Catcher_of_Cats

Bob Boddington lives at the end of Maple Bush Aveune (near 401 & Weston Rd) and enjoys walking his cat on the trails of the Humber River. He owns the Owl & Badger Pub on Eglinton Avenue West (near Eglinton & Bathurst) and works as its manager. His business is over 10 kilometers from his home. It normally takes him 20 minutes to get there by 10:30 when he starts the days work. This is his journey. Before Bob can drive to work he requires his morning Tim Horton's coffee which he picks up across the street at the Crossroads Center. Bob, being in his mid-40s and driving a burgundy coloured supped up Honda Civic, he is not one to take the sidestreets to work, so on to the 401 he goes. Every morning Bob battles his way through heavy traffic at the intersection of the 401 & 400 but today, there does not appear to be any cars on the road but him so he floors it. Bob flies by the TTC's new Jane LRT line and would never consider using it because it does not go anywhere he wishes to go, and besides, he loves to drive. Zoom zoom Bob comes to the "Basketwieve" and knows that he must stay in the collector lanes in order to turn off at the Allen Rd. Bob continues driving, passing this stretch at Keele in under 2 minutes flat. Bob begins to wonder why portions of his city have magically disappeared. He approaches Yorkdale Mall, normally a very busy place, but it appears that the parking lot is mostly empty at the moment. Bob turns off the 401 onto the Allen Rd running southbound. During imclement whether events, Bob Boddington normally parks at the mall and jumps aboard the University Line subway. Mr Boddington loves driving this stretch of road when there is no one on it with its trench-like feel. Go Bobby Go There is a huge problem if you are speeding southbound on the Allen and that is this former expressway deadends at Eglinton Avenue West at a stoplight with a huge backlog of traffic waiting to turn left. Bob finally arrives at work and when he gets inside his bar he smiles because he made it in record time of 11 minutes. Bob wonders if anyone other then him will be on the roads on the way home.

I intend to show a variety of commutes in my journal and I am willing to show any suggestions from the forum members as long as my network is connected (look on page 3 for the extend of my network).

I will be adding more to this section since I have discovered some old shots of when my city was much smaller in the Album folder.

I originally started my recreation of Toronto, ON, Canada about 3 years ago and have been playing on and off since. The goal of this journal is to portray how close to reality Simcity4 can get regarding builtform and infrastructure. I use only the 4x4 city size, money cheats, removal of garbage, and free water/hydro since they will complicate this simulation far too much. 99% of buildings are grown with only landmarks being placed in the correct locations. I will attempt to update this fairly regularly since I have a heck of a lot built to show off. Just to get a feel for the early years, the maps below are 10 separate large cities spanning 20 kilometers east to west (roughly just east of Birchmount Avenue to just west of Jane Street) and 10 kilometers north to south (just north of Sheppard Avenue to Lake Ontario) As you can see in this early aerial shot, I am growing the city bit by bit before moving on. Here is an older map (1 1/2 years ago) showing the higher order transit including subways (green, yellow, purple, orange), streetcar or LRT (pinkish), highway (red), and rail (black). Please feel free to make comments or ask questions regarding my creation and I will be happy to respond. ADDITION: I have dug up my original Toronto recreation in which I had to restart due to game crashes. I used a more accurate map but I never grew the simulation. This is from 01-01-2006. Base Map And the infrastructure

When this sim fried I stopped playing Simcity 4 for a few years but in the end, I felt that I had to recreate this.  My only wish is that the current NAM was available then because my highway and transit network is based on 5 year old files and does not look at amazing as current ones.

Please bear with me as I learn how to create one of these journals.

Since 2008, I have made tremendous progress on my city and have started to push beyond Toronto's city limits into the suburbs. Below is from early 2010. The city now runs 30 km east/west from the edge of Mississauge at Dixie Rd to Brimley Rd in the middle of Scarborough and 30 km from the lake to just north of Kirby Rd in Vaughan. Visible is the main highways of Toronto, the 400, 401, DVP/404, 427, Gardiner Expressway, and the Allen Rd. There is currently 4.7 million residents living in my creation. To get a close up view of the map go to:

I love your region/maps. Keep up the great work.

