Yep I use them. I am going so far in that I even think about how much traffic there would be in REAL life, so it looks realistic. But this was the best vid I have ever seen about this topic!
I have been a lot more deliberate with my new build about road hierarchy and when I see I didnt place a road where my cims would like to drive I tear everything out and start again lol
It may not be the most aesthetically pleasing city, but it has rules and will abide by them AND will let you know what the rules are with it's name! Ha!
@@mikeh2850 dirt roads are even, steady, flow. Traffic occurs whenever flow is funneled or slowed, so dirt roads shouldnt ever see much traffic unless you have few access points to a separated zoned area because the traffic never gets fast enough or dense enough to block up
I've enjoyed watching Bluffside Crossing develop, but I'm REALLY into theoretical videos like this one. Roadway hierarchy, intersection design, highway interchange design, dropping the city planner knowledge bombs... that's what I'm after. Thanks for the content!
That's GREAT feedback. I enjoy putting together both types of videos, but I do find this to be a bit more stimulating due to the amount of pre-planning and video editing that goes into it. That said, I'm quiet obviously a novice with video editing... so I better get much better if I'm going to do more of these. 🙂 There will be more in the future though, that's for sure!
Honestly if I ever was an urban planning student in college, this would be a pretty fun, interactive, and efficient way of understanding fundamentals and principles of roadway hierarchy. It's amazing how much we can learn from these videos.
bro now that I read your comment, both hospitals in my city are placed exactly like this, one right on the corner to an arterial with hw access and one on a sidestreet right next to the biggest collector, sick.
the more you practice it, the easier it gets ... understanding where 'freeway' should go is easy, arterials from there lead to the zones where you build/zone on I also find its very helpful to build along the contour of the land, road hierarchy tends to take up a lot of space and its easier to make the space it takes up fit the space it has to go on, than to try to force grids for max building space
I have made mental maps of what my city configuration(s) will be, @@CityPlannerPlays, only to completely forget them all when playing. I typically go for grids for Commercial, Industrial, and low end Residential. The more natural configuration(s) I do for the rich people. Gotta make the rich people happy. Otherwise they will not finance your Mayoral campaigns. Hah! Still my biggest Cities: Skylines sin is I do not often buy up new tiles and branch out that way. I typically stick with the initial tile and wind up cramming *everything* into said tile. Why? I do not know. I have also noticed a long time that it is best to just go with whatever the map needs you to do until you earn your first two or three million dollars. From there you can probably rebuild up to your entire city from scratch to your mental map configuration(s). This is just assuming the in-game random disasters do not happen frequently enough that you are stuck with clean up and a depleted Treasury. I know I have had to abandon some maps purely because the tsunamis were literally lining up. The first two tsunamis caused so much death and destruction that huge Emergency/Rescue building could no longer keep up. By the fourth tsunami on that one map even that building could no longer take it anymore and crumbled then washed away. Ironic, really.
The BEST explained “Road Hierarchy” and “Road Utilization” video I’ve seen yet! Well done!! I have 400 hours in to the game, but have a gift for messing this up on EVERY city 😂
@@CityPlannerPlays And we play with TMPE despawning disabled! No cars will be removed when traffic gets bad. The vanilla game will remove some cars from the roads when there is a major traffic jam. Therefore a gridlock will never occur. With despawning off, gridlocks in badly designed cities are very common in game.
After watching your city building in many of the videos you have, I changed my road building and with that simple change went from 25%-30% to having 80%+ and being able to complete the game. Thank you.
You explained this very well!! You can see you have lots of experience in real life. Congrats on nearly 1K, and I just want to let you know that when I finish school I want to be a city planner myself!
I loved learning the concepts! I have seen them a lot in Biffa's videos but with a detailed and focused example like this is much clearer. Now I would love to turn my organically messy and disorganised town into a sister city of Roadway Hierarchyville
I thought this video was easy to follow and well explained. I do think, though a counterexample would make it even more effective. I used to be horrible at this when I started playing. I'm not sure what made it finally click for me, but road hierarchy is vital for me now. I guess doing it wrong so many times gave me a good framework to know what bad design looked like.
@@CityPlannerPlays That scenario annoys me because it's not the way I usually see people fail at this. Half the problem in that city is the highway junction is just unrealistically bad -- it has two ramps for the same direction, and none for the other one. (That then causes traffic to make two lefts in a diamond service interchange elsewhere to U-turn, which is about the worst possible traffic pattern you can have in CSL.) Since it's not hard to make a bad one, I think it's better to just make it yourself to demonstrate. Then you can have all the usual things, like inexplicably using a grid of 32m roads in low-density residential, having the zoning in massive blocks instead of mixing them, having the residential close to the highway and the industry far from it, a big block of specialized industry on a resource field far from the rest of the city, ... (Most of which I made in my first city 😬)
This video caused so much inner dialogue like, "you know you know this, yet here you are not doing it." Sometimes we just need to keep hearing the same message
Probably the best explanation I've seen about road hierarchy. My only point is regarding noise pollution. What's generating it are the high density comercial buildings, not the roads itself. I know it has some impact, but probably not that much in the game. Also, it seems that the video loops at 4:50 (or close to it). Thanks for sharing ☺️
Noise pollution. high density commercial buildings beget traffic that generates the noise. If anything this year has taught us, the road truly is passive. Manhattan Island (or any city in the world) showed us how quiet it can be when there are no people, cars, busses, trains, etc.
Having such a quality game for this guy to share his knowledge is a great benefit to the world community. As a kid we learned about “the people in our neighborhood,” but this was an over generalized list of doctors and construction workers. I love that this channel is so entertaining and that it also gives me an appreciation for the people who make significant decisions in my city. Also, knowing more about why roads are designed the way they are makes them much less frustrating to travel on, haha.
Seems he added the first piece twice, that runs up to 4:50 and the second piece goes at 10:27. Anything in between is just a repeat of the first piece, so either skip to 4:50 and watch from there, or jump to 10:27 if you started from zero.
I do take these into consideration. Then I learned more about how the Netherlands do their roadways and applied their methods with what I knew in the past into conideration. Highways: Fast and connected large areas, few connection and bike highways that are separated. Roads: Fast, more connections than a highway, connecting communities, little to no driveways, separated bike lanes and no street parking. Streets: Destination, usually 30-40km streets, street parking, sometimes separated bike lanes and people-oriented traffic calming measures.
Didn't even notice i did something similar in my cities, i did watch some planning tips and did hear about road hierarchy but as i understood is just big road with acess to small road, with more access to smaller roads, and to avoid many connections on the larger ones. This more detailed explanation is nice to know, your layout does look like something more realistic compared to mine that had something that looked off Great video!
Super helpful information in clear, concise language. I went from having a hundred on and off ramps to having an effective network of varying levels of roads.
Paused the video at 2:24 and just kept glancing at my other monitor while I built my city, not to exact replica of course, but I used the hierarchy and relatively the same roads. Currently have 3,000 population and 90% traffic flow. Best road layout video guide I've watched. Beginner tips especially for new cities, interchanges, interchanges, INTERCHANGES. Highway/Arterial speed is crucial.
