How to Diverge Traffic

[Propfam 2,286]

Hello,

As we know, we can converge traffic into one road by using superblock design. However, how do I diverge the traffic into multiple roads? This is important because I want to develop my commercial zone, but don't want to rely just on one road.

[rsc204 21,806]

Simple connect everything to all the main access roads. The split between their usage will be determined by the fastest routes to work, if you design things around your cities needs, you can balance usage. But sims rarely bother with alternative routes because they are underused, they will prefer the quicker path. 

[Naomi57 2,985]

All of your sims are travelling from home to work, and from work to home.  Even an airport is merely a big employer, rather than a transit hub.  Use the Route Query tool to observe and analyse individual sim commute habits.

Converging traffic is about creating the most efficient means for most sims to commute from home to work, and discouraging sims from using back streets.  Sims like direct routes, and in the NAM, they like fast routes.  They don't like detours, and they don't like backtracking, but they will travel some way out of their way to get a faster route.

• Streets are 40% slower than Roads and Avenues.  That discourages sims from using them, if there's a better route nearby.
• One Way Roads are 50% faster than Roads and Avenues.
• Highways are 3 TIMES faster than Roads and Avenues, but highways do not provide pedestrian access or frontage access for zones ... no sidewalks.

According to the NAM documentation, an empty road (or highway) has a further 30% speed boost.  A congested road (or highway) has gradually more and more speed reduction, so a NAM sim will prefer a route that shows up as green in the Traffic Congestion data view.  This means that converging traffic requires a route with sufficiently high capacity.

Business prospers adjacent to busy avenues and highways.  High adjacent traffic = High customers.

This is more easily seen in a 64x64 small city, where there are major throughfares to neighbour connections (or ferries), which are bulk destinations for traffic.  Here's a map of one of my small cities that I posted recently.  The highway interfaces the two land neighbour connections.  Avenues (2-tile AVE-4) avenue or arterial highway (1-tile RHW-2) provides access to and from the 2-tile highway (MHW or RHW-4) backbones.

Aside from being the route to neighbour connections or ferry, the highways and avenues are also the route to the largest employers in town.

Here's the screenshot of the city itself, to compare to the map above.  Note, this is not meant to be an impressive city, it's just a curious little neighbour city that I just happened to already have screenshots for.  It demonstrates the Street ► Road ► Avenue / RHW-2 ► MHW/RHW-4 dendritic structure.

In the south-west corner, you'll see the combination of RHW-2 with 3x3 OWR-2 roundabouts, which provides highly efficient arterials, but makes zoning a little more tricky.

 

 

[Propfam 2,286]

On 23/12/2020 at 10:22 PM, Naomi57 said:

All of your sims are travelling from home to work, and from work to home.  Even an airport is merely a big employer, rather than a transit hub.  Use the Route Query tool to observe and analyse individual sim commute habits.

Converging traffic is about creating the most efficient means for most sims to commute from home to work, and discouraging sims from using back streets.  Sims like direct routes, and in the NAM, they like fast routes.  They don't like detours, and they don't like backtracking, but they will travel some way out of their way to get a faster route.

• Streets are 40% slower than Roads and Avenues.  That discourages sims from using them, if there's a better route nearby.
• One Way Roads are 50% faster than Roads and Avenues.
• Highways are 3 TIMES faster than Roads and Avenues, but highways do not provide pedestrian access or frontage access for zones ... no sidewalks.

According to the NAM documentation, an empty road (or highway) has a further 30% speed boost.  A congested road (or highway) has gradually more and more speed reduction, so a NAM sim will prefer a route that shows up as green in the Traffic Congestion data view.  This means that converging traffic requires a route with sufficiently high capacity.

Business prospers adjacent to busy avenues and highways.  High adjacent traffic = High customers.

This is more easily seen in a 64x64 small city, where there are major throughfares to neighbour connections (or ferries), which are bulk destinations for traffic.  Here's a map of one of my small cities that I posted recently.  The highway interfaces the two land neighbour connections.  Avenues (2-tile AVE-4) avenue or arterial highway (1-tile RHW-2) provides access to and from the 2-tile highway (MHW or RHW-4) backbones.

Aside from being the route to neighbour connections or ferry, the highways and avenues are also the route to the largest employers in town.

Here's the screenshot of the city itself, to compare to the map above.  Note, this is not meant to be an impressive city, it's just a curious little neighbour city that I just happened to already have screenshots for.  It demonstrates the Street ► Road ► Avenue / RHW-2 ► MHW/RHW-4 dendritic structure.

In the south-west corner, you'll see the combination of RHW-2 with 3x3 OWR-2 roundabouts, which provides highly efficient arterials, but makes zoning a little more tricky.

 

 

So, AVE-6 is slower than AVE-4 since the former is road-based (slow) and avenue-based (fast)? Is congestion counted how fast a route is?

Edit: I forgot to check the doc. Sorry for my forgetness.

[Naomi57 2,985]

2 hours ago, chfzdn said:

So, AVE-6 is slower than AVE-4 since the former is road-based (slow) and avenue-based (fast)? Is congestion counted how fast a route is?

Roads and avenues are the same speed.

• Street — 30km/h car  ||  25km/h bus
  • includes Maxis street, and SAM-1 to SAM-11.
     
