The traffic map and overlay

Two views show how road traffic is doing: the Road traffic view of the Map window for the whole map, and the traffic overlay that colours the roads in the main view. Both use the same colours, from green (flowing) to red (jammed). Use them to find the junctions that need traffic lights and the streets where buses get stuck in town traffic.

Open the Road traffic map

1. On the main toolbar, click Map (the map icon; tooltip Open map, extra viewport, cargo flow or list of signs) and choose Map of world, or press F4.
2. In the Map window, click the road traffic button (a bar in red, yellow and green; tooltip Show road traffic on map: where it flows and where vehicles are held up). The title changes to Map - Road traffic.

The busiest towns stand out in yellow. The white corners mark what the main view shows.

Colour	Legend	What it means
Red	Traffic jam	Vehicles stand still most of the time; or town traffic level 6 or 7
Orange	Slow traffic	Vehicles wait about half the time; or town traffic level 4 or 5
Yellow	Some waiting	Vehicles have to wait now and then; or town traffic level 2 or 3
Green	Traffic flows	Vehicles drive on freely; or town traffic level 1
Dark grey	Quiet road	Hardly any traffic
Light blue	Traffic lights	A junction with lights where nobody is held up

Road stops, bridges and tunnels count as road. Railways look as in the Routes view, and everything else is plain land.

Show traffic in the main view

1. Open the road toolbar: on the main toolbar, click Build roads (the road icon; tooltip Build road infrastructure) and choose Road construction.
2. Click the traffic overlay button (the same red, yellow and green bar, next to the traffic light button), or press O.
3. The roads in view are tinted by their traffic; quiet roads keep their normal look. Click the button again, or press O, to hide the colours. Closing the road toolbar hides them too.

The overlay button is a switch: it leaves the tool you are using alone.

Because the overlay is a switch and not a tool, you can keep it on while you build: place traffic lights or paint bus lanes and watch the colours change. It follows the traffic, redrawing every second.

Gredinghall with the overlay on: yellow in the centre, where town traffic is busy, green towards the edges.

What the colours mean

A road takes the worse of two colours:

• What road vehicles went through there lately. About four times a game day the game looks at every road vehicle on the road. One that waits, or crawls at less than a quarter of its top speed, counts as held up; one driving on counts as flowing. Vehicles loading at a stop, in a depot, stopped or broken down don’t count. Older observations fade away, so the colours show the last few days.
• The town traffic on the road. Every road has a congestion level from 0 to 7 (see town traffic): 1 shows green, 2 and 3 yellow, 4 and 5 orange, 6 and 7 red. With the city clock on, that follows the time of day, busier in the rush hours.

So a red junction can mean that road vehicles queue there, or that town traffic is jammed. The Land Area Information of a road tile tells you its town traffic level.

The map and the overlay only show; they never change the game. The vehicle part isn’t saved, and in a network game every player’s computer collects its own. Right after loading a game, only town traffic shows until vehicles have driven for a while.

Tips

• An orange or red junction on a bus route is the first place for traffic lights. After building them, keep the overlay on for a few game days and compare.
• A light-blue junction on the map has lights and no queue; if it turns yellow or worse, look at its timings.
• Yellow and orange streets all over a town centre are usually town traffic. Carrying more of the town’s passengers takes cars off the road; bus lanes take your buses past them.
• Watch a town in the rush hours with the city clock on: that’s when its streets are busiest.

Switching it off

There is nothing to switch off: the Road traffic view and the overlay only show when you choose them, and they don’t change the game.

See also

• Traffic lights
• Giving way at junctions
• Town traffic and street life
• Commuting: the Commuter traffic map in the Towns menu shows where commuters drive
• Bus priority