Hey I've been binge watching your videos and its super interesting watching you play city skylines and seeing your though process and how you approach the game. I'm really suprised how more people haven't heard of you yet. I just wanted to let you know that your content is amazing and I hope your channel grows quickly! Keep it up! 😊
Well done and well explained. I just started the game a month ago and just found your channel today, thanks to Biffa, so I am going to be busy watching a lot of your videos!
@@CityPlannerPlays I have sunk a tremendous amount of time in it! I am trying to recreate the greater Youngstown Ohio area based off a map I downloaded from the workshop that used a height map. I thought that would be a good way to start, base it off of a real town (my hometown) but the struggle is real.....lol I wanted to take Urban Planning at Akron (this was 15 years ago) but life threw me a curveball and I could only take one class. What you do, is so fascinating to me
This video was mindblowing for me, it really change my way of building cities, i always had traffic's mess and the game experience was desmotivating. Now, with medium cities (60k-100k cims) my traffic flow is upper 80%-85% and the game is again really fun. Thanks a lot!!! (Regards from Argentina)
I downloaded the game to try it out and put it back down after building one (not so functional) city. I watched one of your vids and I've been hooked since. I didn't initially realize the depth to which you could go in the game - it's actually a lot of fun to build a city with all functions running efficiently - industries, roads, commerce, etc. Your vids have helped to improve my enjoyment of the game tenfold, so thanks :)
I would never have known this if I didn't play this game. The amount of micro-knowledge you can get from playing different kinds of games is just staggering.
City planner you are awesome my love of this game has been rekindled. I'm an old school sim city player sim city one way back in the back back day. Eventually, around 2013 or somewhere there in, I swit her to skylines. I know have skylines on ps4 and it had been so long since I played and city building games I was just not feeling it. However, after I found your videos I'm back at city building! Thanks for all the info and the gameplay!
Thank you! I was expecting the game to explain the basics of roads, but it immediately wanted me to build one and I just...had no idea what kind of road I needed or what layout to do yet because I didn't know anything
I still struggle with road hierarchy but I feel like each time I build a new city or new area, I get a little bit better at it. This video helps but I feel like I'm going to have to watch it several more times in the future.
This video alone helped me get my traffic from 46% up to 83%!! Thank you! It's such a simple thing but so easy to overlook. This game keeps amazing me with its depth
This is the first principles of roadway hierarchy tutorial I've seen that used as an example a city that I found appealing. Maybe it's that I actually like gridded cities and I remember some of them being written from a perspective that stuff which looked like a suburban development hellscape to me is appealing because of its wavy roads, but I'd like to think it was because you put some time into what kinds of stuff wants to be zoned near what kind of roads. I also have to admit that I tend to go straight from local to arterial roads, with one or the other pressed into service for double duty doing collector stuff, though. It ends up looking similar, but it mostly comes from a perspective of wanting to reduce the number of places there is (when I was playing on the Switch, where you can't them off) or ought to be stoplights.
This is awesome. I've been into city builders for a while now, starting with the classic Sim City, but I always winged it, and when things didn't pan out I'd seek out walkthroughs and tips. I've only recently discovered this channel, and it has helped so much. I'm still learning, but knowing how things work has made playing Cities: Skylines even more enjoyable than ever. Awesome videos and thanks for your work.
I feel like highways by in large are too prominent a feature in the wider landscape. They're entirely devoid of access function and have a variety of sub classes that mar everything from rural spans to the densest city hubs. I'm certain progress toward an in-between for highways and arterial is being well considered by some but on the whole the idea of a highway is still that through put giving way to nothing. It would be excellent to see an increase in flanking roads and slipways and to translate our very widest of roadways servicing the the commercial sprawl sector. It's obvious that many major roadways are used as the go between from local to highway and while traffic can enhance a business district I think those enlarged road ways cause more problems for passage as well as patron access. Hoping some day to get my hands on CS to test some options on improving fading the boundary between different road transit systems.
I played cities skylines a little when it came out but recently got back into it. And I have to say that your videos really helped me understand the game better and I'm building my city with a lot more ease and more profit as a result :) Thanks for these great videos!
Oh cool I think I just became your 1000th subscriber! Loving the channel so far. Can't wait to see what else you put out. As a console pleb it's always nice to see tutorials that don't use 100+ mods
Woot woot! Thanks so much for subscribing! Especially being #1000! I have an Xbox Series S coming on launch day and plan on starting a series there. We'll see how the transition goes.... 😀
Once I learned it, its a great system! I was watching someone else's skylines vid and they were saying 'i really try not to have the industry trucks get in the way of everything else as best I can' Road Hierarchy solves that issue.
Cheers for this, road hierarchy is something I've known about for a while but not really bothered with because it sounded like a hassle, this visual breakdown certainly gave me some tips on getting more serious with it. Subscribed!
Was sent here via a Biffa recommendation and thoroughly enjoyed it. The best demo of road use that I have seen. You seem to really know your stuff. Subscribed.
I observed it myself during my years of playing this and have been following it through trail and error, but you have articulated it nicely, it makes sense.
Wow I finally get it! I have been playing this game for years, and now I'm going to start from scratch. This puts all my old Cities to SHAME! Thank you!
Best example of road hierarchy plus the examples of how the roads are best used. Even though I already use this system of roads, this video has shown me how to better utilize the system!
the first video of yours i stumbled across was the tutoria series and while i was faring ok just based off fixing my own daily gripes with connectivity and accessibility, definitely was making the error of putting the ploppable facilities on main roads which i realized from watching that series. have had 0 traffic issues since i started putting them on locals with good access to collectors. it is such a blast seeing my cities bustling with activity and good traffic flow 🤭
Would love to see you take a look at the roads in Manila where it's notorious for traffic jams. A 15-minute drive from Quezon City to Makati would take 4-5 hours because of traffic, particularly if you're going through the main arterial road of Metro Manila: EDSA. The main solution they are doing to remedy the traffic is to build lots and lots of flyovers. It would be great seeing you come up with better road layouts :D
@@CityPlannerPlays Yes! Would love to see that. Can be any city with bad planning/ traffic jam then you can show how it could be better using CS. I tried doing that to my city but I don't know anything about city planning 😂
Thank you so much for this information. I'm newer at building in Cities and have been laying out my roads all wrong. I have a city that I was scratching my head on how to make traffic better and was actually making it worse. Time to fix based off of this. Thank you so much.
I got city skylines 2 and found this tutorial super interesting and amazing how transferrable it is even after all this while. Would be cool to get an updated video on road heirarchy for CS2. Especially on the topic of paired couplets. I could never get those running well in my cities somehow.
I'm a civil engineering student myself and I take my major on Transportation and Traffic Management. This game is one of the reasons that makes me want to learn this in college LOL. I've got the basics, I try to use the hierarchy and it works the same as the theory, but I still sometimes can't decide to place some of the buildings on the road. Your zoning makes sense, but for the aesthetic of the game sometimes it's a bit tricky to place some things that can make traffic jam, and now I know why there are still some traffic jam close to my public services. Thanks a bunch Bro for the tip. For the upcoming content, can you please discuss about modes (Transit Oriented Dev), I know how they function in real life but I haven't been able to applied it correctly in the game (Especially Air and Water Transportations).
Thanks so much for the video, I have entire neighborhoods where I just divided it with the large roads and then used the small roads for everything. I’ll use this in my next city ty!
