Build an entire region without any highways, good idea or bad?

[randomsimer 1]

Just curious what people think of the idea of building an entire region with never installing any highways.  Only GRLs, Avenues, and lots of subways and streets.  Could it work?  If not, how soon should I start thinking about connecting my cities together via highway?

  Edited February 23, 2015 by jmsepe  
Moving this to the correct subforum,

[monkeywater 910]

I do this.  Almost.  When an avenue crosses to another city I turn it into a highway to get increased cap relief.

 

Highways are pretty inefficient compared to rails.

[Turjan 1,048]

The game is pretty flexible in this regard. You may have to use most of your options with very high density cities, but subway is by far the most effective tool you have in this regard.

 

Then again, highways are not really inefficient. At least if you use Maxis highways, which allow a relatively dense highway grid with many exits in your city tile, you can get away with no public transport or only a few bus stops up to relatively high city populations. But you don't need them with a dense subway system.

[henrys1996 127]

To think of building an entire region without a highway is a bit nuts to me, because my building style is medium/high-density and my cities can reach populations exceeding 1.4 million, as is the case with Redmund, the city I'm working on right now. This means you need to have as many transportation options as possible and you still deal with traffic problems. But if you have a small farm town, you can build a rural road (preferably with RHW-2) and not need an actual freeway... it really depends on the kind of region you want to build. If the region is very remote, then I'd say yes and in fact, you wouldn't need much in the way of mass transit (except for some airstrips, if you can consider that mass transit, which I wouldn't since it's not publicly funded). On the other hand, if you intend to build any kind of larger development, a highway will most likely be warranted.

[1131989 223]

I'm another one of those guys. The epic highway network of my 1.7 million Sim region is highlighted in its entirety in the red circle:

 

 

Got kind of bored with that city and started laying down RHW for the same reason California is doing high-speed rail: to remedy an (in-universe) inferiority complex and prove that my region can play with the big guys (look, a highway!). 

[Thin White Duke 4,072]

To use a bold statement, it's a terrible idea. It could be an interesting challenge, though.

[Turjan 1,048]

Well, you can always change the preferences regarding what kind of transport your Sims use in the Traffic Simulator Configuration Tool. The Default is "American". Just change it to something that's more focused on public transport.

 

[BlakeMW 84]

You can absolutely build entire cities and regions without highways. Or even avenues.

This obviously depends a great deal on mod settings. With unmodded Simcity4 RH/Deluxe it's actually easier if you force everyone onto busses and monorail, because those transit types don't cause congestion. So you can have a city of roads, or even *streets*, with no congestion, and quite good commute times. Forcing sims onto mass transit is pretty easy you just don't give them a valid driving route.

Today's NAM is a lot more balanced because both busses and monorail are subject to congestion, so you don't get a free lunch by forcing sims off the roads.

 

If you aren't going the forcing route, you can still do a lot to get sims onto Mass transit ASAP. This is mainly about placing train stations, parking buildings, or other transit hubs which accept cars right outside apartment buildings. Half the sims will still insist upon driving, but they will be satiated by driving 2 tiles to the train station or parking building and thereafter be happy rail commuters.

 

The trick to having a really good mass transit system is you must have every building within about 5 tiles of a bus stop or other mass transit stop, as once a sim is on MT they need to have a MT route all the way to their workplace. For buildings which produce a lot of traffic, like apartment buildings, bus stops don't cut it and you need to have direct access to higher capacity stations like rail stations. As you can easily fit half a dozen apartment buildings around a single train station this is not a problem - it just needs to be planned in advanced, with rail stations about every 10 tiles.

 

With the NAM my mass transit scheme goes like this:

Low and medium density residential is serviced by sims driving to train stations (no or few bus stops).

High density residential is serviced by direct (walking) access to train stations or a combination of parking buildings and monorail stations (no or few bus stops).

Commercial is serviced mainly by a network of bus stops, which link up with the rail.

Industry is serviced mainly by rail, as I use the trick to make large industrial complexes which are readily serviced by transit hubs. If not using that trick, more bus stops.

 

Depending on congestion settings, you may need to build a lot of mass transit lines, at approximately the same density as you would normally use avenues and highways. The mass transit may be marginally more expensive, but you'll gain a great deal of income in fares. I have cities which easily earn 10x in fares what is spent on transit (including roads).

[Ocram's Razr 964]

I tend to use trains for intercity transport, subways in downtown areas, and frequently use avenues. I rarely ever use highways unless I have a long stretch of avenue that connects two cities, in which case I use Maxis highway for demand cap relief. Using CAM and NAM, I manage to get huge cities with populations in the millions with only a couple of red roads, red-orange avenues, yellow-orange subways, and orange trains.

 

--Ocram

[Munchiez 74]

I think it would be an interesting feat if you tried that, I would! Why don't you do it and show us. I might even try that!

[Xascul 7]

I actually started with a similar premise.  Right now i have a metropolis region that is around a quarter million population with reasonable congestion, and still no freeways.  I started this 'experiment' when i heard of the old Pacific Electric Railway, better known as the 'Red Cars' that used to run around the greater LA area.  What most people seem to forget is that a lot of major cities had tons of streetcars/trolleys and rails before the freeways were built.  Since i have the NAM installed, i use the GLR mod as a 'trolley' and have them running down the middle of streets and avenues and running on their own ROWs (right of ways) when they get into the suburbs.  So far I can tell you that the experiment is working well and I have a city that doesn't need highways at all!  I want to see how dense and big the metro area can get until i finally feel the need to build freeways.  

 

There are several advantages of building a region without railways (or at least starting one) rails and GLR are very inexpensive, require less maintenance, and if laid out correctly, as the population grows, your revenue will go up.  Note that i don't have the 'American/european' preference mod installed.  They are much easier to connect and take up way less room than highways.  Also your region would have a sense of 'realism' as you lay out your rails in relative straight lines and as certain rail lines become disused, either they're converted to the GLR or freeways would be built along the same ROW.  

 

I'd say try it out and experiment!