The best intersection is...

Crossroads are something very complex and actually very interesting. They can be simple, where one less busy road crosses another and where a right-of-way sign is enough for flow (or not), or they can be real road intersections, where we find overpasses, roundabouts and more. Which ones the designers of the road network will decide on depends on the expected traffic and, of course, money.

But how to determine the fluidity of individual versions of intersections? In modern times, of course, with computer simulations. These are a fairly complex, professional and not exactly cheap thing, so of course those who make a living doing it more or less do it. But there are also enthusiasts, such as the owner of the YouTube channel euverus.

Do you know the Steam platform? In short - it is a platform mainly intended for playing games, it works in different operating systems (PC, MAC, Linux), and it allows you to buy and play games and socialize with other players.  And what does Steam have to do with Crossroads Simulation?

One of the very popular games on this platform is a city simulation called Cities: Skyline. Among other things, you can build all possible intersections and other traffic elements in the game, and the system then takes them into account during the simulation. The matter is obviously very interesting, because there is also a whole series of additions and improvements ("mods") for the game, which are available through the so-called Workshop. Everything can be found in it, from vegetation that will beautify our city, to various buildings of various architectural styles and also - intersections. Well, the aforementioned euverus used Cities: Skyline and its add-ons to build 35 different intersections where two roads meet and then measure flow rates. He then made a six-minute video out of it all and posted it on YouTube.

And which intersection is the best? Of course, the answer is not simple, as it depends on the circumstances. We somehow found the two-level roundabout the most cute, which is somewhere in the video at 4:40, because it is not too bulky but still flows well enough.

Whoever hides behind the name euverus is to be congratulated on his enthusiasm. The whole thing probably wasn't done in an hour. The case, of course, has some small flaws. One is that the vehicles sometimes seem to drive through each other. But it only seems so, since the vehicles in the simulation are treated as points and not rectangles. This may slightly reduce the accuracy of the simulation, but it should still be around 97 percent, which is an excellent result for an amateur venture. Who knows with what precision professional solutions work...

Source: euverus/YouTube

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