Necessity of Highways

[jdfess6 0]

For a rather large city, in your opinion, would you say that a highway network is necessary? Or do you think public transportation works better, and easier?

What are your views of this? 

Personally, I've never built an extremely huge city (200k is the largest), but I loooove public transportation, never had a highway system, so far.

[Boycey08 0]

i always add a highway if im doing a large tile, dont even give it a 2nd thought but currently ive got sc4 vanilla, altho i ordered deluxe on monday, hopefully it'll be with me by the end of the working week

highways do cut down on commute time if used correctly

take a look at one of haljackey's threads, particularly his city journal or his posts in the Show Us Your Highways thread in the city building concepts section (i think, not positive of this), he inspired me to use highways before i even knew how to use them properly lol

[tycoonsimraider123 16]

I personally don't like how the Highways work because when i add one, no one uses them so i gave up years ago. Yes Mass transportation is hella better an easier, my largest city is currently 450,000 and i don't use a highway. hope that helped?

[stryker1942 0]

I have medium city that's about 500,000, and I have a X shaped highway system that no one uses. If it was a square then it would be used more, but would take up more space. I think mass transit is better for intracity travel, but highways can provide the capacity to transport thousands of cars across city borders.

[duack 14]

sims dont usually use the highways becuase the commutes in sc4 are WAY to short but i put highways anyway to make it realistic. also i try to force my sims into using highways and avenues by making them the only way to travel sometimes, especially in my suburbs because i dont want there to be traffic on a small street

[Haljackey 17,325]

I'll say this:

If you want to get proper use out of highway networks, you need to make them direct routes between home and work. Making them bypass the area in question will lead to little or no usage. Keep this in mind

-However, the recent advancements to the NAM traffic simulators provide excellent pathfinding improvements, allowing sims to commute a little farther if it reduces travel time.

Proper mass-transit placement is another key component in getting your sims moving. One of the major drawbacks is that mass-transit is frowned upon by the rich, and they will generally prefer to drive even if it takes more time. You need to have a mixture of both road networks and mass-transit in your cities in order to get prosperous development. Good infrastructure = good city.

EDIT: Boycey08: Oh, and I believe the name you were looking for is "show us your interchanges". That and other useful links are found in my signature.

Best,

-Haljackey

[WeekendCityPlanner 19]

I don't have any concrete facts for how or why highways may or may not be necessary, but I believe that it is up to your desire, whether for realism or ease of use. I use highways because I find them easier to build than mass transit systems.

[loveangel 0]

Like haljackey said, if your highway runs more or less between home and work without much detour, they will be well used. Not so much if they detour around the edge of town (like the 3 number interstates in america).

If you have NAM, you definitely don't need to build highways if you don't want to. I usually only build them between/around the major cities on my region (mostly for the transport map on region view, and the highway neighbor connection bonus- lol), not necessarily right through them. I never have them near CBD/downtown areas and rarely in areas of high density res zones. I just don't really like the idea of car-dependant urban sprawl, like cali, texas, toronto etc. I prefer the thought of people walking and riding the subway if they live downtown, and taking the train in if they live in suburbia

[writingliberty 0]

Being from California, I use highways a lot, and while I do use some mass transit it's not much. (Usually limited to buses unless traffic gets bad enough to put in a subway or monorail.)

The general idea with highways is - just like other sorts of roads - to make them go where the sims want to go anyway. Since it's generally a good idea to have industry separated from everything else, and commercial likes high traffic, I tend to build avenues lined with commercial that are the only possible accesses to a highway that goes toward my industrial areas. And there will be no road connection except the highway. And quite often (although this is not realistic in terms of California) I stick toll booths on the highway.

[Boycey08 0]

in my large tiles, the commercial districts are in the centre of the tile surrounded by highway, i have 0 roads connecting outside districts to the commercial districts and i use side onramps rather than through onramps, so the only way in and out of the commercial district is via train and highway, granted my highway still isnt used as much as id like

but if i had through ramps and connecting roads, it would not be used at all (i know this for sure as ive had to spend an hour bulldozing and rebilding my onramps lol)

oh and you're right haljackey , i wasnt too sure which thread it was, but yea your highways are inspiring, keep them up

[writingliberty 0]

Actually, Boycey, that's the design I would use for an industrial district. Commercial is best placed near your freeway access points, so the commuters have to go past them on the way to the industrial from the residential. (Commercial loves traffic.)

