Citizens do not use the road I made for them in Cities Skylines

[Demir]

I have a little bit traffic problem in some highway. So I tried to relieve the road from it but citizens do not use the road I made for them.

I want them to follow the light blue colored path but they follow the dark blue one and it causes traffic. How can I make them to follow the right road?

[briley]

1. The road appears to be much longer than the alternative. The wide curve towards east does not seem to be necessary. It should be possible to build it much shorter.

2. The road does not seem to solve the actual traffic problem. Most of the cars passing through the heavily congested area seem to want to go south, and those which want to go north seem to want to change from the westmost road to the eastmost road. The road with the dark blue arrow doesn't seem to have any congestion, so the light blue one isn't really needed as an alternative.

What I would recommend in this case is to feed all the four roads coming from or heading to the north into a roundabout. There already appears to be one in the south. And then I would create a bridge to accomodate specifically those cars which come from the north via the western road and want to go north via the eastern road. But there doesn't seem to be a reason to do this here. It should be possible to do this much further north. Perhaps over the cloverleaf exchange in the north, or even further north.