A city without any car traffic? Impossible!

[Wilfried Webber 22]

Hello there

I've recently carried through a nice traffic experiment.

What I did was trying to get rid of all car traffic in a highly dense populated city (highrise-only). I wanted to find out whether the game does allow such at all.

Since any residential zone needs to have street access somewhere in some way in order to function properly, I first laid out a complete street-only network (no roads and avenues) and zoned residential (only) next to, followed by putting my Pedestrian Mall Connectors (see STEX) between the residential zones, next to the streets - thus connecting them with NAM ped mall tiles surrounding the residential zones.

So, I finally got residential highrises surrounded by pedestrian malls, except the front side which was zoned next to a street in each case, since the game relies on street access for residential zones (not necessarily on the front side, though).

Next, I zoned commercial and industrial without street access, with pedestrian access only. Each industrial area of approx. 4x4 tiles had railway access to bring its goods on the regional market while commercial had to get down to seeking carless customers (hehe ).

I also put some subway stations around (again, only accessible via ped malls) to ensure fast commute trips.

There was now no more possibility of commuting by car from a residential building to a commercial or industrial building. I was really too curious if it worked.

It did.

So I checked the commute trips, and couldn't believe they still used cars! But it was only a few hundred out of tens of thousands of commuters: they only used cars to get to some civic buildings I accidentally had put directly next to streets instead of putting them next to ped mall tiles without street access.

Well then, I removed the direct street access by moving these civic buildings away from the streets. Now no one would go by car anymore.

A carfree city, alright!

But I was wrong; instead of what I had been expecting, my city underwent a strong population decrease ending up at 0 pop.

And now: As I zoned only one tile light commercial next to a street and a small shop or something has been successfully erected, the city became strongly populated again within just a few months, going up to some 200k pop, as before its Great Decline.

Yes, that tiny shop had some 15 car commuters but watch the effect: no car traffic, no population.

Even only one car commuter per one million ped commuters, you name it, your city flourishes. Although commercial buildings will show low customers since they need lots of traffic noise.

Or, to cut a long story short:

1. In Sim City, every residential building needs street access. You have to ensure total accessibility by car to every single residential lot, no matter which side of the lot the street touches. But since larger lots can be divided into several smaller ones, it's best to zone with all the arrows facing the street.

2. You don't need streets for job buildings but watch out: You must have at least one job attended by car. You cannot have a completely carfree city. It's seems not possible with this game so far (after having studied the corresponding exemplars, I don't believe you could change this by modding, anyway).

3. Commercial zones need high traffic noise, i.e. high car traffic amounts nearby, in order to develop properly. They will develop without high traffic, too, though not too well.

4. Industrial zones, of course, need railway access. Otherwise, they won't develop too well, either, though they don't depend on this.

Well, this is what I've found out and proven. Hope you can use this information in some way, whatever this may be. Thank you

[Garek Maxwell 1]

I have to say, I've had a completely carless city (Not including industrial automobile traffic). You don't have to have jobs connected by car to develope properly. However, the form of transportation probably helps. Trains, subways, or...something else... Either way, those seem to work. Otherwise, it seems sims don't like commuting.

Other than that, I'm still messing around with carless cities. Eventually I'm going to try my hand at a carless, commercial-less, and industrial-less city. Complete crack-down on just about anything. I've just got to figure out how to get this to work. Commute times and trasportation to civic jobs seem to be the biggest hurdle. Still working on a cheap way to get people around that's as speedy as using a car. I think the way you zoned would work though...

Good job on the rest of the information! I was just nitpicking. ^^;

[Wilfried Webber 22]

You don't have to have jobs connected by car to develope properlyquote>

Umm, did you check if there was really no one using the car? I mean, not even a single Sim actually driving around?

This is the essential thing about what I'm trying to point out. As of my current experience, there has to be at least one job that can be attended by car, though I guess it doesn't have to be actively attended. At least a connention has to exist.

Sure, if I'm wrong it only makes me more curious

I'm really all about getting more and more detailed information on this. Just go ahead and tell me

[DioAngel 1]

seems pretty interesting.. I have to try it.

[Garek Maxwell 1]

I'm pretty sure I got it to work with no cars. I'll make another city just to be sure. I'll post the results and pictures later tonight.

[sc4portugal 10]

That sound's great!

[Garek Maxwell 1]

Sorry about being a day late. Heh, I completely forgot about taking the snapshot. Anyway, here it is...

As you can barely make out, there's no cars. (Sorry about the image size.)

I think what your problem was is probably the same problem I had, and that's commute times. It's really the worse thing you can have. People outright abandone if they're not close enough to a main transit hub (in this city it was the railways). I think it might be possibly to improve upon this by using your initial style of planning (in the picture you posted). The only thing is that the rail ways need to have good access, which is probably possible if they're just on each side of the overall square. Otherwise, you'll probably get abandonment.

[DOXXP29 5]

Excellent experiment and information, Wilfried. I found out the same things and came to the same conclusions in quite a different way. I had an industrial/commercial city with heavy residential cities on two sides. When I started the CI city, I laid out the roads, rail and subway first, which is my style. The city developed quickly and had a combined industrial and commercial population of about 80k when I noticed something: there were NO cars! None. Only thing on the roads were a few freight trucks. I'd route-query the commercial buildings and see no cars. I'd R-Q the roads and see the same thing. At the time it was frustrating and I couldn't understand what was happening. It took me awhile to figure out why I had no cars. As far as I could tell (and I'm not 100% certain, but this is the only thing that made sense), the residential cities were so congested with car traffic that, in addition to having a very effective mass transit system in place in all cities, there was no reason for them to use them to get out of the residential city because the commute time would be too long.

I finally did a little road construction and put some roads as the only direct path from a couple of neighbourhoods in the residential areas to generate some car traffic. It wasn't much at all, maybe one car for every 2 - 5k people. However, I did notice that as soon as a car came into the city, a new wave of mass development occurred. Buildings turned into skyscrapers, skyscrapers turned into BIGGER skyscrapers and the few undeveloped lots that existed sprouted to life immediately going through several stages with the nest stage replacing the previous before the building could even open its doors. After the initial wave, things reverted to normal, but I did notice that the demand for C and I remained high. After a century or so I went back to the previous mode and removed the roads and the city still was going strong, there was no depreciation or significant increase in commute times, but the demand graphs did drop back to reflect a relatively normal level.

So it definitely IS possible to create a car free city. I don't know that it is NECESSARY to have one job supplied by a car for the city to develop/operate, but I did notice a difference when there was car traffic introduced to the city. It seems to help. I can't elaborate on how it affected initial development because I wasn't aware of car traffic when I opened the city so I don't know if there were no cars at first or if that was something that happened later on as the city grew.

[deftones553 0]

Please keep all images 800x600 or less to avoid possible deletion.--hym

[FlyingObjects 0]

Wounderful Experiment! Now I know why my commercial zones aren't developing, as they have almost no traffic noise.

[Artistvrd 0]

very nice test there!

[John94538 0]

Nice experiment! I've never had a large city without at least a few automobile traffic. I have used mass transit to help sims travel without cars, but it never worked.