Usually my commercial is along avenues and surrounded by residential on the back streets, and the avenues are the only access points to highways that lead to industrial.

[iquere 2]

I don't use the highways much... it looks best to have a highway between large zones of res/com/ind. Unfortunately no one uses it then, and when you build it between zones it usually just looks ugly and malplaced.

I'm an avenue fan... I'd rather build two avenues than a highway

[flyinbird93 2]

I was going to create a new thread related to highway usage but i will try here first. i have a very extensive highway setup in my downtown core of my scraper section of hansing. while i find this very annoying i only get large usage of the highway structure during evening commute. with on average 12k commuters coming in/out of each of my 4 corners of my loop. however, little if any usage at all is used during morning. what irritates me is the game only displays morning commute traffic well. is there a mod or way to change it to show evening commute over morning? id really like to see the usage for pics that im not getting now.

[TV-VCR 14]

Yes. A highway network can be used to speed up how long it takes for residents to get to work. Say, if you have a highway that comes from a residential area to a commercial area. They can also be used to connect areas that are further apart. Pretty much like in real life.

[dlo 0]

I only really use highways on large maps, in which I draw them tic-tac-toe style. They're usually used only by the rich who can't find enough work in front of their door. Sometimes I also use them as a neighbor connection, especially if the existing one is badly congested. This is the only way I found to make Sims really use the highways, I even got one to be dark red in the congestion graph (10,000 cars).

[Dizastrow 4]

I always place one strip into each tile, and I make that one strip of highway lead from my residential centers to my business and industry centers.  Ive had lots of success!  The Highway doesnt even need to be connected to another city tile. 

[Maxis92 11]

Originally posted by: jdfess6 For a rather large city, in your opinion, would you say that a highway network is necessary? Or do you think public transportation works better, and easier?

What are your views of this? 

Personally, I've never built an extremely huge city (200k is the largest), but I loooove public transportation, never had a highway system, so far.quote>

 

Good question.

No, don't think a highway system is necessary. Of course, ike you said, you must build your city with the proper infrastructure (and very extensive mass transit) like density.

However, for the less dense or griddy cities, a highway system is probably necesary because it would relieve the confusion on the streets.

[ruennsheng 0]

A highway system is only needed when there is a high demand of commuting from a major suburban residential area to the central city. Take a cue from the European cities though: the streets are narrower but still efficient, because of public transport.

[kingdiz_55 12]

I think that the combination of both would be even better given that each has its own advantages.

[simbuilder 1]

I usually have highways in my cities, but i kind of noticed that usually they aren't worth the cost. Personally, i think subways are the best method of transportation. They cost a good amount of money but more people seem to take advantage of them than the highways.

[jjakucyk 0]

I like to use highways for realism, but they can be very valuable too. The trick to remember is that unlike in the real world, the pathfinding in SimCity prefers the shortest DISTANCE commute over the shortest TIME. This has been fixed to some extent with the NAM and other transit mods, but it's still the overall basis of the commute engine. So the lesson is that people will not go out of their way at all to use a highway. The only way around this is to try to funnel people onto the highways and provide other barriers that make the highway more direct.

[Dizastrow 4]

I have had success with my highways, with many sims using them.

Ive found that if you limit the amount of on and off ramps you use, this encourages sims to use the highways.  I usually put one onramp near the place the highway connects to another city, and another at the commercial and industrial centers.  Thats it!! The sims seem to like the "quick" highway rather than taking city streets filled with intersections.  Parking ramps near off ramps is also very effective!!

[jlvannat 0]

I like to have highways all throughout my cities. In my larger downtown cities, I'll basically have a highway that circles most of the district, with arterial highways from the suburbs out to other cities. The downtown loop and innercity highways actually get a lot of traffic. I've spent the last year trying to perfect it so people actually use them. It's tough.

