Road traffic is one of the most important elements ofCities: Skylines 2. Not only do citizens have to drive to their destinations, but pedestrians must also walk to mass transit lines, cargo must reach its buyers in and out of the city, andcivil services must maintain roadsand patrol neighborhoods.
All of these reasons to move can lead to traffic jams, and to avoid them, players have a variety of tools they can use to adjust intersections. Adding, rerouting, andupgrading roads are part of the player’s toolkit inCities: Skylines 2, but even a minor change to a single intersection can make a surprising difference in traffic congestion.
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Intersections between small roads have no signs or stoplights by default, but all intersections that involve medium or large roads start with stoplights. Players can modify these default choices as soon as they buy Advanced Road Servicesfrom the Road development tree.
First, players can add stoplights to a small road intersection or remove them from a larger intersection. Select the stoplights from the ARS tab and click either the activate button to add them or the cancel button to remove them. On PC, these are the left and right mouse buttons. By removing stoplights from major road intersections, light traffic on side roads won’t bring heavy traffic to a halt.
Next, stop signs are a safer way to bring traffic to a halt at minor intersections. Players should avoid adding them to major roads since all traffic has to stop every single time they reach an intersection.
Players can also forbid vehiclesfrom going left, right, or straight at an intersection. This is a good way to prevent left-turning vehicles from blocking traffic going the other way (or right-turning vehicles on left-hand drive maps). However, players must provide a way for vehicles to reach their destinations without taking the turn in question, and be aware that the detour may add more congestion to other parts of the road network.
Finally, players can add or remove pedestrian crosswalks from intersections.Cities: Skylines 2adds a crosswalk to each road entering an intersection by default, but with this tool, players can remove some to reroute pedestrian traffic or add them to the middle of a road to make pedestrian movement more convenient. However, players should be aware that pedestrians will often jaywalk through an intersection even if there’s no crosswalk present.
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Roundabouts
Cities: Skylines 2’s road construction menu includes a special tab for roundabouts. By placing a roundabout island in the middle of an intersection, all stop signs and stoplights disappear and traffic from every direction only needs to yield to vehicles already in the roundabout.
The first roundabout island unlocks with the first milestone, and players can access the rest by spending one development point in Roads. Larger roundabouts are better for larger intersections since traffic must slow down more and additional vehicles can fit in the intersection. However, larger roundabouts also take up more space, space players may have already given to civic buildings.
Roundabouts are most useful in areas where moderate traffic meets heavy traffic. They’re less helpful when heavy traffic meets heavy traffic, and they can actively get in the way if an intersection has a lot of pedestrian traffic. Since roundabouts have no stoplights, pedestrians will cross a roundabout intersection as soon as they reach it, no matter how many vehicles are in the way.
Pedestrian Paths
If an intersection is experiencing a lot of pedestrian trafficthanks to a nearby mass transit stationor parking lot, players may want to get them off the roads entirely. An elevated pedestrian path is a useful way to handle this.
Pedestrian paths are tucked away in the landscaping tool, and players can use the same tool modes to build them. One useful note is that a pedestrian path only needs to be 22.5 feet up to clear an intersection, so click on the bars next to “Elevation” twice to better manage height changes.
A pedestrian path that reaches all four corners of an intersection can allow players to completely remove the crosswalks below it. However, pedestrians always look for the fastest path to their destinations, and so many of them will still jaywalk since the ramps add extra length to the path. Still, a footpath will at least get some pedestrians off the road.
Another way to use pedestrian paths is to turn a road into a dead end and connect that end to the intersection with a path. This can make walking faster than driving in many cases.
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Asymmetric Roads
One last useful trick is the asymmetric road upgrade. Players can find at least one version of this road type in every category aside from highways.
An asymmetric road that faces an intersection creates a left-turn lane, a common sight in real towns and cities. While this lane doesn’t add a left-turn-only light to the intersection, it allows more vehicles to wait at the light and sorts traffic based on the direction it wants to go. Asymmetric roads are most useful when a smaller road meets a larger road at a stoplight. They’re also helpfulwhen players zone one side of a roadthat gets a lot of through traffic.