• Road — 50km/h car  ||  45km/h bus
  • includes Maxis RD-2, and NWM AVE-2, TLA-3, ARD-3 and NRD-4.
     
• Avenue — 50km/h car  ||  45km/h bus
  • includes Maxis AVE-4. and NWM TLA-5, RD-4, RD-6, TLA-7 and AVE-6.
     
• One Way Road — 75km/h car  ||  65km/h bus
  • includes Maxis OWR-1, and NWM OWR-1, OWR-3, OWR-4 and OWR-5.
     
• Highway — 150km/h car  ||  110km/h bus
  • includes Maxis Highway, both Ground and Elevated, and also all NAM RHW types.

 

The advantage of the Maxis avenue AVE-4,  is that it is TWO TIMES the traffic capacity of a Maxis road RD-2, so it can handle TWICE as many cars.

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Here are the speeds in iLive Reader 0.9.3:

As tempting as it might be to alter the speeds here, don't.  According to the experts in the traffic simulator, these speeds are carefully calibrated, and changing them can break something.

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The difference between AVE-6 and AVE-4 is the traffic capacity, not traffic speed.  Traffic capacity is of particular interest for two situations:

1. high capacity intersections, and
2. highway in-line transitions to high capacity avenue.

https://www.sc4devotion.com/namdoc/feature-guides/network-widening-mod/network-widening-mod.html

• TLA-5 and RD-6 provide a 25% increase in traffic capacity over Maxis Avenue AVE-4.
• TLA-7 and AVE-6 provide an 87.5% increase in traffic capacity over Maxis Avenue AVE-4.

Traffic capacity matters, because green roads and highways in the Traffic Congestion data view provides up to a 30% boost in speed.  Orange and red in the Traffic Congestion data view considerably reduces speed.

You can get a boost in both speed and capacity using the Maxis OWR-2 One Way Roads, but they are not as good at handling high capacity intersections.  The combination of the 3x3 OWR-2 roundabout and RHW-2 is an interesting combo to boost traffic capacity and speed with minimum space taken up, but it makes zoning more tricky.

Other options for boosting intersection capacity are FLEX Turn Lanes (FTL), QuickTurn, and TuLEPs.  Sadly, the 4x4 roundabouts, as much as they look great, are not good at handling high traffic levels.

If you don't like to think about traffic capacity, you can modify settings in the TSCT to boost either the network capacity, intersection capacity, or mass transit settings.

[Tarkus 6,932]

1 hour ago, chfzdn said:

So, AVE-6 is slower than AVE-4 since the former is road-based (slow) and avenue-based (fast)? Is congestion counted how fast a route is?

As @Naomi57 mentioned, Avenue and Road have been equalized in terms of speed and per-tile capacity with the NAM Simulator--the one exception being the Classic capacity level, which has Avenue at a per-tile capacity of 1400, vs. a Road per-tile capacity of 1200.  However, due to how the AVE-6 and TLA-7 are pathed, they invoke the first value of the Intersection & Turn Capacity Effect (ITCE) property, which boosts the per-tile by 125%, so even in this case, their per tile capacity is going to be 1500.

Equalization of Road and Avenue has been a characteristic of NAM Traffic Simulator Plugins since the development of Simulators A and B (by jplumbley and mott/mayormot) in 2007.  jplumbley was a collaborator of mine in the very early days of Network Widening Mod (NWM) development, and both he and mott were designing their simulator plugins specifically to be compatible with future developments with the NWM and RHW.  I also worked with z1/z to balance his later Simulator Z (which started development in 2008, and eventually became the core of the current NAM Simulator options) to have this same compatibility.

The one major difference between Simulator Z and Simulators A/B in terms of the overall capacity landscape is that A and B also gave the One-Way Road network equal per-tile capacity and to the Road and Avenue networks, and Simulator A gave them all equal speed.  The first version of Simulator Z to be included with the NAM (which I believe dates back to NAM 26 in 2009) also had Road/OWR/AVE equalization all the way across, but z's updates to the simulator for NAM 30 in 2011 gave the OWR a 50% boost on both speed and per-tile capacity over Road/Avenue.

That change was intended to recreate the traffic engineering concept known as a green wave.  In short, it's much easier to achieve traffic signal synchronization on RL OWRs than on two-way networks, and this can result in higher capacity/average speed--more here.  (I'll note, the OWR boost has not come without controversy--especially from the people who try to use Avenues as expressways, and build grade-separated intersections using OWR-based ramps . . . the ramps are actually faster than the Avenue mainline, so traffic will often exit the Avenue, causing such setups to not work as their creators intend.)

Maxis left both the One-Way Road and especially the Avenue network extremely overpowered in their original settings--I suspect in part as means to compensate for the severe downtuning of the pathfinding heuristic value to accommodate the minimum requirements (500MHz Pentium III with 128MB RAM and a video card with 16MB memory).  The full-width capacity of an Avenue is actually 5 times that of the full-width (and per-tile) of a Road under those settings, plus Avenue's speeds were set 30% higher than Road's across the board.  The effect is that you can actually stuff 6.5x the amount of traffic (1.3x speed, multiplied by 5x capacity) on an Avenue than you could stick on a Road before the two equal out in terms of congestion, under the original Maxis capacity/speed regime.

