K citizens doesn't beat 80% ... ;-)
Great city name 😉
But Biffa, where are the roundabouts?
@@settyoce155 I watch so much Biffa the lack of highway exit roundabouts really took my brain a minute to accept.
It really rolls of the tongue hahah
It may not be the most aesthetically pleasing city, but it has rules and will abide by them AND will let you know what the rules are with it's name! Ha!
I never thought that the answer for all those mind boggling traffic was just outside of our houses IRL.
Me with all dirt roads: "Yeah I think I'm fine buddy, thanks."
Then comes the inevitable question at the 10K+ population levels: "Why are so much traffic getting clogged on my dirt roads?".
I've actually had much better traffic flow in all dirt cities. Shows how poorly they programmed the game.
LUL
@@mikeh2850 dirt roads are even, steady, flow. Traffic occurs whenever flow is funneled or slowed, so dirt roads shouldnt ever see much traffic unless you have few access points to a separated zoned area because the traffic never gets fast enough or dense enough to block up
Must be a Democrat mayor lol
I've enjoyed watching Bluffside Crossing develop, but I'm REALLY into theoretical videos like this one. Roadway hierarchy, intersection design, highway interchange design, dropping the city planner knowledge bombs... that's what I'm after. Thanks for the content!
That's GREAT feedback. I enjoy putting together both types of videos, but I do find this to be a bit more stimulating due to the amount of pre-planning and video editing that goes into it. That said, I'm quiet obviously a novice with video editing... so I better get much better if I'm going to do more of these. 🙂 There will be more in the future though, that's for sure!
@@CityPlannerPlays Seconded that notion. More of these, please!
@@CityPlannerPlays Could you do a series of key city planning theory that is in Cities?
I understand the hierachy. just gets harder to remember to use it when building
Absolutely! I have to remind myself sometimes, too. If I don't remember, the traffic will remind me... 🙂
Same. Especially when you build for looks...
the more you practice it, the easier it gets ... understanding where 'freeway' should go is easy, arterials from there lead to the zones where you build/zone on
I also find its very helpful to build along the contour of the land, road hierarchy tends to take up a lot of space and its easier to make the space it takes up fit the space it has to go on, than to try to force grids for max building space
I have made mental maps of what my city configuration(s) will be, @@CityPlannerPlays, only to completely forget them all when playing. I typically go for grids for Commercial, Industrial, and low end Residential. The more natural configuration(s) I do for the rich people. Gotta make the rich people happy. Otherwise they will not finance your Mayoral campaigns. Hah!
Still my biggest Cities: Skylines sin is I do not often buy up new tiles and branch out that way. I typically stick with the initial tile and wind up cramming *everything* into said tile. Why? I do not know. I have also noticed a long time that it is best to just go with whatever the map needs you to do until you earn your first two or three million dollars. From there you can probably rebuild up to your entire city from scratch to your mental map configuration(s). This is just assuming the in-game random disasters do not happen frequently enough that you are stuck with clean up and a depleted Treasury.
I know I have had to abandon some maps purely because the tsunamis were literally lining up. The first two tsunamis caused so much death and destruction that huge Emergency/Rescue building could no longer keep up. By the fourth tsunami on that one map even that building could no longer take it anymore and crumbled then washed away. Ironic, really.
Same. I usually do ok with the hierarchy, it's the fine-grained detail of the traffic lights and yield signs that I find less intuitive...
Honestly if I ever was an urban planning student in college, this would be a pretty fun, interactive, and efficient way of understanding fundamentals and principles of roadway hierarchy. It's amazing how much we can learn from these videos.
Im on my 3rd year in BS Civil Engineering. Watching this for my introduction for highway and railway engineering course.
Holy cow, it is finally fixed! Thanks for the patience everyone!
I finally found an answer I didn’t know I had a question for. Why my hometowns hospital/PD/FD was on “side streets”
bro now that I read your comment, both hospitals in my city are placed exactly like this, one right on the corner to an arterial with hw access and one on a sidestreet right next to the biggest collector, sick.
The BEST explained “Road Hierarchy” and “Road Utilization” video I’ve seen yet! Well done!! I have 400 hours in to the game, but have a gift for messing this up on EVERY city 😂
Thank you! I'll have to show my first City at some point. It has it's issues, even with hierarchy, ha!
