Population density vs traffic

[Tomnoddy]

I'm on my second city, it now has 28k pop and fits within the original area of land you started with (haven't bought any extras yet). I realised that must be quite dense given I only need 75k for the final milestone, "Megalopolis".

After getting past 25k though we've got some parts of the road network turning red for much of the daytime, though traffic flow remains over 80%. Previously I've been able to fix with bolt on solutions - slip roads and flyovers to bypass the busiest junctions. I've added bike paths , a metro system for the downtown, a freight line to connect the two industrial areas, and a bus network for the suburbs. Over 25k though, this wasn't enough.

The first problem is in my residential area. The inner residential zone has some very nice skyscrapers, but some streets are still two lane-one way, and it looks like i need to remove some intersections and extend the one-way network. Even with savescum, I'd have to bulldoze most of the max-level growables !

Then there's the mini roundabout between the industrial and commercial zones. It was there at pop 0, and has been upgraded to 4 lane highway roads, been bypassed with flyovers and underpasses. But it can't cope when pop exceeds 25k, and that whole area is very tight. Just don't have room for the big cloverleaf interchanges etc. that are now unlocked.

 

[28rommel]

From the image, It seems that you should have pre-planned ahead of time and made room for the freeway system to go straight down the middle (running north and south) through the initial area/plot of land that you own. This would have greatly assisted you with traffic. It looks like you currently only have one way in and out for the freeway system on your map (meaning only one junction area). Wow.

 

[MarkJohnson]

In general one-way roads are a bad idea for this game.

You look like you have excessive forestry specialization. Make sure you have no exports at all to reduce traffic. This will cut down traffic a lot.

 

[Tomnoddy]

From the image, It seems that you should have pre-planned ahead of time and made room for the freeway system to go straight down the middle (running north and south) through the initial area/plot of land that you own. This would have greatly assisted you with traffic. It looks like you currently only have one way in and out for the freeway system on your map (meaning only one junction area). Wow.

Lessons - don't zone anything on a small road, even one-way you'll eventually want to upgrade to highway or 6 lane, which is wider and means bulldozing. Also perfect grids are a bad idea, leave some gaps for cycle paths & walkways, mass transit, parks and alterations - that way you can change one street without bulldozing the next one.

 

[ristosal]

From the image, It seems that you should have pre-planned ahead of time and made room for the freeway system to go straight down the middle (running north and south) through the initial area/plot of land that you own. This would have greatly assisted you with traffic. It looks like you currently only have one way in and out for the freeway system on your map (meaning only one junction area). Wow.

Disagree with having to build a highway down the middle, as he has a fine looking central six lane artery there. It will do fine as long as zoning is balanced and public transport is on point (I wouldn't expand south on that map anyway). That full cemetery needs to go though if he wishes to extend it And yes, he needs additional highway interchanges to spread out industrial traffic.

I would buy two squares along the highway next, one to the east to allow for extra highway connections (and city expansion naturally), and one to the west to fix a map design issue. That cloverleaf eventually goes to shit with a large city, download the Maelstrom Junction or something from the Workshop and replace it when traffic becomes a problem there.

 

[MarkJohnson]

It will do fine as long as zoning is balanced and public transport is on point

Great advice. balance is the key.

That cloverleaf eventually goes to shit with a large city

um, what happened you your great advice above?

Clovers work great, as long as it's balanced. It can be very challenging to balance a city the larger it gets, but it can be done.

 

[Turjan]

I wouldn't worry too much about the red color. As long as traffic flows, it's mostly okay.

Regarding clover leaves, yes, those get a bit suboptimal with more traffic because half of the traffic entries lie before traffic exits. Flyovers work better with heavier traffic, especially if you have many left turns on the connection.

 

[Tomnoddy]

Disagree with having to build a highway down the middle, as he has a fine looking central six lane artery there. It will do fine as long as zoning is balanced and public transport is on point (I wouldn't expand south on that map anyway). That full cemetery needs to go though if he wishes to extend it And yes, he needs additional highway interchanges to spread out industrial traffic.

I would buy two squares along the highway next, one to the east to allow for extra highway connections (and city expansion naturally), and one to the west to fix a map design issue. That cloverleaf eventually goes to shit with a large city, download the Maelstrom Junction or something from the Workshop and replace it when traffic becomes a problem there.

The layout of that city is as follows -

left rear corner is the industrial zone. The one way streets of the industrial area feed into a roundabout that splits off traffic bound for the highway onramp (export) and that bound for the entry point of the commercial area (right rear). Traffic coming in off the highway meets a roundabout that splits traffic headed for the input of the industrial and the input of the commercial. Traffic exiting the commercial is routed into the input of the industrial zone.

The residential area (foreground) was added last, since it generates less traffic than the goods vehicles i fitted the roads in for the shoppers and commuters around the more important stuff.

Problem was when I unlocked natural resources view i discovered that the natural resources on this map (forest) were mostly on the opposite side of the commercial zone to where the rest of the indsutry is. I'm going to buy a new plot of land that allows me to move the specialised industry on the far side of the industrial zone away from everything else, since traffic from the specialised zone is mostly import, export, or to the generic industry, with none going to commercial and very little residential (it doesn't seem to employ many Cims).

Atm the problem is Kludged with a system of highways to link the two halves of my industry either side of the commercial zone.

And yes, I will definitely buy the plot with the highway so I can get more onramps.

Last thing to get added to this city was the office space, mostly on the far side of the residential away from the commercial and industrial , since AFAIK there is no traffic to these zones from offices.

For the residential area, I'm going back to a 100% one way system again, since the problems arise where one way meets normal roads. If people don't like oneway, they can always use the bike paths. I have these bus routes linking serving as feeders for my metro system, I was worried how this might effect them, but i could either

• just go 100% metro and be damned, the whole city is so dense i'm sure we could afford it
• add a one way road looping back from the end of the one way circuit through the residential zone back to its start. Car traffic won't use this, since it will only be going to work or to the shops, so the buses heading back to the start of their routes should be able to short cut though here without getting stuck.

As for worrying about the growables, I realised I just need to be bold and get bulldozing. I have 1.3 million funds, all the buildings unlocked, I just need to let the game run a bit and the tall buildings will all come back. Much easier than starting over.

 

[MarkJohnson]

As far as forestry goes, you can just plop a bunch of trees until the resource overlay shows dark green. It is the only resource you can create.

As for on/off ramps, I advise against adding any. This way you'll learn to balance the tile and better be able to grow larger cities. Otherwise, you'll just run into more issues as your city grows.

In fact, I highly recommend you build a few 1-tile cities and get a feel for how things interact with each other and you get a better feel to the game.

 

[EthanZak]

To be fair, for that size of city, with a single highway access point - your traffic is looking pretty good. You'll encounter more problems with it as you expand outwards, and people & goods start to want to move to areas in neighbouring squares; I keep zones of about that size isolated from each other except for highway and public/cargo transport; this combo means stuff that has to go by road can do so quickly (if your highway access points are up to scratch), but for cims it's a far shorter route to use public transport, hence it's better utilised.

My other tips would be: avoid traffic lights where possible (a lot easier since MT), use short on/off ramps to connect roads to roundabouts instead of directly (works best if you have the on and off ramps on diff sides of roundabout, I use tunnels/bridges), and as Mark said above, avoid one-way roads if you can.

Oh one more thing, small roundabouts are terrible for anything but very low-use areas - it take up a lot of room, but the large roundabout is what I always go for (and often with something built in the centre of it via tunnels when my city gets really crowded).