-Tarkus

[Naomi57 2,985]

1 hour ago, Tarkus said:

6.5x the amount of traffic (1.3x speed, multiplied by 5x capacity) on an Avenue than you could stick on a Road before the two equal out in terms of congestion, under the original Maxis capacity/speed regime.

That explains why I remember the Avenue being more powerful in SC4 vanilla!    

1 hour ago, Tarkus said:

That change was intended to recreate the traffic engineering concept known as a green wave.  In short, it's much easier to achieve traffic signal synchronization on RL OWRs than on two-way networks, and this can result in higher capacity/average speed--more here.  (I'll note, the OWR boost has not come without controversy--especially from the people who try to use Avenues as expressways, and build grade-separated intersections using OWR-based ramps . . . the ramps are actually faster than the Avenue mainline, so traffic will often exit the Avenue, causing such setups to not work as their creators intend.)

Thanks for chiming in here, @Tarkus.  The 50% boost in per-tile speed and capacity of OWR-2 over Avenue and Road is a big part of why OWR-2 features so much in my interchanges, such as this OWR-2 roundabout.

... and this MIS to OWR-2 transition for a high performance at grade crossing of the ground level RHW-4.  This is the most basic of my RHW-4 x RHW-4 diamond interchanges.  It almost feels like I'm cheating, to use OWR-2 this way?  

Click to expand the images.

OWR-2 also integrates with other other road types MHW, AVE-4, TLA-5, OWR-3, OWR-4, RHW-4, and MIS, in ways that make OWR-2 the most versatile of transition types.  Here's another one, this time for a RHW-4 + OWR-2 transition to OWR-4 frontage road, coming off a regional highway.  Once again, OWR-2 is a central enabling road type.

If you don't mind my asking, Tarkus ... is that intentional in the NAM, that OWR-2 would hold such a central position?

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

10 hours ago, Naomi57 said:

Traffic capacity matters, because green roads and highways in the Traffic Congestion data view provides up to a 30% boost in speed. 

Capacity also matters because uncluttered paths also mean low customers for commercial buildings -- raising your capacities too much will drive your business areas bankrupt. As with so many other features of this game, you must carefully balance the moving parts in order to have your cake and eat it too.

[Propfam 2,286]

Is lane splitting (on RHW for instance, like A2 and D1, if I'm not mistaken) separate (diverge) the traffic? How about non-splitting ramps like A1 and B1?

[Propfam 2,286]

On 22/12/2020 at 6:32 PM, rsc204 said:

But sims rarely bother with alternative routes because they are underused, they will prefer the quicker path. 

That's what exactly I mean. I want to maximize the traffic on a line of network but the network has some sort of traffic capacity that if exceed, costs commute time. I have to separate the line into different lines to properly distribute the traffic. Also, concentrating the traffic into a line even without any traffic jams will have a diminishing return. There will be a point where you can't build commercial buildings, even offices, anymore due to land scarcity and density, especially on a Maxis-based cities. Sure, if you have lots of commercial in other areas and have a collection of megatall or hypertall, you may able to build those buildings. But, if you just have Maxis buildings, you basically game over, even if you've CAM, tho the ceiling is obviously higher than vanilla.

Sorry for my words. Thanks.

[Naomi57 2,985]

4 hours ago, chfzdn said:

Is lane splitting (on RHW for instance, like A2 and D1, if I'm not mistaken) separate (diverge) the traffic? How about non-splitting ramps like A1 and B1?

Sims know exactly which lane they need to be in to take the best ramp to their destination.  Converging and diverging traffic is more about commute destination and fastest route, and not really about ramp types.

Lane splitting is partly a cosmetic consideration, and partly a traffic volume consideration, given ramps like A2 and D1 are excellent ways of transitioning down from a higher number of lanes to a lower number of lanes on your highway.  If you take a close look at this RHW cloverleaf, you'll see that I used RHW-8S for the centrepiece, for maximum traffic handling on the intersecting portion of the two highways, and then used a Type E1 ramp (I think), to immediately transition down to RHW-6S.

Further out from the centre of the interchange, I'm using Type B1 ramps, to keep the number of highway lanes unchanged.

Click on the screenshot to zoom in.

Toward the "east" side of the screenshot, I do a RHW-6S to RHW-4S inline transition without the benefit of ramps.  It's not as nice.
Toward the "south" end of the screenshot, I use a Type D1 ramp to transition down from RHW-6S to RHW-4.

If it was real-life, the type of ramp used would relate to reducing risk of accidents from weaving traffic, or the dangers of traffic joining the motorway from a standstill.

If you're looking for a more compact and functional style of highway building, I can show you some interchanges with that emphasis, instead.

4 hours ago, chfzdn said:

That's what exactly I mean. I want to maximize the traffic on a line of network but the network has some sort of traffic capacity that if exceed, costs commute time. I have to separate the line into different lines to properly distribute the traffic. Also, concentrating the traffic into a line even without any traffic jams will have a diminishing return. There will be a point where you can't build commercial buildings, even offices, anymore due to land scarcity and density

This is where mass transit comes into the picture.  Tram-Avenue is a truly awesome way of cramming enormous amounts of surface traffic (i.e. High Customers) into a small space.  I've got a Tram-Avenue x Highway interchange if you'd like to see it.  Just be warned that fire fighters called to dual networking Tram-Avenue, Tram-In-Road, Tram-On-Street, and ElevatedRail on Road tiles can't fight fires.

