Frontage Roads

[bat_mantis 1]

I've been playing around with frontage roads parralelling the main road next to large commercial areas within a few of my cities. So far I've had pretty bland results and ended up scrapping quite a few and replacing my areas directly next to the main road.

I was just wondering if anyone else has tried these and what kind of results they've had.

[Sam 163]

Commercial depends on high traffic loads to be successful (traffic = customers), so it is best placed on your most busy roads. Usually these will be the roads the residents travel along to get to work.

However for residential, I have best results if they are well away from the main roads (this might be similar to your frontage roads) with a few links onto an avenue.

Usually I create an avenue through the area I will put the residential on, then have a very few roads crossing the avenue to feed into blocks of streets where the residential area is zoned. I line the avenues with parks on each side so that no residential area touches the avenue.

This reduces the traffic noise in residential areas (and raises desirability. The limited access points to the avenue keeps the speed high on the main cross city routes.



I'm not sure if this is what you were asking though.

[pickled_pig 7]

I've had quite good success with frontage roads (I call them service roads), but only if they are paralleling a highway (ground, elevated, or rural).  Using the customers = traffic idea, you'd want only one or two ways to get onto your service road.  Thus routing all potential customers onto the road rather than the highway.

Plus, service roads look great surrounding a highway if there's a one-tile space between the road and the highway.  I've been surrounding my highway in my city with service roads around some areas to catch the exits - not specifically to house commercial zoning.

[bat_mantis 1]

Yeah, this is generally the exact same results I've had with frontage roads too. They work really well in residential areas where the traffic noise from the larger roads kills the desireability.

I've been trying for more realistic looking suburban retail areas and where I grew up that always included a small frontage road off the main road to keep traffic moving from store to store off the main road. The only luck I've really had with them is when I put up a larger shopping area with a parking lot in front. This seems to boost demand and bring in traffic along with being semi-realistic.

Other than that, though, the roads only seem to confuse my sims. They either don't use it at all and stick with the main road or decide it's a shortcut and overwhelm it with traffic that should be going out to the main road.

Thanks for the replies on this, though. I'm going to keep toying with it.

[Sam 163]

Date: 12/24/2005 9:33:21 PM
Author: bat_mantis
Other than that, though, the roads only seem to confuse my sims. They either don't use it at all and stick with the main road or decide it's a shortcut and overwhelm it with traffic that should be going out to the main road.

quote>

I don't seem to have too much trouble with that. My sims tend to take the quickest way to the avenue and then stay on the avenue, and vice versa. But I use the perfect path finding option in the NAM. I find the game's default path finding a bit whacky.

[norwoodman 0]

I assume that frontage roads would be the same as service roads. I never place commercial on the service roads, because most of the traffic would be using the main arterial road. There are a few places where I do place commercial next to main arterial roads (or avenues) such as in downtown areas or major outlying business districts. If your referring to low density commercial development, then there shouldn't really be too much of an issue to get them to develop along the service roads, but for higher density commercial they should really be placed on service roads that get a lot of traffic themselves.

 

On some highways with service roads with heavy commercial development I sometimes have found that the service road is significantly busier than the highway itself.

[bat_mantis 1]

Date: 12/24/2005 9:47:41 PM
Author: sam

I don't seem to have too much trouble with that. My sims tend to take the quickest way to the avenue and then stay on the avenue, and vice versa. But I use the perfect path finding option in the NAM. I find the game's default path finding a bit whacky.

quote>

I've been wondering if that might be the trouble with this. I've only got better pathfinding on in NAM and not perfect pathfinding. They still might be doing some goofy things because of that.

[aldara6166 106]

I use the idea of frontage/service roads quite frequently when building industrial areas.  This ends up creating a sort of industrial park like in real life.  It also enables me to control shipping, based on the limited connections and ALL truck traffic going right to a rail station near the entrance of the industrial park (thanks to the NO TRUCKS lots as well.)

 

That's my experience...hope that helps.

[bat_mantis 1]

I've been using industrial parks for quite a while now too. It really does make the area look alot more realistic. It also keeps everything off the main road so future expansion is alot easier.

I'm also working now on reducing air pollution by building smaller industrial areas that are spread out farther and divided by trees or parkland. So far I've had limited success on actually reducing pollution, but the desireability of the area increases and the aesthetics of the area are alot higher than they would be if I just built one giant area.

[hamsterTK 93]

i heard that there are some goofs in the perfect pathfinding mod. Besides, it makes the game more realistic because traffic problems that can be fun to solve might appear out of nowhere. I personally like to have 2 avenues separated by a block or two. One will be connected with all roads, while the other will alternate from overpasses to traffic lights every 3 or 4 streets. It works for me sometimes, but i know you guys who pwn this game probably will find lots of problems with it.

Anyways, realistic or not, i hate messing with freeways. They cut a swath through my neigborhoods and they hurt my cs on the side streets that are often set up so that sims dont have to go far to work. The only time that a freeway really was useful was when i had a big city, and i made a loop around it. It really helped my commute time since R$$$sims not traveling directly thru town hopped on it instead. the tolls were nice too.

[bat_mantis 1]

Date: 12/25/2005 1:30:57 PM
Author: hamsterTK


Anyways, realistic or not, i hate messing with freeways. They cut a swath through my neigborhoods and they hurt my cs on the side streets that are often set up so that sims dont have to go far to work. The only time that a freeway really was useful was when i had a big city, and i made a loop around it. It really helped my commute time since R$$$sims not traveling directly thru town hopped on it instead. the tolls were nice too.

quote>

I agree with you on the freeways. I had a reasonably sized city (~90,000) and decided that traffic flow downtown was high enough a freeway would cut down commute times. I made the biggest urban renewal mistake I could think of with this. I uprooted hundreds of homes and businesses for the sake of traffic. My downtown became a commercial desert in no time flat.

I think, though, if I wasn't so gung ho about it and built up a block every few months giving the area time to recover and adjust itself it would have gone alot better. Right now, though, I only build freeway bypasses on the outskirts of my cities and bring people downtown on avenues. That's mostly because I've only got mid-size cities on my current map and partly because I'm not much of a fan of them anymore.

Oh, and to stay on topic here, I think I figured out the frontage road bit. I'm using ploppable commercial lots as anchors for the area to bring in commuters. The plop lot automatically creates traffic and demand for the adjacent lots and just like that I have a functional retail area on a frontage road.

Don't know why I never thought of this before...it's how developers bring people to malls.