Is Very High Density with Low Traffic Even Possible?

[lestatdl1 0]

I'm getting back into playing SC4 now that I have a faster computer, but my old frustration remains...

I once created a large city tile city with 2 million + population, grid-layout with highways north-south and avenues east-west, with one east-west highway linking them all together. The surrounding cities contained the industry, with this main city alternating blocks of R and C. I covered every single underground tile with subway lines. Every last tile. The subways ran all the way to my industrial zones even! My frustration is that they were all red or dark orange for traffic congestion. Likewise with crowded highways, even with extensive busing. Is it possible to have low-medium traffic congestion and very high density? Should I even try, or just start building out more and not having so large of a skyscraper-packed downtown?

I was theorizing that with a large enough city I could afford a huge mass transit network (which I could) and that with enough mass transit in place I could alleviate the congestion of a densely-packed city of high-rise buildings. I know it's not all that realistic, but is it even possible in SC4? I have the road top mass transit mod and perfect pathfinding, but I'd rather not add any more mods (I just like to play the game as close to its true form as possible).

I know there are mods that multiply the capacity of various MT, but I'mwondering how realistic my goal is in generic SC4/RH.

[SC4BOY 21]

Only mass transit properly serving appropirately dense "residential areas" with of course distributed CS will alleviate red lines.. each line type has a capacity limit and once you pass that it starts getting "delayed" ... and of course there is the evil "station shortcut" problem that can result from careless station placement.. 

Oh.. the only lines that can turn red and still not have "congestion delays" are subway and monorail/HighSpeedRail. This is fairly well documented in early experimental play (circa 2003)

Congested stations will still cause problems however..

sample transport demo

transport thinking re: commuter loops

Station shortcuts and congestion

Transport thoughts 1

Transport thoughts 2

If you are going for 2.5 mil again, I expect you will, even with extremely good design, still have transport problems... We do in our happy city and it is only a 1.5 mil population center..

Happy Sim'ing

[lestatdl1 0]

Thanks SC4Boy; I've actually read each of those threads this morning already!

I think I'm placing my MT in ways that sims find useful, since I manage to max out capacity quickly. I just hate to fill half of the map with rail lines and highways to get the capacity I need for a city of that size. I think I'm just going to build out more.

[2ch.net simplayer 180]

You could take a look at my old experiment - population of 2,000,000 while traffic being nearly zero: https://www.simtropolis.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=38&threadid=49610&highlight_key=y&keyword1=envisage

[DOXXP29 5]

I've noticed that when I tried to run subway lines on every single tile, I got MORE congestion and red lines than if I ran less lines...something that would probably equal out to every three to six tiles, if it could be computed that way. I haven't done this with a 2 million population, but I've seen this is quite a few cities where I've tried it with populations of over a million as well as the smaller ones. I have some cities with hardly any vehicular traffic. I do it by putting in a lot of subway lines and a lot of road top stations. Many of the cities I run the lines directly under my road grid and use that spacing and connections. If my blocks aren't too deep, I'll run the tubes lengthwise along my roads and run the crossover lines maybe every second or third block. I've also had some luck with diagonal lines, but I don't recommend it for a densly packed city.

[Barbarossa 51]

My only comment is that this question seems to be focused on car/subway traffic. Where are your other forms of mass transit? You will never have good transport in such a high-pop city unless you branch out and use rail, GLR, monorail, etc.

Barbarossa

[DOXXP29 5]

Barbarossa is correct, you really do need to have a balance using various types of transportation. I find passenger rail works best when bringing people in from other cities. Strategically placed stations in your downtown areas with subway or bus running from the stations is a big help. (Try using multi-function stations to save space). I've had mixed results with monorail. For whatever reason, if I have subway and monorail running the same places and the same lines, they almost always take the subway, even though the monorail is faster. (Maybe it's easier for the lazy sims to walk down stairs instead of up to an el? Who knows?) Adding freight lines through your industrial regions to the edge of the map will greatly reduce the truck traffic. Ferries have never done much for my cities, and I finally got rid of them because they were too inefficient. Another thing you might want to consider...when laying out streets, put in cul-de-sacs in your residential areas to keep drivers from cutting thru the neighborhoods. This will also make the driving commute longer, which SHOULD cause them to use the shorter mass transit commute. Also, there are some "no truck" and "no car" traffic tiles on the STEX. Using these can work to change commuting patterns and eliminate freight traffic without having to bulldoze existing roads.

[SC4BOY 21]

Originally posted by: lestatdl1 Thanks SC4Boy; I've actually read each of those threads this morning already!

I think I'm placing my MT in ways that sims find useful, since I manage to max out capacity quickly. I just hate to fill half of the map with rail lines and highways to get the capacity I need for a city of that size. I think I'm just going to build out more.quote>

 

Yes it seems that you are using decent design.. But I think you may have traffic misconceptions. Take a look at a large city near you using GOOGLE EARTH and look at the huge amounts of space used for traffic routing and control. You will be stunned at the huge amount of land devoted to automobiles (not to mention other forms of transport.). 

Have a good one!