I did not think I would be so engaged by this. I love city builders and something about hearing the real-life application makes it even more interesting
Great video man, I utilize road hierarchy in my builds as best I can but your explanation definitely helped me understand how to implement it better. Appreciate the information!
@@GoneGamingBadfishBiggest piece of advise is something you probably already do - make sure that you have a couplet pair in most situations unless you're trying to direct traffic away from some place specifically. Also, if you're going to use them like they are collectors or arterials, minimize crossings to the greatest extent you can.
One of the advantages of your build is that it occurs out west. When I lived out there, I was amazed how easy it was to learn cities because of their layout and use of hierarchy principles. Seems like you've done a great job of doing that in your videos, too!
Really awesome and easy-to-follow advice. I love how this game just continues to get better the more you play. there’s so much theory that can lend to learning how to “build better”, but a total newb can still have fun starting too
Your videos have helped me alot. Even though I don't have the mods that you used on Bluffside Crossing I still feel like I'm improving. I did know how to play cities skylines but only at a pretty much basic level. Your district zoning video and this one have helped me significantly. Keep up the good work.
I love going through and doing that! I think it's a tune of fun to keep iterating on things that I've built. The space constraints that you generally have in a built up city keep things interesting, too.
@@namelessfellow I always thought that I could just make one big road with a few 2 way roads junction will work. But they always ended up using the closes 2 way road junction and get stuck. But learning this. I just redesigned everything and they flow much better. I lost like 45k people but it much better to make plans using this method.
@@juliusbenter2369 Yeah, a big part of the problem IMHO is that the speeds of the different roads aren't different enough. The small 2-lane road is 40 km/h and the medium 4-lane road is 50 km/h, and that's just not enough of a difference to get traffic to stay on a collector rather than just winding through the local roads. (And the 6-lane road is 60km/h, so they won't really stay on the arterials either.) The last city I was playing with I ended up making some of the junctions one-way near the highway exits to force traffic elsewhere...
might've helped to use game terminology to define the roads for casual players like myself. great video though, thanks for trying to explain this. i always screw up traffic.
That was very, very, very informative and easy to follow. Thank you! Now, I just need to see if I can put into practice in a game starting from scratch and going thru each milestone. Using these ideas plus what I've learned from Biffa should get my cities to have 85-90% traffic.
Absolutely! You can always start out with locals (even dirt roads) and upgrade them over time, so long as you know the end-stage classification of the roadway so you set access appropriately. Good luck!
that's an excellent approach to a subject many youtubers approach, but you addressed it much more professionally (referring to this essential access/mobility concept)
Nice explanation of the theory and use cases for different road types! Btw I've been placing services like hospitals on local roads since I noticed that vehicles have problems entering the buildings. If they have to turn left to enter the building, they can only do that on local roads. On roads with more lanes, they have to circle around the block in order to turn right to get in. I think that causes unnecessary delays for the service vehicles and more road traffic.
This is a great explanation of road hierarchy. I would like to see this map with the Traffic Manager mod with the traffic set to not de-spawn when it gets problematic. It could be that your traffic is quite as good as it seems. It will probably only be a little worse but I think it will be worse.
I'm new to your channel and liked this video. With the DLCs and road assets available for download from the workshop, is there a general methodology or principal to determine if an asset is a collector, arterial, etc..? 2 lanes = x, 4 lanes=y, 6 lanes=z for instance?
This video is incredibly helpful when it comes to road layouts and access, but it would be nice if there were a video in which you fully explained Local vs collectors vs Arterials... e.g. the game lists them in relation to size but the astute observer will notice than you can have a four lane high way, a small four-lane road, and a four lane road w/ meridian. So would be the characteristic we would be looking for to use them as you're describing. I think this was buried in one of your earliest videos, but I could be incorrect.
Can you (as a city planner) make a wishlist video talking about ideas to make this game better? Your knowledge can improve this game. This game can be better. The game starts with calling us “mayors” building our own city. Mayors’ job is to manage a city. That’s what this game supposed to be and it only focuses on managing traffic. I found out that the developer’s first game is a traffic managing game. So this game and how well it does focus heavy on traffic. I give them credit for that.
That's a good idea! I think that the main question would be is this a city painter, a local government management sim, or something in between. For example, the Mayor title is interesting, because there are different types of local government structures. The community I work in has a Council-Manager structure where the mayor has influence, but no more power, than any other council member. The City Admin - which is a hired, civil servant position, actually runs the City. This included all departments including Planning, Engineering, Public Works, etc. They have the ability to really influence things in a way that a mayor - even in a strong mayor municipality - never could - sitting in on meetings and directing the staff to do things such as fix traffic in a specific area. There is also a TON of interaction with officials that set staff priorities. Elected officials really set the tone for what the City will work on. This is one of the main reasons I've been working on transit and active transportation facilities over the last few years.... That said - yes. I'll make a video on this. Great topic and it'll be a blast. Thanks for the idea!
There are a couple mods that let you turn off the zoning on specific roads. That lets you turn off zoning on your arterial/collector roads and push the local roads closer to them. It's nice to be able to have houses backing right up to main streets and it helps maximize space in the neighborhoods. I'd also be curious to hear what you think about superblocks, as used in Barcelona. They look interesting, but I haven't been able to really test them in the game yet. One more question, do you have any hard data on optimal block sizes? Seems there has to be a balance between blocks so small that most of the city is paved and blocks so big it takes twenty minutes to get to the nearest cross street to get out. And I'm sure "optimum" is relative to the zoning category.
I really need to find that mod. I hate the way that buildings end up zoning on both a collector and a local road. The best that I've been able to do is put a fence on the collector to make zoning not appear there. That said, if you find the mod - let me know. I'll look, too. I think that Barcelona's superblock concept could be a real winner. Cities are going to need to embrace active transportation and alternative mobility options to improve resiliency. And we don't really have time to adjust - climate change is here right now. These are really the only tools available at the local level to do so. But there are obviously a ton of other benefits, including health, improved sense of community, increased density, and reduced crashes. The silver lining of COVID is that cities here in the US are getting more and more willing to use public rights of way for things other than traditional transportation infrastructure and gathering spaces. This can only be good for our cities. Optimal block size is an interesting subject. I'd answer with a question - optimal for whom? Cities with short block lengths (Portland - 200' x 200' or 8 units by 8 units in game) are excellent for pedestrians but a real mess for cars and transit. Tons of intersections means safety concerns. And short blocks mean more pavement, more environmental impacts, tons more cost to maintain. Conversely, in Salt Lake City, the original Mormon pioneers created block of 660' x 660' -10 full acres! - or 25 x 25 units in the game. The primary purpose of this design was for ease of moving cattle and simplicity of design. In modern times, these block sizes provide a ton of flexibility, but can lead to a loss of vibrancy at the street level. But it's just tough to be a pedestrian when each block is 1/8 mile. Further, the City owns way less right-of-way, so "fixing" their superblocks would be hard and quiet costly. Long story short - there is no consensus. But I'd think that something in between is probably best. Denver (260' x 400 or 10 by 15 units) is easy to navigate as a pedestrian, cyclist, or transit rider and works quiet well for lot sizes. If pushed, that is probably where I'd fall. Others may prefer a NYC style 200 x 922 (8 x 35) with pedestrian cut throughs. I think that there are advantages and disadvantages to both. Sorry about the book, but I LOVE topics like this. Thanks for the question! What do you think? Drawing upon your personal experiences, what has, in your opinion, been best?
