Road hierarchy: fixing traffic without demolishing your city

Traffic jams in Cities: Skylines are rarely about road quantity; they are about road relationships. A city with fewer roads but correct hierarchy flows better than a road-packed city where everything connects to everything.

Tier one: highways. They serve districts, not houses. A residential zone with direct highway access generates hundreds of trips that cut through the whole city.

Tier two: arterials. They connect districts to highways. The rule: arterials must not hit signalised intersections too close together - at least twenty grid squares apart.

Tier three: local roads. They serve houses and shops only, and meet arterials at a limited number of points. This is the rule players break most: every small street feeds the main road, and every car takes the same 'shortest' route.

Rollout step one: start with industry. Industrial zones generate the heaviest goods traffic. Give freight its own corridor that never crosses downtown, then move cargo terminals to the map edge.

Finally, transit before asphalt. One metro line linking residential zones with the job core removes more private cars than two new lanes. Add roads only once transit is full - and your city starts moving within a week.