Playing Cities: Skylines, and now I'm watching youtube videos on interchanges and road hierarchy. It's a dangerous rabbit hole.

I kept wondering why there were such big gaps in between the voice over. Then I saw the video length.

“If you play cities skylines” I think that’s 95% of this audience

This clip at 2:05 made me realize that I’ve never seen a car accident from the 1900s before lol

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As a truck driver, these off ramps are a nightmare! There have been times where I had to miss an exit because there was someone merging on and there was no way for me to get off without hitting them. These things are frustrating. And don't even get me started on merging on with a truck!

Why does everyone record in a bathroom? Audio sounds fine and then she's echoing in a bathroom.

In the Malmö area in Sweden, we use a lot of those cloverleaf interchanges. Traffic is quite low by American standards, so these intersections have proven to be safe and quick. I don't think I've seen a single accident during the 20 years we've had them.

Great video, very interesting. As an avid Cities Skylines player and traffic fixer I can see how this design, whilst good to start, soon crumbles as car flow increases. Whereas there's tools and tweaks in game that helps things flow better (lane mathematics and dedicated merging lanes), sadly this doesn't solve IRL problems as well. Thanks for the video 😁👍

This Video: America’s infrastructure gets a D+ 8:58 Me a cities skylines player: Those are rookie numbers

“if you play cities skylines” you say as i’m literally playing cities skylines staring at a cloverleaf interchange 👁👄👁

I wonder how the cloverleaf compares in different countries. For example in Germany, in driving schools we are taught how to merge/join on cloverleafs and (though I rarely drive) I've rarely seen the accidents you described.

9:13 "Engineers could have never anticipated the massive boom in ... vehicle use." Uh...yeah they could. There has been a constant effort since the 1920s to rip up trams and other forms of public transport in favour of cars. Saying you could've never anticipated what people were consciously working toward is like saying, "I turned the stove on, but then it got hot for some reason."

I smiled when she name-dropped Cities: Skylines, the greatest game ever!

Cloverleafs were built for a world when people still knew how to merge.

As someone that doesn't even drive I've recognized this "weaving" issue simply by observing my city

People who play cities skylines : "I know this all too well" SHE NAMED DROPED IT

"Engineers could not have foreseen population growth". Meanwhile, in my neighborhood growing up, we had a lot of engineers who had 8-10 kids.

A clever solution for the cloverleaf without weaving is found in Germany, right east to the Frankfurt Airport. A cloverleaf without weaving, because the exiting lanes merge inside the loop. There are 2 reasons why this solution was chosen: 1. located at the end of the runway, a construction up in the air was not an option. 2. lowering the intersection was not possible, because a train tunnel runs underneath it.

There’s a really small cloverleaf interchange in Columbia South Carolina that was built in the 1970s and a bunch of houses and businesses built around the interchange. Except the interchange is between two interstates. Due to the homes and businesses, it can’t really be expanded. There’s so many accidents there that the locals have named it “malfunction junction”.

The Cloverleaf...also known as the Cloverfield because of how much a monstrosity it was.

Cities skyline player here: remove AL the traffic lights and you will be Allright.

The classic "are the gonna try to go in front or should I....." while traffic still wants to do 80

In the UK we have something more popular called a "partially unrolled cloverleaf junction" where two symmetrical loops are turned into right hand slip roads that run parallel to each other. They are useful because there's no weaving, they take less space and only minor traffic uses the loops. There's one on the M25/M40 junction

1:45 "New Jersey roadways back then were atrocious." Hell, they still are today LOL

Cities Skylines Players: Friendship ended with clover leaf interchange. Now highway ramp spaghetti is my best friend

Props to the editor of this video for correcting the narrator's use of "less" to "fewer" at 9:46.

“And by that I mean - the 1920s.” Then at 1:50 shows two clips of cars from the 1950s, 30 years later.

The video should be named: how to stretch a video to 10 minutes to maximize ads.