@@CityPlannerPlays I can't say I have an opinion on the block question. Though I do think something like 8x8 looks silly and wasteful. I read a guide or discussion post on Steam that used calculus to determine the best ratio of zoned space to paved area and came up with 10x14 as being close to the point where diminishing returns kicked in. But his analysis didn't include traffic flow or other factors, just space usage. I figure the game forces a 10x format since anything wider will just waste space in the middle of the block. Though there could be exceptions for larger buildings or houses that back up to a pond. If you search the workshop for "zoning" under the mod category you'll find the mods I mentioned. I forget which one I went with. But it lets me turn off the zoning before I build a road or toggle it off afterwards. A workaround without mods is to build the roads just far enough apart that you can anchor the zoning on the local road and leave a 1-block gap between the zone and the collector. That wastes a bit of space, but looks very authentic when you fill that gap with trees as a barrier. As a professional driver for over twenty years, roads are something of an obsession for me. We won't talk about all the time I spent cussing city planners and civil engineers for the atrocities they committed.
@@CityPlannerPlays here's the zoning mod I use. It's a simple on/off deal. steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=592076973 And here's that guide on block size. steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2035626231
@@CityPlannerPlays I ran the math for optimal grids in-game; see my guide at steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2035626231 I agree there isn't a best one in real life, but with the game only zoning 32m from a road regardless of zoning type or road type, there's a best answer for a full square grid: 12×12 (for small 16m roads, since obviously Road Hierarchy means you're not making your grid using collector roads). Of course if you're using something like Campus or Industries then it's not zoned areas, and the analysis is completely different since the 32m zoning depth is irrelevant. I've been using 10×20 grids in CSL lately. That's big enough to fit larger buildings (like the vanilla university) but small enough to have good access. I like that I can fill it cheaply with two small parks to make a noise buffer. And the simple ratio means it tiles nicely -- a herringbone pattern would probably be really annoying to drive in real life, but seems to work quite well in-game since it means only 3-way junctions. On Portland: while 200' is the canonical answer, I bet it was originally 198', since that's 3 chains.
@@johnterpack3940 Oh, thanks for already having linked my guide! I think this guide is a good demonstration of why the grid calculations _don't_ need to be traffic-aware. With Roadway Hierarchy, the grid part is for Local roads _only_, because all the connections mean the grid is about access, not mobility. The fun thing about the grid, to me, is figuring out how best to break up the grid to run a collector through it to add the extra mobility, and how that connects in. (Is the collector axis-aligned too? Does it go at an angle like in Lee's design? Does it connect to the corners of blocks or the middles of blocks? How often does it connect? ...)
Going back and playing some SC4 and wow, I need to somehow take the knowledge you have and plant it in my brain somehow. This is something I would love to get a grip on as my current level of planning is ... rather lacking to say the least.
Same. Technically Highways are arterials, so skipping to collectors isn't a problem. I do it all the time and it happens all the time in the real world!
Something else I think is important--and shown in the video but only briefly discussed--is to have both straight through and perimeter arterial/collector networks. Also, not only do developments need at least two exits, the two exits should preferably lead somewhere manifestly different and not just 20 tiles down the same collector. That's shown in the video, too, with access to perpendicular and parallel roads.
Great video. Would it be possible to get a follow up about when and how to use one-way roads? Because I've seen many real-life cities use them, and although you did talk a little about them in this video, it would be cool to know the best practises and such, for when to use them.
![How to Build a Basic Entrance to a City in Cities Skylines [Top 5 for Beginners - No Mods]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/wuISxBGQAe0/mqdefault.jpg)
Do you use the principles of roadway hierarchy when you design your roadway networks?
Yep I use them. I am going so far in that I even think about how much traffic there would be in REAL life, so it looks realistic. But this was the best vid I have ever seen about this topic!
Nope but I probably should..
I haven't finished the video yet, but I wanted to point out that at 4:48 the video restarts back at the beginning.
I have been a lot more deliberate with my new build about road hierarchy and when I see I didnt place a road where my cims would like to drive I tear everything out and start again lol
Nope, but perfect video, that might expain why my baby with 500K citizens doesn't beat 80% ... ;-)
Great city name 😉
But Biffa, where are the roundabouts?
@@settyoce155 I watch so much Biffa the lack of highway exit roundabouts really took my brain a minute to accept.
It really rolls of the tongue hahah
It may not be the most aesthetically pleasing city, but it has rules and will abide by them AND will let you know what the rules are with it's name! Ha!
I never thought that the answer for all those mind boggling traffic was just outside of our houses IRL.
Me with all dirt roads: "Yeah I think I'm fine buddy, thanks."
Then comes the inevitable question at the 10K+ population levels: "Why are so much traffic getting clogged on my dirt roads?".
I've actually had much better traffic flow in all dirt cities. Shows how poorly they programmed the game.
LUL
@@mikeh2850 dirt roads are even, steady, flow. Traffic occurs whenever flow is funneled or slowed, so dirt roads shouldnt ever see much traffic unless you have few access points to a separated zoned area because the traffic never gets fast enough or dense enough to block up
Must be a Democrat mayor lol
I've enjoyed watching Bluffside Crossing develop, but I'm REALLY into theoretical videos like this one. Roadway hierarchy, intersection design, highway interchange design, dropping the city planner knowledge bombs... that's what I'm after. Thanks for the content!
That's GREAT feedback. I enjoy putting together both types of videos, but I do find this to be a bit more stimulating due to the amount of pre-planning and video editing that goes into it. That said, I'm quiet obviously a novice with video editing... so I better get much better if I'm going to do more of these. 🙂 There will be more in the future though, that's for sure!
@@CityPlannerPlays Seconded that notion. More of these, please!
@@CityPlannerPlays Could you do a series of key city planning theory that is in Cities?
Honestly if I ever was an urban planning student in college, this would be a pretty fun, interactive, and efficient way of understanding fundamentals and principles of roadway hierarchy. It's amazing how much we can learn from these videos.
Im on my 3rd year in BS Civil Engineering. Watching this for my introduction for highway and railway engineering course.
I finally found an answer I didn’t know I had a question for. Why my hometowns hospital/PD/FD was on “side streets”
bro now that I read your comment, both hospitals in my city are placed exactly like this, one right on the corner to an arterial with hw access and one on a sidestreet right next to the biggest collector, sick.
I understand the hierachy. just gets harder to remember to use it when building
Absolutely! I have to remind myself sometimes, too. If I don't remember, the traffic will remind me... 🙂
Same. Especially when you build for looks...
the more you practice it, the easier it gets ... understanding where 'freeway' should go is easy, arterials from there lead to the zones where you build/zone on
I also find its very helpful to build along the contour of the land, road hierarchy tends to take up a lot of space and its easier to make the space it takes up fit the space it has to go on, than to try to force grids for max building space
I have made mental maps of what my city configuration(s) will be, @@CityPlannerPlays, only to completely forget them all when playing. I typically go for grids for Commercial, Industrial, and low end Residential. The more natural configuration(s) I do for the rich people. Gotta make the rich people happy. Otherwise they will not finance your Mayoral campaigns. Hah!
