FatherBenjamin

New York City is unique in the united states for being the one major city without a highway running through the central business district. NYC was lucky enough to have large-scale public transit before the automobile took over. We were also unlucky enough to have the architect (if you will) and perhaps the most powerful proponent of the highway system which was the model for all other urban planners across the united states and many other parts of the world - Robert Moses. When he (among others) came to power in the early/middle portion of the century, he made an effort to rip out many of the modes of public transit in New York, including all the trolley lines, and widen the streets for automobiles. We Americans love our cars, but car culture can be quite destructive. Though it allows for greater mobility, with that comes greater opportunity for investors and planners to build large, segmented regions of development like malls, suburbs, and projects, all of which are horrendously ugly in their own way, no matter what the intent. As I see it, when a city comes to rely too much on automobiles, that will almost invariably promote development that tears apart the communities that make that city what it is, diluting the cultural identity that makes people want to live there and want to identify with it. You get suburbs without a sense of community, projects with unsafe and unused public space, and Central Business Districts that go dead not long after five (though this is true in downtown NYC as well, and in many ways is a separate issue.) There are of course many advantages to everyone having the mobility and the freedom of the automobile, but too much of it condemns us to live in a city designed for cars, not people. There are downsides and issues with the subway/train/public transportation system as well, but I'll take NYC, remarkably, the only large city in the US without a highway running through the CBD, over any other large U.S. city, any day.

 How did you connect the HSR to another city?  Project looks great so far.

Thanks guyver for the tip. I'll try it out, though I'm not sure it'll work for a mac.

I like to lay out the transportation skeleton of my city before I start developing as well. My main problem is that I can never get the freeways to work as efficiently as they should. I have to cut off the sims' extra access points between portions of the city or between cities to keep them from clogging up the surface roads. Anyone have some tips and/or pictures on how to plan out freeways?