Me using nothing but collector roads in my whole city now i understand why i have 10 years long traffic jams, thanks for showing 🤘
After watching your city building in many of the videos you have, I changed my road building and with that simple change went from 25%-30% to having 80%+ and being able to complete the game. Thank you.
Thumbs up for Biffa, looks like he supporting other CS builders channels. I like that 👍👍
It's crazy now I get why my traffic doesn't get to bad. I instinctively was playing the game just like this lol
Haha! Maybe you should look at a career in regional transportation planning! 😀
@@CityPlannerPlays And we play with TMPE despawning disabled! No cars will be removed when traffic gets bad. The vanilla game will remove some cars from the roads when there is a major traffic jam. Therefore a gridlock will never occur. With despawning off, gridlocks in badly designed cities are very common in game.
Same, honestly. XD IRL, I know *my* city is laid out like this.
This video caused so much inner dialogue like, "you know you know this, yet here you are not doing it." Sometimes we just need to keep hearing the same message
I loved learning the concepts! I have seen them a lot in Biffa's videos but with a detailed and focused example like this is much clearer. Now I would love to turn my organically messy and disorganised town into a sister city of Roadway Hierarchyville
I hope you come up with a better name than I did 😂
Having such a quality game for this guy to share his knowledge is a great benefit to the world community. As a kid we learned about “the people in our neighborhood,” but this was an over generalized list of doctors and construction workers. I love that this channel is so entertaining and that it also gives me an appreciation for the people who make significant decisions in my city. Also, knowing more about why roads are designed the way they are makes them much less frustrating to travel on, haha.
Probably the best explanation I've seen about road hierarchy.
My only point is regarding noise pollution. What's generating it are the high density comercial buildings, not the roads itself. I know it has some impact, but probably not that much in the game.
Also, it seems that the video loops at 4:50 (or close to it).
Thanks for sharing ☺️
Shoot! Trimmed the video, so the loop should be gone.... someday. Ha. Thanks for watching!
@@CityPlannerPlays loop still here 😞
Noise pollution. high density commercial buildings beget traffic that generates the noise. If anything this year has taught us, the road truly is passive. Manhattan Island (or any city in the world) showed us how quiet it can be when there are no people, cars, busses, trains, etc.
You explained this very well!! You can see you have lots of experience in real life. Congrats on nearly 1K, and I just want to let you know that when I finish school I want to be a city planner myself!
Thank you! And go for it! It's a wonderful field!
I thought this video was easy to follow and well explained. I do think, though a counterexample would make it even more effective.
I used to be horrible at this when I started playing. I'm not sure what made it finally click for me, but road hierarchy is vital for me now. I guess doing it wrong so many times gave me a good framework to know what bad design looked like.
Heck of a point. I should have added that. Perhaps even just a reference to the Fix the Traffic scenario, ha!
@@CityPlannerPlays That scenario annoys me because it's not the way I usually see people fail at this. Half the problem in that city is the highway junction is just unrealistically bad -- it has two ramps for the same direction, and none for the other one. (That then causes traffic to make two lefts in a diamond service interchange elsewhere to U-turn, which is about the worst possible traffic pattern you can have in CSL.)
Since it's not hard to make a bad one, I think it's better to just make it yourself to demonstrate. Then you can have all the usual things, like inexplicably using a grid of 32m roads in low-density residential, having the zoning in massive blocks instead of mixing them, having the residential close to the highway and the industry far from it, a big block of specialized industry on a resource field far from the rest of the city, ...
(Most of which I made in my first city 😬)
Ok, so
this is officially my favorite City Skylines channel. I was looking for something like this for so long. Great video!
Thank you! I appreciate that!
Paused the video at 2:24 and just kept glancing at my other monitor while I built my city, not to exact replica of course, but I used the hierarchy and relatively the same roads. Currently have 3,000 population and 90% traffic flow. Best road layout video guide I've watched. Beginner tips especially for new cities, interchanges, interchanges, INTERCHANGES. Highway/Arterial speed is crucial.
