Is it worth Building Large Highways?

[[C] Habo777]

I have been slowly learning W&R for a few days so I haven’t tried realistic mode but when I need to export resources or transfer goods between cities I have found building railroads with cash to be easier (Once I figured out how to single a basic junction) and more effective then making a 4 lane highway and using trucks. I figure that in realistic mode since it’s harder to build railroad track that large highways are probably the first step in inter-city transportation but if you were starting out with realistic mode off or you got your railroad construction up and running what would you use a 4 lane highway for that a 2 lane road or a rail line wouldn’t do better.

[Lex713]

In most cases large highways more of an aesthetic choice rather than actual need, lot of players almost fully switch to train to haul large amount of goods and trucks are not relevant for them. However if you plan to rely on trucks heavily then it might work for you.

[bballjo]

Highways are less important than good an effective junctions and appropriate routing.

With waste and maintenance, there is a lot of local traffic happening, that still needs to be handled, but inter city travel via road really doesn't have a lot of benefits after the initial construction phase is completed.

So no, large highways aren't really worth it.

[Silent_Shadow]

I think highways are a good "default" choice for a lot of reasons:

• You can use them while building them (have one road in use while working on the other).
  
• They are cheaper and much faster to build than a railway.
  • Material can be stockpiled for later phases of road construction but not for railways.
  • Road bridges/tunnels are accessible and can be worked on almost instantly.
  • Track builders are limited to one per segment (there are ways around this though).
  • Road materials are much easier to make yourself than the steel or prefabs for tracks.
  
• Highways are quite cheap to build, which is pretty important early on when money is tight. Trains may be more cost effective for their throughput, but not for small throughputs and not when each destination needs a ~25k-ruble-per-km connection to the mainline.
  
• Highways are a lot easier to place in rough terrain thanks to their higher incline limits.
  
• You already need roads in your cities and industrial areas for construction and for services (fire fighting, trash removal, police, etc.) and trucks and buses can enter these buildings, so you can save a lot of space in cities and industrial areas by just using trucks. Trains need a lot more space for their stations and waiting yards/sidings.

Trains are really only better if you need "more," like more speed (for public transportation range), more throughput (for large volume products like crops, aggregates, cement, etc.), or more fuel efficiency, but since most industries output fewer goods than they consume, you'll usually just build industries next to the source of their highest tonnage input and not be shipping huge amounts of goods across the map unless you are exporting them.

[Novu]

If you have thousands of cars the highways can be worth it.

Personally I prefer to build "stroads" which are hybrid streets and roads.

[Catsander]

The intersections, interchanges and juncions etc should be closer together than irl if it is going to be worth it imo.

[Egodeus]

I use both to be honest. Besides in the beginning it took me about ten years in realistic mode to get started on the tracks to connect things up, while the highways were easy enough to build. They also allow me to ship workers around from my towns to run for example the trash disposal area without any people living within several kilometers of the place due to pollution.

Also quite a lot of the waste transfer needs to be done via trucks, since moving everything to rail just isn't cost effective. And having a robust highway system around allows my construction vehicles to build things in all corners as needed, as they can get to highways where they can skip the local traffic in towns and industrial areas on the way.

[Beast of War]

"Highways" are asphalt roads ?

I have constructed a double asphalt road from the customs house to the furthest town in the interior map. And while the bulk of all goods is transported by train, ships and planes ( the customs house is all but abandoned now, only a few ash waste trucks still visit it ) at some sections this double road is VERY busy, and would be congested were it a single road. It is more or less the main artery of the economy.

I did not allow citizens to have cars since a few plays ended with a crashing economy due to traffic jams.

[Bufnitza]

Worth it? Not really. Nice to have? Definitely!

I always "plan" (using dirt roads) the main roads as soon as I start on a map. These roads will be double side. I first build them as dirt, then upgrade them to gravel and eventually asphalt.

As mentioned, one advantage to this is that you can upgrade them without crippling the backbone of your republic. The second advantage is a nice aesthetic. Another advantage is that faster traffic can now overtake slower traffic much easier because of no incoming traffic to disrupt overtaking.

I don't really complicate my life with large/complex interchanges, I just do traffic lights, and although it's breaking immersion a bit, it's a lot less hassle.

I use them to inter-connect large settlement-like areas, such as residential, industry, customs, etc.

Inside districts (or cities?) I don't do this, but I always make sure I have redundancies, so if I upgrade a road, I don't isolate half the district/city.

