Why can I never add in a seaport?

[An Ning]

Topic.

I have leveled the land (and even the water), I have a stretch of road along the coast I even made strips of road that go down to the water... I still cannot make a seaport.

How exactly do you add these annoying things in?

[An Ning]

I can't place a seaport at all -with or without a road.

[braverheart1991]

One does not simply build a seaport. all jokes asside you need to find a level enough terrain and move the seaport between water and land until it allows placement. I know most of it goes into water with only about 1 or 2 tiles in length being on land.

[NetPCDoc]

Wow, it has been so loonnngggg since I last encountered these issues ...

First, find a place where you can verify the number of tiles in the planning 'footprint'. The short side defines how long a stretch of beach you will need. The long side, even though it has the arrow for road-side-placement, will not actually connect to a road; two to three tiles of this long side need to be on dry land, with one tile on the land-water-transition and the rest out in the water. While you might be able to get ferry ports to work on a lake or pond (water surrounded by land), Seaports require either river or ocean water (water that actually allows SHIPS to sail off the side of the city).

The vanilla (unmodified) seaports are not 'transit enabled' - that is you will not see any transit actually crossing the lot border (the way you do with car ferry terminals). Although, when in use, the transit query tool will show freight trips ending at a seaport (the same way that freight trips end at a rail:freight-station).

When placed on a 'river' you need to allow enough room for ships to sail around the seaport (i.e. between the water end of a seaport and the opposite bank/shore). And while you are learning about seaports, I would recommend at least a fifteen (15) meter drop at the transition (bank? shoreline?) between nearly flat dry land and the water you are placing a seaport on; once you are confident that you actually CAN place a seaport, then you can experiment with how deep the water needs to be. (You might also want to avoid 'Cliff' or 'Bluff' top placements - keeping the dry land to near water level, until later.)

[MGB]

Most likely you just need to ensure the water where you are placing the Seaport is deep enough. Just use the levelling tool and drag a deeper area of water towards the shoreline to achieve this.