What is Lane Mathematics? | Cities: Skylines | Ep. 12
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 21 ก.ค. 2024
- What is lane mathematics? In this episode we explore the basics of lane mathematics and work through a few examples in our city including applying it to our two-level roundabout interchange featured in episode 11!
0:00 Introduction
0:58 Basics of Lane Mathematics
3:08 Example #1
4:30 Example #2
9:35 Results
10:47 Problem #1
12:08 Problem #2
13:52 Outro
Biffa Plays Indie Games
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How to use Lane Mathematics to Control Traffic in Cities Skylines!
• What is Lane Mathemati...
Fixing BROKEN Traffic Using "Lane Mathematics" in Cities Skylines
• Fixing BROKEN Traffic ...
AMAZING Fix From 17% to Almost 90% Traffic in Cities Skylines!!!
• AMAZING Fix From 17% t...
Cities: Skylines is a city-building game developed by Colossal Order and published by Paradox Interactive.
Copyright © 2018 Paradox Interactive AB. www.paradoxplaza.com
Music used in this video is from the Cities: Skylines (Original Game Soundtrack) composed by Paradox Interactive.
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Just found this video, great explanation 👍 😁
Cheers Biffa, thanks for watching the video and taking the time to leave a comment! It's not quite as effective without mods but the principle behind it is still the same :)
Yooooo bifa
@@harrisonjensen8179 mods?
Hey Harrison ... no mods here - only DLC. The types of roads and what DLC they come from should be readily available from the Cities Skylines wiki!
This is a sore spot for me with Cities. When I'm just having fun, being creative and building a city, the game at some point just turns into a traffic simulator.
I agree, it could be a little more forgiving. Let's hope they make some improvements to the AI in the next Cities: Skylines! Welcome to the channel John Lacy!
In real life there are always traffic jams as well. So I wouldn't bother trying to go for perfect efficiency.
A lot of players play it because it is basically a traffic simulator. The city building is just a side quest to them.
I agree! My city isn't perfect and there are some small backups but anything is short lived and things are flowing smoothly.
Haha, that's an interesting way of looking at it!
The more highway entrances you add, the more lanes you add. What a simple concept! I like it!
Hey Gamesational - thanks for stopping by and leaving a comment! It seems to work relatively well too ... it would work better and be easier with mods but it works well enough without!
As a console player, it’s very frustrating to not be able to control what lanes are available after a merge onto a two-way road. Less ‘lane mathematics’ and more ‘lane gymnastics’
haha, that's a good analogy! The traffic manager mod is an extremely powerful tool - I wish it was added to the game at some point. For now we'll just have to hope the AI is happy with whatever interchanges we make. Thanks for taking the time to leave a comment Chris!
No bs
I try to keep it to a minimum! :)
Once you get into heavy traffic it's not just about lane mathematics but more about Fluid Dynamics. You need to know when to go big and when to go small, when and where to put a bypass, what can compress and what can expand traffic and why you would want to do it, etc.
Hey Lander1 I like that comparison! It's almost like highway plumbing :)
@@jester.Gaming "The virtual highway is just a series of tubes..."
My dude between you and the Bifa I've learned more about traffic then I ever thought was possible. I still prefer your channel over anyone's else's just because you make it a whole lot easier for me to comprehend then any other City Skylines creator. You have become my go to guy for information and advice on everything City Skylines.
👊😎👍
I'm happy you're learning about traffic Randall! It's a very important part of the game. Without decent traffic in your city your services and citizens will have trouble reaching their destination and the city will start to deteriorate and eventually fail. I hope my future videos will be just as helpful! Thank you for your continued support!
"Lane Mathematics" almost made me skip this - but I'm really glad I didn't. Upsizing then downsizing highway lanes seem counterproductive, but I can see the logic in forcing vehicles to choose a dedicated lane to offramp/onramp rather than compete against through traffic. Well presented video on what is easily the hardest part of the game.
Thanks Andrew, I'm glad you decided to check it out! Welcome to the channel!
I've seen the principals behind lane mathematics at work while driving in several real-life cities. Note how often you see "Exit Only" and "Lane Ends" lane signs on either side of an intersection.
That's very true Steven Morton!
Exactly, you have to force the little dumb sims to do what they must
A way to force traffic to go where you want is to change road types and make your desired route the quickest, the highway ramp has a 80 kph limit, good for the bypass ramps, and use an urban road with 50-60 kph limit for the roundabout ramps.
Hey Make It Go - that's great advice! The AI should always choose the quickest path to their destination. As far as I know they do not take into account traffic but rather distance and speed. Thanks for taking the time to leave a comment!
IRL highways generally do not touch the number of through lanes, they only add merge lanes to help with merging.
I remember reading a forum a long long time ago, where a traffic engineer explained traffic engineering. One thing he explained was that you generally should not touch the number of through lanes on a highway. There's the issue of surprising drivers that their lane becomes an off-ramp in 1/4 mile. And that exit ramp may not divert enough traffic to justify taking away a full through lane (I think that's like 99% of exit ramps out there?).
Where I live we have some "exit only" lanes on the highway that do not continue after the offramp but there is plenty of signage for a considerable distance before reaching the exit. There can be both single lane exits as well as double lane where one lane is exit only and the other is not. I've been learning a lot about traffic, streets, and highways all over the world from comments on my videos ... interesting stuff!
IMO Traffic Manager's tools should have been in vanilla. Not being able to set lane arrows, decide whether you want to allow pedestrians to cross an intersection or not and speed limits are all things we should be able to do without needing a mod.
Anyhow, you have a clear way of explaining things which is a very good skill to have.
