What to do with the starting motorway?

[Vjeldan]

There is one thing i am struggeling with every city i start: the beginning.

There is a motorway with three lanes from the end of the map and three lanes to the end of the map. And this motorway just ends somewhere in the landscape. Three lanes in the sand, and three lanes out of the sand.

Now the game gives me the ability to build roads. Twolaned in one direction, or one lane in each direction at start, no other roads allowed yet.
What can i do with this?

I could split each the three lanes in and out the not-yet-city to twolanes in the same direction and a second road with one lane off and one lane back on the road, but this lane back doesn't make much sense.
If i just narrow down the motorway to a normal twoway road thats creating a mess with traffic piling up.
If i split the 3 lanes into something divisible by 2 i got a lot of roads i never wanted and don't have much use.
I could branch off twolanes out and twolanes in, and then create a third street with one lane in and one lane out in the middle... alright, thats somewhat clean. But then i got one side of the city in which the people go into the city, and one side of the city were the people go out of the city. Sounds good? Is not good.
People want to move in to the houses and get wares from outside, every part of the city needs access to outside the city. And who gets in but doesnt want to stay wants to get out of the city again. Just one direction for both in and out of the city that is then branching into one way-out-side of the city and one way-in-side of the citiy let's my traffic go wild.

What do i do with this dead end in nowhere motorway?

 

[Vjeldan]

Nope, the only "clean" way doesn't even work, since i can't combine lanes from the two different starting motorways to one twolane in both directions with only using one lane. For that i too would need one lane roads. Which i do not have at the beginning. I have 2x 3 lanes and can only work with 2lane roads, while the one mathematical possible approach to combine this is not possible. What the heck?

 

[$ini$ter-NL]

The magic word in this game is: roundabout.

 

[Fox_NS_CAN]

I usually try to build around it with a fair bit of space left between roads, so that when the city is bigger I can rework the whole area.

 

[Vjeldan]

I experimented with a roundabout. But for a roundabout also i just have twolane roads at my disposal. That means, i cannot build a 3lane roundabout. I also cannot connect the motorway directly to a roundabout, i have to build 2lane-roads first to connect them, which leaves one lane abbandoned. One lane has to vanish, or one additional lane has to be created. There might be places were this isnt a problem, but on THE bottleneck to and from the citiy this should not be necessary, or is it?

 

[ristosal]

I experimented with a roundabout. But for a roundabout also i just have twolane roads at my disposal. That means, i cannot build a 3lane roundabout. I also cannot connect the motorway directly to a roundabout, i have to build 2lane-roads first to connect them, which leaves one lane abbandoned.

It's not a big problem as long as you the roundabout is large enough, something like 14 squares in diameter is good. You'll unlock three lane highway soon enough.

 

[panda_Express12]

I just extend the high way up a bit with the one-way two lane roads. I then connect those two roads with a line of regular two lane roads that leads to industry on one end and residential on the other. It ends up looking like that -> TT

I will eventually upgrade this to regular highways once they unlock and I have the money.

You don't have to worry about the small capacity of two lane roads in the beginning. They will do finely until you are ready to upgrade.

 

[Simcity5]

http://i.imgur.com/C0t9BK4.jpg

Just use the normal roads, they will treat them as one lane one way roads because they wont go down the road for no reason like it being a wrong way one way dead end. You can stick aroundabout at the end but you dont have to, then when you unlock motorways you can upgrade them if you want, or bulldoze the pre existing motorway when you unlock more grids and stick a new motorway where you want it.

 

[chris_dftba]

http://i.imgur.com/C0t9BK4.jpg

This is pretty much what I do. Except I'll have a couple roundabouts and have industrial section connected to a roundabout too. And I leave enough space so that they can be upgraded to highways later on.

 

[28rommel]

http://i.imgur.com/C0t9BK4.jpg

Just use the normal roads, they will treat them as one lane one way roads because they wont go down the road for no reason like it being a wrong way one way dead end. You can stick aroundabout at the end but you dont have to, then when you unlock motorways you can upgrade them if you want, or bulldoze the pre existing motorway when you unlock more grids and stick a new motorway where you want it.

Agree.
Just use this method (or something very similar) at the beginning. This individual added roads to form a perfect straight 180 degree line from the existing highway that is present when you begin a new map. This is a good guide for building your initial city, as you know that later this will be a highway (just upgrade those pieces of road to a highway later). If you study your map at the very, very beginning, and you decide that you would rather have this (eventual) highway turn one direction or the other, then do that instead when adding these tempoary regular road extensions, so you are not destroying too much of your existing city because later you realize that you didn't plan things out properly from the start.

Hit the button in the very bottom-left corner that looks like a globe. It toggles you between Area View and the Game View. You can then see an extended (very high birds-eye) view of the entire area. You will usually see other highways, existing train tracks and the ocean where you may want (boat) harbors later. Hit this button again to exit the special view. Always get a general idea of where your initial highway will (eventually) go and turn.

 

[Vjeldan]

But this way i squeeze a 3lane motorway to a "oneway+1 unused lane" street..
Isnt that far worse?

