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Lugano (Ticino, Switzerland)

Geography and general Information

Lugano is located in the Italian speaking canton of Ticino in the south of Switzerland and is the 9th larges Swiss city with a population of 65.000. It lies on the Lake Lugano and is well known for its beautiful views from and towards Monte Brè and Monte San Salvatore. The map is based on a hightmap from terrain.party and covers the most of Lake Lugano in the scale 1:1. To the south the map extends as far as Capolago, to the west up to Ponte Tresa, to the north up to Lamone, and to the east up to Oria close to the the Italian border. It also includes the small Italian exclave of Campione d'Italia on the eastern shore of Lake Lugano. The networks have been built by an overlay image, which I linked below.

Outside the rather flat plains for the city of Lugano it can be a little bit challenging to develop this area, as it is a mountainous region with many narrow shores between the lake and the steep mountains. Also, as there isn't really much of a strong current in Lake Lugano I would suggest to place the sewages right to the Italian edge in the far east of the map (No offense, Italy is also a beautiful country :D), where I prepared two drain turbines.

In the reality Lake Lugano is rather suitable for water sports and tourist boats than for any important goods shipping (it's just a lake without connection to an ocean after all). But to increase the possibilities in CSL I included a single ship route in the direction of Porlezza, Italy that only creates ship traffic, if the player decides to build a harbour (no through traffic). As it is always possible to drive around the lake in a reasonable amount of time there are no bridges across the lake with one exception: the Melide causeway, which has been built between 1841 and 1847 by making use of a submerged glacial moraine. Today it carries the Gotthardbahn railway, the A2 motorway and a main road.



It is by no means perfect as it is my first serious attempt to create a map for CSL, but I hope it will nevertheless make fun to develop a chic european city around Lake Lugano and to get an impression by the fascinating landscape there.

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Road network

As in the original the A2 motorway is the main trunk line trough the Ticino area as it connects the northern part of Switzerland through the Gotthard tunnel and all the way down to Chiasso with the Italian extension towards Como and Milan. It is also one of the most important routes for goods transport through central Europe. However for the most part of its lenght and also in the Lugano area the A2 has only two lanes for each direction, which can easily causing traffic jams, especially in the peak hours when international transit traffic and urban traffic using the same routes. As Lugano is located in a rather mountanous area, the A2 is by far the fastest way to drive around. Most of the other roads are characterized by narrow passages through villages, steep serpentines and sharp bends.

In this map the two main outside road connections are therefore reserved for the A2 motorway.
For the other two possible road connections I chose to include the Strada statale 340 towards Menaggio in Italy and parts of the Strada Cantonale towards Luino, both being low capacity highways with one lane for each direction. Because of the unreal high traffic congestion on the two latter roads, they are disabled by default and can be "activated" ingame by closing small gaps near the edges of the map, if you really want some traffic (-> screenshot).

In contrast to the real road network I made some smaller changes at the junctions and added a fictional bypass highway in the north of Lugano to prevent some heavy jams through the city center as can be seen every day in original.

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Railway network / Public transport

The Gotthardbahn is one of the most important railway lines in Switzerland and the only long distance railway line in Lugano. It runs mostly parallel to the A2 motorway and has one track for each direction which is shared by long distance trains (hourly Eurocity trains of the relation Zürich - Milan), by regional and suburban trains (RE Erstfeld - Como and S10/S50 Bellinzona - Chiasso/Varese) as well as by frequent freight trains.
Unless you are building a completely new railway line through the map and seperating local and outside traffic, I strongly recommend to use 4-track stations in which the trains can pass each other and avoid level crossings as much as possible.

Thanks to great asset creators, many types of the original trains are available in the workshop:
SBB RABe523 (for the regional/suburban trains): https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=492618605
ETR 610 (for the intercity trains): https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1030916843
Re 430 (for freight trains): https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1157496968

The Lugano area actually features a lot of different means of transportation, which can be added ingame, if you want to:

- First of all there are two smaller local railway lines that aren't built in the map by default yet. On of them is the single tracked FLP (Ferrovia Lugano - Ponte Tresa) which runs on meter gauge and can be almost considered as a light rail line. The other is the Ferrovia Monte Generoso, a steep mountain railway from Capolago to the summit of Monte Generoso.

- Lugano has also 3 funicular lines (all of them being totally overpriced, but still worth it):
the short Funicolare Lugano-Stazione, which connects the railway station with the lower city center,
the Funicolare Monte San Salvatore, which extends from the district of Paradiso towards the famous Monte San Salvatore where you have some awesome 360° panorama,
and the Funicolare Cassarate - Monte Brè which climbs (obviously) Monte Brè.
Funiculars for CSL? Have a look at the great project by REV0: https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=1251093114

- Until 1959 Lugano also had a tram network, that can be revived in Cities Skylines.

- Last but not least the Società Navigazione del Lago di Lugano offers many ferry lines to various parts of the city or other villages around Lake Lugano. Tourists will love (and pay for) it.
How about a nostalgic steam ship? -> https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=931692079

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Overlay

If you want to develop Lugano as realistic as possible you can make use of an overlay image, although it isn't perfect and the resolution is limited to avoid too long loading times.

Image (~27MB): https://picload.org/view/doggoicr/overlay.png.html
Mod: OverLayer v2: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=662933818

The overlay image has to be called overlay.png and to be placed into \Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Cities_Skylines\Files
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I also recommend the use of these mods for the best experience (althogh not absolutely necessary):

81 Tiles: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=576327847
Fine Road Anarchy: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=802066100
Daylight Classic: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=530871278
Advanced Vehicle Options: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=442167376
Improved Public Transport 2: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=928128676

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Thanks to BonBonB who made a review of this map in his great What Map series:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xYaNwajnq0