What is the best highway layout?

[umnoscottishhootsmon 0]

What is the best highway layout?

i currently know all of my ringroas do not work at all

[Frankie_Grove 32]

ringroads? oh, like a city bypass, I see now. Well, i find that direct connections via highway between work place and the homes are the best way to go. Most efficent anyway. I like non-complicated networks, as here in the Southern USA, the highways aren't quite that complicated.

[darste 3]

You're damn lucky buggers up there in da US.... Here, in South Africa we have some of the most complicated road networks..... i mean, who can expect a tourist to navigate through some on the intersections.... Ya, but neway, hope ya find a solution to ur problem.....

[cnystrom1 1]

i think ring roads will work, but only to aid commuters to go to jobs out of the inner city (eg to a mall without taking endless suburban side streets), but not to deter traffic simply passing the city, since that doesnt really happen in sc4. i would suggest a few higways from downtown in a few directions, and connecting them with a ring road or two in case some have to switch highways for a shorter commute.

[umnoscottishhootsmon 0]

my hometown is really comfusing but i have tried all kinds of ringroads but none of them are used do you mean i should have radial routes instead of orbital routes

[cityhawk 12]

Originally posted by: Frankie_Grove

...as here in the Southern USA, the highways aren't quite that complicated.quote>

You ain't kidding! It's just basic intersections everywhere. After going through it once, a tourist could probably tell you where to go!

Best highway layout...hmmm. I'd suggest studying some real world maps to get some ideas.

As under my knowledge, highways in SC4 are used if there aren't any faster ways to get to the same place (that means there can't be a million side roads or even railroads, I would imagine, that can take you to the same place). SC4 is just weird like that.

[hamsterTK 93]

yeah, i havent had a lot of luck with ring roads or bypasses myself either. buts that because they dont really go anywhere sims want to go. unless you have a huge highly populated region and use radical commute time mods you wont see any significant long distance travel that would favor a bypass or ring road.

However, if you plan a city with sattelite downtowns around a ring road you could see that road get some use. the only thing is that sims probably will go the back way down regular roads unless they are from way out 2 city tiles away and the freeway is faster overall and that rarely happens...

[binobi 2]

the thing about ringroads in simcity is that the sims will use the shortest, not the quickest route to get from home to work. as anybody who has used ringroads in real life will know it is usually longer but faster to take the highway.

one way to get those pesky sims onto the highway is to not give them any other route to where they want to go, i.e, building disconnected pieces of development that are only joined by highways, this however isn't he most realistic approach.

as we all know highways were usually added to cities after they had existed for a while, and that is another method to employ. what i mean is to upgrade your congested city routes once the city has been running for a while. a big problem with this of course is that you can lose a lot of valuable real estate in your downtown areas, and it can force a major rethink of these areas to ensure all the zones still have road access.

having said all of that, i find that if you have the NAM installed then it corrects a lot of the route finding shortcomings of the original game. some of you may think that this is cheating, but i personally think it is just an improvement rather than a cheat.

[Haljackey 17,398]

Biuld big or don't biuld at all. Carve your highways through your city and biuld them before you zone the area. Interchanges must be really buffed up to ensure traffic flow like ave/highway and stacks. A road/highway connection always backs up and will detur sims from using it.

The best way to layout your highways is to get your sims from home to the office. So get em rolling on high speed high capicity highways! The best way to use em is for bridges and getting them to go where no other roads go! Hope this helps!

Also, you can download the Rural highway via my signiture to have a little more variety in highway layouts!

[SC4BOY 21]

Just my two bits worth, but I don't like ringroads.. Why? you say. .. Well it is because I hate having peripheral traffic bypassing my CBD so I take care to GENERALLY (unless it is causing a commute time increase) force all traffic through my Central Business District (CBD).. This helps give me max'd out commerce in the CBD.

If you aren't VERY CAREFUL you will find intra-city traffic comming into your city, taking a ringroad, and exiting to another city without contributing to your "customer couint" in your city. I believe that traffic is counted as "customers" if it passes within 3 tiles of the commercial building in question. 

Oh and to answer the question of "where do my highways go?" it's a matter of finding where your traffic comes from, where they want to go, and how you want them routed.. then build your transit in that fashion.

[umnoscottishhootsmon 0]

this is a rubbishy map of my town

the highways are disused te rail is disused and the light blue bit is congested maximally which is somewhat good only the blue roads (highway) close to the  light blue bit have any traffic on them  however those mindwrentchingly stupid sims(god bless 'em) insist on taking little country roads packed with junk and cars and little bits of paper instead of a big fat highway

i must thank microsoft fo the paint program without it i don't know what i would do

[callagrafx 3]

Originally posted by: umnoscottishhootsmon this is a rubbishy map of my town

the highways are disused te rail is didused and the blue bit is congested maximallyquote>

I can tell from that extremely detailed rendition that you work for Ordnance Survey LMAO

[soldyne 111]

well, I use an extension of the ring road concept in my CJ. the thing is I play the entire region as one big city so my ring road actually extends through about 5 or 6 city squares. I also use the highway itself as a seperation of my suburban and medium density urban areas to give the region view more of a "natural" city look. I also have two highways going through the center of the ring (north-south and east-west). my highways get decent usage but I also like to have my cities concentrate on using mass transit instead.

I will come back later and post some pics of my regions transit map.

ok here is a pic of my downtown area (still under construction) you can see the transition between the suburban and urban areas, this is also where my highway is:

now here you can see the highway going around the downtown and a highway bisection the north and south areas.  the city has not developed far enough to the point of the north-south highway but you get the idea:

[mightygoose 92]

i try to use motorways/highways as a skeleton to plan where the big centres of my region are, be they my regional airport, industrial port, logistics area or primary/secondary city centres.

here is my region

hence you see i do use a ring road to bypass the very centre of my largest CBD but thats only to reduce excessive road traffic. the majority of commuters take the subway... it does however still get used. the entire region is carved up into large segments bar the downtowns, the city tile containing port massatex has over 100,000 industrial jobs, thats 2/3 the region total. about 40,000 people use the m5 just north of gabru, the entire green areas of the map are populated with suburbs and so although there are some roads that run loosely parallel to the motorways i tend to have them encrusted with junctions making the freeway the quickest route.  the motorway with least use is currently the m6 because it only feed suburbs into staunton...

on a side note when i added my hsrl from staunton to gabru i put only three stops on it staunton, uxeter and gabru combined with efficient bus networks i did not detract from the m1/m4 traffic and still managed to get a good 4/5000 people using the new link...

in conclusion motorways shouldn't go everywhere. they should merely join the dots of the biggest centres on your map... well if you wanna be realistic anyway...

[MrFingers 0]

Highways are interesting. You need to step back and look at your overall terrain, where are people going to live, where are they going to need a route to get to the city center? I like to trace river fronts or mountain range bases as these often define where people will live. Then you need to get people to use the highway. Think of the system as a tree or blood vessel network. you go from street, to road, to avenue, to highway. don't give them the option of taking a side road all the way to work, because they will. you have to control traffic flow by creating branches of residential areas, forget grids, think about arteries and veins, let the developement grow to fit the landscape and it will be much easier.

[umnoscottishhootsmon 0]

i see your logic mrfingers however i have an annoying habit of having flat land maybe i sould start with differnt terrains like hills i am not very good at building around terrrain