Still my biggest Cities: Skylines sin is I do not often buy up new tiles and branch out that way. I typically stick with the initial tile and wind up cramming *everything* into said tile. Why? I do not know. I have also noticed a long time that it is best to just go with whatever the map needs you to do until you earn your first two or three million dollars. From there you can probably rebuild up to your entire city from scratch to your mental map configuration(s). This is just assuming the in-game random disasters do not happen frequently enough that you are stuck with clean up and a depleted Treasury.
I know I have had to abandon some maps purely because the tsunamis were literally lining up. The first two tsunamis caused so much death and destruction that huge Emergency/Rescue building could no longer keep up. By the fourth tsunami on that one map even that building could no longer take it anymore and crumbled then washed away. Ironic, really.
Same. I usually do ok with the hierarchy, it's the fine-grained detail of the traffic lights and yield signs that I find less intuitive...
Holy cow, it is finally fixed! Thanks for the patience everyone!
The BEST explained “Road Hierarchy” and “Road Utilization” video I’ve seen yet! Well done!! I have 400 hours in to the game, but have a gift for messing this up on EVERY city 😂
Thank you! I'll have to show my first City at some point. It has it's issues, even with hierarchy, ha!
It's crazy now I get why my traffic doesn't get to bad. I instinctively was playing the game just like this lol
Haha! Maybe you should look at a career in regional transportation planning! 😀
@@CityPlannerPlays And we play with TMPE despawning disabled! No cars will be removed when traffic gets bad. The vanilla game will remove some cars from the roads when there is a major traffic jam. Therefore a gridlock will never occur. With despawning off, gridlocks in badly designed cities are very common in game.
Same, honestly. XD IRL, I know *my* city is laid out like this.
After watching your city building in many of the videos you have, I changed my road building and with that simple change went from 25%-30% to having 80%+ and being able to complete the game. Thank you.
You explained this very well!! You can see you have lots of experience in real life. Congrats on nearly 1K, and I just want to let you know that when I finish school I want to be a city planner myself!
Thank you! And go for it! It's a wonderful field!
I loved learning the concepts! I have seen them a lot in Biffa's videos but with a detailed and focused example like this is much clearer. Now I would love to turn my organically messy and disorganised town into a sister city of Roadway Hierarchyville
I hope you come up with a better name than I did 😂
Me using nothing but collector roads in my whole city now i understand why i have 10 years long traffic jams, thanks for showing 🤘
I thought this video was easy to follow and well explained. I do think, though a counterexample would make it even more effective.
I used to be horrible at this when I started playing. I'm not sure what made it finally click for me, but road hierarchy is vital for me now. I guess doing it wrong so many times gave me a good framework to know what bad design looked like.
Heck of a point. I should have added that. Perhaps even just a reference to the Fix the Traffic scenario, ha!
@@CityPlannerPlays That scenario annoys me because it's not the way I usually see people fail at this. Half the problem in that city is the highway junction is just unrealistically bad -- it has two ramps for the same direction, and none for the other one. (That then causes traffic to make two lefts in a diamond service interchange elsewhere to U-turn, which is about the worst possible traffic pattern you can have in CSL.)
Since it's not hard to make a bad one, I think it's better to just make it yourself to demonstrate. Then you can have all the usual things, like inexplicably using a grid of 32m roads in low-density residential, having the zoning in massive blocks instead of mixing them, having the residential close to the highway and the industry far from it, a big block of specialized industry on a resource field far from the rest of the city, ...
(Most of which I made in my first city 😬)
This video caused so much inner dialogue like, "you know you know this, yet here you are not doing it." Sometimes we just need to keep hearing the same message
Probably the best explanation I've seen about road hierarchy.
My only point is regarding noise pollution. What's generating it are the high density comercial buildings, not the roads itself. I know it has some impact, but probably not that much in the game.
Also, it seems that the video loops at 4:50 (or close to it).
Thanks for sharing ☺️
Shoot! Trimmed the video, so the loop should be gone.... someday. Ha. Thanks for watching!
@@CityPlannerPlays loop still here 😞
Noise pollution. high density commercial buildings beget traffic that generates the noise. If anything this year has taught us, the road truly is passive. Manhattan Island (or any city in the world) showed us how quiet it can be when there are no people, cars, busses, trains, etc.
Thumbs up for Biffa, looks like he supporting other CS builders channels. I like that 👍👍
Having such a quality game for this guy to share his knowledge is a great benefit to the world community. As a kid we learned about “the people in our neighborhood,” but this was an over generalized list of doctors and construction workers. I love that this channel is so entertaining and that it also gives me an appreciation for the people who make significant decisions in my city. Also, knowing more about why roads are designed the way they are makes them much less frustrating to travel on, haha.
Seems he added the first piece twice, that runs up to 4:50 and the second piece goes at 10:27. Anything in between is just a repeat of the first piece, so either skip to 4:50 and watch from there, or jump to 10:27 if you started from zero.
Thank you for doing this! I am trimming it out, but it takes time (potentially hours) to process!
I got so confused by this. I paused right before the repeat, and when I resumed I was like.. wait a minute. Then I thought it was a bug with TH-cam xD
@@robbasgaming7044 Nope... just a guy that is still learning how to use Premiere - ha!
@@robbasgaming7044 I thought I accidentally scrolled to the beginning! 😂😂
I found it useful to watch the first part twice as it helps me memorise it better
Ok, so
this is officially my favorite City Skylines channel. I was looking for something like this for so long. Great video!
Thank you! I appreciate that!
I do take these into consideration. Then I learned more about how the Netherlands do their roadways and applied their methods with what I knew in the past into conideration.
Highways: Fast and connected large areas, few connection and bike highways that are separated.
Roads: Fast, more connections than a highway, connecting communities, little to no driveways, separated bike lanes and no street parking.
Streets: Destination, usually 30-40km streets, street parking, sometimes separated bike lanes and people-oriented traffic calming measures.
Didn't even notice i did something similar in my cities, i did watch some planning tips and did hear about road hierarchy but as i understood is just big road with acess to small road, with more access to smaller roads, and to avoid many connections on the larger ones. This more detailed explanation is nice to know, your layout does look like something more realistic compared to mine that had something that looked off
Great video!
Super helpful information in clear, concise language. I went from having a hundred on and off ramps to having an effective network of varying levels of roads.
The way you describe building gives me greater confidence in starting a city. First time I tried the game I got a tad overwhelmed.
Paused the video at 2:24 and just kept glancing at my other monitor while I built my city, not to exact replica of course, but I used the hierarchy and relatively the same roads. Currently have 3,000 population and 90% traffic flow. Best road layout video guide I've watched. Beginner tips especially for new cities, interchanges, interchanges, INTERCHANGES. Highway/Arterial speed is crucial.
Hey I've been binge watching your videos and its super interesting watching you play city skylines and seeing your though process and how you approach the game. I'm really suprised how more people haven't heard of you yet. I just wanted to let you know that your content is amazing and I hope your channel grows quickly! Keep it up! 😊
Thank you! I really, really appreciate the kind words and feedback!
Well done and well explained. I just started the game a month ago and just found your channel today, thanks to Biffa, so I am going to be busy watching a lot of your videos!
It's really a fantastic game! Just be careful or you'll sink as much time into it as I have 🙂
Thanks for watching and enjoy!
