A new city's initial roads

[JustOutsidEarth]

I love this game, but I hate starting a new city. This is because I have a lot of trouble starting off with a natural and efficient entrance/exit to the city. Optimally, I would like to continue the highways into the city and add some offramps further in, but I would accept being able to turn those initial highways into some sort of mildly efficient and not awkward looking main set of roads that would be a major artery of the cities' initial transport. Does anyone have any advice about the best way to add the first ever important roads to a new city? Thanks for the help!

[grapplehoeker]

As you can see from my guide, you don't really need much more than a simple roundabout to splt the traffic up into 3 directions. One to industry, one to commercial and one to residential.
This is all you need at the start and it will work effectively until at least 40k population. At that point you can upgrade and consider alternative methods of steering the traffic to where it has to go. That is a mid term project and not something you need to worry about at the start of a city.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=422074590

[ancienthighway]

Roundabouts aren't needed in the early game. The traffic isn't there to make them more effective than a simple crossroad.
If you do use a simple crossroad, or even a "T" intersection, leave 10-20 squares on both sides of the proposed main road. This will give you the room needed for a roundabout, diamond intersections, and mass transit lines.

[JustOutsidEarth]

Thank you for the feedback!

[Luzilyo]

usually when starting a city, i try to figure out where the middle of the map is (i think one map-square has a lenght of about 235, so the middle would be between 117 and 118. when i found the middle (or got as close to it as i can before having wasted all my money on "planning-roads"), i do a square of 62 x 62 and then i build outward from there. usually i make the middle square dense residential + utilities (parks, police hq, etc) and around that i build whatever i need. when planning i usually plan for all the border streets of each square to be upgraded to at least 4 lanes, to manage traffic a bit more easily. at first, i just connect the highway to whichever square is closest to it. later, when my city grows big enough to cover the highway, i make tunnels under the city with drive-off points on each side. the tunnels should only go to -12, so that the rest of the underground area can still be used for trains and subways. also, once i start having multiple highways leading into the city, i make side-paths so that people can always change from one highway to any other without having to go through the city, which helps a lot in reducing the traffic.

[ExavierMacbeth]

After I found a design I liked & could upgrade based on my building style, I went into the game's Asset Editor (from the main menu) and built a Road Asset of it using the basic roads you start unlocked with. After that you can just go to the right tab in the roads menu and plop it down as a custom asset.

I did that with a couple of generic neiborhood blocks as well so I can quickly get through the initial phases of a new city :)

[frutiemax]

2 one way streets, one leading in your city and one leading out. Obviously you cannot put buildings on those streets because the firemen won't be able to reach them.

[Nait]

There's a way i use, but it works only with the unlimited money and the ability to unlock everything from the start.
So you plan all your highways on the whole area, to run THROUGH your cities/districts and not actually end in them. And then you just build nice curved on-ramps that connect to the sides of the highways on one end and to the regular street roads on the other. While the highways themselves that run across the map will be enclosed with the help of the interchanges except the outer connection of course.

[Luzilyo]

ah, yes, i forgot. regarding mods, when you try to use my method, you probably want to install the precision engineering mod, which should help a lot with judging distances and angles correctly.

[baddragon]

My biggest "mistake" is starting my city too close to the highway. I now try to start 40 squares minimum from the start point.

[AoD_lexandro]

I use the two lane highway leading in to two lane roads, with TMPE to stop traffic looping at the exit. Works a treat. Just setup a T or Diamond and use the offramps to join in to 2 lane highway then 2 lane road. Basic Lane math always helps.

[RabbitRidge]

This is a revived necro thread.

[AoD_lexandro]

Dang, ma bad.

Quick get me some garlick!

[RabbitRidge]

:D

[ECV]

Nah, that would be vampires. This is more like zombie territory. Beheading Axe?