Virtual junctions (different types of pedestrian crossings and junctions)

[originalfoo]

Currently, the only place where I can have traffic lights and/or signs (stop/yield/priority) is at junctions of 3+ segments.

I'd like ability to be able to use lights and/or signs features at 'virtual' junctions between two segments. It might be simple (some way to mark a normal node as a junction node) or require more effort (replicate the vanilla light/signs UI on to normal nodes), but it would open up a plethora of new opportunities, for example...

Traffic calming

That could be achieved with 3 segments. The middle segment still has 2 lanes, but they are on top of each other on one side of the road. The nodes either side of that middle segment gets either yield or priority signs as applicable.

In-road crossings

Again, three segments. The middle one contains the crossing. Timed traffic lights are set up on the nodes either side.

EDIT: Probably not timed traffic lights; in example above, the pedestrians have right of way - when they show up at the crossing, cars have to stop. Not sure if TMPE has a feature to enable that sort of thing? (current traffic light editing features are too painful to use so never really investigated that aspect)

Staggered crossings

This time there's three (or four?) segments, and some carefully crafted traffic light setup.

Advanced stop lines

The road going to the junction has 2 segments; one a fairly normal road with bike lane, the other a seemingly dedicated bike stop area.

Invisible traffic lights exist on the node between those two segments, and with careful sequencing the flow of vehicles vs. bikes can be engineered to give the desired effect.

Summary

The ability to turn normal nodes in to junction nodes would enable all sorts of cool road features to be created. In many cases, the 'middle' segments might be constructed manually in-game using decals and 'invisible lane' networks; alternatively asset authors could create dedicated prefabs for the specialist segments (the user would still need to config the traffic lights, signs, etc, in-game via TM:PE).

[krzychu124]

Theoretically every node in game could have traffic lights or other stuff (see lane connector on straight roads i.e., quick fix for tollbooth) but in actual implementation, nodes with fewer that 3 segments are excluded from usage. It should be possible to create feature like this (of course I need to investigate that). I like it, it's step closer for better realism and greater flexibility.

[kianzarrin]

This mod implements one of the Ideas above:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=427258853&searchtext=zebra+crossing

[originalfoo]

Kian's 'road blender' mod will likely open door to implementing some of the stuff above.