The answer to increased traffic density isn’t increasing road capacity, it’s public transport. Build a decent railway!

there’s a cloverleaf near where I live that has an exchange so small that it gets backed up even outside of rush hour

Spartanburg SC has a roundabout underneath an interstate bridge and it is fantastic. Makes it so much easier to find the on ramp.

cloverleaf is an inside out roundabout. It favors through traffic, while roundabout favors right turns traffic. Both have capacity relative to turn radius.

They’re fun to drive around when they’re well banked

Loved the clovers back in the day. 3am they’re empty and provide an endless loop to hoon that old Eagle Talon. This has nothing to do w your video but damn, those were fun times!

I drive through a cloverleaf interchange everyday to and from work. The work fine outside of the US.

the "riverside freeway and pomona freeway" referenced at ~5:10 is the i-215/sr-60/sr-91 interchange in california, not virginia.

Sees thumbnail: "is it because they're huge?"

We in Germany have a lot of cloverleaf interchanges. But we also know how to drive - always right before left, so the number of crashes in cloverleaf interchanges in Germany is quite low.

I loved them as well for an engineer who saw them for the first time in Dubai. We didn't have cloverleaf or any form of interchange in our city back home in Philippines. They look spectacular from above. And not advisable to build any structures/establishments nearby. Since they don't have any pedestrian lanes or overpass bridges. But they are perfect for long distance trips

So what I'm hearing is that the Cloverleaf was invented by someone in Argentina. Who was that person, and why don't they get a mention?

And if cities skylines has taught me anything, then every possible intersection needs to be a roundabout

Thank you for having a real person read the content. I despise content that was created using software to read a script.

imagine how many train lines you could build with 4.6 trillion dollars. Traffic fixed forever

The Riverside and Pomona freeways... In Virginia? I'm pretty sure there talking about LA.

7:34 Cities: Skylines player here -> I know but traffic in the game is on another level sometimes lol.

Good job stretching this to ten minutes. I didn't think you'd make it, but you found a way!

Oh wow, so that weaving problem is the issue I’ve always had with cloverleafs, in city simulators I’ve always ended up needing to change them for other interchanges due to reduced capacity and weaving is the cause. I’d found myself making weird cloverleaf derivatives where I could have the slip lanes join on the opposite side to avoid the issue but it never hit me how it worked.

5:10 the Riverside and Pomona freeways are located in Riverside, California not Virginia

They seem to work just fine in Germany, a few high traffic interchanges got upgraded, but the cloverleaf is still by far the most common variant.

I can remember when, at least here in the South, you’d sometimes run up on a cloverleaf all of a sudden, on an otherwise 2-lane highway. I guess most of them were built before the interstate system was complete. Later, I found out they were a popular solution when intersections in rural areas had a high rate of accidents. Dividing each highway for a one mile stretch and installing a cloverleaf was an ideal solution. In that setting, it was not really possible to overrun the interchange’s capacity, and accidents would almost completely stop.

What slays me about the cloverleaf is that you can reverse the order of the ramps so that you aren't merging INTO THE OFF-RAMP when you're trying to get on the on-ramp, but that so many of these were built essentially to ensure a rough stop right at the beginning/end of the ramp.

I was thinking "this is making me want to play cities skylines" and literally 3 seconds later she's talking about cities skylines.

"4.6 trillion dollars over the next decade" Funny how when it's a program to help us the numbers are stated in 10 year increments. The military budget for instance is only ever discussed in "per year"

I have always felt that the exit/entrance ways were a problem, especially during heavy traffic times. Thank You for giving my concerns a voice and the problem a name (Weaving).

This is 10th video in a row where i watching video about traffic and intersection model, idk why but it seems interesting to me

One interesting design I've seen in England is through highways separated by bridges while the on and off ramps join in a big roundabout.

