Road extensions?

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I've done some research on this topic in the past, but I just wanted to potentially open up further discussion about the Network Widening Mod/road capacity in NAM versions of SC4. I've been playing the game for about a year with latest NAM revs installed. It took me forever to learn how to sensibly use the RHW, and I still have trouble with it. I'm one of those that try to have a rough plan of what I'm doing in the game, but I usually don't go far beyond using avenues and vanilla roads/OWR in my grids. I still usually end up building everything way too close together 

One thing that I'm trying to incorporate are more NWM roads, so I can build denser urban centers that can handle more traffic. It appears that some of the NWM roads can't be played around with much - you can't add FLEXturn setups, or premade intersections that are compatible with RD-6, no? I have one running up the length of a grid that I've built as a main/arterial road. Also, as another example - I've found NRD-4 to be marginally more effective than the RD-2 for traffic flow, with the exact same footprint. However, I've really so far only applied it to roads that need it, and the look is sort of...inconsistent? I dunno. Like I said, I'm still pretty new. Just wanted to get more people's thoughts on this. The NWM tools don't appear to have been brought up as much as the other stuff. Picture is a new tile I'm working on, currently connected to next city solely by the elevated RD-6. Thanks for reading and have a great Monday!

[Tarkus 6,932]

First off, welcome to Simtropolis!

To answer a few points:

On 11/24/2025 at 3:50 AM, ccccccc said:

 It appears that some of the NWM roads can't be played around with much - you can't add FLEXturn setups, or premade intersections that are compatible with RD-6, no? I have one running up the length of a grid that I've built as a main/arterial road. 

The only NWM networks that have any sort of turn lane support at this juncture are those in the TLA and AVE families (TLA-3/5/7, AVE-2/6, and of course, the Maxis Avenue, which would be AVE-4 if using similar nomenclature).  The ARD-3 can hook into the Type 110 setups, as there is a transition for doing so, but using the modular FLEX Turn Lane (FTL) features, not via QuickTurn.

While expanding turn lane functionality to the RD and OWR families is in the cards, it's fairly low on the priority list right now.

Additionally, it doesn't look like you have any RD-6 anywhere in any of the screenshots . . . the elevated network you have is the elevated viaduct form of the Maxis Avenue network (which is part of the NAM's Draggable Viaducts system).  The RD-6 does not have elevated viaducts--nor do any of the NWM networks.  That is also in the plans, but there is other NWM functionality that's in front of it in the developmental queue.

On 11/24/2025 at 3:50 AM, ccccccc said:

I've found NRD-4 to be marginally more effective than the RD-2 for traffic flow, with the exact same footprint. However, I've really so far only applied it to roads that need it, and the look is sort of...inconsistent? I dunno. Like I said, I'm still pretty new. Just wanted to get more people's thoughts on this. The NWM tools don't appear to have been brought up as much as the other stuff.

NRD-4 (and pretty much all of the single-tile NWM networks, save for the OWR-1) uses some trickery involving dummy paths and a property in the Traffic Simulator Plugin to receive a 25% boost over base network capacity (in this case, Road).  While at first glance, this might seem below what it should be, given that the number of lanes is doubled going from Road/RD-2 to NRD-4, the property in question (the Intersection & Turn Capacity Effect, or ITCE) also affects the capacity of intersections, and not just those with NWM networks.  The 25% figure is a compromise, designed to allow some bonus to the NWM networks without causing deleterious effects elsewhere.  The simulator calculates capacity on a per-tile basis, not a per-lane basis, so that's the best we can do at this juncture.

The NWM has technically been in development almost as long as the RHW (project was founded at the end of 2006, whereas the RHW's beginnings are in 2005).  Surprisingly, while the RHW may be more challenging for the end user when compared to the NWM, the NWM is actually an order of magnitude more difficult to work on as a NAM developer, and there's been periods of time where we simply couldn't progress with it without first having to solve some larger issue.  A lot of the RHW's functionality involves grade-separated crossings--far simpler to path than NWM intersections with all the turning motions, and there's not nearly as many T-intersections with which to contend. (T-intersections, especially larger ones, can get really gnarly because of asymmetry, and the game's default tendency to reuse +-intersection components as part of the T-intersections often makes NWM situations even messier.)

NWM development is actually a huge focus internally right now, as we've finally built up a framework internally to streamline portions of the process, though things ended up getting paused as a result of both some developmental and Real Life complications.  (The developmental ones seem to be mostly resolved now; the Real Life ones are still a work-in-progress right now.)  Once things finally start moving again, I suspect you'll enjoy some of the new stuff we have in the works.

-Tarkus

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Thanks for the response. I'm excited to see for myself. I tried playing Cities recently, and it's fun as a straight-up builder, but there's too many little bottlenecks (having to plop certain buildings to progress, jobs, pathing issues etc) that prevent it from being a great city management game. I am grateful for the continued support for this game, which I still think is the best city builder I've ever played.