Many city builders are considering a lot of crosses between. Actually it does not help relieving the heavy traffic. Every traffic road detects if there are buildings facing to them. If it is, the traffic load will increase. If there are no buildings facing to the one part of road, that road have no traffic. So you may find only one dimension of the road needs upgrade. (For example, horizontal) And then, the vertical road becomes useless, it is not meaningful to stay in there. It can actually be removed.
However, the last vertical road connects the buildings to other infrastructures, such as energy and fire department. It is important and cannot be removed. For the final appearance, you should look like several stripes leading to dead end, forming the letter "E".
You can actually connects the vertical components of the roacd into bridges as an alternative. Simply put some pond under the bridge and you can build some bridges. In that case your population can be increased, and not worrying traffic conjestion, and hence maximizing the efficiency of the city.
Figure 1: an E-shaped road design, with bridges connecting different horizontal segments.