Making non car focused cities?

[Josquius]

Does anyone know if any mods exist that make it possible to make games that aren't so American style?

Whenever I try to make cities even slightly based around transit it just doesn't seem to work. Everyone still carries a car in their pocket so they get off the metro then hop in their car to drive to the office, having shops in the midst of residential areas causes health issues (weirdly), etc...

I don't expect a totally car free city. I just want to make something a bit more realistic where a lot of people just don't bother with cars and you do have substantial low traffic city centres.

Is there anyway to do this? Or should I be looking for another game?

[Verullus Forgefire]

The TM: PE mod can be used to prevent pocket cars. Although with the other issues you are having I cannot help you.

[squirrelarmyuk]

Add path ways and lots of public transport. Cims will walk a long way if the option to do so is there.

Some road assets have paths, some don’t so make sure you’re using the correct ones for the area’s you’re dealing with.

Also make sure cims can still cross roads by adding bridges/tunnels if you have disabled crossings using TM:PE

[bsbrdv]

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=cities+skylines+traffic+management

one of these might help.
good luck and enjoy

[colart1]

Have you tried bike lanes and pedestrian pathways? I find they do attract a fair number of CIMs so it might cut down on even more cars.

[Catratio]

Originally posted by kakaze:

having shops in the midst of residential areas causes health issues (weirdly)

The noise pollution from the commercial is making them "sick". You can try separating the stores from the houses with a few rows of trees or put some offices between them. I don't know how important mixing commercial and residential is since it seems people make almost random choices about where to shop and will still travel 80 blocks to a store instead of visiting the one two streets over. Same with jobs. I had some stores nearby and watched a woman take two trains and bus to go work at a place 2 tiles away. Nothing I've seen indicates they prefer using the closest ones available.

I don't know how much good it does but I always have the Encourage Biking policy on my city at all times. You can also try setting all public transportation to free to see if it entices people to take it more.

[BucketBrain]

If you want some nice quarter shops next o residential , you need Green Cities DLC Bio Shops . They don´t pollute and generate only half of the delivery traffic compared to usual shops .
And you would get IT Cluster , they produce digital goods for your generic shops without delivery traffic
Another option , as you don´t like to battle the traffic : get the Procedural Objects mod and you can convert any building ( and more objects ) into PO = only deco - no function = no traffic .
As said above , pedestrians and bikes are a great tool to manage traffic as anything that moves will take the quickest route = distance / possible speed . Building shortcuts for them to get to public transport and their destination can cut down the use of their pocket cars enormously
edit link
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1094334744

[Northsun99]

Yes it's possible; I do it regularly as it drastically cuts down on traffic.

You can't stop people from pulling cars from their pocket, but free public transport and making your cities walkable helps a lot.

You can safely surround a single low-density commercial shop with either high or low-density residential zoning, and you can have a high-density shop surrounded by high-density residential. If you have After Dark, enable the "Prefer Bicycles" policy and use the roads with bike lanes, or create a bike network separate from the roads.

What's important when placing a commercial plot inside a residential zone is to space them out - one per block or so, and to make sure that other sources of noise are kept far away. You can also use tree-lined roads to reduce the noise and keep your citizens happy.

To make your cities walkable, try making your grid larger, with footpaths/multi-use trails as shortcuts. My first city I tried to maximize zoning density, but I found it creates traffic. Instead, leave spaces unzoned and run footpaths/multi-use paths in the spaces. If your cims can walk somewhere faster than driving, they will.

Use transit to move your cims between your leisure/work and residential zones (I prefer metro for this, one stop in each residential area, with buses that circulate to pick people up and drop them off at the metro stations.)

Here are some screenshots of some of my cities illustrating how I zone:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2754922755
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2754922726
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2754922690

Good luck!

[siberianhigh]

I’m in the same boat. Trying to create a city where people don’t drive. Northsun99, your advice is valuable!

Originally posted by Northsun99:

You can't stop people from pulling cars from their pocket, but free public transport and making your cities walkable helps a lot.

