[Colorado DLC] Ramp Meters - I-25 Exits 145 & 201 (sec-0010-0001)[140070]

[supersobes]

Ramp meters control the flow of traffic onto the freeway at certain times of day, usually at rush hour. During the hours that the ramp meters are not active, the signals are turned off and do not display any lights. If it displayed a green light during the times that it is not active, then it would contradict the signs which read "One vehicle per green." If the ramp meters are not active for six hours and displayed a green light, that would mean that only one vehicle could go through during those six hours. That's why the signals should be turned off during those six hours. In ATS, because of a game limitation, the ramp meters have no active hours, they should just be permanently turned off.

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On Interstate 25 in Colorado, there are ramp meters at exit 145 Fillmore Street in Colorado Springs and exit 201 Hampden Avenue in Denver. These ramp meters should be tweaked to have the signals turned off displaying no lights.

Date of Bug Report: 29 Dec 2020
Game Version: 1.39.3.13s
Operating System: Windows 10 - 64-bit
No Mods
Always Reproducible

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[Colorado DLC] Ramp Meters - I-25 Exit 145 - Co. Spgs. ;[29/12/2020 12:11:34] (sec-0010-0001);-38742.2;88.7447;-1974.99;0.356566;-0.00381452

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[Colorado DLC] Ramp Meters - I-25 Exit 145 - Co. Spgs. ;[29/12/2020 12:12:16] (sec-0010-0001);-38826;88.6016;-1679.84;-3.00128;-0.0902069

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[Colorado DLC] Ramp Meters - I-25 Exit 201 - Denver ;[29/12/2020 12:13:05] (sec-0010-0001);-38697.2;104.035;-3791.95;-2.72953;-0.0786827

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[Colorado DLC] Ramp Meters - I-25 Exit 201 - Denver ;[29/12/2020 12:13:32] (sec-0010-0001);-38616.2;108.454;-3940.45;0.219371;-0.286036

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game.log:

[HaQ]

Thanks for your report.
QA: 0140070

[KrysEmlyn]

If I may, I'd like to make a different argument regarding the ramp meters.

It is a documented feature that the game supports a "sleep time", in which the signals do not function for a certain window of time.
ETS2 uses this feature to make the signals flash yellow in all directions, usually at intersections with smaller roads or areas with lower populations/traffic flow.
If it's possible for a semaphore profile to have more than one "sleep time" period, I'd suggest having the signals "sleep" if it is not the usual morning and evening rush hour periods.
If only one "sleep time" period is permitted by the game engine, then I'd suggest having them off between the evening rush hour and the morning rush hour (overnight).
To prevent the yellow lamps from blinking on the ramp meters during the "sleep time" period, it should only take a UV map edit to move the yellow light off of the UV mapping for the lamp material.

The yellow light is never used on highway ramp meters except for when they are starting the metering cycle.
I've only seen it happen once while in Seattle as the meter was being activated at the start of the evening rush hour, just before the meter hit its first red.
The only other time I've seen the yellow light on meters used is from snow storm video footage from Midwest states such as Minnesota, where they had the yellow light flash as a caution due to conditions.

As for the green light being constantly lit, I've only seen it done in the Seattle area due to a winter storm where WSDOT set the meters to automatic and the staff left the control building for the duration of the storm.
During the storm, the meters glowed green until traffic conditions warranted the metering of traffic.
Then, they did the usual red-green cycle until traffic conditions were favorable, at which point they went back to a steady green until the WSDOT employees could return to staffing their control building.

[supersobes]

For more information, this video also has lots of examples and visuals about the operations of ramp meters.

Watch on YouTube

[KrysEmlyn]

@supersobes, thanks for linking that video. Hopefully, it is informative for SCS Software.
Also, thank you for not being dismissive of my suggestion that to have the ramp meters actually be functional ingame.

I hope to see this feature expanded to other areas of the game in the future.
One location I can think of is the northbound I-5 ramps from US-2 and Everett Avenue in Everett, WA.
As a former resident of Everett, I immediately noticed something was missing there, but I wasn't sure how to get them in place until now.

EDIT:
I did some quick testing after making some edits to both the semaphore profile and the relevant prefabs that the meters are attached to and I'm pleased with the testing.
The meters can be made functional (do the red-green light cycle) for these prefabs. A second profile does need to be created for the 2-lane version so the lights alternate lanes properly, though.
My current settings are 5 seconds of green, 0 seconds of yellow, 10 seconds of red, and 0 seconds of both the red and yellow being on.
For alternating the lanes in the 2-lane meter setup, a 7.5 cycle time is used and assigned to the left meter signal.
The 5 seconds of green seems to be enough time to get semi trucks and other heavy vehicles enough time to register the green light and get clear of the stop line before the signal turns red.

As for making the meters inactive during the night, no changes need to be made to the meter models at this time.
I added a "sleep time" parameter to the ramp meter semaphore profiles, and the yellow light did not flash as I thought it would during the "sleep time".
I suspect the "yellow.blink.sleep" hookup in ETS2 is responsible for making the signals blink during the "sleep time", but I have no way of knowing for sure.

Just some more information for SCS to consider when designing an update to these assets.

[Cragner]

Some of the meter lights in colorado springs, are a mix of green/red cycles, off or some times flashing yellow. When they are flashing yellow the lower red green lights are off. Can't figure out any reason to why, the same time of day / day of the week seems random on what will be active that day. But regardless of the setting chosen they are never always green.

[Goblinator]

Thank you very much for the very helpful discussion. I have also created a semaphore and am extremely happy that it works.
You can even use several sleep modes, so that the ramp metering is active at the morning peak (in my example: from 6am to 11am) and afternoon peak (3pm to 8pm) and, viewed in this way, is in sleep mode twice.
Perhaps the following information is also interesting: https://95express.com/wp-content/files/ ... 0Final.pdf
The I-95 in Florida reports on ramp metering: green = 2 seconds and red varies between 2 and 13 seconds depending on the traffic volume. In my example I just set a red light duration rate of 5 seconds.

tr_semaphore_profile : tr_sem_prof.ramp_meter
{

model[0]: "ramp_meter"
model[1]: "ramp_meter_l"

type: 2
type[0]: traffic_light
type[1]: traffic_light


interval[]: (2.0, 0.0, 5.0, 0.0)

cycle: 2
cycle[0]: 0.0
cycle[1]: 0.0

sleep_time_start: 1200 # 20:00
sleep_time_end: 360 # 06:00 for morning-rush hour period, means ramp metering is active between 6am to 11am

sleep_time_start: 660 # 11:00
sleep_time_end: 900 # 15:00 for afternoon rush-hour period, means ramp metering is again active between 3pm to 8pm
}

It works in ATS v1.4 <3

Best regards from germany and excuse me from my bad english.

[KrysEmlyn]

Good to know that multiple sleep cycles can be defined for a semaphore profile and that the game will actually use them.
I'll update my local traffic configuration files later to adopt this setup.

[Goblinator]

Since some updates, the "bug" has been fixed that the ramp is no longer permanently green but is off.
Unfortunately, I can no longer activate the ramp meter.

I've also tried older versions of the game, despite semaphore_profile the traffic light is affected.

What do I have to do to make the ramp meter active again?