• https://community.simtropolis.com/forums/topic/758794-is-tram-in-road-incompatible-with-fire-fighting/
  

If you don't want the bother of using trams, standard Elevated Rail achieves a similar extreme surface traffic (i.e. High Customers) objective, with better ease-of-use.

If you simply have far too much surface traffic, then the answers are subway, underground rail, or sunken highway, but those approaches take customers away from the commercial lots.  With a sunken highway, I restrict vehicle access until I am sure there is enough surface traffic to sustain commercial development.  With subway, I don't create a subway network, but rather use it in small patches, as a band aid (or shuttle) to solve specific traffic congestion problems.

Mass transit in general is very helpful for large scale commercial development.

Here's a mass transit mud map of one of my cities from earlier this year.  Yellow shows the subway band aids.  Dark blue the sunken highway.  Pale blue the monorail.  Orange the heavy rail, and green blobs for the stations.  I'll probably use the GLR/tram in the C$$$ areas in the south-west.

The dual-carriageway is all RHW-4, not Avenue.  Avenue tiles are very hard to find in this city.  

You don't have to use all these different kinds of mass transit, I just happen to think it's fun.     A purely logical approach to mass transit, based on SC4 transit type characteristics, would be:

• Monorail (or heavy rail) for long distance.
• Subway for high density residential shuttle to nearest station.
• Subway for traffic congestion band aids.
• Elevated rail and/or GLR tram for high density commercial areas.
• Bus for industrial.
• Sunken highway for R$$$ car users and highway buses.

[Tarkus 6,932]

22 hours ago, Naomi57 said:

If you don't mind my asking, Tarkus ... is that intentional in the NAM, that OWR-2 would hold such a central position?

That was part of z1's idea with the changes he made circa NAM 30.  It's also part of the rationale behind the RealExpressway (REW) project that eggman121 is developing.

I'll note, that situation with converting an MIS ramp to OWR before intersecting a surface network . . . that will actually result in a lower capacity/speed than keeping it MIS (even with the OWR boost, the capacity of an OWR is 40% lower than that of that of an MIS, and OWR speed is half that of MIS), though in your instance, given that RHW-4 x MIS isn't a supported at-grade intersection, it's the only option in that case (aside from converting the ground RHW-4 to an Avenue--or OWRs). 

I've seen some people do that for cosmetic reasons, citing the fact that the surface network--provided it's not another RHW--ends up with signals, though given the OWR's lack of stop point functionality without using SITAP, it kind of moots it.  I'll note that MIS FLEX Turn Lanes (FTLs) are planned, along with a SITAP equivalent to cover appropriate RHW networks, to provide a cleaner (and higher capacity/faster, per the simulator) solution.  The prototype QuickChange Xpress (QCX) interchanges that I've shown feature these MIS FTLs (as well as MIS and RHW-4 height transitions that have transitions to FTL setups built on as well).

-Tarkus

[Propfam 2,286]

Does this video works with SimCity 4 and NWM & RHW in a straightforward way as intended in the video?

Especially the fact that Simulator Z prioritize higher speed. Congestion matters tho but when the traffic exceeds the capacity of the road, not towards the capacity.

For Maxis networks on Simulator Z, this should be straightforward. From the lowest, streets then roads and avenues then OWRs then Maxis highways. Isn't my hierarchy right? Should roads be separated by avenue and then the avenue is higher than roads?

Let me know the hierarchy of all networks including NWM & RHW.

Sorry if I have some misunderstanding.

[Naomi57 2,985]

6 hours ago, chfzdn said:

Does this video works with SimCity 4 and NWM & RHW in a straightforward way as intended in the video?

Especially the fact that Simulator Z prioritize higher speed. Congestion matters tho but when the traffic exceeds the capacity of the road, not towards the capacity.

For Maxis networks on Simulator Z, this should be straightforward. From the lowest, streets then roads and avenues then OWRs then Maxis highways. Isn't my hierarchy right? Should roads be separated by avenue and then the avenue is higher than roads?

Let me know the hierarchy of all networks including NWM & RHW.

 

Yea, that's a great video.  It's a fair match for SC4/NAM, though not quite.  The hierarchy of roads are:

	City Planner Video	SC4 + NAM
	Interstate	RHW-6S, RHS-6C, RHW-8S, RHW-8C.
	Highway	RHW-4, RHW-3, MHW.
	Arterial	RHW-2, OWR-2, OWR-4, OWR-5.
	Collector	OWR-2
	Collector/Local	Avenue AVE-4, TLA-5, RD-6, TLA-7, AVE-7.
	Local/Collector	Road RD-2, AVE-2, TLA-3, ARD-3, NRD-4, also AVE-4.
	Local	Street

Just as Street is a tool for encouraging sims to use the Road instead, so also, the higher speed/capacity of the RHW-2 and OWR-2 are tools to encourage sims to use those as collectors/arterials, instead of roads and avenues.

