Start Using Timed Traffic Lights in Cities: Skylines

Tutorial and some tips on how to get started with the timed traffic lights feature of the Traffic Manager (TM:PE) mod in Cities: Skylines. Some basic and a couple of different phases to try, also tips on when to change the default settings.

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0:00 Start
0:36 Quick setup
2:10 Basics
6:57 Min max times
9:15 Sensitivity slider
10:48 Permissive left turn
13:06 Lane connector
19:25 Optimised phases
21:36 Buffer phases
22:54 Protected left turn
25:33 Continuous lane connector
26:12 More general tips
28:26 Pedestrian phases
31:18 Look for more sources

Some reading about the topic of light phases

[unconventionalideas]

15:33 Biffa likes to do wordplay by calling this “Hugo There.” As an American, Right on Red is legal except when signs cancel this, but only when there is no conflicting traffic.

[LeeHawkinsPhoto]

😂😂😂 I LOVE your comment at the beginning! “If you’re committed to creating a timed traffic light, then I don’t know why you would just go with the quick setup.” I am totally with you there 👍🏻😎

[coryzane.]

This is the best TM tutorial I’ve seen, thank you!

[skipperg]

Yes, in many places you ca turn right on red light. In my country though they usually add an extra traffic light with an arrow which is always green. Also yes in most countries you can choose which lane you are going to when doing left turn as long as left turn could be done only from one lane.
Btw the default traffic light setup you criticized in the beginning of the video is in fact far better than the default setup of traffic lights in real life - the one with only two phases. What happen is many kilometers long line of people wanting to turn left in the left lane (because its only ~3 cars that can turn left per traffic light phase cycle), than smart people form similar line in the middle lane, than some even more smart people start turning left from the right lane and eventually guy from a middle lane driving forward hits the guy in the right lane doing left turn and road comes to deadlock. Happens at nearly exactly same places nearly every day.
4 phase traffic light would've eliminated half of traffic problems (

[fsiradio]

Very nice tutorial. However, with these amounts of traffic I like dedicated lanes for each direction. It saw a lot of times the extra turn right green light isn't used, as the front car wants to go straight instead of right. It blocks the later vehicles from turning right, and kinda neglecting the advantage of having that extra green light to turn right.

Edit:

Never mind, you started talking about that 30 seconds later in the video, where I stopped to type my comment xD

[williamhuang]

The TTLs switch slower so that there is time to clear the intersection. Vanilla traffic lights don't allow much time to clear the intersection, so cars will get stuck on it and block traffic coming into the intersection if the traffic volumes are high enough.

[PauxloE]

13:14 The reason people often suggest to not overuse the lane connectors is that it's easy to force vehicles go somewhere where they don't want to go. If your next road has no way of switching lanes until the next intersection (e.g. because there is no node, or the next node has "stay in your lane"), you might end up with very strange traffic behavior. When they can choose their lane at an intersection, this often can be avoided. (And if you have the protected left turns, you usually don't have conflicts here.)
23:03 In this setup of lane-connectors for protected lefts, you can leave the right-turns always on for all the directions, I think. (Of course when adding pedestrians, you might not be able to.)
31:05 "The collision detection is kind of weird in this regard" – that's an euphemism for "Cars are freely running through pedestrians"?

In general, always check where most of your traffic goes. Give them more (and possibly dedicated) lanes, longer phases, etc. Then check who else can go at the same time. Sometimes it might even make sense to have all cars going into the same direction on at the same time (when they have separate lanes to go to) instead of all cars from one direction.

[NewBuildmini]

28:26 At some lower-trafficked intersections in my city, I give pedestrians green in the same direction as the cars are travelling, so left and right turners conflict with them. This is not as bad as it seems though, and allows me to get away with just 2 phases instead of 3. It's also a common setup overall where I live; vehicles are required to give way to pedestrians when turning.

[anpolar]

13:20 couldn't you have allowed vehicles to enter blocked junctions in the settings menu for TM;PE, would that have allowed the AI to make the left turn?

[KostasK]

one of the best tutorials of timed traffic lights for CS! Thanks

[garyortolano]

Ahhh...found the right tut. finally. I would only set one lane...not a multiple lane expert yet...pause game overnight and come back with cars lined up to Idaho. I live in New York. Oh well....with this tutorial and multiple screens, I can follow right along and perhaps use every lane to my advantage like they're supposed to be. Thank you so much for the very, very intuitive and instructive, precise tutorials !

[markuskopter]

Nice! I've never used timed traffic lights, because I never took the time to figure out how they work. Will definitely try them now.
I'd love to see a video on how you setup your test map in order to create such a nice and constant flow of traffic in every lane on your test map.

[MrLynx]

thank you for these videos, me playing on ps4, i finally understood some subtleties of traffic management mods.

[luksor]

Honestly for me simple all green for one road in four phases with min5-max20 time in clockwise switch with 0.2-0.3 sensitivity is best. Also proper arrow and lane config should be done then, according to most occupied turn or straight but main rule here is dedicated lane multiple direction lane. So for me it's minimum to have main arterial roads 6 lane, preferably 8 or 6 + 2 bus lanes. This is really universal configuration for any traffic even highway exit.

[JohnSmith-cczn]

I have found that using the different "after minimum time" options helped a lot where I have linked timed lights along the same road. After linking 10 junctions in sync the computer switches the phases very quickly as it is looking at all of the junctions and trying hard to balance the timing. When I set all the phases to "when no one is driving" It seems to stick to the max time that I set, thus allowing the busier areas to clear. Yes, some of the junctions take too long to change, but it does seem to work well when the population gets larger and my main roads are clogging up.
Hope this helps someone as I scratched my head for a long time trying to figure the use of this function.

[thedeadcannotdie]

I personally always use "no one is driving" setting for the conditions. Dunno why but it just works for me :P

[misterhamstring]

For an efficient intersection you should have dedicated turning lanes

[cooldude]

If you have to use timed traffic lights, realize that after 30 minutes of trial and error just say "screw it" and make a roundabout

[swizzamane]

@16:17 right-hand turn rule in Washington; can turn right on red or stop sign, if and only if it is clear to do so.

[markwilson]

Re: right on red. This is standard in the US unless it's marked prohibited. Re: phase with all stopped. This is normal is US intersections. Greens don't fire until after the opposite red is fired.