Gridlock Expert Takes On Sim City Streets

Thanks to the Gaming-Age messageboard regulars for pointing to an EA webpage interviewing real-life traffic engineer Sam Schwartz, aka 'Gridlock Sam', and discussing "ways to alleviate traffic congestion in your own virtual metropolis" for Maxis/EA's PC game Sim City 4: Rush Hour. Schwartz notes some of the tricks gamers use to get round traffic congestion in-game: "I have read on the Sim City message boards, and seen screen shots of cities where mayors build roads at certain angles to avoid the creation of a traffic light", but goes on to suggest relevant real-world tactics, particularly noting players should "...use underground rail where [traffic] density is the greatest." However, 'Gridlock Sam' found unexpected social issues even in the virtual city: "One time I made the mistake of turning all my roads into streets thinking I was improving the level of service and therefore congestion would lessen. It did, but now I had Sims yelling at me because their once bucolic roads became bustling streets."

Comments

Roundabouts.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, Mr. Gridlock expert!

Why the hell doesn't the US build more roundabouts? They are not that difficult.

Coming from England, I find that the lack of roundabouts a *serious* problem on the roads of America. When they do build them over here, in larger places to be fancy and for show. And then the medium-sized ones tend to suck - they don't build any "raised bump & painted lines that you can actually drive over if you're going straight across the intersection" ones, these are awesome for minor intersections where there's not much room.

I've got a hunch that they can't build them here because driving tests are so amazingly simple and driver's education so sparse. Without the lights to regulate there would instantly be an accident on every corner. "What right of way?"

Traffic lights are cause of traffic delays, waits, burnt fuel idling at the lights. The only partial relief is the "right turn on red" rule - it means I find myself planning routes around town where I minimise turning left.

Re:Roundabouts.

[wed128]

There are many Roundabouts in southern New jersey and Maryland...and they seem to cause more accidents than streetlights, it's just not worth the few minutes saved waiting. Also, 4-way stop signs are common there, and are very annoying. I happen to like streetlights, as long as they are programmed to turn colors efficiantly.

Re:Roundabouts.

[TheLink]

While roundabouts are pretty good under low to mid traffic conditions, under heavy traffic they fail even more ungracefully compared to traffic lights.

You can end up in a situation where the roundabout is full and nobody can get out to where they want because the roundabout is full. Well actually not totally impossible - someone can eventually squeeze out. But that sure makes things a lot slower. You have to make them really big to prevent over filling, and that's not usually possible.

Of course with traffic lights people could get stuck in the middle and block traffic if they make a misjudgement, or are plain idiotic/selfish. But even if that happens it takes more idiots elsewhere to totally jam things up.

BTW with traffic lights, during very low traffic conditions you could make all the lights flash yellow. That's what is done here in some intersections at night.

Re:Roundabouts.

[Tofino]

Wrong kind of roundabouts, AC. Those are the small, common, mini-roundabouts that as far as I can tell are only found in North America. In England and elsewhere, roundabouts are the equivalent of highway ramps. You are driving down a highway, or on a major street in a city, and suddenly there's a huge, 3-lane-wide roundabout. You need to pick your lane carefully and aggressively so that you end up on the outside at the precise moment that your exit from the roundabout comes up (there are usually 4 or 5 exits from a roundabout).

It sounds like chaos, and it looks completely disorganized when you first think of or see it, but you quickly realize that there's a reason why traffic congestion in England, even in big cities, is so much lower than in the US: the roundabouts, and the relative lack of traffic lights. The drivers in England also tend, in my opinion, to be better. You can spot US and Canadian drivers in England very easily, as they're the ones who timidly stop before a roundabout, aren't sure when to merge, etc. In England, I've seen major roads in rush hour change from 2 lanes, to one, back to 2 again, and traffic never slow below 20mph as cars dance in and out. In Vancouver, if there's a car parked in the right lane during rush hour, traffic stops.

Re:Roundabouts.

[Robmonster]

From my addled memory I think this is from one National Lampoons Vacation (or something like that)

I seem to remember this occuring when they were in France, going round and round the large roundabout by the Arc de Triomphe.

This occured as traffic laws in France dictate that traffic entering the roundabout has priority over traffic already on the roundabout, making it very tricky to get off the darn things. Its the reverse in England where once you are on the roundabout you have right-of-way and traffic trying to get on has to let you pass.

Personally I think roundabouts help traffic flow. Tehre are some nasty crossroads on my way to work whereby the slightest amount of traffic going along the main road causes the intersecting branches to clog up with traffic. A roundabout here would help things immensly (and cut my journey time in half)

simcity 2000 trick, would it work now?

[bbkingadrock]

I remember in simcity 2000 a great strategy was to start your road in the center of the map, then have it be one continuous spiral outwords. there were absolutely no intersections but your road covered all the map. the newer versions probably take into account the fact that the trip would be enormous.

SC4's traffic model..

[Xzzy]

Due to an unwillingness to shell out more cash for what I feel should have been part of the original product, I never bought the rush hour expansion. I did buy SC4 though, the promise of all the new transportation methos drew me in like a moth to flame.

Unfortuneatley, the traffic model blew ass. There were a multitude of problems when trying to ferry people between different regions, sims were too stupid to take a highway unless it fell on their shortest path algorhythm (they would prefer to take narrow local streets even if the highway would have been faster), and don't even get me started on the braindead decision for the only way to have "busy" commercial zones was to have red traffic right next to them (duh?!). Some of the simulator variables were odd too, wasn't traffic modelled as if all cars were moving at 30mph or somesuch?

Did rush hour really fix this at all? Reading the feature list, it just seemed like a stop gap measure bolted on to try and cover some of the flaws.

I know traffic is hard and Maxis did a decent job with the game, but the flaws made it damn near impossible to build a "real" city.. invariably the game turned into a micromanagement nightmare as you bulldozed roads to try and convince the sims to take more intelligent paths. Almost all my cities wound up being groups of individual "pods" that used limited routes to funnel sims into more desireable travel modes.

I'm not a city planner, but this approach mimics no real world city I've ever witnessed.