It's rather common for SC4 players to go straight from AVE-4 to MHW, because the original Maxis features encouraged that. 

On 26/12/2020 at 7:47 PM, Tarkus said:

Maxis left both the One-Way Road and especially the Avenue network extremely overpowered in their original settings--I suspect in part as means to compensate for the severe downtuning of the pathfinding heuristic value to accommodate the minimum requirements (500MHz Pentium III with 128MB RAM and a video card with 16MB memory).  The full-width capacity of an Avenue is actually 5 times that of the full-width (and per-tile) of a Road under those settings, plus Avenue's speeds were set 30% higher than Road's across the board.

In the NAM, by contrast, all the Avenue types are under-powered collectors, for when you have too much traffic to fit on a road, but you don't want to funnel all the traffic in that direction.

Given the neighbourhood layout and zoning in the video, here's the road types I'd use:

• Black for arterial RHW-2 or OWR-2.
• Dark red for collector/local avenue TLA-7.
• Light brown for local/collector avenue AVE-4.
• Dark grey for local through roads ... as opposed to streets in light grey.

That combination would fulfil the city planner's objectives, using avenues for high capacity access in and out of high density residential zones, while still encouraging traffic to prefer the high speed arterial lined with commercial lots.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2y2GjTezCI

Mind you, I wouldn't put industrial where he did.

• High Tech should be away from traffic.
• Manufacturing should be near R$, not commercial.
• Dirty Industry should be nowhere near anything!  

I'd also zone the highest density commercial near the highway exits.

What this city planner is saying, about having fewer intersections on arterial roads, is true with the NAM, too.  It's a good principle, because intersections are where most traffic congestion occurs.  However, if all your residential zones are high density, then every second road needs to be an arterial, and traffic noise will just be a fact of life for every sim.  In those cases, I like to give them little streets as the residential frontage, with the arterial just around the corner.

... or I give them trams ... the perfect (but very noisy) high density mass transport.  

[Propfam 2,286]

Thanks for input, @Naomi57. So, in other words, when I zone low dense, follow all the way from the bottom. When I zone med dense, follow from Local/Collector or Collector/Local to the highest. When I zone high dense, follow from Collector. Isn't it right?

55 minutes ago, Naomi57 said:

Mind you, I wouldn't put industrial where he did.

• High Tech should be away from traffic.
• Manufacturing should be near R$, not commercial.
• Dirty Industry should be nowhere near anything!  

I have a different approach, I don't place industrial near the population even for the manufacturing. Why? Because, they produce a significant amount of pollution and I want to achieve low pollution even from the lowest economic development. So, I choose commercial, even CS$ at start. Then, when the demand for I-HT is there, I'll zone I-HT fully.

Public transport is a good thing, but I want some customers to go in. I'm not dear to make pedestrians as customers yet.

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

7 hours ago, Naomi57 said:

Dirty Industry should be nowhere near anything!  

I've had consistent success zoning residences near dirty industrial. Those zones tend to provide abundant R$ close to many jobs, and miracle of miracles, higher-wealth sims tend not to kick them out

[Propfam 2,286]

3 hours ago, jeffryfisher said:

I've had consistent success zoning residences near dirty industrial. Those zones tend to provide abundant R$ close to many jobs, and miracle of miracles, higher-wealth sims tend not to kick them out

R$ is fine tho with nearby I-D unless if they're too large in size because of the ultra high pollution.

[Naomi57 2,985]

4 hours ago, jeffryfisher said:

I've had consistent success zoning residences near dirty industrial. Those zones tend to provide abundant R$ close to many jobs, and miracle of miracles, higher-wealth sims tend not to kick them out

The two major needs of high density R$ being mass transit and jobs, and if other economic factors are propitious, then yes, the combination of R$ and dirty I-D works.

I have found that local orange air pollution and yellow water pollution stresses high density R$ populations.  If that stress reaches boiling point, it can be seen in scissoring R$ population fluctuations (and partial vacancy) at the stage before buildings vacate completely.  Removing the pollution removes the scissoring on the R$ population graph.

If other economic factors are propitious, then the R$ populations living in a polluted area will remain stable, but I don't think I've ever pushed it as far as you have.  Out of curiosity, @jeffryfisher, what other gameplay factors (besides mass transit and jobs), seem to be most significant to successfully maintaining close proximity between R$ and I-D?  Lower taxes?  A local playground?  Water Treatment Plants, or trees?

Red air pollution and red water pollution even stresses manufacturing I-M, so it's all a matter of degree.  Civics, on the other hand, such as Water Treatment Plants, Power Plants, Army Base, and Airports, don't seem to mind red pollution levels at all.  

[Naomi57 2,985]

17 hours ago, Naomi57 said:

The hierarchy of roads are:

	City Planner Video	SC4 + NAM
	Interstate	RHW-6S, RHS-6C, RHW-8S, RHW-8C.
	Highway	RHW-4, RHW-3, MHW.
	Arterial	RHW-2, OWR-2, OWR-4, OWR-5.
	Collector	OWR-2
	Collector/Local	Avenue AVE-4, TLA-5, RD-6, TLA-7, AVE-7.
	Local/Collector	Road RD-2, AVE-2, TLA-3, ARD-3, NRD-4, also AVE-4.
	Local	Street

Just as Street is a tool for encouraging sims to use the Road instead, so also, the higher speed/capacity of the RHW-2 and OWR-2 are tools to encourage sims to use those as collectors/arterials, instead of roads and avenues.