I personally do use TM:PE with “realistic parking” to avoid pocket cars. The problem becomes, cims start randomly driving in circles looking for parking and then eventually vanishing (I don’t know if they teleport or despawn).

I kind of regret connecting to the highway. Originally I just placed some residential buildings and they magically filled up. However, I saw no citizens on the street. I think they appeared after connecting to the highway. Logic of the game and/or TM:PE isn’t very straightforward in this regard.

Free public transport, I saw it mentioned before somewhere but couldn’t find any way to enable. I decided it must be a mod someone used so I didn’t even google this, but now you mention it I should take a longer look.

Originally posted by Northsun99:

If you have After Dark, enable the "Prefer Bicycles" policy and use the roads with bike lanes, or create a bike network separate from the roads.

I did not know about this policy! Though I added a bunch of bicycle roads before, and people do bike. Maybe the policy will help.

Originally posted by Northsun99:

To make your cities walkable, try making your grid larger, with footpaths/multi-use trails as shortcuts.

I find paths finicky. For some reason, placement doesn’t click in many places when I want to connect e.g. a path to an undeground parking lot. I use pedestrian streets though, my commercial/office district is like that.

Originally posted by Northsun99:

Use transit to move your cims between your leisure/work and residential zones (I prefer metro for this, one stop in each residential area, with buses that circulate to pick people up and drop them off at the metro stations.)

I do this a lot, buses/monorail, but I have no idea why some cims just insist on driving. Added more monorail trains, but there’s already a bunch of buses going to high-rise residential blocks so I have no idea.

Best scenario is they ride a circle and then decide to take transit. But those pointless rides add a lot of traffic and block roads.

Thank you for the pointers!

[Northsun99]

Originally posted by siberianhigh:

Northsun99, your advice is valuable!

I'm glad you found it helpful!

Originally posted by siberianhigh:

I personally do use TM:PE with “realistic parking” to avoid pocket cars. The problem becomes, cims start randomly driving in circles looking for parking and then eventually vanishing (I don’t know if they teleport or despawn).

They likely despawn (unless you have despawning turned off in TP:ME.)

Originally posted by siberianhigh:

I kind of regret connecting to the highway. Originally I just placed some residential buildings and they magically filled up. However, I saw no citizens on the street. I think they appeared after connecting to the highway. Logic of the game and/or TM:PE isn’t very straightforward in this regard.

Did they fill up, or you just had houses that were built but with nobody living there? I believe that you need some sort of outside connection to get your initial population. (CityPlannerPlays released a video a few days ago about severing your outside connections, might be worth watching to see more.) I think even if you used a map with an inter-city passenger rail (or something similar) and no highway connection, you'd still see your cims driving cars.

Originally posted by siberianhigh:

Free public transport, I saw it mentioned before somewhere but couldn’t find any way to enable. I decided it must be a mod someone used so I didn’t even google this, but now you mention it I should take a longer look.

It's a policy (on the "Services" tab of the policy panel - it's unlocked at the "Busy Town" milestone.) I think it's part of the base game, and doesn't require any DLC (although I could be wrong.)

Originally posted by siberianhigh:

I do this a lot, buses/monorail, but I have no idea why some cims just insist on driving. Added more monorail trains, but there’s already a bunch of buses going to high-rise residential blocks so I have no idea.

I think that some cims will always drive, unless it's faster to take another route or there is no other way to get there. If you see someone driving, try clicking on them to see where they live and where they're going, and try to provide a better solution. (Cims will try to find the "fastest" route, and take road speed limits into account, but I don't know transit and cycling factor in.) I once saw a road that was clogged with passenger vehicles, and when I looked all the vehicles were owned by tourists - not much you can do about that.

Good luck with your build. :)

[WhiteKnight77]

While I do what I can to get cims out of cars, I don't believe we can have a complete car free city. By giving cims bike roads and paths as well as the same for pedestrians, I can get them to walk or bike long distances. If you can get cims to travel more than 2 tiles without using a car, you are doing really good.

