If an intersection is one tile away from a roundabout, cars will stop in the roundabout to wait for the intersection. Keep a 4-tile buffer zone.
Pip saw the cursor dart toward the 'X'. He looked at his thriving metropolis—a 2,000-point kingdom built in thirty minutes of pure, focused strategy. With one final zippy car reaching its destination, the screen went black.
Their first move was to watch. For two weeks they stood at corners, on rooftops, and in buses, writing down where traffic stalled and why. They noticed the same things: mid-block pickups that turned two lanes into one, delivery vans double-parked at lunchtime, left-turners who backed up entire intersections, and pedestrians forced into long detours by overengineered crossings. The data told them something else too—many drivers weren’t trying to speed; they were trying to reach predictable, convenient gaps, and the city denied them those gaps.