16 hours ago, chfzdn said:

Thanks for input, @Naomi57. So, in other words, when I zone low dense, follow all the way from the bottom. When I zone med dense, follow from Local/Collector or Collector/Local to the highest. When I zone high dense, follow from Collector. Isn't it right?

Exactly right, @chfzdn!  

RHW-2 is really an arterial, with no sidewalk for RCI zoning, but you can use it as a collector by placing one tile of Street intersecting the RHW-2.  In this screenshot, I've used the SAM-1 "carpark style" Street type, but any one tile of Street will do.  Zoning faces the single-tile of Street.  3x4 zoning prevents subdivision, and is often an ideal size for high density zoning along RHW-2 when used as a collector.

Surprisingly, the NAM allows pedestrians on the RHW-2, but at a slower walking speed.  

For medium density, another combination that is fun is to use OWR-2 or RHW-2 collectors with 3 or 4 streets in-between.  The high speeds and capacities of OWR-2 and RHW-2 are sufficient to minimise car traffic on streets.  You then watch for street congestion and just upgrade a selected few streets to roads, if you want to funnel local traffic.

For high density, you can still have one or two streets for each OWR-2 or RHW-2 collector, but only if every high density lot has a high speed collector a few tiles from their back door, as shown in the next screenshot.  These streets are mostly for pedestrians, and the "road" between the two 3x3 roundabouts is highway grade RHW-2 with no sidewalk!  Click on the image to zoom in.

 

When RHW-2 is used as a collector this way, there are many intersections of streets (or SAM-1 carparks).  Here's another way this can be done:

I like the efficiency of tile usage, using RHW-2 this way ... playing SC4 like it's a game of Tetris.  

When RHW-2 is used as an arterial, rather than a collector, it's better to have fewer high capacity intersections, such as:

1. TLA-5 / RD-6
2. TLA-7 / AVE-6
3. 3x3 OWR-2 roundabout
4. RHW interchange

Important note: The 4x4 AVE-4 roundabout is very substantially lower capacity than the 3x3 OWR-2 roundabout, as weird as that might seem.  

[Naomi57 2,985]

15 hours ago, chfzdn said:

I have a different approach, I don't place industrial near the population even for the manufacturing. Why? Because, they produce a significant amount of pollution and I want to achieve low pollution even from the lowest economic development. So, I choose commercial, even CS$ at start. Then, when the demand for I-HT is there, I'll zone I-HT fully.

That's a good approach.  

15 hours ago, chfzdn said:

Public transport is a good thing, but I want some customers to go in. I'm not dear to make pedestrians as customers yet.

Public transport counts as customers, especially elevated light rail / GLR trams in my experience.

• In Maxis vanilla, buses don't count, bus passengers are NEITHER customers nor traffic.
• In NAM, buses count as BOTH customers and traffic.

Looking up the NAM traffic simulator DAT file, you can see that buses definitely generate traffic & customers (depending on your TSCT settings).

Travel type generates traffic   0x00,0x01,0x01,0x01,0x01,0x01,0x01,0x01,0x01

... what surprises me is that the NAM has Subways and Heavy Rail also set to generate traffic & customers!  That explains a couple thick air pollution anomalies clustered on some of my busiest residential subway stations, so I'm debating whether to switch that setting off for Subway.  

Interestingly, the Air Pollution is clustered only on the busy subway station itself, not the line.

Air Pollution anomalies (a sign of traffic & customers) on Heavy Rail is an experiment I'll do soon.  I always had the impression that SC4 Heavy Rail was green and clean ... and whisper quiet!    ... but according to the DAT file, maybe not.  

[Naomi57 2,985]

On 28/12/2020 at 11:04 PM, Naomi57 said:

Given the neighbourhood layout and zoning in the video, here's the road types I'd use:

• Black for arterial RHW-2 or OWR-2.
• Dark red for collector/local avenue TLA-7.
• Light brown for local/collector avenue AVE-4.
• Dark grey for local through roads ... as opposed to streets in light grey.

That combination would fulfil the city planner's objectives, using avenues for high capacity access in and out of high density residential zones, while still encouraging traffic to prefer the high speed arterial lined with commercial lots.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2y2GjTezCI

That video that @chfzdn posted has got me thinking about Streets in SC4.

The humble Street, is treated as simply a poor cousin to the Road, valued because it's cheap, with little strategic advantage except a (frequently) vain attempt to keep traffic away, and upgraded to a Road at the least sign of congestion trouble.

What if a Street could become an active tool for keeping the neighbourhood traffic quiet, rather than just a passive tool?

Vanilla SC4 is guilty of downplaying the strategic value of Streets, which in real-life are more friendly to pedestrians than to cars.  Urban planning in recent years has seen a revitalised awareness of the importance of building pedestrian friendly neighbourhoods, and road construction that facilitates high traffic speeds is often an impediment to safety and effectiveness for pedestrian use.