Seems he added the first piece twice, that runs up to 4:50 and the second piece goes at 10:27. Anything in between is just a repeat of the first piece, so either skip to 4:50 and watch from there, or jump to 10:27 if you started from zero.
Thank you for doing this! I am trimming it out, but it takes time (potentially hours) to process!
I got so confused by this. I paused right before the repeat, and when I resumed I was like.. wait a minute. Then I thought it was a bug with TH-cam xD
@@robbasgaming7044 Nope... just a guy that is still learning how to use Premiere - ha!
@@robbasgaming7044 I thought I accidentally scrolled to the beginning! 😂😂
I found it useful to watch the first part twice as it helps me memorise it better
Super helpful information in clear, concise language. I went from having a hundred on and off ramps to having an effective network of varying levels of roads.
Didn't even notice i did something similar in my cities, i did watch some planning tips and did hear about road hierarchy but as i understood is just big road with acess to small road, with more access to smaller roads, and to avoid many connections on the larger ones. This more detailed explanation is nice to know, your layout does look like something more realistic compared to mine that had something that looked off
Great video!
The way you describe building gives me greater confidence in starting a city. First time I tried the game I got a tad overwhelmed.
just started playing.. and omg i had a long queue line all the way to the highway.. really good explanation, thank you!
The best way to build something is to get to know it's history and real life counterparts. It may seem wierd sometimes, but it is very true.
Wow I finally get it! I have been playing this game for years, and now I'm going to start from scratch. This puts all my old Cities to SHAME! Thank you!
I do take these into consideration. Then I learned more about how the Netherlands do their roadways and applied their methods with what I knew in the past into conideration.
Highways: Fast and connected large areas, few connection and bike highways that are separated.
Roads: Fast, more connections than a highway, connecting communities, little to no driveways, separated bike lanes and no street parking.
Streets: Destination, usually 30-40km streets, street parking, sometimes separated bike lanes and people-oriented traffic calming measures.
This video was mindblowing for me, it really change my way of building cities, i always had traffic's mess and the game experience was desmotivating. Now, with medium cities (60k-100k cims) my traffic flow is upper 80%-85% and the game is again really fun. Thanks a lot!!! (Regards from Argentina)
That's awesome!!! Thanks for watching
As for myself, I can rest easy on 70-80% after I reached over 50K pop, lol.
Keep coming back to this and still learning things, thanks.
This video alone helped me get my traffic from 46% up to 83%!! Thank you! It's such a simple thing but so easy to overlook. This game keeps amazing me with its depth
I love watching your videos while playing Skylines. Makes it feel like I'm building a city with a planner right next to me to give advice
City planner you are awesome my love of this game has been rekindled. I'm an old school sim city player sim city one way back in the back back day. Eventually, around 2013 or somewhere there in, I swit her to skylines.
I know have skylines on ps4 and it had been so long since I played and city building games I was just not feeling it. However, after I found your videos I'm back at city building! Thanks for all the info and the gameplay!
Well done and well explained. I just started the game a month ago and just found your channel today, thanks to Biffa, so I am going to be busy watching a lot of your videos!
It's really a fantastic game! Just be careful or you'll sink as much time into it as I have 🙂
Thanks for watching and enjoy!
@@CityPlannerPlays I have sunk a tremendous amount of time in it! I am trying to recreate the greater Youngstown Ohio area based off a map I downloaded from the workshop that used a height map. I thought that would be a good way to start, base it off of a real town (my hometown) but the struggle is real.....lol
I wanted to take Urban Planning at Akron (this was 15 years ago) but life threw me a curveball and I could only take one class. What you do, is so fascinating to me
I would never have known this if I didn't play this game.
The amount of micro-knowledge you can get from playing different kinds of games is just staggering.
I downloaded the game to try it out and put it back down after building one (not so functional) city. I watched one of your vids and I've been hooked since. I didn't initially realize the depth to which you could go in the game - it's actually a lot of fun to build a city with all functions running efficiently - industries, roads, commerce, etc. Your vids have helped to improve my enjoyment of the game tenfold, so thanks :)
This is becoming very educational, a quick beginner's guide in urban planning: road hierarchy.
Thank you!
Best example of road hierarchy plus the examples of how the roads are best used. Even though I already use this system of roads, this video has shown me how to better utilize the system!