Rural area ones are amazing, but in cities skylines I try to stay away from building highways in dense places at all

Inner leaves essentially create the problems that left turns do via entry/exit weaves. The primary solution to the obvious speed impediment is to have the inner exits at a different grade and a merger point after the next exit- which creates clearance and cost issues.

1:45 "New Jersey roadways back then were atrocious" They still are

When you have those side lanes just for the entrance/exit they work a ton better. I'd say as good as anything else I've been on.

You definily should know Brasília, Brazil's capital. The whole city was planned in the 50's and pretty much based on those cloverleaf (that got the nickname of "tesourinha" here, in a literal translation a "little scissors"). And land here became extremly expensive.

There's a cloverleaf in Woburn, MA that the state highway department has been debating on how to fix for decades now (hint: can't be fixed without taking land)

5:52 Hey it’s Jakarta’s Semanggi Interchange! ‘Semanggi’ literally translates to ‘clover’ and it’s regarded as a symbol of Indonesia’s development in the 60’s.

Oh my golly!!! I've never seen a video that was so obviously stretched to 10min of runtime. You can watch it at 1.5x speed and it still sounds normal!

Talks out 1920s. Shows 1940s footage: 1:49

There is this cloverleaf interchange near me where two interstates, I-44 and I-49, and a state highway, MO-59, intersect. I-44 goes across east-west. I-49 comes from the north and then switches to the west and becomes concurrent with I-44 for a couple of miles. MO-59 comes from the south and ends at the interchange. This causes issues because those coming from the west and want to continue on I-49 North have to use one of the leafs, while those coming from I-49 South and want to go to I-44 east have to mangle with the large amount of traffic that want to go on I-49 North. I had a close call with a 18 wheeler because of the fact that the exiting traffic and entering traffic have to use the same lane, and the fact that the entering and exiting traffic can’t go fast and this causes other issues with other vehicles traveling fast. This interchange was built when I-44 was being constructed and back when what is now MO-59 and I-49 north of the interchange was a single lane highway known as US-71 Alternate. So there wasn’t any issue back then, but now for the past 20-30 years, and I-49 being recently added, that interchange is a mess. I don’t believe that MoDOT will replace the leaf with a flyover for northbound I-49 traffic, because a couple miles to the west, I believe that they are planning to replace another state route, MO-249, that is already built to interstate standards with I-49. So I believe that don’t see it worth it to modify the existing ramps if it’s going to be obsolete in the future.

A well presented video that makes a seemingly boring topic fun; intelligent AND gorgeous presenter; and mentioning city-skylines... how can it have less than 1 million views...

I personally call it “the pretzel loop interchange”. 🤷‍♀️

Every time a Cities Skylines player uses the full clover interchange, Biffa has a weird sting in his guts. He must grasp his belly and utter the soothing words: "I hate one of these. Let's do the lane mathematics. And Hugo there, Hugo there, Hugo there, Hugo there." And he has no idea why he has to do this, the poor guy.

It’s funny, I saw Road Guy Rob’s presentation of a case study for what to possibly do about one of these in Salt Lake City (looking at the maps app to refresh my memory, it’s I-215 at UT-201)

Only 3 full ones of these were built and only 2 are left. The third got replaced with a double roundabout set up with only 2 of the loops remaining.

They really just photoshopped a road onto the intersection in the thumbnail

2:50 how can that newspaper headline say it was the first when the dude saw it about one in Argetina?

There's an exceptionally tight cloverleaf near where I live, in a suburban area with heavy commuter traffic. Each freeway is reliably trafficked at about the same times. Worse, it has exits and on-ramps very close respectively before and after it in three of the directions. I learned to drive freeways partly by repeated, harrowing trips on it. I can only imagine how long ago it was a sensible interchange for the traffic it supported. There's an improvement project for both freeways ongoing; I rather hope some kind of fix, or easing, of the cloverleaf problem there is in the works.