@@CityPlannerPlays I have sunk a tremendous amount of time in it! I am trying to recreate the greater Youngstown Ohio area based off a map I downloaded from the workshop that used a height map. I thought that would be a good way to start, base it off of a real town (my hometown) but the struggle is real.....lol
I wanted to take Urban Planning at Akron (this was 15 years ago) but life threw me a curveball and I could only take one class. What you do, is so fascinating to me
I found the Mobility - Access comparison helpful as a prompt when trying to think about road hierarchy
just started playing.. and omg i had a long queue line all the way to the highway.. really good explanation, thank you!
This video was mindblowing for me, it really change my way of building cities, i always had traffic's mess and the game experience was desmotivating. Now, with medium cities (60k-100k cims) my traffic flow is upper 80%-85% and the game is again really fun. Thanks a lot!!! (Regards from Argentina)
That's awesome!!! Thanks for watching
I love watching your videos while playing Skylines. Makes it feel like I'm building a city with a planner right next to me to give advice
I downloaded the game to try it out and put it back down after building one (not so functional) city. I watched one of your vids and I've been hooked since. I didn't initially realize the depth to which you could go in the game - it's actually a lot of fun to build a city with all functions running efficiently - industries, roads, commerce, etc. Your vids have helped to improve my enjoyment of the game tenfold, so thanks :)
The best way to build something is to get to know it's history and real life counterparts. It may seem wierd sometimes, but it is very true.
I've been sent here by Biffa.
Welcome!
Have a sip of tea, friend!! ☕️
What video of biffa’s?
@@Zipplandia No video, a recommendation of him one week ago.
Oh ok, thanks for replying
I would never have known this if I didn't play this game.
The amount of micro-knowledge you can get from playing different kinds of games is just staggering.
City planner you are awesome my love of this game has been rekindled. I'm an old school sim city player sim city one way back in the back back day. Eventually, around 2013 or somewhere there in, I swit her to skylines.
I know have skylines on ps4 and it had been so long since I played and city building games I was just not feeling it. However, after I found your videos I'm back at city building! Thanks for all the info and the gameplay!
Thank you! I was expecting the game to explain the basics of roads, but it immediately wanted me to build one and I just...had no idea what kind of road I needed or what layout to do yet because I didn't know anything
I still struggle with road hierarchy but I feel like each time I build a new city or new area, I get a little bit better at it. This video helps but I feel like I'm going to have to watch it several more times in the future.
The game sucks for me. No matter how small you start out, your always broke. Absolutely frustrating.
This video alone helped me get my traffic from 46% up to 83%!! Thank you! It's such a simple thing but so easy to overlook. This game keeps amazing me with its depth
As for myself, I can rest easy on 70-80% after I reached over 50K pop, lol.
Keep coming back to this and still learning things, thanks.
This is the first principles of roadway hierarchy tutorial I've seen that used as an example a city that I found appealing.
Maybe it's that I actually like gridded cities and I remember some of them being written from a perspective that stuff which looked like a suburban development hellscape to me is appealing because of its wavy roads, but I'd like to think it was because you put some time into what kinds of stuff wants to be zoned near what kind of roads.
I also have to admit that I tend to go straight from local to arterial roads, with one or the other pressed into service for double duty doing collector stuff, though. It ends up looking similar, but it mostly comes from a perspective of wanting to reduce the number of places there is (when I was playing on the Switch, where you can't them off) or ought to be stoplights.
This is awesome. I've been into city builders for a while now, starting with the classic Sim City, but I always winged it, and when things didn't pan out I'd seek out walkthroughs and tips.
I've only recently discovered this channel, and it has helped so much. I'm still learning, but knowing how things work has made playing Cities: Skylines even more enjoyable than ever.
Awesome videos and thanks for your work.
makes so much sense. I always used to put the hospitals and police stations in central roads.
This is becoming very educational, a quick beginner's guide in urban planning: road hierarchy.
Thank you!
I feel like highways by in large are too prominent a feature in the wider landscape. They're entirely devoid of access function and have a variety of sub classes that mar everything from rural spans to the densest city hubs. I'm certain progress toward an in-between for highways and arterial is being well considered by some but on the whole the idea of a highway is still that through put giving way to nothing. It would be excellent to see an increase in flanking roads and slipways and to translate our very widest of roadways servicing the the commercial sprawl sector. It's obvious that many major roadways are used as the go between from local to highway and while traffic can enhance a business district I think those enlarged road ways cause more problems for passage as well as patron access.
Hoping some day to get my hands on CS to test some options on improving fading the boundary between different road transit systems.
I played cities skylines a little when it came out but recently got back into it.
And I have to say that your videos really helped me understand the game better and I'm building my city with a lot more ease and more profit as a result :)
Thanks for these great videos!
I started watching this channel because I am literally terrible at making highway entrances/exits. (Also bad at road setup in general)
Lol. But you are right, he explains it very well
Practice makes perfect! Keep playing and you'll keep building better things. Thanks for watching!
Oh cool I think I just became your 1000th subscriber! Loving the channel so far. Can't wait to see what else you put out. As a console pleb it's always nice to see tutorials that don't use 100+ mods
Woot woot! Thanks so much for subscribing! Especially being #1000! I have an Xbox Series S coming on launch day and plan on starting a series there. We'll see how the transition goes.... 😀
This may be the MOST HELPFUL video I've seen as an intermediate player! THANK YOU!
Once I learned it, its a great system! I was watching someone else's skylines vid and they were saying 'i really try not to have the industry trucks get in the way of everything else as best I can'
Road Hierarchy solves that issue.
Cheers for this, road hierarchy is something I've known about for a while but not really bothered with because it sounded like a hassle, this visual breakdown certainly gave me some tips on getting more serious with it. Subscribed!
Thank you!
Was sent here via a Biffa recommendation and thoroughly enjoyed it. The best demo of road use that I have seen. You seem to really know your stuff. Subscribed.
Glad you enjoyed it! I know this has been done before, but I thought I could bring some other info. Glad you thought so, too!
the mobility and access comparison really helps on how and why it works. Great video.
I observed it myself during my years of playing this and have been following it through trail and error, but you have articulated it nicely, it makes sense.
Thank you!
This helped me allot. I'm building and not drowning in traffic and now i know what road to use when. these vids are great.
I knew nothing about road hierarchy but now that i do i'm gonna try and use it as much as i can
Wow I finally get it! I have been playing this game for years, and now I'm going to start from scratch. This puts all my old Cities to SHAME! Thank you!
Best example of road hierarchy plus the examples of how the roads are best used. Even though I already use this system of roads, this video has shown me how to better utilize the system!
OMG Thank you!! I was wondering if the roadways had more to do with it than " We need this road for more traffic"
the first video of yours i stumbled across was the tutoria series and while i was faring ok just based off fixing my own daily gripes with connectivity and accessibility, definitely was making the error of putting the ploppable facilities on main roads which i realized from watching that series. have had 0 traffic issues since i started putting them on locals with good access to collectors. it is such a blast seeing my cities bustling with activity and good traffic flow 🤭
I kind of intuitively do this, but this video helped me visualize layout and road grid structure much better.
AWESOME VIDEO!
I went from 70% to 85%+ on traffic by using these tips.
That's awesome! Glad it worked!