Thanks Jason!
I totally agree - there are a few mods out there that are extremely useful and should be incorporated into the game. Maybe Cities: Skylines 2! :)
@@jester.Gaming In the meanwhile, thank heavens for mods and the Steam Workshop so we can add the essentials in ourselves.
That's very true - the workshop is an amazing resource! Even though I don't use it very much I still like to look through the awesome stuff people have created!
Since nobody's said this yet.... at 12:30, you're talking about how you don't know why the traffic is going up onto the roundabout instead of using the slip lane. It's because of the lane mathematics. 4-lane to 3-lane creates a designated turning lane. 3-lane to 2-lane creates a designated turning lane. However, in the bigger picture, 4-lane down to 2-lane basucally creates TWO designated turning lanes. They're just spaced one node apart because of that 3-lane section. So the 4-lane has 2 lanes going straight, 1 lane turning, and 1 lane going straight, but being forced to turn in the next section where the 3-lane has a dssignated turning lane. Hope that makes sense 🙂
Hey Seth - sorry for taking so long to respond. I think I understand what you're saying. Do you think the cars in the 1 lane going straight don't realize there is a forced turn ahead and are eventually unable to change lanes since there isn't a node for them to do so? That's an interesting idea and may be one of the factors contributing to it! Thank you for taking the time to leave a comment and trying to help solve the problem!
I think it has more to do with the flaws in the AI that calculate what lane a car is in at any given time. It’s the same flaw that causes major backups if you don’t use lane mathematics at all. IE: Cars that are in the left lane that wait until they are at the exit they need and try to suddenly change lanes to get off.
This is why traffic manager is so commonly used. The lane restrictions feature should totally be implemented in the base game.
I agree Michael! The AI is really good but could use some improvements. I think we are somewhat limited in what we can do without mods... and even with mods I'm sure it isn't perfect. Thanks for taking the time to leave a comment!
A whole video on what Biffa came up with! I love it XD I can't imagine this game without Traffic Manager.
hey Gareth, thanks for leaving a comment! I had two people in my previous video mention that I should be using "lane mathematics" on the the interchange I made .... I had no idea what it was so I thought it might be a good topic for a video! I've never actually used traffic manager but it does look really useful :)
Lmao Biffe didnt came up with the principle, its just common sense and is used in all motorways irl
Hey Joachim - do you know what it might be called in the real world? The name lane mathematics seems to be something that Biffa came up with but I can't find reference to it anywhere else other than his videos
Yeah, Biffa came up with the term for Cities Skylines. Obvs he didn't come up with the idea as he is not older than roads!
@@Incogneto1981 I'm not even sure biffa came up with the term. I've seen an old skylines video by some random dude who did it before biffa even started his fix videos. I think that guy may have used the term as well. It pays to be popular.
Started playing skylines last week. Thank you for your super useful content!
You're welcome Rory, thanks for stoping by and leaving a comment. Welcome to the channel and Cities: Skylines!
This is way more illuminating, thank you bro.
Tumzaem! Welcome back - thanks for the comment, I'm glad you liked it!
Bro when I moved to a big city I nearly shit my pants when I saw an 8 lane highway
Haha, there aren't too many here either but the ones we have are usually pretty busy. Thanks for leaving a comment Tony!
In Most European big cities you don’t get 8 lane roads move there
I think cities like that benefit from a pretty good public transportation network and don't need to have such big highways!
@@jester.Gaming When a city needs to add a highway, or lanes to a highway, it really needs transit. Cars are incredibly inefficient in mass.
@@montyandmaryv9340 certain of the German autobahns get that big, near Munich iirc.
Nice tutorial! I'm so binging your whole CS series.
Thanks Явор Съм, welcome to the channel! :)
This.. makes so much sense .. thank you for making this video!!
You're very welcome Ernest S, welcome to the channel!
Congestion on my highways is rarely an issue, with or without mods. It’s the city itself, no matter how I do my intersections, policies, walkways and public transit...I get gridlock every time. Roundabouts with or without sliplanes, timed lights you name it and I’ve tried it.
Uh oh! I've seen a few cities with congestion on the highway but that's usually a result of the traffic in the city being bad enough that it backs up onto the highway! If you haven't checked it out already I have a video about using the principles of road hierarchy to design a road layout (th-cam.com/video/lJYPcXB8PcQ/w-d-xo.html). Lakewood is currently at about ... 70k population (I think) and traffic is sitting around 85-90%. Welcome to the channel Ender7j!
@@jester.Gaming I will watch that for sure and thank you :). Subbed
RE your roundabout interchange, they actually work best as ovals (see any bog standard British one) where the bridges over the highway are straighter and the collector roads join at the curves. That way (especially in vanilla) you can join them directly to the roundabout without the need for highway slips, solving your u turn problem. You also need more room between entrance and exit slips. A good rule of thumb for the number of lanes on a roundabout is the total number of roads connecting to it -1. So three lanes would be good for yours. If the junction gets busy, use the stop sign built into the game (under traffic routes) to force joining traffic to give way to the traffic already on the roundabout.
hi mattthepie, thank you for taking the time to post some feedback and advice! I don't think I've ever built an oval roundabout (or seen one). The area that I live in doesn't have any of these as far as I know. It's definitely something I will consider next time I need a roundabout interchange on the highway. Welcome to the channel!
