Parking (Crazy Traffic)

[Josecr07]

Hi Community.
I have more than 5 cities and all of them have reached a point where the traffic jam is crazy. When I try to place parking, it gets even worse.

What can I do to improve this? Is it normal for traffic to get worse when you add a parking lot?

Give me your tips.

[john.glossop]

What public transport are you using? There are trains, trams, subway and bus services, and if carefully used, these can thin out your traffic problem quite a lot.
Make sure that you integrate the various transport options closely, including any airport you have provided, and that you provide parking where ever you have some sort of station. And make sure that you have services to any other city that you city has access to.

[martinolund]

Well, you need enough parking in all areas so the cims can park there or they will just circle the whole city causing massive traffic jams looking for parking spots...

I like to use the mod Realistic Parking which helps the cars get to the correct parking spot faster (if spots are available).

For example I only build car friendly cities. No public transportation what so ever. I do allow taxis though. So if you have an apartment building with 50 house holds then you need about 50 parking spots for that one building. And if you build a commercial building that has 20 employees then you need about 1/3 of that in empty parking spots (employees work different shifts) + you need empty parking space for customers visiting the store.

Just keep an eye on your parking spots, if any of them gets full then you simply add more.
Now, if you're going to do public transit and and all that (which will reduce car usage) then you can get away with less parking spots overall.

So, you need parking in residential areas, commercial areas, industrial areas, office areas, schools, etc etc. Just like in the real world (with a car heavy city). You can draw on inspiration from Google Maps (Satellite Images) on how real world cities deal with this :)

[TheKillerChicken]

I call the city I live in "carpocalypse city" as we have no mass-transportation with ~400k squawkers in it. It is a joke of a city and the manincupalities are unwilling to work together to get a light-rail into place. The ONLY source of transport we have is the BC Transit bus system. This is the price of living on an island... Vancouver has the incredible "Sky train" and we need it here in Victoria also. So do NOT use google maps to look at the sorry excuse of a city that I live in as you will not learn about mass-transportation at all. In fact: Just now, they are figuring out that there needs to be parking spaces for cars and bikes for the buses.

[sternenstaub70]

Yeah, cities need *a lot* of parking lots. I mean *really* a lot.
If there are not enough in a district or generally in a certain area, people start searching for one. The more people are searching, the worse your traffic gets.

If you use mods, you might try to use the parking monitor mod, it shows all failed parking attempts, cars searching, cars planning to park...
Here, districts can become pretty useful. the mod can shows this information per district.

Btw, you can use the new roads with angled parking lots to create large underground parking areas..

Or, as others mentioned, use more public transportation. However, there will always be a certain amount of peope who still prefers to drive with a car, therefore they need a parking lot...

[Daveyboy]

I've not had any significant traffic issues really. In CS1 I'd get a lot near cargo rail stations but haven't had that in CS2.
I do often get a lot of traffic when adding a parking lot though, as tons of cars come and fill it up right away, once it's full the area is quiet again.
You do need a lot of parking though. I build parking towers everywhere and they still fill up quickly.

[mikelleh63]

When you start seeing crazy u-turn behaviors from your CIMs, you likely need more parking. Ask me how I know. When looking for parking, drivers pull lots of crazy stunts. The crazier the traffic, the more likely you need parking.