This may be the MOST HELPFUL video I've seen as an intermediate player! THANK YOU!
OMG Thank you!! I was wondering if the roadways had more to do with it than " We need this road for more traffic"
This helped me allot. I'm building and not drowning in traffic and now i know what road to use when. these vids are great.
I found the Mobility - Access comparison helpful as a prompt when trying to think about road hierarchy
Hey I've been binge watching your videos and its super interesting watching you play city skylines and seeing your though process and how you approach the game. I'm really suprised how more people haven't heard of you yet. I just wanted to let you know that your content is amazing and I hope your channel grows quickly! Keep it up! 😊
Thank you! I really, really appreciate the kind words and feedback!
AWESOME VIDEO!
I went from 70% to 85%+ on traffic by using these tips.
That's awesome! Glad it worked!
makes so much sense. I always used to put the hospitals and police stations in central roads.
Once I learned it, its a great system! I was watching someone else's skylines vid and they were saying 'i really try not to have the industry trucks get in the way of everything else as best I can'
Road Hierarchy solves that issue.
Thank you! I was expecting the game to explain the basics of roads, but it immediately wanted me to build one and I just...had no idea what kind of road I needed or what layout to do yet because I didn't know anything
This is the first principles of roadway hierarchy tutorial I've seen that used as an example a city that I found appealing.
Maybe it's that I actually like gridded cities and I remember some of them being written from a perspective that stuff which looked like a suburban development hellscape to me is appealing because of its wavy roads, but I'd like to think it was because you put some time into what kinds of stuff wants to be zoned near what kind of roads.
I also have to admit that I tend to go straight from local to arterial roads, with one or the other pressed into service for double duty doing collector stuff, though. It ends up looking similar, but it mostly comes from a perspective of wanting to reduce the number of places there is (when I was playing on the Switch, where you can't them off) or ought to be stoplights.
the mobility and access comparison really helps on how and why it works. Great video.
This just made everything make sense and the game just got a lot more playable, thank you so much!
I started watching this channel because I am literally terrible at making highway entrances/exits. (Also bad at road setup in general)
Lol. But you are right, he explains it very well
Practice makes perfect! Keep playing and you'll keep building better things. Thanks for watching!
I played cities skylines a little when it came out but recently got back into it.
And I have to say that your videos really helped me understand the game better and I'm building my city with a lot more ease and more profit as a result :)
Thanks for these great videos!
This is the best explanation video on youtube!
I observed it myself during my years of playing this and have been following it through trail and error, but you have articulated it nicely, it makes sense.
Thank you!
Dude, I just love this laugh of yours 8:50. Feels like a father telling everything is ok
This is awesome. I've been into city builders for a while now, starting with the classic Sim City, but I always winged it, and when things didn't pan out I'd seek out walkthroughs and tips.
I've only recently discovered this channel, and it has helped so much. I'm still learning, but knowing how things work has made playing Cities: Skylines even more enjoyable than ever.
Awesome videos and thanks for your work.
I've been sent here by Biffa.
Welcome!
Have a sip of tea, friend!! ☕️
What video of biffa’s?
@@Zipplandia No video, a recommendation of him one week ago.
Oh ok, thanks for replying
I still struggle with road hierarchy but I feel like each time I build a new city or new area, I get a little bit better at it. This video helps but I feel like I'm going to have to watch it several more times in the future.
The game sucks for me. No matter how small you start out, your always broke. Absolutely frustrating.
Well its time for me to have a lot of major renovation of my city of 150k people in cities skylines. I learned a lot from this. Thank you.
I love going through and doing that! I think it's a tune of fun to keep iterating on things that I've built. The space constraints that you generally have in a built up city keep things interesting, too.
You're doing pretty well to get up to 150k without doing this!
@@namelessfellow I always thought that I could just make one big road with a few 2 way roads junction will work. But they always ended up using the closes 2 way road junction and get stuck. But learning this. I just redesigned everything and they flow much better. I lost like 45k people but it much better to make plans using this method.