I love that kamikaze entry at 80mph 0:24
haha a little bit wobbly coming into that turn ... top heavy with that hotdog on the roof :D
Another way to fix the issue with cars taking the roundabout rather than the slip lane is to make the roundabout slower, can be done with traffic manager but also by just downgrading to a normal 2 lane one-way road. That should also fix it
Hey Justin, thanks for the tip! Unfortunately since I'm not using mods traffic manager isn't an option! I did try to change the lane type and make the roundabout slower than the slip lane but they didn't seem to care. Someone else suggested that it may have been because they wanted to end up in the left hand lane when they got to the collector road. I honestly have no idea at this point. I may not revisit it for some time though ... especially if there isn't any traffic issues. I'll go through the comments and try everyones suggestion if I do though!
I've always thought of lane mathematics as not having more lanes go into fewer lanes, so I care more about not having a 6 lane one way into a local 2 lane road than a local road going into a 6 lane one way.
Hey Joe, that's good advice - thank you for sharing! I think you're right and reducing the number of lanes has way more of a negative effect than increasing them. Welcome to the channel!
Instead of reducing lanes after an exit, add a turning lane before the exit so instead of people having to merge over to stay straight (as most drivers would do), the fewer amount of drivers who are exiting can merge over to the right.
Solid idea
Lane Mathematics really work. It saves my city without mod. I am glad. Thank you.
They do! It looks like the lanes in CS2 are going to adapt to intersections much easier than in CS1 ... I'm hoping lane mathematics will be a bit more intuitive!
One thing I noticed after using lane mathematics… I don’t work, you see, when I add a lane to the highway the IA says “oh, look at that, I’m going to get to this new line with incoming traffic creating a caos just because It is the outside line even if I will make more sense to go in the middle lane” and some minutes after I have this beautiful traffic jam that goes though 3 highways, 6 districts and thought the lonely office zone no one knows why, which is well what the base game already does
Uh oh Zalicmis, that sounds terrible. The traffic AI isn't the greatest but it sounds like you're having a harder time than most! Are you playing on PC? You might want to try to download some mods to help with your traffic if possible.
Love it when the thumbnail is so good you don't even have to watch the video. :-)
Haha, thanks AngellGaby, I'm glad you liked it! Welcome to the channel! :)
TMPE (mod) lets you assign those lane arrow indicators manually. It goes a long way to resolving these issues without the need for "lane mathematics"; i like this because highway "lane mathematics" can look majorly distracting and downright ugly without other aesthetic mods to hide the obvious road type transitions; I always thought this particular piece of the mod (which has a dozen or so tools in it) should have been in the base game because it's not that complicated.
The game requires a certain amount of distance and space to calculate merging for the traffic (8 units IIRC, with the standard/maximum node placement being 10 units) and this results in some awkward compromises to maintain useful/compliant mechanics over aesthetics.
There is a comprehensive road mod called CSUR which completely overhauls the road network system to better reflect intersection mechanics in reality, i definitely think it's worth checking out just to look at what a powerful and aesthetic tool it is and what it can achieve even if you're a partial vanilla player like myself who has an aversion for mods that complicate the game experience.
See: watch?v=xGu3oYIJ4_k
I'll probably grab it once i get tired of the cities i'm currently building as this feels like a constant resistance from the game when trying to have fun.
Hey grazzer88 - I totally agree! It doesn't look that good but my understanding is that it is to help the AI traverse the city. We weren't seeing any issues at the moment but they may have popped up eventually. The Cities: Skylines modding community has come up with a lot of great mods that would be awesome if they were included in the game ... maybe in the next one! Thanks for leaving a comment and welcome to the channel!
There's road assets for the very reason to please our OCD with lane mathematics. They're in this collection on the steam workshop: steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=2124252245
This is a really great and simple explanation, thank you
You're welcome Inquisitive Moat, thanks for checking out the video!
awesome explanation dude ! youre the man!
Thanks A s t o n Mubarak, welcome to the channel!
Nice, I was gonna reply in your latest video about your opinion on lane mathematics. I only did lane mathematics just this year on CS and it helps my city and also road hiearchy.
Hey Ricardo, that's awesome! I keep on learning new things for our city - it seems like the road hierarchy and lane mathematics work very well together!
Thank you very much! great explanation!
You are very welcome Davwekamel32!
It is easier to keep it simple as u can, so I always build highways in 2 lanes in beginning, widening the highways from 2 to 3 lanes depends the traffic flow volume.
Also I do the exit & entry ramps longer as more than 2 blue grids to have more buffer distance for traffic doing speed transition
That's good advice, thanks for sharing Ulysses!
Easy to understand and yes there are some limitations of the game if you don’t use mods. I think if you downgrade the roundabout from two lane highway road to two lane one way roads the traffic will use the slip exit roads as those roads will have a high speed. But an excellent efficient junction you deafly have an eye to symmetry.
Hey Carl! That was what I originally had and it didn't seem to make that much of a difference. I tried a few different configurations for the road types to try and figure it out but nothing seemed to make a difference. Shawn Smith in the comments brought up that they may have been taking that route in order to end up in the left hand turn lane. I still honestly don't know for sure. There aren't any traffic issues so I'm happy at the moment :)
Keep in mind that lane mathematics doesn't work on highways if you don't have Traffic Manager installed and dynamic lane selection active. Vanilla AI will simply split the leftmost lane(s) into 2. But the AI ALWAYS considers the entire rightmost lane an off ramp/ on ramp regardless, as long as there is any off kind of off ramp anywhere later on. (It does the same for the left lane and offramps on the left, so technically it does work there. But you shouldn't build lefthand offramps.)
Lane mathematics IS however essential for regular roads and the key to getting that 6 lane one-way road completely filled and extremely useful.
I'm missing out without using mods ... I hope they add something similar in the next Cities: Skylines (after the VR version!).