It's actually quite unrealistic that a pedestrian would use a One Way Road (OWR) for walking, if they have an alternative.  It's extremely unrealistic that a pedestrian would use the rough shoulder of a small highway (RHW-2) for walking, though they would if they must.  A pedestrian would clearly prefer a quiet Street, and so I have quietly modified my traffic simulator tonight, and I like the change:  

 
     The new values in pink and blue, the old values highlight straw yellow.

I've increased the Walking Speed only on Streets, to represent the practical and philosophical value of local Streets to encourage walking.  To counter that benefit, I've reduced the same Walking Speed on One Way Roads (OWR) and Highway (RHW-2), to discourage walking in those parts of the city that are less friendly to pedestrians.  It has theoretical value, in terms of a better match for modern city planning.  It elevates the game value of Streets, strategically.  In practical terms, my quick little play with it tonight seems to yield the following benefits:

• Encourages preference for Mass Transit over walking on OWR and RHW-2.
• Encourages sims to walk instead of doing a silly drive a few doors down the Street to work.  
• Makes sims more likely to walk to a Bus Stop near a Road, rather than catch the bus at the closest Bus Stop on the Street network.
• Makes sims more willing to walk further to a Bus Stop, if they are walking on a local Street.
• Makes sims more willing to walk at the other end of their Mass Transit journey, if it's a pleasant walk.
• Makes sims PREFER a pedestrian friendly walking route, which makes us Mayors think a little about creating pedestrian friendly cities.  

These changes will likely exert a subtle reduction in traffic on the Street, as sims walk more, and a subtle increase in traffic on Arterial OWR and RHW-2, as sims use Cars or Mass Transit to avoid walking in pedestrian unfriendly locales.  The 20 Walking Speed, compared to 25 Bus Speed, and 30 Driving Speed, just on Streets, delivers an interesting new variety in sim commute routes.

While 20 is unrealistic in terms of actual speed, it seems to be very realistic in terms of what it does to sim commute behaviour.
IMPORTANT NOTE:  It takes up to a sim-year for sims to all realise that the Streets have become more pedestrian friendly!

Early days, but I rather like what I've seen so far, so was excited to tell you all about it.  

[rsc204 21,806]

53 minutes ago, Naomi57 said:

• Makes sims more likely to walk to a Bus Stop near a Road, rather than catch the bus at the closest Bus Stop on the Street network.

This speaks to me, I'm always designing efficient alleyways, but sims never seem to use them.

This does seem like an interesting tweak, not that I have lots of time to play, but I too am keen to try something similar.

[CorinaMarie 29,578]

1 hour ago, Naomi57 said:

I've increased the Walking Speed only on Streets, to represent the practical and philosophical value of local Streets to encourage walking.

I like this idea! I've made the exact same changes.

 

Here are a couple other things I'm currently testing. From another thread, I've set it so the Buses act a bit like a Taxi once the Sim hops on. (While a taxi would pick them up at their house and then take them to their destination, these buses must be boarded at a station and only after do they go wherever the Sim tells them.)

 

Then I've also said they can ride mass transit longer than the NAM default.

[matias93 7,535]

20 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

I've set it so the Buses act a bit like a Taxi once the Sim hops on.

I've done that as well: as I'm simulating a third world city, most people don't really respect bus stops and in and out of busses wherever they can make them stop.

Naomi's idea on increasing walking speed on streets also makes sense to me.

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

19 hours ago, Naomi57 said:

what other gameplay factors (besides mass transit and jobs), seem to be most significant to successfully maintaining close proximity between R$ and I-D?

I do cleanup water pollution. Also, my residences aren't exactly mixed in among industrial; they're separate but adjacent. If I have any buffer, it's a band of  high-density industrial (which IRM makes less-dirty). I give dirty residential the same water, schools (other than private), hospitals, police and fire as I give to cleaner neighborhoods. Thus they're stressed only by yellow air pollution (and they don't get any parks), just unappealing enough to stave off gentrification without installing the NKO mod.

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

4 hours ago, Naomi57 said:

The humble Street, is treated as simply a poor cousin to the Road, valued because it's cheap, with little strategic advantage except a (frequently) vain attempt to keep traffic away,

A few other humble street advantages:

Depending on slope mod, streets are generally more flexible and able to climb steeper grades.

For those who use road-top mass transit (RTMT mod), street bus-stops are cheaper to build and maintain (but have lower capacity).

Streets have subtly more aggressive auto-join rules.

Streets can be removed by dezoning (in addition to bulldozing).

[Lucario Boricua 7,027]

In terms of the walking speed adjustments, here are some potential ideas:

 

Walking speed continuum based on pedestrian friendliness based on Naomi's table:

• Street: highest, I'd dare raise it to something between 22 and 25, beyond the proposed 20 (unless testing indicates that anything past 20 is inadequate)
   
• Road and 2-way NWM: slightly raised, maybe to 18 but not past 20
   
• Avenue: also left at the current 15
   
• One-way / REW / 1-way NWM: downgraded to 10 as proposed by Naomi
   
• RHW-2: downgraded to 5 as proposed by Naomi

 

There could be some vehicle-blocking lots to create certain facilities oriented to non-motorized transport:

• Urban pedestrian street: blocks cars and freight trucks; allows bus, pedestrians and possibly trams.
   
