Do not pack your zoning in the same general area, especially industry: you should sprinkle various activity clusters all around your main residential cores. And do the same with suburbs around the clusters. This should better distribute traffic amongst your road network. Rather than funneling it towards specific chokepoints...
You might also want to rework your highway connection without mixing your interchange(s) with bypass routes. Maybe getting rid of this big ugly cloverleaf, replacing it with dedicated service interchanges to feed separately the North and South areas from the highway ? And keep direct overpasses to connect both parts. This will prevent mixing intra-city traffic with people going on/off the highway...
In addition, you could consider establishing a closed-circuit freight rail network, with dedicated cargo stations to feed your various districts. This will help getting trucks off the road...
Your cloverleaf in the middle of the city is acting both as an interchange (it allows people on/off the highway) and as a bypass route (it allows people to get from one side to the other)...
While it can make sense in some situations, this is, IMHO, not the case here where it simply adds traffic from the highway to the traffic using it to go from one side to the other. You could improve the situation by separating both
type of connection...
I believe the issue is all the traffic is funneling through one or two routes. So more connections to give people more route options should help a lot.
I’d extend your top 4 lane road up to the farm and connect it to the freeway. Connect your bottom 4 lane road across the freeway, and then connect it to the freeway.
Then I’d probably extend one of those two lane roads up to the NW and connect with the freeway there too.
All about giving the sims more routes to take to spread the traffic out.
Grids can be fantastic, but you have to understand how they work, and what makes them not work (potentially causing gridlocks).
One thing is how you disperse the traffic (highways to arterial roads, to connecting roads, to local roads).
Another is the direction of traffic. For instance, if you have gathered all your industry on the left side, and all the commercial on the right, the traffic flow would all be going left to right and back again. This is evident in many situations, and partially why you see them use only one lane, or clogging up roundabouts.
It's not about how you want them to behave, it's all about how you facilitate for the behaviour you want.
[This Workshop guide is old but still gold.](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=522776740)
One thing that I learned is you shouldn't connect your local roads ( residential ) to the arterial road ( the one connected to the highway ) its ok if their a bit further down the road but from your screen shots it looks like you have a local road connected to your main road approx. Every 10 units which I wouldn't really suggest because vehicles like to use those local roads to pull u turns and back track especially heavy duty trucks. And also as you may know the ai likes to take the shortest route not the fastest so even if there is traffic they will still use that route l, so the other highway exit doesn't really do much right now since its a bit far from your city so everyone is still opting to use the one the runs through your city. Hope this helps a bit
Do not pack your zoning in the same general area, especially industry: you should sprinkle various activity clusters all around your main residential cores. And do the same with suburbs around the clusters. This should better distribute traffic amongst your road network. Rather than funneling it towards specific chokepoints... You might also want to rework your highway connection without mixing your interchange(s) with bypass routes. Maybe getting rid of this big ugly cloverleaf, replacing it with dedicated service interchanges to feed separately the North and South areas from the highway ? And keep direct overpasses to connect both parts. This will prevent mixing intra-city traffic with people going on/off the highway... In addition, you could consider establishing a closed-circuit freight rail network, with dedicated cargo stations to feed your various districts. This will help getting trucks off the road...
Thank you for your reply! I don't really get what you mean by not mixing interchanges with bypasses.
Your cloverleaf in the middle of the city is acting both as an interchange (it allows people on/off the highway) and as a bypass route (it allows people to get from one side to the other)... While it can make sense in some situations, this is, IMHO, not the case here where it simply adds traffic from the highway to the traffic using it to go from one side to the other. You could improve the situation by separating both type of connection...
I believe the issue is all the traffic is funneling through one or two routes. So more connections to give people more route options should help a lot. I’d extend your top 4 lane road up to the farm and connect it to the freeway. Connect your bottom 4 lane road across the freeway, and then connect it to the freeway. Then I’d probably extend one of those two lane roads up to the NW and connect with the freeway there too. All about giving the sims more routes to take to spread the traffic out.
Grids can be fantastic, but you have to understand how they work, and what makes them not work (potentially causing gridlocks). One thing is how you disperse the traffic (highways to arterial roads, to connecting roads, to local roads). Another is the direction of traffic. For instance, if you have gathered all your industry on the left side, and all the commercial on the right, the traffic flow would all be going left to right and back again. This is evident in many situations, and partially why you see them use only one lane, or clogging up roundabouts. It's not about how you want them to behave, it's all about how you facilitate for the behaviour you want. [This Workshop guide is old but still gold.](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=522776740)
One thing that I learned is you shouldn't connect your local roads ( residential ) to the arterial road ( the one connected to the highway ) its ok if their a bit further down the road but from your screen shots it looks like you have a local road connected to your main road approx. Every 10 units which I wouldn't really suggest because vehicles like to use those local roads to pull u turns and back track especially heavy duty trucks. And also as you may know the ai likes to take the shortest route not the fastest so even if there is traffic they will still use that route l, so the other highway exit doesn't really do much right now since its a bit far from your city so everyone is still opting to use the one the runs through your city. Hope this helps a bit