My town currently has 4 highway on/off ramps. one on the far right (where the yellow and green lines start), one in the middle right above my industrial area, one in the middle left, between my farms/logging industry, and a 4th one off screen to the further left that goes to a seaport.
I would assume that traffic would follow the yellow line, using the offramps near their destinations.
instead, ALL the traffic coming into my city, is coming in on the far right and weaving through my surface streets (a 4 lane road, not highway, ring road, and 2 lane connector roads), causing massive traffic headaches and even bigger backups as they try to follow the green line to get to the far left through my city.
Why are my Cims dumb and bombing through the middle of my city, instead of taking the highway?
and another topic.. this torrential crush of vehicles coming in off that one far right offramp regularly causes huge backups for 4+ chunks on the right highway. I have lane mathmatics. I have a very long runup where they have plenty of time to get over. I still get idiot Cims taking the furthest lane just to get ahead of the crush before stopping and trying to merge in right before the offramp.
I miss TM:PE traffic lines.
I think the Cims are just drawing a straight line across the map from their origin to their destination, and driving along any road closest to that line to get there. I just bridged a large distance in a straight line with a gravel road and all the traffic is crushing that slow, gravel road instead of taking the faster, easier highway.
So, at least in my amateur and idiotic testing, I don't think the Cims are obeying road speed hierarchy like I was understood them to do (prefering faster roads and thus highways, over slower, crowded, local surface streets).