IMHO why lane mathematics is needed in the first place is that the traffic simulation is very British: Vehicles almost always tend to pick the "slowest" (outermost) lane suited for their direction. Meanwhile, it's road placement algorithm seems to have an objective to make every entry path to a node have an exit to every available exit path, making lane distribution messy for one-way roads when they meet a two-way road or two roads heading for different directions. In some sense vanilla City Skylines seems to want us not to plug highways right into city roads and think about something to distribute the traffic. (I usually end up making a few roundabouts at my highway entrances / exits)
Hey Patrick - sorry for taking so long to get back to you. I think I understand what you're saying. The AI has some problems navigating different lanes, entrances, and exits of the road network. I think you're right ... the AI is pretty decent but does have a few quirks! The transition from highway to road network was always something that I had trouble with. Thank you for the comment and welcome to the channel!
This is not the reason.
Vehicles try to get in their 'correct' lane as quick as possible and stay there in order to prevent merging into a busy lane at the last second. So a car driving a 2-lane road that needs to turn right at the end, is going to drive in the right lane. If there is a right turn before that, but the number of lanes before and after that junction is both 2, it sticks to the rightmost lane to avoid unessecary merging.
That means getting stuck behind cars slowing down to take that turn. However there is no way for the car to know if moving to the left lane is faster (cars only calculate their route at the start of the journey). If the right turn is rarely used but the left lane is actually super busy, 'doging' the turn lane would negatively impact your traffic.
Only the player knows if a dedicated turn lane is required or not. Also, just like in real life, adding lanes doesn't improve traffic flow. And just like in real life, most people THINK it does and act accordingly.
About the only other way I can see to resolve the "taking the hard right at the roundabout instead of the slip lane" issue is to build something with more of a turbine configuration rather than a roundabout. Grade separate and overlap the entrances and exits such that in order to make that "hard right", a vehicle would have to go around 3/4 of the roundabout.
I've never tried to build the turbine configuration interchange before ... it looks like it would be difficult (impossible?) without mods. I had enough difficulty as it is with this elevated roundabout trying to get everything compact and connected!
Naturally, there is a cemetery right next to the construction-heavy segment passively-aggressively watching you try to avoid it. They always find a way to get in the way :)
They do, don't they? When you first put them down you think it's in a spot that's out of the way and you'll never use but inevitably they get in the way and you need to wait for them to empty before you can move them. Thanks for taking the time to leave a comment Šime!
YAY FOR BIFFA! REPRESENT THE TRAFFIC KING
He definitely knows what he's doing, welcome to the channel Violet!
when you make slip lanes and bypasses you should use traffic manager to make the speed limit faster. for some reason cars consider road speed when looking for the best route. you can also use highway roads to make the slip lane/bypass faster and use regular roads to make the roundabout slower.
Hi Alika, thanks for stopping by and leaving a comment! That is an option that would help things out, however, I am not using any mods for this city on purpose! We will have to accept some limitations but everything is running smoothly so far :)
@@jester.Gaming nice. yea without mods you gotta use street roads for roundabouts and busy intersections. highway roads for slip lanes and bypasses.
It's too bad it isn't a feature in the game. I have seen the mod used and it is extremely useful... maybe in CS2 whenever that may be! :)
Omg Finally! Thank You!!
You're welcome David, welcome to the channel!
Veia los videos y no entendia nada. ahora con el traductor de youtube a español es otra cosa xD nuevo subcriptor. Saludos
¡Eso es genial, no sabía que existía esa función! Me alegro de que puedas disfrutar de los vídeos. ¡Bienvenido al canal! (Traductor de google).
An alternative to the last fix would be to have the on-ramp onto the roundabout after the off-ramp instead of having both at the same place. (One needs to go over the other, though, so it's also a bit difficult to do with this size of roundabout.
hey Paŭlo, thanks for taking the time to leave a suggestion! You're right - I was a little limited on space and lack of mods. Most of my issues could have been fixed relatively easily with one or both of those :)
(Sorry for long comment)
Hey,
Well it's been nice to be mentioned in a video, that's a first for me :D It was to be noted that the CS AI doesn't really like 4+_lane highways, it's usually better to limit lane mathematics to not exceed 3-lane highways, those can work with mods (but it's not really ideal).
I can give u a reason to why the cars may choose the roundabout to turn lane rather than the slip lane: they see it as the faster lane. The highway ramp has an 80Km/hr max speed whereas the 3-lane highway bit has a 100Km/hr max and with the two stretches of roads being whiten a similar length, some cars choose the "faster" lane. so maybe try downgrading that bit to 2-lane highway (Still a 100Km/hr road but it might work ... who knows!).
Something else I was going to add - but well u did it you- is that even though having 1-way (or highway ramp) as the lane to go can and will work, it's usually not as pretty and realistic as 2 or 3-lane highway + had u put it as a high way ramp going straight through some of the cars would choose to go up the roundabout when they just want to go straight, so u did well by not down-grading it to 1-lane.
And one final thing (which will actually be a bit repetitive), with your design of roads and all it shouldn't really ever get that bad of traffic, so I, personally, go for lane mathematics when I feel the roads are getting to their limits without "Mathematics". for example, when u put the merging slip lanes (one from the roundabout and one from the ramp), the 2-lane highway can "stay" for aesthetics and symmetry reasons and be upgraded in case of need. Happy building and looking forward to your next videos!
Edit : some words
yeah adjusting road speed is key when doing traffic optimization.
Hey Sami - your feedback on the last video was awesome and gave me the idea for this video so thank you for that! You don't have to apologize for the long comment!
