Experiment using two regional entry points. (not modding or cheats)

[Rufus Honker IV 100]

My experiment:  Using one of the city maps that a road passed through, thus granting two regional access points, create a map with residential and industrial connected only by streetcars using tracks to connect up the streetcar roads.  The conecting road between the two points is bulldozed.

 

How it went: I used Riverbend (in the second region whose name escapes me), in sandbox mode and it was possible, but there are still snags to be worked out.  I was able to balance my deficit with sales of ore, but didn't have enough playtime to see if I could get properly into the black.  There was practically zero traffic.

 

Snags:

• Water, sewage and power does not travel by rail.  You will have to set up power/water/sewage on both ends as I could not think of a way to connect without using roads.
• Commercial has to be over with the industry.  People can travel by rail to stores, but freight will not be shipped via streetcar.
• You need to put the streetcar station on the residential side because otherwise the residents would have to take a streetcar to operate the streetcar station.
• Streetcar roads are expensive.  This would be tough to try outside of sandbox.

[bjl707 4]

Do you have any pics of your city?

[Rufus Honker IV 100]

Do you have any pics of your city?

 

Ran off and took some for you.  Sorry some of these are around 7am gametime.  And my graphics card isn't THAT good, I top off all the settings for screencaps with the game paused, and put them all back to "low" for gameplay.

 

Whole city (almost nothing was on the other side of the river)  Residential is far in this picture, commercial/industrial near:

 

In this pic you can see the original road which cuts across the picture from lower right to upper left.  I upgraded it to streetcar, bulldozed a section and replaced that section with simply a rail.

 

 

The industrial/commercial area:

 

The residential side, solar power and utilities at the top of picture - the sewage outflow is across the bridge:

 

 

The only two connections between the two sides of the city:

 

 

Not everyone takes the streetcar.  You can walk along the tracks.

 

Atry shot looking past the police station towards the rail connectors.

 

[Yaffle 29]

It's easier to do this if you also have an oil plant for a while and connect the road back up using the oil plant dirt road. All the delivery trucks (not garbage/recycling) can use those, no other vehicles can, keeping separation. The roads remain after the oil plant is destroyed.

The issue is that the region trucks will always spawn on the same side, and if you need (say) oil for your "living" side power station then they cannot reach it if it's quite literally on the wrong side of the tracks.

I don't know if the utility vehicles can use the roads the mines have or not, may be worth a try.

The downside of this is duplication, as everything travels by road you need two sets of every utility, which makes the maps increasingly tight.