Cities Skylines Traffic Tips

Need help staving off traffic jams and bumper to bumper lanes in Cities Skylines? Then check out our helpful guide on easing traffic troubles in the game, with or without using mods.

Best Tips for Traffic in Cities Skylines

While traffic solutions may vary on your map selection and previous route decisions, there are still plenty of general tips that greatly improve your experience. We've divided these into three distinct categories for easy review.

Exits, Connections, and Flow

• Don't leave the highways/roads that enter and leave your city as the only roads in those areas. Create exits, access roads, and any other features that allow drivers to filter out to other parts of the city.
• Be certain that all highways are properly connected across your city.
• Adjust traffic routes as necessary to redirect cars to less frequented paths.
• Make sure neighborhoods have a good amount of entrances and exits to reduce congestion.

Crowding, Density, and Intersections

• Avoid crowding intersections into one area. Spacing them across the map evenly will result in more equal traffic flow.
• Utilize traffic view to better understand where your problems areas with traffic are.
• Don't forget to use roundabouts, especially in intersections where congestion is increasing.
• Allow for some degree of low and medium density areas nearby roads. Having all high-density zones near your roads will result in heavy amounts of traffic.

Public Transportation, Cargo Depots, and Zoning

• Don't forget that traffic is not just caused by commuters and other personal driving, but also cargo. Cargo depots will streamline goods coming in and out of your city.
• Have roads available that aren't used for zoned buildings. Give your drivers traffic options that are not crowded by buildings. Consider zoning on one side or not at all for some streets.
• Don't forget about buses and other forms of alternative transportation. Public transport will greatly improve traffic congestion.

Related: Best Cities Skyline DLC – All Cities Skyline DLCs, Ranked

Best Mods for Traffic in Cities Skylines

Using mods may be considered "cheating" by some players of Cities Skylines, but we'd disagree. This is because Cities Skylines is a single-player game with personally determined goals. You can do what you want in your own game, including mods to improve traffic flow.

Traffic Manager: President's Edition

Traffic Manager: President's Edition on Steam Workshop is arguably the best traffic mod to ever be released for Cities: Skylines. By using the TMPE mod, you can access more sophisticated parking and lane tools. You'll also unlock the ability to highly customize intersections, rails, road, and other traffic assets. Other small tweaking features are also available.

Network Anarchy

Want to just do whatever you want when placing roads and other traffic assets? Then check out the Network Anarchy mod on the Steam Workshop. You'll be able to ignore the typical placement restrictions in Cities Skylines to essentially do whatever you want. The mod is in beta, so keep in mind that bugs are likely to occur at some point.

Want to read more tips for Cities Skylines? If so, check out All Cities Skylines Cheats and Console Commands on Pro Game Guides.