@@juliusbenter2369 Yeah, a big part of the problem IMHO is that the speeds of the different roads aren't different enough. The small 2-lane road is 40 km/h and the medium 4-lane road is 50 km/h, and that's just not enough of a difference to get traffic to stay on a collector rather than just winding through the local roads. (And the 6-lane road is 60km/h, so they won't really stay on the arterials either.) The last city I was playing with I ended up making some of the junctions one-way near the highway exits to force traffic elsewhere...
@@namelessfellow Yeah, Thank god for mods. you can change the speeds of roads
Cheers for this, road hierarchy is something I've known about for a while but not really bothered with because it sounded like a hassle, this visual breakdown certainly gave me some tips on getting more serious with it. Subscribed!
Thank you!
I knew nothing about road hierarchy but now that i do i'm gonna try and use it as much as i can
Thank you so much for this information. I'm newer at building in Cities and have been laying out my roads all wrong. I have a city that I was scratching my head on how to make traffic better and was actually making it worse. Time to fix based off of this. Thank you so much.
No problem! Thanks for watching!!
Really awesome and easy-to-follow advice. I love how this game just continues to get better the more you play. there’s so much theory that can lend to learning how to “build better”, but a total newb can still have fun starting too
I kind of intuitively do this, but this video helped me visualize layout and road grid structure much better.
the first video of yours i stumbled across was the tutoria series and while i was faring ok just based off fixing my own daily gripes with connectivity and accessibility, definitely was making the error of putting the ploppable facilities on main roads which i realized from watching that series. have had 0 traffic issues since i started putting them on locals with good access to collectors. it is such a blast seeing my cities bustling with activity and good traffic flow 🤭
This is a good video. I never liked compact cities like this. I always give plenty of space between different zones and districts.
I'm a civil engineering student myself and I take my major on Transportation and Traffic Management. This game is one of the reasons that makes me want to learn this in college LOL. I've got the basics, I try to use the hierarchy and it works the same as the theory, but I still sometimes can't decide to place some of the buildings on the road. Your zoning makes sense, but for the aesthetic of the game sometimes it's a bit tricky to place some things that can make traffic jam, and now I know why there are still some traffic jam close to my public services. Thanks a bunch Bro for the tip.
For the upcoming content, can you please discuss about modes (Transit Oriented Dev), I know how they function in real life but I haven't been able to applied it correctly in the game (Especially Air and Water Transportations).
Your laugh is so comforting 😆
that's an excellent approach to a subject many youtubers approach, but you addressed it much more professionally (referring to this essential access/mobility concept)
Thank you! I know this topic has been approached by others, but I thought that these were important issues to touch on.
2:26 took a picture of this diagram for reference. Soooo helpful!
I feel like highways by in large are too prominent a feature in the wider landscape. They're entirely devoid of access function and have a variety of sub classes that mar everything from rural spans to the densest city hubs. I'm certain progress toward an in-between for highways and arterial is being well considered by some but on the whole the idea of a highway is still that through put giving way to nothing. It would be excellent to see an increase in flanking roads and slipways and to translate our very widest of roadways servicing the the commercial sprawl sector. It's obvious that many major roadways are used as the go between from local to highway and while traffic can enhance a business district I think those enlarged road ways cause more problems for passage as well as patron access.
Hoping some day to get my hands on CS to test some options on improving fading the boundary between different road transit systems.
I did not think I would be so engaged by this. I love city builders and something about hearing the real-life application makes it even more interesting
One of the best tutorials ever. Thank you so much
Was sent here via a Biffa recommendation and thoroughly enjoyed it. The best demo of road use that I have seen. You seem to really know your stuff. Subscribed.
Glad you enjoyed it! I know this has been done before, but I thought I could bring some other info. Glad you thought so, too!
I learn so much from your videos...and then I go scrap my current city 🤣😂🤣
*Opens latest city* "I gotta redo everything"
Great info, Thank you!
Your videos have helped me alot. Even though I don't have the mods that you used on Bluffside Crossing I still feel like I'm improving. I did know how to play cities skylines but only at a pretty much basic level. Your district zoning video and this one have helped me significantly. Keep up the good work.
I've tried using the road hierarchy in my current city ! It really helps!
Thanks so much for the video, I have entire neighborhoods where I just divided it with the large roads and then used the small roads for everything. I’ll use this in my next city ty!
No problem! Let me know hjow it goes!