Would love to see you take a look at the roads in Manila where it's notorious for traffic jams. A 15-minute drive from Quezon City to Makati would take 4-5 hours because of traffic, particularly if you're going through the main arterial road of Metro Manila: EDSA. The main solution they are doing to remedy the traffic is to build lots and lots of flyovers. It would be great seeing you come up with better road layouts :D
Yikes! I'm going to look into it. I love seeing how other countries plan their cities!
@@CityPlannerPlays Yes! Would love to see that. Can be any city with bad planning/ traffic jam then you can show how it could be better using CS. I tried doing that to my city but I don't know anything about city planning 😂
@@CityPlannerPlays planning is an insult to call Philippine Road Network lol.
Thank you so much for this information. I'm newer at building in Cities and have been laying out my roads all wrong. I have a city that I was scratching my head on how to make traffic better and was actually making it worse. Time to fix based off of this. Thank you so much.
No problem! Thanks for watching!!
I got city skylines 2 and found this tutorial super interesting and amazing how transferrable it is even after all this while. Would be cool to get an updated video on road heirarchy for CS2. Especially on the topic of paired couplets. I could never get those running well in my cities somehow.
I'm a civil engineering student myself and I take my major on Transportation and Traffic Management. This game is one of the reasons that makes me want to learn this in college LOL. I've got the basics, I try to use the hierarchy and it works the same as the theory, but I still sometimes can't decide to place some of the buildings on the road. Your zoning makes sense, but for the aesthetic of the game sometimes it's a bit tricky to place some things that can make traffic jam, and now I know why there are still some traffic jam close to my public services. Thanks a bunch Bro for the tip.
For the upcoming content, can you please discuss about modes (Transit Oriented Dev), I know how they function in real life but I haven't been able to applied it correctly in the game (Especially Air and Water Transportations).
Thanks so much for the video, I have entire neighborhoods where I just divided it with the large roads and then used the small roads for everything. I’ll use this in my next city ty!
No problem! Let me know hjow it goes!
I did not think I would be so engaged by this. I love city builders and something about hearing the real-life application makes it even more interesting
Great video man, I utilize road hierarchy in my builds as best I can but your explanation definitely helped me understand how to implement it better. Appreciate the information!
Also any advice on how to effectively utilize one ways? I know for me they can get a little tricky!
@@GoneGamingBadfishBiggest piece of advise is something you probably already do - make sure that you have a couplet pair in most situations unless you're trying to direct traffic away from some place specifically. Also, if you're going to use them like they are collectors or arterials, minimize crossings to the greatest extent you can.
One of the advantages of your build is that it occurs out west. When I lived out there, I was amazed how easy it was to learn cities because of their layout and use of hierarchy principles. Seems like you've done a great job of doing that in your videos, too!
Dude, I just love this laugh of yours 8:50. Feels like a father telling everything is ok
This is the best explanation video on youtube!
Really awesome and easy-to-follow advice. I love how this game just continues to get better the more you play. there’s so much theory that can lend to learning how to “build better”, but a total newb can still have fun starting too
Your videos have helped me alot. Even though I don't have the mods that you used on Bluffside Crossing I still feel like I'm improving. I did know how to play cities skylines but only at a pretty much basic level. Your district zoning video and this one have helped me significantly. Keep up the good work.
Well its time for me to have a lot of major renovation of my city of 150k people in cities skylines. I learned a lot from this. Thank you.
I love going through and doing that! I think it's a tune of fun to keep iterating on things that I've built. The space constraints that you generally have in a built up city keep things interesting, too.
You're doing pretty well to get up to 150k without doing this!
@@namelessfellow I always thought that I could just make one big road with a few 2 way roads junction will work. But they always ended up using the closes 2 way road junction and get stuck. But learning this. I just redesigned everything and they flow much better. I lost like 45k people but it much better to make plans using this method.
@@juliusbenter2369 Yeah, a big part of the problem IMHO is that the speeds of the different roads aren't different enough. The small 2-lane road is 40 km/h and the medium 4-lane road is 50 km/h, and that's just not enough of a difference to get traffic to stay on a collector rather than just winding through the local roads. (And the 6-lane road is 60km/h, so they won't really stay on the arterials either.) The last city I was playing with I ended up making some of the junctions one-way near the highway exits to force traffic elsewhere...
@@namelessfellow Yeah, Thank god for mods. you can change the speeds of roads
might've helped to use game terminology to define the roads for casual players like myself. great video though, thanks for trying to explain this. i always screw up traffic.
That was very, very, very informative and easy to follow. Thank you! Now, I just need to see if I can put into practice in a game starting from scratch and going thru each milestone. Using these ideas plus what I've learned from Biffa should get my cities to have 85-90% traffic.
Absolutely! You can always start out with locals (even dirt roads) and upgrade them over time, so long as you know the end-stage classification of the roadway so you set access appropriately. Good luck!
that's an excellent approach to a subject many youtubers approach, but you addressed it much more professionally (referring to this essential access/mobility concept)
Thank you! I know this topic has been approached by others, but I thought that these were important issues to touch on.
City Planner: Do you use road hierarchy?
Me; I do now!
This is a good video. I never liked compact cities like this. I always give plenty of space between different zones and districts.
Nice explanation of the theory and use cases for different road types!
Btw I've been placing services like hospitals on local roads since I noticed that vehicles have problems entering the buildings. If they have to turn left to enter the building, they can only do that on local roads. On roads with more lanes, they have to circle around the block in order to turn right to get in. I think that causes unnecessary delays for the service vehicles and more road traffic.
Your laugh is so comforting 😆
The most heart-breaking moment for me in CS: gotta choose either parking spots or trees. Like choosing between beer and salty peanuts.
This is a great explanation of road hierarchy. I would like to see this map with the Traffic Manager mod with the traffic set to not de-spawn when it gets problematic. It could be that your traffic is quite as good as it seems. It will probably only be a little worse but I think it will be worse.
That's a good idea. I'll do a followup.
*Opens latest city* "I gotta redo everything"
Great info, Thank you!
I love your videos so much. I love Cities but I am mostly fascinated by your POV.
Thank you so much! I appreciate the kind words!
I'm new to your channel and liked this video. With the DLCs and road assets available for download from the workshop, is there a general methodology or principal to determine if an asset is a collector, arterial, etc..? 2 lanes = x, 4 lanes=y, 6 lanes=z for instance?
Super helpful info about local roads, I was doing this entirely wrong.
Glad it was helpful!
This video is incredibly helpful when it comes to road layouts and access, but it would be nice if there were a video in which you fully explained Local vs collectors vs Arterials... e.g. the game lists them in relation to size but the astute observer will notice than you can have a four lane high way, a small four-lane road, and a four lane road w/ meridian. So would be the characteristic we would be looking for to use them as you're describing. I think this was buried in one of your earliest videos, but I could be incorrect.
I know this is a year old but im wondering the same thing lol
Great help, thank you
Can you (as a city planner) make a wishlist video talking about ideas to make this game better? Your knowledge can improve this game.
This game can be better. The game starts with calling us “mayors” building our own city. Mayors’ job is to manage a city. That’s what this game supposed to be and it only focuses on managing traffic.
I found out that the developer’s first game is a traffic managing game. So this game and how well it does focus heavy on traffic. I give them credit for that.