- It's good to know that the 4-lane highway doesn't work as intended. I had honestly never used it prior to this video so I had no idea the AI didn't like it
- I played around with the interchange a little bit trying to make the slip lane faster than the lane up to the roundabout but I couldn't get the cars to switch. I didn't have a lot of time to try things out so there may have been a combination of roads that would have worked
- I had never thought about the cars going up to the roundabout and back down to skip the 1 lane highway if I had put it in... that would have been something good to talk about in the video!
- That's good advice! I'll never get to expanding the city if I continue to try and make everything work perfectly ... sometimes I should wait for it to actually break before I fix it! :D
Thanks again for your continued support Sami!
I believe the cars on the first lane should have an extra node to lane switch before the first slip lane. Maybe they were not able to switch from 1 to 4 in two nodes.
But this is guesswork on my part.
That's also possible Rodrigo, I'm not exactly sure how the AI works. They simply may not have been able to change due to the nodes on the road
If they just used Traffic Manager just for the lanes arrows would help a lot. You could take off almost everything else in the mod. And of course a lane connecter to help merging onto a highway. Other than that turn everything else off. Then for a bit better control you are changing the base game logic that much. Or hurting performance much at all.
I agree Larry - the traffic manager mod is an extremely powerful tool and works really well ... it's a shame they haven't incorporated some of the more popular mods into the game. Maybe in Cities: Skylines 2 :)
Hi Jester, I just found this video. I’ve watched a lot of Biffa but your completely vanilla take on it is interesting. I like to play using just a few mods that help the game, like traffic manager, move it, and Klyte’s fine road anarchy, fine road tools, and touch this. I’ll have to check out your other vids. Some of these other guys on YT building their completely custom cities with everything off the workshop are really good CS artists in my opinion, and are not so much playing the game.
hi Larry - thank you for the comment and support! I think some of those mods you listed should be added into the game ... they are all very useful! I'm hoping they'll be included in some way to Cities: Skylines 2 (whenever that is!). The CS artists are still very talented and fun to watch nonetheless! I don't think I could build most of the things that I see them doing :)
@@jester.Gaming yes they are very talented and I couldn’t imagine doing what they do. But what I really meant is I like to see other people playing the game and seems there aren’t many doing it completely vanilla on YT
I don't know of many either. I used to regularly watch T4rgetGaming if you haven't seen him yet. He seems to be on a bit of a hiatus at the moment though but has lots of good videos!
im realizing just now, this is a big brain players only game
Nah, I wouldn't say that - all you need is time and practice! I went through a lot of cities before I got to what I have today. Don't give up!
The reason for the 4 lane change affecting traffic in the roundabout it's because the extra lane that goes into the off ramp is an exclusive turn lane and you have an intersection before it that's too close so it doesn't give enough chance to cars that want to turn to do so at the off ramp but instead manage to change lanes past it and then are able to turn in the next possible turn which happens at the roundabout.
That's an interesting observation dietrevich and could very well be the case! Thanks for taking the time to leave a comment!
12:09 what if we upgrade the slip lane to a 2 lane road instead of downgrading the 4 lane highway? It would convert the 2nd right lane to a turn lane, and the intake road to the collector is a 3 lane due to problem 1
Hi. Good work on finding out quasi lane restrictions on vanilla ^^. Do you play vanilla only on this channel?
As for the interchange with the roundabout, i'd recommend you don't have enter and exit lanes of the roundabout in one one point. Try making the exit point before the exit point and lead it under or over the incoming lane.
Also, as a rule of thumb, have roundabouts 1 lane more than the feeding lanes and try to have dedicated exit lanes on them (lane mathematics).
Greetings from Austria! :)
Hi Max P, welcome to the channel! That's right - only vanilla with DLCs enabled (everything except for Sunset Harbour at the moment). That sounds like great advice - everything is working well at the moment though but I may have to revisit it at some point in the future if traffic starts to get bad or I need to build another interchange! :)
What's the highway lane mod you use? I don't know what keywords should I search for. Thank you.
heyううま【ねえええ】... I'm not using any mods only DLC. Most of them are from the Mass Transit DLC but there are a couple from a few others ... the list can be found here (skylines.paradoxwikis.com/Roads#List_of_road_types).
Do you have any expansions? I only have the base game and can't see different width highways.
hi rosebrambles! I do have all of the DLC installed at the moment but at the time of filming this episode I may have been missing Sunset Harbour. You can find a list of all the different road types and what DLC they come from on the official wiki page (skylines.paradoxwikis.com/Roads#List_of_road_types). The DLC is usually on sale a few times throughout the year if you wanted to pick some of them up!
about prob1 more acute angle between two lane highways makes you happy
That is something I never thought of - I'll have to try it out! Thanks かりふぁ!
Something one has to watch out for when applying lane mathematics to the standard cloverleaf is to ensure that (1) the over/underpass sections have a node in the middle of their respective spans and (2) lane changing is ALLOWED at that node! If either of these attributes is missing, this prevents anyone (anyone law-abiding, anyway...) from using the ramps to change from one road to the other, serving instead as an exclusive "U-turn" for the opposite road! Thereby absolutely negating the entire purpose of the interchange! I've seen this happen through careless use of applying "Yugo Therez" to entire selected stretches of freeway ahead & behind of a cloverleaf.
Hey Gary XHLC, that's an interesting point you bring up. Do you know if by default the node is in the middle of the over/underpass or can it vary depending on the terrain you are building it on (small variations in the elevation causing the node to shift?). Same with the lane changing. Without mods I can't check. If the nodes shift does lane changing get adjusted unknowingly?