• Cycling track: only lets pedestrians through (no car/bus/truck/tram) and would become useful with the higher speed for pedestrians. This could be implemented as a new SAM texture along with the speed adjustment. Such texture could feature only the cycling elements or be structured as a dual network for pedestrians and bicycles.

 

Another option would be to check if it's possible to develop a new ordinance called "Complete Streets Legislation" which could be used to toggle on/off the pedestrian speed changes.

[Naomi57 2,985]

10 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

Here are a couple other things I'm currently testing. From another thread, I've set it so the Buses act a bit like a Taxi once the Sim hops on. (While a taxi would pick them up at their house and then take them to their destination, these buses must be boarded at a station and only after do they go wherever the Sim tells them.)

This reminds me of another potential experiment for you, Cori, along similar lines ... or perhaps you've already spotted this mod?

Quote

https://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/1902-taxi-stand-new-transportation/
What we have here is a new transporation method. Sims take cabs!

It is a 1x1 lot which you place near any road, which gives every pedestrian a ride to the office & back. Small plopp fee & no maintence (private business). There is also a 1x1 RoadTop lot which you place on the roads to save space.

What it basically does is the reverse of a parking lot. Instead of turning cars into pedestrians, it turns pedestrians into cars. While this concept has been implemented into an older lot (rent-a-car or so) by someone else, i've decided to make some taxis.
...

[Kloudkicker 4,561]

These are pretty popular and maybe of some help?

 

[Naomi57 2,985]

IMPORTANT NOTE:  I'm guessing you've all realised this already, it takes up to a sim-year for sims to all realise that the Streets have become more pedestrian friendly!

12 hours ago, Naomi57 said:

 
     The new values in pink and blue, the old values highlight straw yellow.

3 hours ago, Lucario Boricua said:

Street: highest, I'd dare raise it to something between 22 and 25, beyond the proposed 20 (unless testing indicates that anything past 20 is inadequate)

Note that Bus is 25 on Street tiles, and Driving is 30 on Street tiles.

I felt that if a Bus Stop is more-or-less enroute, it's logical for the Sim to take it.

There is a balancing act between Bus and Walking preference.  22 might work.  25 would alter the balance completely, I think.

3 hours ago, Lucario Boricua said:

Road and 2-way NWM: slightly raised, maybe to 18 but not past 20

I plan to experiment with raising Pedestrian to 16 on Road, simply because I get the impression that Pedmalls are part of the Road network (just with no vehicle paths), but I'll be holding off on that ... wait and see.

I've been loving seeing my sims use the Pedmalls in preference to the OWR, and so I'll be experimenting with Pedmall preference over Avenue, too.  Another possibility I'm considering is:

• 14 for Avenue
• 16 for Road

Avenue is a similar shared space, balancing vehicle and pedestrian needs, so I'm reluctant to drop Avenue very far, but I'm keen to see a clear advantage to Pedmall tiles.  Dropping Avenue by 1 simulates a slightly lower speed attained with busy Pedestrian crowds and waiting at walk signals, but the whole point of Avenues is that they are supposed to be moderately pedestrian friendly.

Part of the reason I want to keep Pedestrian speed on Roads down, is because they balance vehicle and pedestrian needs.  Having a clear Pedestrian advantage to Streets alters sim behaviour in delightful ways, and allows Streets to become a strategic asset (better than Roads) for pedestrian friendly routes.  

3 hours ago, Lucario Boricua said:

There could be some vehicle-blocking lots to create certain facilities oriented to non-motorized transport:

• Urban pedestrian street: blocks cars and freight trucks; allows bus, pedestrians and possibly trams.
   
• Cycling track: only lets pedestrians through (no car/bus/truck/tram) and would become useful with the higher speed for pedestrians. This could be implemented as a new SAM texture along with the speed adjustment. Such texture could feature only the cycling elements or be structured as a dual network for pedestrians and bicycles.

Another option would be to check if it's possible to develop a new ordinance called "Complete Streets Legislation" which could be used to toggle on/off the pedestrian speed changes.

Bus Stops with Street on one side, and OWR or highway on the other side, feature in my cities with frequency, even back in SC4 vanilla, effectively creating cul-de-sacs with pedestrian / bus-only route through (see screenshot below).  I noticed that pedestrians quite happily shortcut through vanilla bus stops and many other transit lots, too.

Pedmalls do a great job of complete vehicle blocking.    ... but not exactly the cutest look.  

A Pedmall combined with a WSSNCOPFL would simulate a vehicle blocker, while still looking like a Street tile.

• https://community.simtropolis.com/forums/topic/759977-wssncopfl-working-simulated-street-neighbor-connection-overhanging-prop-filler-lots-beta-in-progress/?page=5&tab=comments#comment-1743291
  

I do love the idea of a Cycling track, and perhaps a "City Cycleways Initiative" ordinance that boosts Street cycling (aka Pedestrian) to 35 for selected cities ... for Streets only.    I'm super keen to have a "Park and Ride" ordinance, too.  I only want Park and Ride for some cities, not all of them!

A Pedmall with SAM texture and cycleway bollard props would make a PERFECT vehicle blocker!