Support your commercial districts!

[Ephphatha 0]

In a few minutes I'll post a picture too.

Basically, What I've been doing on all my new cities lately is run a highway through the center of town (in both directions) and have a cloverleaf in the centre. This highway is the only neighbour connection I have. I build onramps as close to the cloverleaf as physically possible, and build the commercial districts within one or two blocks of the offramp road, then the residential area is near the city boundries. I break this slightly for the industrial areas, where I don't normally zone commercial areas, just industry, and I have the neighbour connections slightly closer to the border to decrease freight times.

The traffic is atrocious near the onramps, but the commercial businesses have high customers, so they're happy, and the highways can pass many cars. The commute time is also normally faily short. And also, it's a hell of alot better than putting corner connections (which was a really stupid idea of mine).

EDIT: Here we have a picture.

http://img317.imageshack.us/img317/6051/traffic9oh.jpg

And yeah, that network would collapse oh so hard IRL.

[spa 970]

An example of something working in Sim City and being a disaster in real life

[MiniMark 7]

I agree with spa. Perhaps some bus stops or some one way streets would come in handy to eliminate some of the congestion. Likewise if you have the money go with a Subway System or upgrade (and destroy lol) the roads to avenues. On the plus side at least the cloverleaf isnt "red" or I would probably cry watching the traffic stop and go. Good pic by the way

[Gridlock 9]

Hey interesting topic ,i have probs with loops in my cities also ,The red junctions mean the roads at capacity,no more traffic ,or very little more can go that way, that in itself will limit development of the surrounding area,so although its good your looking for answers ,in not convinced that this is the solution... Nice try tho !

[jcman5050 0]

For sure spa, take a look at albuquerque,nm traffic can be hell for a midsize city

[Gnargenox 6]

I thought other people would try a similar approach to traffic control and downtown commercial districts.

I made my avenues on a 6x6 grid with a clover leaf directly in the center of town. I placed three on-ramps on each of the four highway "arms", commercial zones along the highway only and industrial on the edge of town only. Perfectly symmetrical civic building placement and elevated areas for large lots with tunnels underneath so as to still keep a perfect grid. I did change one corner around the minor league stadium to one-way roads. I'm pretty sure having four small airports isn't necessary, but it makes it look so symmetrical I have yet to see a traffic problem with 111,000 sims, but i did set my NAM settings to x2 capacity, x10 speed and x10 something else. And of course you might notice I am using the radical ordinance mod hehehe. My first try with that mod, and I grew this city in one nights sitting. Now for my industrial neighbor with the same layout.

[soldyne 111]

interesting design, Gnargenox. I see you are using tunnels in some of the larger blocks. what do plan to use that space for in the future if you don't mind me asking?

to keep on topic though, I use a combination of roads and avenues in a new octagonal grid layout which I designed for my CJ. I have not released the CJ pics yet so you will just have to wonder about it right now. I, like Gnargenox, only place commercial near the highway and only facing avenues. the residential is kept to small cels of roads within quadrants in the city surrounded by the highway and commercial. 200k people so far and only a few bottle necks at neighbor connections (because the neighbors aren't developed enough yet to handle the influx of commuters).

[Gnargenox 6]

Yes, I too have bottlenecks at the highway neighbor connections. This was the first time I ever had yellow traffic data on a highway. I think about 11,000 cars pass thru it. One odd thing is the avenues under the highway without the on-ramps have atrocious traffic counts under the highway and I get traffic complaint pop-up messages often. I guess it counts the highway traffic above and considers that to be too high for an avenue. That's a major error with RushHour in my eyes.

This simple grid pattern that Ephphatha suggested with a single crisscrossed highway certainly is one of the best and simplest ways to control traffic and therefore boots customer count for commercial success. It also is a nice way to build that towering metropolis in the center of a town rather than one of the corners. If I ever plan on adding subway connections to neighboring cities though, I'll place the only tube stops as close to the center of town as possible.

My industrial city, since posting that pic above and playing it a few hours, hasn't done as well as I had hoped. There are only about 32,000 sims after 8 yrs. I guess they prefer to live next door and commute. (I am using the Radical Ordinance Mod to remove all air, water and traffic pollution too). This grid road layout seems to be much better for commercial, again as Ephphatha pointed out. That is one reason I created the tunnels; to keep the grid perfect (for math's sake). Now no other route is more desirable than another. But I needed space for things like the university and even the advanced research center which is 7 tiles long and would interfere with the grid layout.

One other interesting thing about this type of traffic grid is that i keep developing residential buildings in doubles. More than half of the residential skyscrapers grew a twin within a few days. I don't know if this is due to the calculations being influenced by a perfectly symmetrical grid, or simply that the demand was SO high that more sims of that wealth type moved in than any single building could hold. All food for thought and a great topic, especially for me as I learn more about how the game mechanics work.

[hamsterTK 93]

now that is interesting. maybe since everything is symetrical the exact same conditions are on both sides of the road so the exact same buildings are built.

[mightygoose 92]

dude that symmetry thing is amazing, you realise your next mission is to grow a perfectly symmetyrical city

[Skyfire2275 23]

Wow, that symmetry is weird, but cool at the same time. Thanks for sharing this insight. I think I will go investigate as it is very intriguing....

-Skyfire

[paperboy15 4]

You only get twins? Heck, I get triplets and quadruplets sometimes (especially with STEX buildings where I don't remove some of the lot files). It is quite interesting.

[paperboy15 4]

Here are some pics.

Mitsubishi Crystall Mall:

Can you find the all of the twins (LOL):

[danob 1]

Hey paperboy15...Where did you get that spider legged building from?   Could you post the link?

[+Guest]

Yea! I want that spider-leg building.

Brentino

PS: My first post

[rodent1989 9]

while funneling sims thru the highway should boost development, just like Gridlock said, the congestion and noise will limit high wealth development.

If you want to try an interesting experiment, place residential in the center and industrial on the outside with a "barrier" of commercial in between.  That forces people to use roads with commerce on it and every trip by car will pass a commercial lot.  It works pretty darn well too.

[annoyingdan 42]

Congrats on your first post!

That spider leg building is a hospital, made by me, called the Minerva Medica Center. all you need to do is look me up on the stex and you should find it.

[paperboy15 4]

Thanks annoyingdan! Here is the link:

https://www.simtropolis.com/stex/index.cfm?id=3264

The building is slope tolerant, so you may want to level the ground first.