How to build a big, mass transit free city in SimCity 3000

Contributor/author(s): Ken Kinder

The first big cities I built depended on mass transit by the time they got to a population of 100,000. First come busses, but by 300,000 sims, you'll probably be spending your money on rails.

Most Americans prefer cars, so why not try to be a friendly mayor and build a big city without mass transit? It's not easy, but it can be done.

There are three real transportation stages in a city designed this way. The first step is a small city, which has commuters driving to industry for work, and commerce to shop, but can't afford freeways. This is the most challenging. The second step is being able to afford freeways, but still having sims commuting to industrial zones to work. Finally, as most experienced SimMayors know, large cities depend much less on industry and much more on commerce. This is the final stage when your sims commute less to industrial zones.

Before I describe how to go through each step, I'll give you some general tips that work in any case and city size:

• Use double width roads for arterial routes. These are called avenues. They really are double the capacity of standard roads.
• Stay away from a grid system that spans the whole city. Grid systems work at first, but become difficult to improve.
• Use avenues as arterial routes. Most of the thru roads should be avenues.
• Build strip malls inside residential areas. Many mayors zone commercial between industrial and residential. Don't do that until you have the infrastructure to support that. Think about it: if the same road that people drive to work on is the one they use to shop, that's double the traffic! Providing most of your commercial needs through low-density strip malls deep inside residential zones means sims don't need to drive far to shop: less traffic!
• Low density always means less traffic. Especially when starting out, stick with lower density zones until you have the infrastructure to support high density zones.
• Build parks and open space bordering your arterial routes. Then have local roads come to the arterial route. The idea is to keep your main avenues from having driveways. If your arteries don't have very many zones directly near them, the only traffic is thru traffic.
• Plan areas of residential and areas of industrial. Keep commerce in the residential areas until you are a large city. Each area, or "development" as real majors call them, can vary in size. I stick to about 50x50 tiles.

On with the 3 steps to glory. In your first step, you are a small to medium city that can't afford highways. Start off with a low-density industrial area in the middle of your city. Pick one direction at first, maybe South or North, and build residential zones in that direction, with commercial zones inside the residential areas. Keep everything low density and make several thru avenues back and forth between your industrial and residential area. If a road gets heavy traffic, widen it. If an avenue gets heavy traffic, find out where the traffic is coming from and build another avenue. Be sure not to build commercial zones between residential and commercial. Build commercial zones on the other side of the city from the industrial area.

Keep some space between your industrial and commercial areas open: about 10 spaces. Also, when you zone big new areas, space them out similarly. This leaves room for highways later in the game and keeps land value up.

When have a population of about 30,000 or 40,000, you should start building more than one industrial area. Having huge industrial areas that all your sims drive to simply can't be done with road-only infrastructure. What if everyone drove to the same place to work in your town? Try leapfrogging. That is, if you have an area of residential which has industry on one side, and open space on one side and build an area of industrial on the other. This will allow people to live near where they work. Remember to space out these areas to leave from for highways.

When you get past 100,000 sims you can start building highways. I rarely take out many loans for these. Build highways in the space between these areas. Here are some tips for effective highways:

• When you have a full interchange (two highways crossing each other), make sure a sim going in any given direction can go in any other given direction. You can do this by first building four on-ramps around the intersection, and then building a road in the shape of a square around the intersection. The road should be concentric to the middle of the interchange. Have it go under the highway placards created by the onramps. Then, build its 8 on-ramps around the outside of the road. This will allow a sim to go any way he wants.
• When building overpasses for avenues, you probably want an exit. You may have noticed that avenues make for funky intersections when they have onramps. Here is a tip: build a road leading to the onramps. So if you have an overpass over an avenue, build roads parallel to the highway that intersect the avenue. Then put on ramps on them. You'll find the intersections are simpler and less congested.

The final step is when you have commercial zones as more important destinations than industrial. This is a good time to build a downtown. In an area with good freeway access, build avenues with high-density buildings along it. Mix residential and commercial, and use lots of parks to boost land value.

Follow these steps, and you'll have a great transportation infrastructure without the hassle of mass transit. I've done it with some very large cities.

See also
Several tips to start and keep a big, successful city
Reducing number of junctions: less traffic
Transportation infrastructure
Control your transportation flow
Eliminate traffic and mass transit costs
Mass transit: in efficiency, realism, and stuff
The where and what of mass transit