I know i can upgrade it later to something else, and before i was upgrading them to a full motorway. But why would i want a motorway in the middle of my city right next to the historic centre?

There has to be a way to turn this incredibly ugly starting road into something useful AND beautiful with using the starting options without too much upgrading later that would destroy whatever i build there at first.

 

[28rommel]

But this way i squeeze a 3lane motorway to a "oneway+1 unused lane" street..
Isnt that far worse?

I know i can upgrade it later to something else, and before i was upgrading them to a full motorway. But why would i want a motorway in the middle of my city right next to the historic centre?

There has to be a way to turn this incredibly ugly starting road into something useful AND beautiful with using the starting options without too much upgrading later that would destroy whatever i build there at first.

Do what you want, but the advice we are giving you is what people normally do (without the use of special mods, which can give you endless alternatives).
The highway (motorway) is there from the start, so most people go with it as a permanent fixture of your future city. I usually know (and can foresee) that this highway will connect with another highway when you purchase additional squares of the map later. You obviously need this initial highway in the beginning, for it is the only way for new citizens to arrive and for inbound/outbound trucking to happen.

PS: Go to YouTube. There are many starting guides on video, that will give you ideas.
Good luck. Post some screen shots of your city in a week or two (in this thread) so we can see your progress.

 

[Vjeldan]

Thanks so far!
I took a map where the start looks more like this instead of ending in nowhere and upgraded the 3lanes to 2lane-motorways. But traffic is still far from optimized there i guess.
At the moment of this screenshot the traffic seems okay at the incoming motorway, but every time i build new houses the arriving people are jamming the street at the traffic light. If i use more then 2 lanes, they will only use one lane and the traffic jam is even worse. The little road from "Perlen-Viertel" is sometimes adding a lot of trucks, its an agrarian industrial area. But if i route the tractors directly on the big mainstreet the traffic will jam because of more traffic lights.
At first i had the big road around "Pinien-Hügel" to be 2-lane one way only. But it wasnt enough, so i made it into 6lanes, both ways + busline. I use busses alot since then and the people seem to enjoy the busses, they ignore the cabs though.
Any tipps?

 

[Simcity5]

Red doesnt always mean its a problem, it doesnt take much to get it to go red, even when its not a problem at all. But you will have problems sooner or later as that little junction at the end of your motorway is a bit of a bottle neck, only 2 or 3 cars will pass through at a time and the rest will start backing up. Little close together junctions that you have dotted about arent great for traffics

 

[humorpalanta]

Well, to access all the roads I just put a starting road somewhere. Then I can use the Autobahn road to build.
How to build: Don't let both ends of the Autobahn be close to each other. Basically build a triangle. 1 corner for the incoming and one for leaving. Put there roundabouts. And make a road that goes between those roundabouts.
This way thetraffic will slowly spread around the city and it doesn't get on 1 junction.
Later on you will have enough money for proper junctions.

 

[Nekozji]

The two roundabouts on the left side of this were built off the starter junction...

...and I'm really starting to like this approach. It's much harder to overload than a single roundabout, and each one provides on/off access to just one direction of highway. You can hang your industry off one and residential off the other.

On the whole, it balanced out so well that I made another later and plan to continue the pattern for all future junctions. It's not a problem to start them with 2-lane 1-ways, since your traffic load will be low. Initially, I extended the motorway with basic 1-ways as well, since it still provided access to the island, but later on the upgrade encouraged traffic to favour that route for speed.

 

[Simcity5]

I like the start of how your city looks, the curves and lines, you arent just wall to wall gridding the map like I normally do, another thing I would suggest is to not get too obbessed with making sure every inch of every road available is zoned, have some roads and avenues that are just plain unzoned roads to get from A to B, like the veins of your city, busy roads that cars are using to get to places, to get from one area to the other, if cars and services are constantly stopping to visit these buildings its going to cause tailbacks when the city grows.

This is like a quick example but The bits Ive coloured yellow I would consider leaving unzoned as main roads and avenues to get around the city, the viens of the city

 

[TimFisher]

You're forced to build off that motorway to get started, but you don't have to keep it. I don't. It's stupid. I know exactly what you mean. After I get big enough to build highways, the first thing I do is delete that whole ugly interchange and build my own thing. I rarely keep the highway stub at all. Usually I build a 4-lane avenue that replaces that stub, goes under the motorway and connects to the main parts of my city. You can't do any of this until you unlock highway though.

Actually, you can because 4-lane roads are unlocked long before highways, and if you're going to delete the whole interchange anyway, then you do so and then you can just run your 4-lane road right into the highway. Remove the traffic light that is created, though. Later on when you get highways, you can redo that temporary intersection and build a proper interchange the way you want it.

In the US we build motorways right through the middle of the city, but in England I have never seen this. So in this game starting off a city right on top of a motorway is kind of limiting as to what kind of city you can build. You really have to use your imagination to plan your city center far away from where you started off in order to get a non-US style of city.

 

[28rommel]

I guess it really comes down to the decision to extend your freeway system along this "line," or if that doesn't make sense, to destroy it.
So the decision is based on the layout of the current map (terrain, water, etc) and your own personal preference.
To each his own.