Oh cool I think I just became your 1000th subscriber! Loving the channel so far. Can't wait to see what else you put out. As a console pleb it's always nice to see tutorials that don't use 100+ mods
Woot woot! Thanks so much for subscribing! Especially being #1000! I have an Xbox Series S coming on launch day and plan on starting a series there. We'll see how the transition goes.... 😀
Would love to see you take a look at the roads in Manila where it's notorious for traffic jams. A 15-minute drive from Quezon City to Makati would take 4-5 hours because of traffic, particularly if you're going through the main arterial road of Metro Manila: EDSA. The main solution they are doing to remedy the traffic is to build lots and lots of flyovers. It would be great seeing you come up with better road layouts :D
Yikes! I'm going to look into it. I love seeing how other countries plan their cities!
@@CityPlannerPlays Yes! Would love to see that. Can be any city with bad planning/ traffic jam then you can show how it could be better using CS. I tried doing that to my city but I don't know anything about city planning 😂
@@CityPlannerPlays planning is an insult to call Philippine Road Network lol.
dude, the glow up from this video to now 👍 nice
I feel like I am using this video as a course book with my game as a midterm project... I appreciate your effort in educating us here! Love your unbelievable level of patience and dedication! I can only hope that every city in the world has at least one person like you! Thank the City Planner!
PS How useful would it be to have in-game road selection menu follow these principles? I just realized I have no idea what roads are arterials, what are collectors...
okay, cant wait to build a city with this!
I love your videos so much. I love Cities but I am mostly fascinated by your POV.
Thank you so much! I appreciate the kind words!
Definitely some great things to keep in mind, I'm going to share this video with a friend that's just getting in to this game
Great video man, I utilize road hierarchy in my builds as best I can but your explanation definitely helped me understand how to implement it better. Appreciate the information!
Also any advice on how to effectively utilize one ways? I know for me they can get a little tricky!
@@GoneGamingBadfishBiggest piece of advise is something you probably already do - make sure that you have a couplet pair in most situations unless you're trying to direct traffic away from some place specifically. Also, if you're going to use them like they are collectors or arterials, minimize crossings to the greatest extent you can.
One of the advantages of your build is that it occurs out west. When I lived out there, I was amazed how easy it was to learn cities because of their layout and use of hierarchy principles. Seems like you've done a great job of doing that in your videos, too!
this should hopefully relieve my city of traffic jams
That was very, very, very informative and easy to follow. Thank you! Now, I just need to see if I can put into practice in a game starting from scratch and going thru each milestone. Using these ideas plus what I've learned from Biffa should get my cities to have 85-90% traffic.
Absolutely! You can always start out with locals (even dirt roads) and upgrade them over time, so long as you know the end-stage classification of the roadway so you set access appropriately. Good luck!
Going back and playing some SC4 and wow, I need to somehow take the knowledge you have and plant it in my brain somehow. This is something I would love to get a grip on as my current level of planning is ... rather lacking to say the least.
Nice explanation of the theory and use cases for different road types!
Btw I've been placing services like hospitals on local roads since I noticed that vehicles have problems entering the buildings. If they have to turn left to enter the building, they can only do that on local roads. On roads with more lanes, they have to circle around the block in order to turn right to get in. I think that causes unnecessary delays for the service vehicles and more road traffic.
Yeah Cities Skylines, i'm in love with this game and laughing because if you saw my city you would probably go crazy - I mean there's tunnels and highways everywhere because of the intense traffic LMAO, but i'm learning a lot too :D thx
Super helpful info about local roads, I was doing this entirely wrong.
Glad it was helpful!
City Planner: Do you use road hierarchy?
Me; I do now!
might've helped to use game terminology to define the roads for casual players like myself. great video though, thanks for trying to explain this. i always screw up traffic.
The most heart-breaking moment for me in CS: gotta choose either parking spots or trees. Like choosing between beer and salty peanuts.
These are good tips. Personally, I almost never zone the arterials. If anything, just infrastructure buildings on those.
Same. Technically Highways are arterials, so skipping to collectors isn't a problem. I do it all the time and it happens all the time in the real world!
Good info. I can see why I have problems with my traffic ☺️
This video was very informative and I will definitely try this next time I play.
Thanks! Good luck!