That's a good idea! I think that the main question would be is this a city painter, a local government management sim, or something in between. For example, the Mayor title is interesting, because there are different types of local government structures.
The community I work in has a Council-Manager structure where the mayor has influence, but no more power, than any other council member. The City Admin - which is a hired, civil servant position, actually runs the City. This included all departments including Planning, Engineering, Public Works, etc. They have the ability to really influence things in a way that a mayor - even in a strong mayor municipality - never could - sitting in on meetings and directing the staff to do things such as fix traffic in a specific area. There is also a TON of interaction with officials that set staff priorities. Elected officials really set the tone for what the City will work on. This is one of the main reasons I've been working on transit and active transportation facilities over the last few years....
That said - yes. I'll make a video on this. Great topic and it'll be a blast. Thanks for the idea!
@@CityPlannerPlays this is so cool and can't wait to see that video!!
2:26 took a picture of this diagram for reference. Soooo helpful!
There are a couple mods that let you turn off the zoning on specific roads. That lets you turn off zoning on your arterial/collector roads and push the local roads closer to them. It's nice to be able to have houses backing right up to main streets and it helps maximize space in the neighborhoods.
I'd also be curious to hear what you think about superblocks, as used in Barcelona. They look interesting, but I haven't been able to really test them in the game yet.
One more question, do you have any hard data on optimal block sizes? Seems there has to be a balance between blocks so small that most of the city is paved and blocks so big it takes twenty minutes to get to the nearest cross street to get out. And I'm sure "optimum" is relative to the zoning category.
I really need to find that mod. I hate the way that buildings end up zoning on both a collector and a local road. The best that I've been able to do is put a fence on the collector to make zoning not appear there. That said, if you find the mod - let me know. I'll look, too.
I think that Barcelona's superblock concept could be a real winner. Cities are going to need to embrace active transportation and alternative mobility options to improve resiliency. And we don't really have time to adjust - climate change is here right now. These are really the only tools available at the local level to do so. But there are obviously a ton of other benefits, including health, improved sense of community, increased density, and reduced crashes. The silver lining of COVID is that cities here in the US are getting more and more willing to use public rights of way for things other than traditional transportation infrastructure and gathering spaces. This can only be good for our cities.
Optimal block size is an interesting subject. I'd answer with a question - optimal for whom? Cities with short block lengths (Portland - 200' x 200' or 8 units by 8 units in game) are excellent for pedestrians but a real mess for cars and transit. Tons of intersections means safety concerns. And short blocks mean more pavement, more environmental impacts, tons more cost to maintain. Conversely, in Salt Lake City, the original Mormon pioneers created block of 660' x 660' -10 full acres! - or 25 x 25 units in the game. The primary purpose of this design was for ease of moving cattle and simplicity of design. In modern times, these block sizes provide a ton of flexibility, but can lead to a loss of vibrancy at the street level. But it's just tough to be a pedestrian when each block is 1/8 mile. Further, the City owns way less right-of-way, so "fixing" their superblocks would be hard and quiet costly.
Long story short - there is no consensus. But I'd think that something in between is probably best. Denver (260' x 400 or 10 by 15 units) is easy to navigate as a pedestrian, cyclist, or transit rider and works quiet well for lot sizes. If pushed, that is probably where I'd fall. Others may prefer a NYC style 200 x 922 (8 x 35) with pedestrian cut throughs. I think that there are advantages and disadvantages to both.
Sorry about the book, but I LOVE topics like this. Thanks for the question! What do you think? Drawing upon your personal experiences, what has, in your opinion, been best?
@@CityPlannerPlays I can't say I have an opinion on the block question. Though I do think something like 8x8 looks silly and wasteful. I read a guide or discussion post on Steam that used calculus to determine the best ratio of zoned space to paved area and came up with 10x14 as being close to the point where diminishing returns kicked in. But his analysis didn't include traffic flow or other factors, just space usage. I figure the game forces a 10x format since anything wider will just waste space in the middle of the block. Though there could be exceptions for larger buildings or houses that back up to a pond.
If you search the workshop for "zoning" under the mod category you'll find the mods I mentioned. I forget which one I went with. But it lets me turn off the zoning before I build a road or toggle it off afterwards. A workaround without mods is to build the roads just far enough apart that you can anchor the zoning on the local road and leave a 1-block gap between the zone and the collector. That wastes a bit of space, but looks very authentic when you fill that gap with trees as a barrier.
As a professional driver for over twenty years, roads are something of an obsession for me. We won't talk about all the time I spent cussing city planners and civil engineers for the atrocities they committed.
@@CityPlannerPlays here's the zoning mod I use. It's a simple on/off deal.
steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=592076973
And here's that guide on block size.
steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2035626231
@@CityPlannerPlays I ran the math for optimal grids in-game; see my guide at steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2035626231
I agree there isn't a best one in real life, but with the game only zoning 32m from a road regardless of zoning type or road type, there's a best answer for a full square grid: 12×12 (for small 16m roads, since obviously Road Hierarchy means you're not making your grid using collector roads). Of course if you're using something like Campus or Industries then it's not zoned areas, and the analysis is completely different since the 32m zoning depth is irrelevant.
I've been using 10×20 grids in CSL lately. That's big enough to fit larger buildings (like the vanilla university) but small enough to have good access. I like that I can fill it cheaply with two small parks to make a noise buffer. And the simple ratio means it tiles nicely -- a herringbone pattern would probably be really annoying to drive in real life, but seems to work quite well in-game since it means only 3-way junctions.
On Portland: while 200' is the canonical answer, I bet it was originally 198', since that's 3 chains.
@@johnterpack3940 Oh, thanks for already having linked my guide! I think this guide is a good demonstration of why the grid calculations _don't_ need to be traffic-aware. With Roadway Hierarchy, the grid part is for Local roads _only_, because all the connections mean the grid is about access, not mobility. The fun thing about the grid, to me, is figuring out how best to break up the grid to run a collector through it to add the extra mobility, and how that connects in. (Is the collector axis-aligned too? Does it go at an angle like in Lee's design? Does it connect to the corners of blocks or the middles of blocks? How often does it connect? ...)
Going back and playing some SC4 and wow, I need to somehow take the knowledge you have and plant it in my brain somehow. This is something I would love to get a grip on as my current level of planning is ... rather lacking to say the least.
The CIMs just check distance and travel speed.
So using streets with the same speed limit will get you no change of driving behavior.
These are good tips. Personally, I almost never zone the arterials. If anything, just infrastructure buildings on those.
Same. Technically Highways are arterials, so skipping to collectors isn't a problem. I do it all the time and it happens all the time in the real world!
Me who just plans a small Minecraft town: Hmm yes very interesting I will binge this content from now on.
Something else I think is important--and shown in the video but only briefly discussed--is to have both straight through and perimeter arterial/collector networks. Also, not only do developments need at least two exits, the two exits should preferably lead somewhere manifestly different and not just 20 tiles down the same collector. That's shown in the video, too, with access to perpendicular and parallel roads.
Great video. Would it be possible to get a follow up about when and how to use one-way roads? Because I've seen many real-life cities use them, and although you did talk a little about them in this video, it would be cool to know the best practises and such, for when to use them.
Great suggestion! Adding this to my topics list!
this should hopefully relieve my city of traffic jams