Avenues to Highways

[Ttimber13 0]

I have insane amounts of traffic on my avenues.  I want to upgrade them to highways but how do I do that and make sure that the city ins't affected in a bad manner.  The avenue is going right through the heart of my city.  Any help is greatly appreciated, Thanks!

[JakeMD 107]

just drag your highway over the ave. you cant drag over roads and intersections, but you can drag over open areas, hope that helps...

[Schmicky 0]

if u drag highway over avenue up to intersections, the intersections will remain over-capacitated(yellow/orange/red on the transportation menu... So if u build interchanges in place of the intersections, that is when the highway will take more space...

[Simboy231 0]

thats pretty much it. That's what i do to my island highways.

[opbravo 0]

One thing to note, though, is that once you convert an avenue to a highway you'll lose road access. In other words, any zones that had access directly from the avenue will lose it once you convert the avenue to a highway. So be careful, you might end up with a lot of "no car" zots.

[JakeMD 107]

yes, good thing you said that opbravo, just make sure no zones get their road access from the avenue, and you will be ok, other wise, just leave the intersections and avenue alone, mabye even build some one way roads instead ov regular roads. just something to think about, but other wise, if you want less buzy intersections, you will have to put in over/under passes. Its a part of the game i dont like, but it sometimes has to be done. Good luck!!!

[Ttimber13 0]

That's exactly why I don't want to do it. Is there any way to get around that?

[JCarter 0]

Sad to say, but you'll probaly have to demolish development on your avenue. I'd recomend the elevated expressway because they easily pass over your roads, trains, etc.

[Haljackey 17,255]

You could build a highway bypass to this route nearby if thats possible.

You can also help your ave by restricting it to just bus traffic. Place these HOV markers from the link provided to not only do this, but also create bus stops for your route. Just convert your ave into one-way roads for the conversion issue, and then back to ave.

https://www.simtropolis.com/stex/index.cfm?p=results

[opbravo 0]

Not that I know of. I'm afraid that turning your avenue into a highway will require some major construction, since the avenue runs through the heart of your city. Those zones getting direct access from the avenue probably can't be saved. Maybe you can try (if you haven't already) mass transit in an attempt to ease the traffic in your major artery.

[JakeMD 107]

theres no way of getting around it, take our advice my friend

[liryon 0]

You could use the hole digging lots, and build a highway tunnel directly under your avenue. This will require some major reconstruction at the tunnel entrances/exits, but otherwise have no detrimental effects on the zone access or intersections above the tunnel. The trick here is to have the tunnel bypass some of the high traffic area, and yet still be the desireable route for enough commuters who currently take the aveanue. So this will work if people need to drive through downtown to get to the other side (they can take the highway tunnel) but not for people who's desination is downtown. Of coruse adding busses, subways, and if need be monorails along the route of the aveanue may help as well.

[Sim_BOB 2]

Try placing mass transit at the begining and end of your major traffic. Once you do, find out where the majority of your traffic is coming from (e.g. north to south, west to east, etc.) and then place a carpark near the mass transit building that is first used (If north to south place it on the north end). I would recommend subways and bus stops seeing as they take up the least amount of space. Make constructing a highway be your last option, because it is way more expensive and does not improve your cash revenue by any means, and mass transit comes with a profit.

[crazyyaya 4]

You could you different methods to divert traffic from the avenues. Use lots of public trnasportation.

[JCarter 0]

You could use Blahdy's Big Dig and create a tunnel...then you would only have to demolish buildings for entrances and exits...make sure to provide interchanges near the high trafficed area.

[Curtis78 2]

As a few others said I believe a bypass is the best way to go. Depending on what your city looks like and where devopment is you could make another avenue running parallel or just a highway. Make sure you do some research to find which roads are the most over campasity then add intersections or entrance-exit ramps to the avenue or highway. Also increase mass transit and make higher campasity roads and avenues near the old avenue

[hawkpride147 1]

i tend to use the texas approach...highways with feeder roads. of course you have to plan accordingly or you will end up having to bulldoze some buildings or switch to big-dig. in your case, i would recommend big-dig when blahdy finishes updating it on the STEX. you can have your highway completely underneath your avenue hopefully clearing out some congestion (assuming you don't have a subway system in place yet)

[Ttimber13 0]

Thank you everyone for all of your help! I built the highway and I didn't have to rezone that much. Thank you once again!!

[Dragonator 0]

One other thing you might try is to place RTMT (Road-Top Mass Transit) stations on the avenue itself and build an extensive subway network to connect the areas needed. The RTMT doesn't take any zoning space as the stations are placed on the road itself and has great capacity. I did this and it relieved the traffic and also the commute time a little.

[sebbyb07 2]

I find bypasses as well as highways an effective means of reducing traffic. Providing sims with another route to take often works in my cities. I currently have no red on my traffic maps throughout an entire region.

[nuke31 0]

Wow this thread exploded.

I think the Idea of using one-way roads is really good then you can cut down on your Intersections.

[joeshmoe 1]

ive had the same problem. putting one way roads around nearby blocks usually helps, so does the subway

[HuskerDude 12]

I think subways or in-avenue GLR are your answer.

[writingliberty 0]

If you look at real-life, several different solutions have been tried with various levels of success; in part it's trial and error. In San Diego they turned downtown into a nest of alternate one-way streets, when it was discovered that the streets were laid out with enough room for THREE lanes of traffic. (They can actually handle more traffic this way than if they were two-way streets...) In Chicago they have a well developed above ground mass transit system. In New York, Paris, and London it's below ground mass transit. In Washington and Los Angeles it's extensive use of highways.

Some of these solutions would not have worked in some of the other situations - underground mass transit (BART aside) wouldn't be a good idea in real-world California, and a massive highway network project in New York would have been prohibitively expensive. And so on.

In SC4, usually the best way to alleviate traffic is to determine where the bulk of it is coming from or going to and provide alternate routes. Perhaps you have a dense residential district in your city and all the people in it are commuting to the same direction? Then you need more ways to go that way... but you do not necessarily have to fix a road in between that is congested, because those long-range commuters may be the main problem, and just getting them off of it may solve it.

[Interchange 0]

How do you get that GLR anyways?

[hawkpride147 1]

you might also try GLR in Avenue...a new invention...stations are in the works from several of our members.