@@jester.Gaming most of the time the nodes are spaced 10 to 12 units apart. If the length of the lane segment is shorter than 10 units there will be no node in the center. You can see where the nodes are when in road building mode by lining a road up like you are going to make an intersection, the node on the existing road will highlight. You can create a node by building a road in between 2 nodes then deleting the new road, there will be a node where the new road was built.
Hi! Thanks for wonderful video. A question: what about the small roundabout in the middle of the city? Does the same logic apply?
hi Niccolò! Without mods the use of a roundabout is going to be highly dependant on the amount of traffic you're expecting to have.
I think it could work in an area with light-moderate traffic before you start seeing issues. The principles would be essentially the same and you would want to try and have dedicated lanes for entering and exiting the roundabout but also have some travel/through lanes for the cars. Mods would make everything much easier with being able to designate lanes and yielding to traffic.
@@jester.Gaming Hi friend and thanks for answer! Could you make a video for this ? Thank you very much!
Biffa is sipping tea rn lol
I hope he would approve, I doubt he has even watched the video haha :)
Hey jester, great video. You explained the principles very well and I intend to use them in my game from now on.
Quick question, you say that you are using no mods, as you mention the traffic assistant mod (very very useful tool, I feel the lane guidance should be a part of vanilla), but you have a lot more roads than I have access to, such as a 4-lane highway. Is this some late game thing, or are you using mods, if so what ones?
Hey PureZOOKS, thanks for taking the time to leave a comment - I'm glad my video was helpful! I'm not using any mods but I do have all the the DLCs installed. The four lane highway in particular is from the Mass Transit DLC. There's a list of the different types of roads on the wiki page (skylines.paradoxwikis.com/Roads#List_of_road_types). I hope this helps ... welcome to the channel!
what's your map and lut or theme you are using?
Hey Chao Yang - I'm on Eden Valley from the Green Cities DLC and .... boreal theme I think. I hope this answers your question!
what is the mod called that allows u to have more then 1 highway type
Hey Taylor - no mods here! I have a few different DLCs installed though. Different road types and what DLC they come from can be found here: skylines.paradoxwikis.com/Roads
I'm still trying to catch up in your series....but I do remember Biffa saying the game defaults clears congestions. I'm not doubting your road system but I would love to see you download traffic manager. Not for using the mod to dictate roads but to use one of the feature to disable despawning so you can truely put your city to the test.
That's totally true! I'm sure it happens. I'm almost afraid to do it though, haha! Maybe the last episode :)
could you please give me this roundabout workshop's link?
I think this is the one you're looking for: steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2254140991
11:21 How can that happen? Because I did see the road on the other side have two arrows (go through and left turn) on the left lane. But that one only have a single left turn lane arrow on the left lane.
It's a good questions Rizky ... I have no idea how the game determines what arrows go where. Someone else in the comments was speculating it had to do with the angle of the roads but I didn't have the time to go back and check the theory. It's confusing!
@@jester.Gaming yeah, angle issue is the most probable thing and also one of the most annoying one 😅
I hate it when the lane arrows start kicking in the collecter and roundabout. The outer lane is for both.
Hey 5blocksMC! Unfortunately it's the best we can do without mods at the moment ... maybe CS2 will add some better road customization options!
Quality. So much quality
Thanks M W!
Does this only apply just for highways or all roads
Hi Damian Herbert - I believe this is primarily to be used in and around highway interchanges as roads are entering and exiting. There is something similar to Lane Mathematics usually called Road Hierarchy that people usually use when designing a city road network (th-cam.com/video/lJYPcXB8PcQ/w-d-xo.html). I hope this helps. Welcome to the channel!
'Lane Mathematics' is actually 'Lane Guidance'... going from 4 syllables 'math-e-mat-ics' to just 2 syllables 'guide-ance' is more efficient and doesn't scare players.
That's a good way to describe it! That's a good name for the purpose of what we're doing rather than the process (if that makes sense). We're using lane mathematics to guide our citizens to certain exits/lanes. Welcome to the channel David!
So this helped me understand traffic way better but I noticed you're using roads no in the base game? What am I missing?
Hey Christopheralb! I can't recall exactly which roads I used in the video but the Lane Mathematics can be applied to any of them ... there are so many roads available, you can check them out and what DLC they are from here: skylines.paradoxwikis.com/Roads#List_of_road_types
Thanks for the video, now I can steal it and implement in my game, just kidding.
I think you should Saiponath, I got the idea for the video from Biffa so it's all good :)
Is the 4 lane highway a mod or do I just need to grow my city?
Hey Plasmawolf55, the 4 lane highway is from the Mass Transit DLC. It is unlocked at the Boom Town milestone (population 2400).
how do i get this on my cities? cant find it on steam
Hey Jordan - what in particular are you referring to? Lane mathematics can be used on any road type regardless of what DLC they came from!
When I 1st heard of lane mathematics I was like "Wait, that has a name??"
Hey Blade1301, thanks for checking out another video - welcome to the channel! It's a name that was coined by Biffa (you should check out his channel if you haven't) but I can't seem to find it used anywhere else :)
Maybe it's been around, but Biffa is the "Trope Namer"
It should really be called lane addition or dedicated lanes to make it sound less daunting
Those are both great names! I think anything would work really ... the mathematics involved aren't too complex :)
Cool one !!!!!!!!
Hey Nomad, thank you for your continued support - I'm glad you liked it!
