Critical Connections! - Understanding the Power of Service Interchanges in Cities Skylines 2

➤Welcome to the “Cities Player Plans” video series. Cities Skylines 2 is out and now we must build! But how will we connect our city to the outside world efficiently? Service interchanges are the crucial last step to let traffic enter and exit your city from the freeway. This video is all about understanding the included service interchanges in Cities Skylines 2!

0:00 Have You Ever Had a Dream?
1:10 Service Interchange vs System Interchange
2:24 Trumpet Roundabout
4:14 Partial Cloverleaf (ParClo)
5:50 Dumbbell
7:02 Teardrop Roundabout
9:32 Diamond
10:37 Single Point (SPUI)

#citiesskylines2 #interchange #city

➤Music Provided by Chillhop:

[IvoryShard]

I love the fact that I ended up learning so much about city planning and interchanges by playing skylines and trying to get better at it.

I don't even know how to drive...

and my country does not even use roundabouts.

[Arkaine_]

My favorite interchange design came from you; the so called Single Point Partial Cloverleaf design. I have tried it in CS2 and it works fine so far. Although I haven't reached the point yet where it would be challenged by heavier traffic. I do miss TM;PE from the first game. Back in the first game I've built a 150k population city that ran off a single SPPCI and it worked just fine.

[raving_]

I love that you put the wiki link you talked about in the description, its something small that many people forget to do!

[timehunter]

I agree with flaring the exits, looks nicer but I think the traffic slows down less too.

[PhotonBread]

Being from Carmel, IN, I’m a bit of a roundabout aficionado.. we call the Teardrop Roundabout interchange a Dogbone. They’re at almost every major interchange in the city. Usually the Dogbone is under the main road though

[davidroddini]

The SPUI also has a variant which is as narrow as a regular 4-way intersection. You just elevate the highway over the local road and have a regular intersection underneath with the “ramp road”running between the highway directions far enough back that it doesn’t get blocked up onto the freeway. Then connect the “ramp road” to the freeway from the left side.

I hope my description is clear enough.

Edit: I forgot to add that while this type of SPUI isn’t very common IRL, it does exist and is called an inverted SPUI.

[Jive]

The half-circle design of your town is awesome.

[WonkieNJ]

My only comment is that Riverdale looks like Frostpunk, and that's awesome.

[northernwolfentertainment]

Great video! I'd love to see a dedicated series focused on how to improve the in game prebuilt intersections. For example, in CS2 the standard partial cloverleaf always breaks down and I find myself redrawing part of the roads due to traffic merging where they shouldn't and whatnot.

[beastateverythin]

I always throw down a diamond interchange for literally every service interchange in all my cities. Only when it starts to get overrun is when I change it. It often surprises me how long they last. In my city of around 55k pop, I finally need to replace my first diamond with something else

[enhydralutra]

I have simply built a road across a highway and called it good in CS2, and it went very well! But that's because connected a couple city services that weren't going to create much traffic at that intersection. Something I learned from actual road infrastructure driving around.

[martdonkey]

Those partial cloverleaves are everywhere here in the Netherlands, just now realised how efficient they are

[abfruits]

OH! I'm so excited to see that trumpet roundabout! My town has one! Ours actually has the local road going in the other direction (but it's to a very unpopulated area), and to handle the left turn issue once you get past the roundabout and the underpass, our exit/entry lanes are a diamond/with/light, as opposed to being curved into the local road. To be completely honest, I wouldn't normally think of building this interchange, even though I drive on one multiple times/week.

[tinear]

Gotta love that SPUI. It does feel to me, though, like a lot of the in-game intersections are forced onto flat terrain, while IRL the highway naturally ends up above or below the local road due to topography.

[MatteV]

The Trumpet and B4 ParClo are super common in Sweden around where I live, and they're smooth to drive on. Im glad Cities Skylines 2 added better road management for better traffic flow.

[PupOrionSirius]

The built in game interchanges are a great starting point.

[ward]

Big fan of your videos, thanks for keeping them coming. If I may make a request, can you do a video on placement of freeway interchanges? I always find myself building a city to ~20k population and then having major gridlock. At that point the city is so established that it feels wrong to nuke entire neighborhoods for the sake of bringing in additional connectivity (I know this happens IRL, hello I-5/I-90 interchange). Having some strategy for thinking about potential interchange locations at the game start would be helpful. It's likely that you did this already for C:S so any links to videos or stream segments that cover that would be appreciated!

[zackthecaz]

I used the spui in my minecraft downtown city and it's great! Love your video and the info :)

[fko]

There was this whirlpool highway interchange addon for CS1 and it could handle high amounts of traffic without stalling and it was ver compact vs the common cloverleaf intersections.

[ThaJay]

Yeah, I thought about it but this confirms it. We can not do a proper SPUI in CS2 right now without traffic management. It needs to be a 3 phase light with separate left turns on the local road. Only alternative is to split off the straight direction but that requires a third level or taking off the straight directions from the local road some other way.

Oh how I can't wait for the mod update and the traffic manager, advanced road tools and move-it mods. I love CS2 and what they made it but I really miss those mods for my road building. Hardcore landscaping to force the road I want is really finnicky and a lot of work.

Oh and landscape not physically snapping to roads any more has its upsides, but getting the landscape to have some fat on the bottom side of the road along a hill is so much work now! So I hope a smooth to road / building landscaping option also emerges at some point.