industrial areas

[grumphie]

so, i've been playing cities:skylines for a few days now.

maintaining functional commercial area's and living space has so far not been much of a problem. while the commercial area's sometimes lack customers or workers, it's mostly a problem of having some overcpaacity or me reworking some part of my city. heck, rather large area's of residential buildings can often do with a single or maybe a pair of 6 wide roads on a roundabout without clogging up, supporting several thousand citizens.

what i struggle with however is constructing industrial area's. i clog my roundabouts, get large congestions in the industiral zone itself if it's big enough, and basicly die in a fiery hell of garbage not being collected, building burning down and traffic buidling up into the freeways.

could anyone give me some pointers on how to build a functional industrial zone that doesnt clog itself to death?

to give some examples on hwo i tend to handle traffic right now:

Spoiler

my most recent industrial zone, worked fine for a long time but when it started to fill up traffic started to get a large problem.

roundabout worked great while the large flats were still low density residential - high denisity hits and traffic unto the freeway.

another industiral zone(runnign into a large roundabout), clogged up as well when filled.

as you can see, i suck at handling alrge amounts of traffic.

 

[Cymsdale]

The transportation of industrial goods is pretty much going to cause the bulk of traffic problems in your city, so I suggest building industrial districts with that completely in mind. Service vehicles are minor and commuter traffic can be managed by providing good access to the district from public transportation. Once that is managed, you should focus the traffic layout in a way that makes it easy for cargo to come in and cargo to go out.

Keep in mind that going 'out' means two different things. You will have goods that need to leave the map for exports, and you will have goods that need to be distributed to the various commercial districts in your city (this is also why huge commercial districts can have traffic issues if you are not careful).

One problem you might have is you are simply building way more industry than you actually need. Check your import/export view to see how many goods are being exported. Remove unnecessary industry to bring the exports down to a small buffer.

Another consideration is to split up your industry into smaller more manageable distracts. No need to force all cargo traffic into one area of your city.

 

[DCT1080]

For industrial areas, bearing in mind that the same is also true for the other zone types, less is more. at the start, zone no more than about 4 square blocks as you paint a road. The biggest problem with industrial is traffic coming in and out. This means that a typical 3 or 4 way highway intersection won't be abe to cope with the trucks and you will end up with a traffic jam on your regional road connections. Instead, especially if your city is surrounded by a ring of highway where everyone can eventually get all over the city, have your industrial area only accessible from one side of the highway at a time, forcing all traffic coming and going to travel in the same direction to enter and leave and then use either a cloverleaf to U-turn on or a series of other intersections to get where they are going.

The next step, is to really think about what your traffic must then do after it enters your industrial zone. Try to make the entrance free of intersections for as long as is possible, then, make sure that you avoid a 4 way cross and have your initial traffic disperse into a T-junction. You want to try to repeat this for the exit. Keep the entrance and exit as far away as possible from each other too. In your industrial zone, you will also want your buildings there to level up. They don't all need to (and probably wont) hit the top level, but by making sure that they do, you will alleviate some of your traffic issues.

In order to do this, place at least one fire house, clinic, LOGICAL bus stops leading to residential areas and the same for metro. You also want to have your garbage dump somewhere in the zone BUT never EVER have all your garbage dumps OR incinerators all in the same zone, this is a jam waiting to happen. Instead, spread them out across multiple zones and place them sensibly too, preferably away from either the entrance or exit.

Using the heavy traffic ban and making sure that your residential zones are also linked to your industry ensures that Cims can drive to and from work directly if they don't use mass transit. The other thing about having to place these services is that you then have less space to zone your industrial buildings, meaning less trucks overall.

Cargo train depots are also somewhat handy for getting heavy trucks away from your on ramp, but they can clog up your industrial zone itself, meaning you should be careful too how you end up placing it. Same rules apply for it as for the highway entrance. Place it on as long a stretch of road as possible, whilst also ensuring that the trucks leaving it will want to be able to get to all sides of the zone and aren't all funnelled into one street.

Lastly, never try to place all your eggs in one basket. Pause the game first and then plan out and zone multiple industrial areas. Without restarting, place your services (fire, medical, garbage) and connect your transit. Then, for each zone you place in this way, cars and trucks have an additional option to travel to, meaning your main highway intersections should remain clear. Both the farming and forestry specialisations are safe for you to expand your other zone types next to, as they generate no pollution, so check your resources for ideas about where to place your industry.

Hope this helps.

 

[novapaddy]

It's funny because I'm going in a totally different direction. You have highways for roads within an industrial district and I'm now going back to using single (off-ramp) or the normal dual-way single road for my intra-district transport. I was happy to find out last night that I can add an off-ramp to an off-ramp so I get the road continuing as before, but now it has a functioning off ramp as well.

I found that having a single-direction road just causes multiple problems when they eventually have to end and meet up with normal traffic.

EDIT: I would also have more gaps in the terraces of industry to allow cross traffic within the district.

 

[Person012345]

Ok, I'll go through what I think to be wrong with your screenshots:

First thing: There's no reason to have those big 6 lanes. It might seem unintuitive, but downgrading some of those roads to 2 lanes might ease traffic because traffic lights are terrible and you don't want them ever. else get the traffic light on/off mod. Unless the traffic is legitimately being caused by a lack of turning lanes, large roads are pointless except for aesthetics. Second thing: You only have one way in/out. I'd advise giving traffic another way onto the highway (perhaps at the right hand side). Split the traffic in half. Whilst this may not be an issue right now (I think it's mostly the traffic lights although it's hard to say without moving footage - I can't even see the traffic lights in those screenshots, I'm just assuming they exist), it will be for larger areas.

Again, traffic lights. Kill them. Kill them all. Also, connect that main roundabout up to smaller, more local feeder roundabouts that each share the traffic load instead of, again, all of it cramming into that one junction and then hitting traffic lights. Examples:

The last one is much of the same.

 

[AmpsterMan]

Man your Industrial area looks WAY too big. I bet you have A LOT of exports. Perhaps the best solution here is to reduce the amount of Industry you have.

Otherwise, many of the solutions offered here would work wonderfully. I love working Industrial areas because i find them to be the most challenging

 

[Morwynd]

Check out this article which presents what he calls the "Industrial Coffee Filter" pattern: http://simnation.tv/citiesskylines/guides/build-guide-the-industrial-coffee-filter-zone/

Important features are that he splits off incoming industrial traffic (from the highway) ASAP, flows everything through the industrial zone (via 1-way roads) towards an exit road, and then gives it its own dedicated route back to the highway. The main idea is to separate industrial import/export (ie external highway) traffic from city traffic as much as possible.

Of course you also still need to connect Industrial to the rest of your city, but giving it priority highway access is critical.

 

[novapaddy]

Hey Morwynd thanks for the educational link in the previous post. Very good!