I am new to this channel but I have been following Biffa for a long time. I understand that you may not like mods but a traffic manager is a must. You are not seeing any traffic issues for the most part because despawning is turn on and cars disappear just so the game does not run into major traffic issues. If you are using lane mathematics but don't give dedicated turning lanes on merging intersections you lost the point of doing the lane mathematics anyway. The game's AI cannot do it by itself that's why the mod exists. If you want to become better at this game, not using mods is not smart at all.
hey nikolaspcc, thanks for the feedback! I think there are very few if any vehicles despawning in the city at the moment. I would expect to see some traffic issues first before the game starts to despawn vehicles. I realize the vanilla game isn't perfect and the AI usually doesn't do exactly what it is supposed to sometimes and that's okay - I'm enjoying playing without mods at the moment but maybe I'll check them out in the future!
Here I am watching a lot of Cities Skylines video because I finally bought the game and need to completely rebuild my city I started over 2 years ago while there was a free weekend for Cities Skylines on steam
That's awesome Vertrix - welcome back to Cities: Skylines! Thanks for watching one of my videos and taking the time to leave a comment!
Nice!
Thanks Mallet! :)
Brilliant
Thanks GrayOne9, welcome to the channel!
Ok, this game is more complex than I thought
Hey Gabriel - it really isn't too bad! Once you get used to some of the mechanics it is relatively smooth sailing (until you get hit with a tsunami!).
I dont seem to have 4-lane highways. Does that comes with a mod, is there a way to get 4-lane highways without using mods?
They come with both the network extensions mod (which also have 5 and 6 lane ones), or the Mass Transit DLC, I think. If you have the asset editor (i.e. not on console), you can also build your own (though I guess that also counts as "using mods").
Hey Nerijus! Paŭlo is correct. The 4-lane highways come with the Mass Transit DLC. There are a various other road types that come from other DLCs - you can find the full list of roads and their associated DLC on the official wiki page (skylines.paradoxwikis.com/Roads#List_of_road_types). The other alternative as he suggested is using mods if you're on PC - which are free! :)
hey Paŭlo, thanks for helping to answer some questions!
@@jester.Gaming Thank you for the great answer! Huh, I guess it's time I get some DLC's, tired of playing on base game.
You're welcome Nerijus! If you're on PC there may be a Winter Steam sale some time relatively soon and you can get a good deal on the DLC's. There may be sales in other platforms (or through the publisher) but I'm not sure about those ones :)
For some reason, ads on your videos always feature ice-creams. But yeah, cool videos!!
That's interesting Aaron! I've had to go back and watch parts of a few videos to answer a comment or look at something for a video ... I've seen ads for The Mandalorian and a local internet company. I don't actually choose them and I think they're targeted towards you based off of whatever info Google has been able to collect about you. Has it been hot recently where you live? :)
Btw there is a mod you can change traffic so you do not have to upgrade or downgrade. Unless this is a console gameplay
Hey RB Assassin, you are correct. The Traffic Manager Mod (TMPE) would help out a lot! I'm on PC but not playing with mods at the moment :)
@@jester.Gaming you should try it. It’s fun with the mods but they are really easy/complicated at the same time but pose challenge
I've been sticking with no mods since there are a number of people who play on console that do not have access to them. There are already lots of talented players using mods out there but I think very few who play without them!
Lets say you have an off ramp that is 2 lanes, would you remove 2 lanes from the highway?
Hey ItsThatGuy75! That's a great question ... I think if you were officially following lane mathematics then yes you would probably remove two lanes from the highway. The current off ramps in the game are only a single lane so you wouldn't run into that problem unless you were using mods. However, I think it would be more situational and you would have to test it out to be sure. I could imagine that if you had a two lane off ramp but only removed one lane on the highway that would still give you a dedicated turn lane and a turn lane/through lane for your interchange ... and honestly that would probably work. I hope this helps, thank you for the comment and question!
Lane mathematics is not quite as important when building offramps. If you have a 3 lane highway and want a 2 lane off ramp you can change the highway to 2 lanes and have 1 lane exit only and one that can go straight or exit. The bigger issue is if the exit gets backed up it will block traffic that is trying to go straight. Lane mathematics is more useful with on ramps to prevent crazy merging of traffic entering the highway.
I don't even know where you can find the lane mathematics. Does it come with a DLC or am I missing something completely?
It is how the lanes add up to be even on ramps and at intersections. A 3 lane highway becomes 2 lanes when a ramp exits off. 3-1=2. Or goes from 2 lanes when a ramp joins, 2+1=3
Hey GydigiGytha - sorry for the late response. Bendigo is correct! It's simply something you can apply to your highway interchanges when adding or removing lanes. No DLC is required!
Thanks for helping out and answering a question in the comment Bendigo!
I would love to do this on my city but I play CS on ps4. The only options for highway are the 1 lane ramp, 3 lane highway and 3 lane highway with barrier 😫 Maybe it's time I switch to PC 🤔
Hi Dave! Wow! I didn't realize there were so few options for you. Some of the different road types are from the DLCs - you can check out the list of roads and where they come from on the official wiki page: skylines.paradoxwikis.com/Roads. There should be a sale on Steam in the next few weeks if you keep an eye out for it CS is usually at a decent discount. Thanks for leaving a comment!
@@jester.Gaming wow thanks for the heads up. will switch to pc after I build a good one. cheers!
That's awesome, best of luck with your build! If you haven't got it complete by the time of the sale you can still purchase the game at a discount and have it for when your PC is complete!
I play PS4 also. The Mass Transit dlc has more highway options, 1-lane 2-way, 2-lane & 4-lane all have sound barrier options. It’s like $12 and worth it
My problem with the lane mathematics is that it doesn't consider how much traffic is using each ramp/ramps so sometimes you shouldn't downgrade, it just depends.
Hey Saber, I totally agree - it really depends on the situation. Unfortunately there is no solution that will fix everything. Thanks for taking the time to leave a comment!
