I decided to try out sandbox mode to be able to experiment a bit more. This meant that my first residential district was quite a bit larger than usual as I had access to high-density zones from the start.
This lead to the traffic situation in the following image (click on it for a larger image):
The two large parallel roads you see are just elongations of the exits from the default highway you start out with. All the cars stay in the same lane when exiting, backing up far into the main road. Most of them need to go into the residential district on the right, and they merge into the rightmost lane of the large road the exit leads to.
I understand that the cars take the optimal lanes no matter the actual traffic in the game, but I still don't see how I can efficiently solve my traffic problem here. What am I doing wrong, and how do I design a better exit?
Best Answer
You could try a frontage road running parallel to your large one way
This allows for numerous entry and exit points to the highway without making a zillion intersections on your main avenue. The frontage road also "filters" the traffic to closer to where they actually want to go instead of having them all go in and out at the same place.
Here's a screenshot of one I made in game:
It's a bit goofy because I didn't have room to run on both sides of the highway but flows very well.