A great solution to make traffic simply flow

Mar 24, 2015 23:31 GMT  ·  By

I think I first saw a roundabout when I was about seven years old and my basic understanding of roads was challenged by its existence, so I had to ask my father about the reasons why anyone would build something like this instead of sticking with the classic intersections I knew from the end of my street.

I was living in a relatively small town and I had travelled little until that point, so that was something new to me. I suspect my father tried to explain the advantages of the circular road to me, but I failed to understand.

Since then, I have moved to a bigger city and I have witnessed the kinds of traffic jams that can form during rush hour even in the classic intersections that have solid design and synchronized lights, while also experiencing the relative improvements that a roundabout can offer.

But in my mind, the roads of the future are not circular patterns around central islands, which tend to force cars to slow down and offer pedestrians more options to cross traffic.

For me, a metropolis needs to have complex raised highways and tunnels in order to move the river of cars through its neighborhoods, with large avenues created, even at the expense of buildings and businesses, in order to create high-speed corridors for city services and for workers trying to get home in time for dinner.

Cities: Skylines makes roundabouts almost essential

A city that does not use roundabouts to connect the big neighborhoods that are otherwise not linked by large streets is a profoundly inefficient one in the new city builder from Colossal Order and Paradox Interactive.

For a while, I looked at my grid-like city and thought of ways to re-imagine it so that I could include more smaller roundabouts in order to make sure that traffic flowed more easily.

But as I spent some more time simply looking at my citizens moving around, sometimes with their cars stuck in a queue that seemed to be about a kilometer long, I understood something.

I could extensively re-design my metropolis to include roundabouts in almost all the places where traffic was heavy and that would make it more efficient, but part of the joy of living somewhere is accepting that the place is not perfect and will never be so.

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