11:40 u-turns here are terrible for traffic
Totally terrible! It isn't a great system but it's working so far. Welcome to the channel aitammatia!
You did a better job explaining this than biffa does
Thanks Carl, I appreciate the support! It's just two different ways of explaining the same thing and my way connected with you better - I think Biffa would probably explain it best overall :)
I’m confused. I don’t have those roads on my game… are those roads part of a dlc..?
Possibly ... or you haven't unlocked them. There are too many roads to keep track of at this point (skylines.paradoxwikis.com/Roads#List_of_road_types).
The biggest problem is that the base game just has 3 way highway and highway ramp.
Either you cant go more than 3 lanes and have to use the two way single road.
Or you use the six lane one way roads but the you will alway have to go down to 3 lanes.
Well on my computer it’s an easy fix, just going to the workshop and getting some roads and highways... and i also have traffic manager mod on my computer.... but my computer could barely handle the base game when population went over like 5000.... so i started play on console instead since it handles the game better but.... yea then the problem with not be able to do much with traffic comes back at you....
Hi Johan - the workshop is definitely an extremely useful tool! I highly encourage anyone to check it out if they are able to. I wish it were available on console so that everyone had access to the amazing mods and assets there. Welcome to the channel!
I've seen them on biffas channel as well, tried it and it does fine most times but idk... it's doesn't feel very satisfying to me because it often doesn't look so realistic. Besides there are cases where a slip lane which takes off a lane from a highway will make things worse if not as many cars who drive on that lane actually do take the exit, or in the opposite case 1 lane subtracting traffic isn't enough for all the cars who actually take that exit. Don't get me wrong, lane maths is neat and it helps but they shouldn't be the ultimate golden rule for C:S
I agree Leo C, it's useful but only in certain situations. I think it all works a lot better with mods. Without mods you're still hoping the AI does what you want it to. With mods you would be certain but could also edit the lanes to look a little better!
@@jester.Gaming Thanks for the reply! I'm locked in vanilla because I play on Xbox :( I can't wait to get a gaming pc and smash my CS with mods! Cheers mate
You're welcome - I hope you are able to find some computer components in stock! I had to wait 3 months to get my new processor :(
wow!
Thanks Niccolò! :)
You're pro man
Thanks diego, welcome to the channel!
Thanks
You're welcome Wharlley!
How do i get 2 lane highways?
I believe they are from the Mass Transit DLC.
@@jester.Gaming tysm
They are taking the roundabout because they want to be in the left lane on the collector road.
Hey Shawn, that's a good observation - I didn't think of that one! I had thought the main thing the AI used to decide where they went was the shortest distance travelled. However, they could have be factoring in the time it would take to change lanes once they used the slip lane. You may have solved it. Thanks Shawn!
Another solution would be to have one one-lane exit ramp from the highway that then splits, going to either the roundabout or collector. This also lets you reduce your highway to just two lanes, allowing the normal third lane to be dedicated to the oncoming traffic without upgrading to four lanes. At this point, however, to address the problem that Shawn observed, you'd still need to modify your roundabout so the traffic entering the roundabout comes on after the off-ramp, so it's a bit more work, but it would certainly pay off later once your city grows and the roundabout sees more use.
Hey Ludimus 969, that could definitely be a possible solution! If the traffic starts becoming an issue I will have to revisit the interchange and I may try this out. Thanks for taking the time to leave a comment and some feedback!
Which modes you use?
Hi Tamás, no mods at all! I have all the current DLC installed and that's it!
Thanks the answer
No problem, welcome to the channel!
It probably has to do with speed limits
Man traffic manager has spoiled me. I can't even imagine trying to play this vanilla
Hey Ragnarac! That might be the case - I probably won't look back at it and try to figure it out unless there starts being traffic issues - I've had lots of good suggestions to fix it too! I've honestly never played with the traffic manager but I've seen people using it ... and it does look awesome!
@@jester.Gaming I can very well see it becoming a traffic issue in the future, I have seen the situation before in other builds. however, I have never been able to grow that large before my notebook lap top's capabilities have gotten in the way or I have found I have made of mess of things and needed to restart.
My computer is starting to struggle a little bit now while I play and record. I hope it will be able to last for the rest of the city! I've had a few cities with the exact same issue .... the get to the point where it's easier to start over than it is to try and fix. That is one of the reasons why I've been going so slow - I find it helps to stabilize the city and I don't make as many mistakes :)
What a mess.Traffic is my biggest challenge in this game
It's definitely challenging ... if you don't keep up with it or start with a decent plan your city will come to a standstill once it reaches a certain population and the streets get clogged down
these maths work easy when you have 58 thousand CIMS! I would like to see that when you have +700k, like me,
they all go along the same line, with or without maths, destroying your patience...
Uh oh Pedro, I don't know if my city will ever get that big! How is the traffic overall? Are you playing with mods?
@@jester.Gaming my traffic 55~60%; MODs of course, yes! everyone you know! I've tried several methods to avoid traffic jams, but the game doesn't help me! the fun became a headache... I have other cities, one with ~300k, another with ~220K citizens
Thats not bad at all given the size! I find the traffic info view doesn't necessarily paint an accurate picture for traffic flow but is more representative of traffic volume. I have some areas that are red due to lots of vehicles but is still flowing smoothly
Did anyone else here the words "single lanes" so much they started singing them to the tune of Single Ladies?
Well... me neither.
haha that did not cross my mind but it does now! :)
I don't think you could make a city which looks more vanilla.
I don't know what it is but I hate the villa buildings and that awful shade of green for the grass. Boreal and European suburbia is the way