Roads and High Density Real Estate

[Bruxinth]

So I want to make a Mega-metropolis with skyscrapers everywhere, and I want to plan ahead with the road layout so I don't paint myself into a corner later on. What are some tips on managing a large population and road congestion?

[Axz]

I have a great layout... that has not worked in over a decade, yet I'm still trying...

For what it's worth (probably not a lot), I pick the biggest area possible and only plan 1 corner of it, then flip the corner onto the other corners so that you only really have to plan out 25% of the map.

I don't use any road type other than standard roads, but I always have every road be a double road, that should keep congestion down until later points when you're on roughly 200,000 population and other public transport options become viable. At the moment I'm on around 100,000 population and all roads are green apart from a couple of crossroads which are light yellow.

What I was told is that "You can't build *up*, until you can no longer build *out*", so you'll need to build on most -if not all- of the map before proper skyscraper demand turns up. I never made it that far before, but I did find that the bigger my city got (out) the taller the buildings got and if I try focusing on a small area skyscrapers just don't turn up (beyond large apartment blocks).

I'm not even going to attempt to explain bus stop effectiveness, I don't get it, I just put them damn near everywhere. Google "Sim City 4 Bus Stops", having a better understanding of bus stops (or any public transport) makes life much easier on so many levels.

Also there are the city ordinances which help a little.

[Mr.Ongi Doge (RUS)]

1.Use avenues, metros.
2.Put a bus stops every 4-5 grids in living zone, because sims are very lazy (im not so sure it help tho)
3.Put metros every 4-5 grids, similar to bus stops
3.Car stops + bus stops help ease the traffic, but it works only when the "AI" of the sim decide that using bus is easier than using car (look at the 2nd point)
4.Dont even dare using monorails, its useless junk that costs more than metro per week and takes land space. Even tough it was a little bit cheaper than metro to build, mounthly costs are killingful.
5.When decide to get a great commute system, you should thing about air pollution too. Make some gaps at the sides of the main roads and plant some trees.
6.Parks kinda bad in filtering air and they cost a lot in week when you decide to put them everywhere
7.In real life, the more straight roads with less intersections gives a car permission to gain more speed

I have a city approximately on this setup and have almost no issues with traffic. Giving a care of traffic and all of the other needs - you will have skyscrappers at 50k population.

Actually, 1 skyscrapper capacity is about 4k population, but im yet to have atleast one of that in early game even when i have enough people to build that

[Mr.Ongi Doge (RUS)]

I can give you a rough example of how the bus stops work, but i cant guarantee that will be precise enough:

1.From home to bus stop, people can go some of the distance, but if it was too high, then people will use cars instead. Also they may not have money for the bus or just dont want to wait for the bus to arrive (commute times problem, low on bus stops, car is faster and stuff)
2. Sims can drop their car at the car stop and go to the bus stop from there OR to other commute buildings
3.When ppl exit the commute buildings, they still need to continue to go to the building they need, but they cant use car (cuz they dropped it at the car stop or leave it home). Thats where bus stops can help

[NetPCDoc]

First you need to understand "trip" dynamics; try reading anything you can find on the NAM mod.

Second the CAM mod changes the rules on when you can get skyscrapers; find the CAM on a mod site and read the documentation.

Third region dynamics can provide additional demand, especially when you place a new city in a region that already contains older - demand generating - cities.

It may also help to understand "demand" dynamics; if you can find a strategy guide, then DO read what it has about "demand" and "trip" in Sim City 4 Deluxe (i.e. Sim City 4 & Rush Hour).

[Khoren]

Create Districts and Connect them to a Central HighwayAxis that interconnects them all.

Even when the destricts are directly next to each other, keep the interconnections minimal, so that people don't try to shortcut over the districts through small rural roads.

Here an example a young WIP city that has almost 100% perfect Traffic, no busstops taxis whatever yet and It still runs flawless.

Its not really dense and serves more as a example what i mean with Axis Roads/Highways.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2401964281

But don't remove all interconnections, Due to the sims still needing the roads to walk per foot, but place them irrelevant, so that they can't serve as a "shorter" route for cars.
Especially between rural and commercial areas.

And of course, Never lead high traffic over standard roads, You will hate yourself for that later, you WILL need Large Highways especially to reduce travel times between workplaces.

If with that you still encounter problems, then connect the different districts with metro(s) and place Bus and car stops.
And other mass transportation systems.

And Always listen to the advisor, he will point out to you when roads are congested, so that you either can Increase It to fit the demand or create/ force and alternative path thats capable of handling the traffic.

[Met.Lyph]

I don't even use roads longer than 2 lenghts

[Cahos Rahne Veloza]

The new norm now is to only use PedMalls from the Network Addon Mod. Especially the newer Draggable Pedmalls as those only ever allow Pedestrian traffic. No cars means no traffic congestions.

[=CAW=aldarions-lament]

place corner stores towards the centre of your streets with a simple road to allow pedestrians to cross along with a metro to commercial centres. remember that high tech industry is low pop but late game commercial is high pop when laying out districts. i like to place small industrial zones just outside the radius if the schools with car or bus. rail is useful for intercity comuting