Roads with traffic

[cnwfan]

I've been experimenting with placing roads with traffic on a route I'm working on. I'm using Stevens Pass for the assets. I can place a 4 lane road with traffic, save and run the route. As expected cars are spawning and moving in both directions. Now I add a second road with traffic to the route, same road by the way, and when I run the route, cars spawn on the newly placed road, but not on the originally placed road. Remove the second road from the route, and the original road spawns cars again. I've even tried adding a traffic overlay and I still get the same result... cars will only spawn on one road. Is there a setting that controls how many roads can have traffic on them? I know it's possible because I ran a scenario on the Peninsula Gilroy route, and just like the traffic in the Bay Area, cars were spawning all over the place.

[TheKman]

That's weird...... I don't have that problem. I've used the same road section in different locations on a route along with different road assets and all spawn traffic. And I have no idea how to solve your problem......

[cnwfan]

After much web searching, I found a solution that seems to work, at least in my case. The web post mentioned that roads with traffic should be laid down in the same direction. If not, sometimes the part of the program that spews traffic gets confused. For roads with traffic that is cross to the initially laid road, the suggestion is to lay the a small segment of road with traffic in the same direction as the initial road with traffic, the rotate the road section 90 degrees or whatever rotation is needed.

In my example, my initial road was laid south to north. I laid a small additional section south to north that is not connected to the initial road. Rotated the small section, saved, and ran the route. Sure enough... it worked! Also, there is a road radio button on the builder panel (next the grid display radio buttons). Click that, and it displays any traffic roads in a blue color along with showing moving green arrows to represent traffic.

[TheKman]

I must be the anomaly. I lay road sections in many differrent directions and all spawn traffic like they should. In your case, has it always been like this? I'm wondering if one of those TSC updates whacked things. I stay offline unless I have to buy something off Steam and I seldom buy from Steam namely because one has to be online and the update(s) in my case tend to whack things. Many will disagree, but a TSC update usually does more harm then good.

[cnwfan]

This is my first time laying down roads with traffic. I believe the post I found was in a Steam forum, but it also could have been a DTG forum. It was from several years back, and I believe it was a UK poster. It was written in a very "matter of fact" tone as if this was usual road / traffic behavior for the poster.

It's possible that an update might have altered traffic behavior. The fact that you don't experience the same issue could point to that, or could be something with the assets you're using. I did compare the road and traffic manager bins in Stevens Pass against the Peninsula road / traffic manager bin files, and they looked the same to me other than naming, file paths and car types. I was hoping the HIS folks would jump on and comment, but their postings have been very infrequent these days. In the end though, it's working now and ultimately that's what matters.

[TheKman]

For roads with traffic, I tend to stick with roads from 3D Trains, the Alaska route and SR roads with the traffic overlay.