Plantation Bay (A YouTube Let's Play of SC4)

Yea, totally agree with you there!  ALL those NAM diagonal elevated stations are a tricky bitches to work with, IMHO.  

I can laugh in hindsight.  

yeah I love the NAM but I'm generally focused on building cities, not putting together puzzle pieces. I don't often use the tramways or ground light rail for that reason (although I might at some point in this Let's Play just for the purpose of demonstration.

10 hours ago, rob_mtl said:

I don't often use the tramways or ground light rail for that reason

Yea, I think you nested Elevated Rail inside two parallel One Way Roads in one of your videos, which is a good answer to avoiding puzzle pieces.  

In my experience, Trams and Elevated Rail are particularly useful because they generate traffic noise (= customers), which subways and passenger rail don't.  I'm thinking to do a tutorial series on trams, but NAM 37 is tweaking how trams work, adding to the draggable options and making it less fragile, so I'm going to hold off doing a tutorial until then.

Based on watching a few of your Let's Play videos, here's just one puzzle piece I'm pretty sure you'll love.  It's under the ElevatedRail Dual/Double-Decker Network Pieces menu item, towards the end of the TAB ring.  Stick one of those on each side of the Elevated Rail station, and you have a compact private station to serve any set of 4 large high-rise residential towers or office blocks, because the ground level Pedmall provides pedestrian access under the tracks either side of the station.

BTW, I really like how you use heavy Passenger Rail for express, and light Elevated Rail for a more snaky all stations route.  It has real-life realism and dovetails well with gameplay factors.  I think I'll try that out in one of my cities.

Yeah the local/express thing is New York-inspired (although NYC's is an entirely subway and el-train local express with typically 2 tracks or more running in both direction).

The oneways on either side of the el-train track, although not perfect in terms of realism, serve three functions: 1) they provide a road thoroughfare with the capacity of an avenue by the higher speed of a 1-way; 2) they give space for el-trains and/or a park median if the train goes underground; and 3) they allow you to build commercial or dense residential lots facing both sides of stations for minimal walking time and maximum "customers" bonus.

I like the dual network pieces in theory but I've found they interfere with the zoning lots. Like buildings won't build facing them, which kind of defeats the purpose (I might just be doing it wrong).

See the attached images for what I'd like to have my el-train thoroughfares look like (Broadway and Myrtle in Brooklyn where the J and M trains fork... near one of my favourite delis :D). Those el-train streets in New York really buzz with commercial activity despite the racket of the aging trains passing overhead and the rails blocking out the sun.

I'll certainly try the pedmall piece. I have lots of patience for puzzle pieces around stations, major intersections, parks, etc., just not the whole length of lines.

That being said, Plantation Bay is getting some rail viaducts very soon. I love the stone rail viaduct plus Victorian station combo. We'll see if I can make it function.