[siberianhigh]

At this point I am semi-happy, and cims take public transport for tiles if needed. Within an area I block private cars with TM:PE (incredibly frustrating and tedious, since you cannot ban them by default), and when I can I simply do not connect areas by road (haha). I just provide separate services for each area, and it’s fine.

I find cims taking trains and buses pretty far to go to work, university, school. They can pick one even if it is only available by train or ferry! If I set up correct a walkable shortcut, they often walk home from the nearest train station for example. I love having control over road congestion through traffic line configuration, and I love not having to design complex interchanges yet at 127k cims living quite densely (but pretty happily, with parks and stuff, and I don’t have pollution solution enabled in this city either).

Occasionally I notice a cim taking a ferry all the way to airport island (which is unconnected except by water and metro) just to shop at a convenience store, but I am guessing they don’t tell a difference between commercial buildings and can randomly choose to go to one on the other end of the map.

I tried to start a new city with private transport, roads jamming with vehicles with one cim in each are so frustrating to see. Thought I could solve the insanity of traffic in a dense city with some underground parking, but they fill up quickly and roads get jammed.

[siberianhigh]

And I am not saying it is an example of a perfectly livable city, of course. I have ways to go to make transportation faster and more efficient and eliminate the need to travel too far. But while I chose to go unlimited money the city is now profitable, with entirely free public transport. And in some weird scenarios like the one with airport island CVS I guess it’s up to cims to be weird.

[Harry_Robinson1]

I use a lot of paths and free public transport that takes people where they want to go, I also have my roads set up to minimise traffic and to make driving a car a longer route than walking which tricks the AI into not using their cars. I also have cars banned via TMP£ on certain roads, and I have shortcut routes for buses and walking only.

[siberianhigh]

Nice. So it seems like non-car-focused cities are relatively possible in C:S, at least modded. In my case, I’ve got an island without road connections, and tourists + residents arrive by boat and by plane.

Planning private roads so that it takes longer to drive makes total sense, though for now I don’t trust this logic yet and just ban private vehicles. I wish TM:PE allowed banning private cars by default or per road type, otherwise it takes too much time.

[Harry_Robinson1]

Originally posted by siberianhigh:

Nice. So it seems like non-car-focused cities are relatively possible in C:S, at least modded. In my case, I’ve got an island without road connections, and tourists + residents arrive by boat and by plane.

Planning private roads so that it takes longer to drive makes total sense, though for now I don’t trust this logic yet and just ban private vehicles. I wish TM:PE allowed banning private cars by default or per road type, otherwise it takes too much time.

I find banning cars from the main roads works well enough, people are much less likely to drive in this game if taking a car would require using a tiny back road, when they could just walk directly down the main road (especially if it has bridges over the intersections, they love that in this game.) or take a bus/metro/monorail to where they need to go. I also find that usually planning roads isn't too tough, I personally use a grid system like this, where main roads are 6s, collector streets are 2s, culdesacs are Cs, paths are Ps, Transit stations are Ts, and the actual zoned area is are "."s:
6666666666666666666666
6........................2.........................6
TPCCCCCCCC2CCCCCCCCPT
6........................2.........................6
6666666666666666666666

This system can be easily expanded with more collectors and culdesacs between the main roads at the top and bottom (I usually do 3 or 4 culdesacs between each collector, and 6 or 8 culdesacs between each main road.) and the dimensions don't need to exactly match this graph, plus main roads can be 4 lanes in areas with less traffic (mainly from commercial zone suppliers and buses) although this can lead to unnecessary traffic lights.

The important part is that the citizen AI looks at the road layout and determines that to drive it needs to drive down the culdesac, up the collector, and down a main road just to leave their grid, and would need to do the opposite at the other end, or it could just walk down the street and across the path to the transit station which will take it to it's destination easily, (especially with free public transit on and good routes that take people everywhere they need to go.) or it could walk directly to their destination if it's close enough by crossing bridges over the main road intersections. (I highly recommend getting the pedestrian overpass mod for building these.)

On a sidenote, island cities sound fun, I want to do one someday but it would definitely need to be non-car focused, having to build everything car related around 2-lane roads in harbours would suck.