I'll usually build an outer loop too not only for the realism, but to help connect all of my cities. It helps the economy and keeps cars and freight moving. It's more of a bypass to avoid traffic and intersections.

I probably don't use mass transit as much as I should. I REALLY love using subways and elevated rails because they can connect, are easy to squeeze into a densly populated city, and have a high capacity for the sims.

[audrasthepatriot 0]

Something else that I like to do is use avenues in a limited access manner - only hook up the avenues to roads and avenues, and not streets.

[Quzo 0]

Yes, Highways for more realisim but I also sometimes upgrade avenues to highways if they get too conjested. For larger citys highways are necesity but for smaller cities not so much unless you want to gives your sims and fast way (ease of use) to get to another city. Let's say you have one city with just residential zoning and you want to get your sims to the industrial area. Not only that but they are good for freight trucks and can serve as a relief road so they won't go on another road that would otherwise be conjested. As well as this you can try orbital highways as they are always good.

Of course if you want sims to take public tranport highways aern't always a good option because yes they can reduce conjestion but they can also, at the same time, increase the number of road users. Yes buses do use highways but I wouldn't advise you to place highways in places where you can easly get sims to take plublic transport. Having said that though you could try using highways as a form of BRT (bus rapid transit), this can be done by placing HOV lanes on any roads connecting to a highway. BRT is bacially bus lanes but the use of the road the bus lanes are on is recrited to only buses (and sometimes couches). These are good because they are faster than conventianol buses but in my opinion they are lazymans mass transit just like road top trams (trams systems that run on raods instead of on a new network). I belive HOV lanes can be found here:

https://www.simtropolis.com/stex/index.cfm?id=1834 and here: https://www.simtropolis.com/stex/index.cfm?id=3199 or here: https://www.simtropolis.com/stex/index.cfm?id=14799 Choose the cone that suits you.

I normally have a public tranportation system working along side highways so sims can decide which one suits their needs. Although I do try and have a good bus system to act a counter effect.

Highways are needed if you can't be asked to build up a decent mass transity system or if a lot roads in your city are getting to conjested to act as a relief road.

Genrally when I do place highways sims do use them especialy when they go across a river, sometimes to the exstent of conjestion (needs careful placing though for maximum usage). But as stated erlier you really only need them for neighbour connections and fast, efficient travel around larger cities (relief roads for ease of use and conjestion reducion) and city orbitals.

Try is as well if you want a good highway system its Lakeyboys 'multi highways' mod: https://www.simtropolis.com/stex/index.cfm?id=4267 Ovbiously you need NAM but I assume you already have that.

Hope this helps. I am no expert though.

[Wasila 0]

I use NAM, and have a large tile with 600k people.

I have bus, underground and monorail networks plus a rail network virtually no one uses.

I have a very successful and well used highway which runs through my city. I also have a highway running between two cities, one which is fully industrial and provides many of the jobs of the other, which then connects to the one in my main city.

[Dizastrow 4]

My system works!!

Last night I started a new region and built a few cities right away.  Put ONRAMPS by the connections to each city tile and ONE in your R, I, and C centers.  Dont put them anywhere else.  People are using my highways like crazy!!

[loveangel 0]

Originally posted by: Dizastrow My system works!!

Last night I started a new region and built a few cities right away.  Put ONRAMPS by the connections to each city tile and ONE in your R, I, and C centers.  Dont put them anywhere else.  People are using my highways like crazy!!quote>

And what you're suggesting is that adding another onramp will discourage people from using your highway...?

The idea that adding onramps to a highway will cause a bottleneck effect and congestion in front of every ramp, slowing everybody down, makes sense in real life.  But I don't think theres really any related game mechanics in sc4.  highways will have a set capacity, "merging" shouldn''t necessarily slow anybody down unless it goes over capacity.

Sounds like your highway is pretty well positioned, connecting several cities and going through all types of zones, couldn't that be why it's well used?

[yongsoseum95 0]

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[writingliberty 0]

Highways are not absolutely necessary. Cities with low populations and/or a LOT of mass transit can get by without them.

Generally, though, they are a high-speed, high-capacity option for supplementing or replacing parts of your road networks. (You can't use them everywhere, because buildings cannot interact with them directly.)