Can I make a city with no roads but with only public transit and is it bad?

[gd6noob 0]

Hello..

 

I was just thinking if its possible and would it be a bad idea? I always end up with heavy traffic jams... Ive pretty used only Avenues > Roads > One way streets.

[Bdub01 201]

IDK. Try it as an experiment and see if it works. I have heard of others doing it.

[Fatjuice 253]

It's inevitable - roads must exist, but still, you can minimize their existence. It's worth a try - ti will demand a big city with lots of planning.

[yayaya1 22]

you can have roads connect to a station and have the mass transit system connect to another station that leads to the work place. In other words, you have to have roads at least connect to the station.

[lhrob 213]

Chances are, no - you can't do it.  If I understand correctly, the sims need to walk along roads in order to get to mass transit stations.  That may be resolved by using pedestrian tiles, I'm not sure.  But either way, you will automatically get "No road connection" zots that pop up over all your buildings, and thus they will become abandoned.  So it's basically defeating the point.

[Ro-Bo 183]

R zones arrow needs to touch roads; or else houses will not grow. About using only public transit, I have several cities in which residential area only connected to industrial area by train. Commercial area can be made to be only accessible by NAM pedestrian mall (sims have to walk). But downside is, low traffic means low customers.

[Fatjuice 253]

he meant with no roads, but with streets, yes?

[lhrob 213]

he meant with no roads, but with streets, yes?

 

As I understood the OP's post, they are referring to all drivable pavement...streets, roads, avenue, OWRs, highways.  They just want to place mass transit only.

[Panos 29]

He can cut off the industrial zone and use trains but that is a limited option at the moment. 

 

Buses are using roads. So while the roads going to be there, going to have cars. 

 

He needs a good road network fist, then plug buses & car parks at every corner. My new city since is flat, going for the same concept and experimenting. 

 

However, I haven't experimented with tram yet. Maybe straight avenues, without anything intersecting them from housing to Industrial area, could ease the traffic. 

[gd6noob 0]

wow.. sounds really hard... 

[Prophet42 1,503]

I believe it is hard coded into the game that the buildings need roads to grow.  As Ro-Bo stated you could connect different areas in you city by rail, subway, or El train only.  For example you could have an area with only residential connected by train to an area that only has commercial.  It would be an interesting experiment to see if you could do it successfully.  If you decide to do it gd6noob, let us know the results.  Good luck!!

[z1 566]

I believe it is hard coded into the game that the buildings need roads to grow.

 

Yes, it is.

 

As Ro-Bo stated you could connect different areas in you city by rail, subway, or El train only.

 

This doesn't work.  Again, due to the way the game is coded, commercial and industrial areas have to be connected to residential areas by road, even if Sims never use the road.  Without the road, they won't commute.

 

And if you're having problems with traffic jams, get the NAM.  It allows you to control your level of traffic.

[A Nonny Moose 8,263]

^ I don't think the OP mentioned which version of the game he has.  NAM needs Rush Hour/Deluxe patched to 1,1,638 or higher.

[Metalpuritan 161]

It is possible to build a city with no roads.  I have seen the tutorial for it.  It is out there somewhere.  You can definitely make a city without roads.  There is a way to fool the game into thinking there are roads when in fact there are none.

 

Edit: Found it:  https://www.simtropolis.com/omnibus/_/simcity-4/tutorials/how-to-make-a-roadless-city-r89

[dogma555 187]

I too was interested in setting something like this up.. since the most dense areas of my city consist of a good 80-90% of sims relying on el-rails, subways, and monorail.

 

I think the only way around a road is to use a blank pedestrian tile in its place, although you may still count this as a "road", sort-of...

[A Nonny Moose 8,263]

Ped mall tiles don't work with residential.  Why I do not know.

[z1 566]

Ped mall tiles don't work with residential.  Why I do not know.

 

It has to do with the basic model of traffic simulation.  There are two fundamental modes - driving and mass transit - and residences need to be able to access both.  Pedestrians are considered to be part of mass transit in SC4.

[Broadsword15 0]

if there's no road then all the zones will have no road access sign.

[Ro-Bo 183]

Well, my (almost) roadless city is ugly. I put streets in straight lines, zone R on one side and the other with C & lots of rail stations. Sims will only have to walk across the streets to either work at the commercial buildings or ride the trains to industrial area.

[A Nonny Moose 8,263]

Try building your residential in u-shaped zones with rail stations at the top of the U.  Less ugly, and you can get some nice little round-abouts at the ends.

[sandy9900 0]

okay im just gonna ask it here. cause once i tried testing a city. I've divided this city into 2, the residential area and their workplace. i have set it up so that all of them would either use bus only or cars only in order to go to work. but i dont understand why is it that in traffic view, 5k sims in an avenue using buses is just the same in volume as 5k using cars. because the way i see it more sims can occupy a bus so it would take less number of bus than cars to carry 5k sims on that avenue therefore it should be less in volume, right?

[z1 566]

No.  You can consider that all vehicles in SC4 are single-passenger, despite what the graphics show.  In reality, vehicles don't even exist; there are just Sims behaving in certain ways.

[sandy9900 0]

but if that's the case then what are buses for since the volume would still be the same.

[z1 566]

Buses are often faster for certain routes, since there's a 24-second delay at the beginning of every car trip (presumably as the Sim gets in the car and pulls out of his or her driveway).  Buses are also very good for taking Sims to rapid transit stations, as most of these have no parking associated with them, and so Sims can't drive to them unless you build extra parking facilities nearby.

[A Nonny Moose 8,263]

It is really too bad about the implementation of buses.  Since each one is an individual private vehicle (taxi), it would be better to show them as such.  A bus usually has the capacity for anything from 13 to 40 passengers, but SC4 buses have a capacity of 1.  Makes the whole idea rather bogus.  And typical buses in RL are slower than cars in general.

 

I consider this to be something that is incomplete.  Probably due to the rush to market.

[lhrob 213]

I'm glad to be reading the truth about buses.  All this time I thought they relieved congestion by carrying multiple passengers, but to hear they are basically just "faster cars", it's really disheartening.  I feel like ripping out every bus stop in my town.