[Zentra]

They are NOT necessary at all and can be a great time, labor, material and and cash sink. As a result, they are paramount to the aesthetic of my Republics. I like making wasteful mega projects. I have to have major highways throughout my Maps. But yes. Trains, Tram, Cableways, etc, are far more effective and less subject to issues like snowy roadways. But Roads... Roads are a cool way to go bankrupt for me. ;)

[[C] Habo777]

Originally posted by Zentra:

They are NOT necessary at all and can be a great time, labor, material and and cash sink. As a result, they are paramount to the aesthetic of my Republics. I like making wasteful mega projects. I have to have major highways throughout my Maps. But yes. Trains, Tram, Cableways, etc, are far more effective and less subject to issues like snowy roadways. But Roads... Roads are a cool way to go bankrupt for me. ;)

I see you are doing the Dubai approach to infrastructure.

[SiberianDev]

Functionality-wise, not really. You don't need anything more than dedicated lanes for turning vehicles at intersections.
Multi-lane roads in this game are actually counterproductive. When traffic volumes are high enough, vehicles changing lanes cause congestion.
Also it makes it harder for vehicles on side roads to merge, since they wait for all lanes to be clear. There's a greater chance of vehicles travelling in "checkers" in both lanes, effectively resulting in there being no usable gap.
The only practical benefit of building multi-lane roads, is that they make overtaking a bit easier.
Speaking of overtaking, one of the most annoying things, is that vehicles do not return to the right lane after overtaking. This can lead to them delaying other overtaking vehicles that are faster than them, which results in the right lane being faster than the left lane. Snow plows are notorious for this in the winter.
Also vehicles do not consider the distance until the point they'll have to change back into the right lane, to turn right for instance. This leads to situations when a vehicle changes into the left lane, drives for a few meters, and changes back into the right lane, which often results in it stopping, or it stopping vehicles in the right lane, along with everyone else behind them.

[SiberianDev]

Originally posted by Bufnitza:

Another advantage is that faster traffic can now overtake slower traffic much easier because of no incoming traffic to disrupt overtaking.

On 2-lane roads, oncoming traffic doesn't affect overtaking, yet.
This can actually result in faster traffic being stuck behind the vehicle in the left lane.
A common situation (at least in my republic) is when a vehicle (usually a snow plow) overtakes a vehicle that's just accelerating from a stop. The latter vehicle then reaches top speed, and the former vehicle ends up being slower.

[John Moridin]

No.

Keep a dedicated bus road between your city and industry. If needed, use bridges to avoid any big truck lines.

If you have multiple bus routes inside a city, try to keep the two line separate as possible. If doesn't matter that much for small city lines but it is important if you have two industry bus lines going to different places.

Make sure that construction vehicles don't go through any important bus or truck routes unless necessary.

If you have some heavy truck routes, try to avoid them clashing with other heavy bus routes and truck routes. Once I had to put down some signs to stop distribution offices and construction trucks going through my gravel mine area.

----
Basically, you want to make sure that you manage any heavy use of roads. That is better than building a highway and hope that it magically solves any problems.

[SimoGlass]

If I could put in my two kopecks, I have found some scenarios where highway arrangements can prove useful.

- Mines and associated processing facilities produce an obscene amount of waste when running at 100% production. Wherever these garbage trucks go will most likely create traffic problems. Waste loading speeds at rail stations is painfully slow which necessitates at least some degree of significant road infrastructure.

- Dense cities require lots of shops which burn through large quantities of consumer products. Localising distribution inside the city area requires a large amount of space be dedicated to railways. Unless the city can operate on a single warehouse and only 1 or 2 shopping centres, I'd argue it's more spatially efficient to put the distribution outside the city and send all the trucks along a highway to bypass city traffic.

- Concentrating workers onto a single platform can be an annoying process, and it usually involves creating "loops" of sending workers to other platforms when their wait limit expires. You're going to have a bunch of pickup platforms to send workers to industrial areas, which means means a bunch of busses, many of which are probably all going to a high-volume facility like mines, refineries or other large factories. Jam all the factories nice and close and you can use a highway to collect the busses onto a single route.

Why I felt compelled to write this at 4:45 AM is a problem for future me to figure out...

[Bufnitza]

Originally posted by SiberianDev:

A common situation (at least in my republic) is when a vehicle (usually a snow plow) overtakes a vehicle that's just accelerating from a stop. The latter vehicle then reaches top speed, and the former vehicle ends up being slower.

This is also one of my major complaints. Vehicle AI should be changed to not overtake a snowplow which is actively snowplowing.