Main problem with cloverleaf is the difference in speed. These were designed in the 1900s for cars that barely even go 45mph. Nowadays cars can easily travel at 100mph without any issue. The people merging onto the highway don't have the ability to go 30-70mph in 2 seconds given the short length of the merge. Meanwhile, people exiting are given a very short distance to brake from 70-80mph to 30mph.

"It was invented by an American who stole the idea from a nameless Argentine" "The story of this invention starts in the US, and not in the country where it was invented" "This invention has only been tried and tested in the US" This is why the world thinks Americans are cute.

In the Netherlands we have a large amount of these weaving entry-exit lanes, sometimes being very short. You get taught how to negotiate them in driver’s ed, and because everyone’s taught quite well, you almost never run into problems. It’s not the road structure that’s at fault here, it’s your driver’s ed that’s incomprehensibly limited and unconstrained. Weaving isn’t hard when everybody sort of knows what they’re doing.

Well in Germany on the Autobahn we only have this type of interchange (at leat I can't remember to have driven past another one) and they work just fine, and there can be a lot of traffic🤷‍♂️

There is one in redditch, near where i live and its quite uncomfortable to be on but there is low traffic so it works there

you can fix weaving in cloverleaf interchanges by separating the on and off ramp into a slip lane so the on and off traffic go into a single lane. Alternatively although Ive never seen it done is to pass the offramp over or under the on ramp so they don't even share a lane at all. It makes much smaller bridges and tunnels than doing massive flyovers.

Cities Skylines Gang where are you?!

There are stack interchanges all over Texas urban areas, we don't deal with cloverleaves very often. Though the Waugh Street and Memorial Drive intersection in Houston is a notable exception.

Cant imagine a clover leaf interchange in a highly populated area. The one here in Joplin, MO that is for i49 and i44 sees very little traffic compared to most and boy is it a nightmare.

Boy, Cities: Skyline sure does get a lot of love, and deservedly so.

1:18 ramping up the cost I see what you did there....

I'd like to see more usage of diverging diamond interchanges. Especially interchanges between a semi-divided highway and fully divided interstate.

As someone who does play Cities, I discovered this issue rather quickly and began using elongated 'H'-shape off/on ramps with frontage roads. It's more expensive to put down and maintain, but traffic flow is much smoother.

Funny how "Went off" and "Turned on" are the same thing when referring to metaphysical light bulbs.

Still can't fully get used to this lady's accentuations and pauses.

2:20 that fact blew muy mind, I'm an engeneering student from Argentina, and I was sure we didn't have highways until the 40s. The oldest cloverleaf from here that I'm aware of Is "el trébol" cross in the Richeri highway, which was the first actual highway (no level crossings), built in 1945. And the oldest thing similar to a highway Is the general Paz, built 1938. WTF

Hard to describe in words, but you can have a look what they do in Germany now very often with cloverleaves: you block lane changes in the intersection,e.g. by a small wall, and then built a small bridge over the leaf of a cloverleaf. So after you took a leaf, you don't change lanes, but drive above the other leaf and then merge in your direction. You cannot do it with too much speed, but it is surprisingly efficient

Cheddar: these roads were built 60 years ago and never could've anticipated such traffic Europe: how about, say, 2000 years?

Cloverleafs work fine, every design has its traffic capacity though. Depends where you live, but here in Minneapolis they work excellently

“one more lane, bro”

There are variations with a bridge or tunnel at the ending of each cloverleaf for grade-seperated merging and branching off.

This video brings back memories... of my friends and I taking bong hits driving on the cloverleaf. It was fun. I just looked up Google Earth to see the cloverleaf in question, and its gone, replaced by a partial cloverleaf like in the video. The march of progress destroys more of my youth.

Anyone else have to play at 1.25 speed? Sounds like she’s speaking in slow motion

The picture at 6:23 is labeled backwards. You can also see on the right edge there is a smaller offramp located too close to the larger interchange.

In my local area we only use half clover leaves as mostly on ramps.