Are roadless enclaves posible?

[Lomaster 0]

So i've been thinking about developing some landfills, coal plants and heavy industry enclave at the outskirts of a city, connected to the mainland only by railroad. And of course some streets in the enclave itself, to link the stations and facilities. The way i figured it was like that: a passenger railway station for employees to get to the enclave and a freight station for waste to get to the landfill. My doubts are: 1) whether waste can travel by railroads 2) whether power plants/ landfills/ industry won't get wealthier employees that hesitate to use mass transit. 

 

So my major question is "how vital are roads?" (i'm talking NAM here, but any speculation on vanilla roadless layouts is welcomed)

 

[Ro-Bo 183]

Is this involves multiple city tiles or just in a single city?

 

In a city, it doesn't matter where, garbage will always be collected even if that part isn't connected to the rest of the city. Of course the landfill itself must not have no-road-connection zots.

 

If this involves 2 different city tiles, some kind of roads (roads/avenues/highways) neighbour connection must be present to introduce garbage deal in the landfill-less city.

 

As for mass transit, they will use it if it is the fastest way to a job or if they have no choice. Also, open your Traffic Simulator Configuration Tool. There is an option on the % of mass transit usage of each wealth.

[MandelSoft 2,769]

All residential houses need road connections. Period. That's a basic design constraint in the game, no matter how roadless you want to make your city. Of course, there are ways to make the roads you do use look less attractive for cars and promote other traffic modes. For instance, you could try to use only streets and use the SAM from the NAM to make your streets look more like cobblestone streets, or even dirt tracks.

[Lomaster 0]

Ok thanks for replies. To make myself more clear - do residential houses need road connection to their jobs or detatched section of a city where residential houses connected by roads to a train station is enough?

[Xyloxadoria 1,099]

Houses need to be built along a road to work. Once a sim gets on that road, what they do is up to you. They could drive, walk, use a bus, or take the train. A commerical lot doesn't need road connections so you can get there by road or pedmall (you would have to get off a train or bus somewhere first though)

 

In theory, sims could walk all the way to work on a road. You would just have to design your city in such a way that encourages it. Ive manged to be semi successful with that a few times. A good mass transit system is the key to making it work. Toll booths can also help. Sims hate them and only have to use them in cars. If you put them in key locations that would "block" sims from getting to work or their house then it will reduce the amount of people that drive. (Assuming they have other options via mass tranist)

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

The 'road' from the front door can be a SAM textured 'street' and it will work.  You can use streets throughout except for neighbour connections which must be at least roads for garbage deals to work.  If you want to change SAM textures you need at least one tile of road or a SAM stopper to change over.  The SAM stoppers have drawbacks of being at least two tiles long and no side entry.

 

Ped malls work but need at least a bus stop at one end to function properly.  Ped malls can only be used for commercial areas.