How not to use roundabouts in Cities Skylines
- by Juan R. Gonzalez
In every cities skyline build, I watch on YouTube, All I see is that the solution to your traffic woes is to build roundabouts all over the city. Every tutorial I have reviewed dealing with traffic in your city on cities skylines tells you to build roundabouts.
Well, I’m here to tell you differently. I believe that you can build a city in cities skylines without using roundabouts to deal with traffic issues. I tested this theory in miniature on my current build Rancho La Mariposa in the industrial area of that build. If you want to see what I did check out the video on my channel and don’t forget to subscribe. Anyway, I’m going to go step by step here to help you deal with traffic in a different way in your cities skyline builds without having to use roundabouts.
Nothing On The Main Road
First, in order to lower the pressure on the main road, you need to move all the commercial, industrial, and residential buildings that you have built on the main feeder road. All your buildings must be placed either on secondary roads or on what I will call frontage roads. We will talk more about frontage roads later in the article, but this is strategy will help reduce the pressure on that main road which goes through your city. The other important thing is to ensure that your main road has no intersections. The main road should be clear of all intersections.
Create Frontage Roads
Second, you need to create two parallel roads that run alongside your main road. These two roads must follow the road all the way to the main highway intersection. The roads are called frontage or feeder roads. These roads will carry the traffic that wants to stay local. All your intersections should be connected to these two roads that run alongside the main road. You need to create interesections either underneath or above the main road that connect these two frontage roads. Normally, I would make these intersections on other primary roads. Your residential, commercial, or industrial buildings should be placed on these two roads. What these two roads will do is distribute the traffic effectively along the main road. The main road allows traffic that does not want to stop in the area to go through without having to stop every time deliveries need to be made in the area. The purpose of these two roads is to ensure that traffic flows effectively along the main road. They accomplish this by taking the traffic from the area and distributing it along the road based on how the AI’s needs.
Connect with Entrance Ramps
Finally, along both roads, you need to pick several points to place entrance and exit ramps. These ramps will feed traffic to the main road that wants to bypass the area. These ramps will feed traffic that wants to travel to another area faster than on the frontage roads. These ramps will feed traffic that wants to leave the area altogether. It’s important to space the ramps so that you provide enough space for the AI traffic to pick an exit or entrance at the node. You should also use Traffic Manager to make sure that the entrance and exit ramps have dedicated lanes so that they do not slow down traffic trying to move through.
These three easy steps will help you manage your traffic throughout your city without having to rely on roundabouts. It also creates more realism in your cities because most U.S. cities do not use roundabouts to manage traffic. I believe in providing practical real-world tips to help with issues in your Cities Skylines cities. I hope this is helpful and I will see you next time with some new tips and tricks to make your cities as perfect as you want them.
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Juan R. Gonzalez
I'm a Husband, Lawyer, and Gamer in that order. I have been gaming since I got my first Atari 2600 at age 10. Since then I was hooked and I've played every console, arcade, and handheld I could get my hands on. I play to have fun, but I also like the competition that comes with gaming.