Thanks AfroThunda, I will give that a try in the future.

TORONTO, ON The built up area is 20km by 14 km. This map shows Toronto's current and future subway, rail, and streetcar (LRT) lines. Red =highway Red (broken line) =buried highway Black =rail Yellow =Yonge/University Subway Line Green =Bloor/Danforth Subway Line Purple =Sheppard Subway Line Orange =Eglinton Subway Line Magenta =Streetcar/LRT included the following lines (from bottom left corner): East-West Lines North-South Lines Commissioner's Dufferin Harbourfront/Queen's Quay Bathurst Front Spadina King Jarvis Queen Parliament Dundas Broadview Kingston Woodbine College/Gerrard St Clair W St Clair E Note: All rail lines have commuter trains on them.

TORONTO, ON This is an accurate representation of the intersection of Highway 401 & Allen Rd. Hwy 401 runs east-west with express and collector lanes. Allen Rd [Allen (formerly Spadina) Expressway] runs north-south with an at-grade subway line (Spadina-line) running down the center of the roadway. Also in the picture are a power-center south of Wilson and the northern-part of Yorkdale Mall with the parking lot re-developed into an office park. PS There is no traffic yet at this intersection because the 401 is not complete except at this intersection.

TORONTO, ON The blank areas are parts of Queen's Park, University of Toronto, Rosedale in the center of the map, Lawrence Heights and Downsview Airport in the North, High Park in the southwest, and all cemetaries.

TORONTO, ON Its current dimensions are 20km from west of Jane St to east of Birchmount, from south of Lakeshore to just south of Finch. The area that can be seen is mostly built up with a current population of around 1.6 million.

The Ministry of Transportation of Ontario (in Canada) is using high-mast lighting exclusively whenever they reconstruct a highway, whether it is in a urban area or not. They use less electricity, there are far less shadows on the road making it safer to drive, and they are LESS light polluting then conventional lights because they focus there light straight down at the road surface.

Is this a thread based on poor urban design done by the planning department or shoddy work done by transportation engineers? In most cities these are two separate departments which normally fight amongst themselves on what goes where and who's view is the correct one. If you start to include decisions forced by other jurisdictions that have a finger in the pie then you can find yourself in a tough spot and in a situation where the "planning department" has lost control over development. The cities, mostly in North America, have to continually deal with this.

Gorgeous music hall and library.

Thanks for the idea, this will really speed up my loading time.

My summer job this year is to survey every business in the city of Toronto in order to determine how many full and part-time workers they each employ. My team surveys everything from mom-and-pop stores to schools, from railyards to bank head offices, from restaurants to churches. Everywhere where there is a paid employee. Here are some examples: CN Tower 450 Skydome 2200 CBC Building 3200 Air Canada Centre 1950 Toronto Convention Center 600 Metro Hall 6500 Toronto City Hall 1650 CN Railyard (main southern ontario yard) 1000 Department store (Sears) 280 to 600 Big-box like Walmart/Home Depot 200-300 Cinema (12 screen) 180 Construction site of 30 storey building 120-350 (depends on size and number of buildings) Hardrock Cafe (most large restaurants) 100-150 Canon Theatre (Pantages) 230 Metropolitan Hotel (old) 300 Osgoode Hall 450 Old City Hall 225 Toronto Bus Terminal 250 Bus/Streetcar Maintenance (average) 600 St Joseph's Hospital 2200 St Michael's Hospital 4700 Sick Kids Hospital 5450 Marriot (Eaton Centre) 290 Massey Hall 65 Moss Park Armory (army/not an army base) 2700 Community Centres 90-180 I hope this list will bring a greater sense of realism to the game. If anyone requires pictures of these places I can provide them in this thread. If anyone requires job numbers for anytype of business I can provide this since I have personally visited over 8000 businesses in Toronto over the past 2 1/2 months.