Upgrading a conjested road into an Avenue with minimum disruption.

[CSGdesign]

Hello everybody.
I've recently published a continuing Mayor's Diary (which you can browse here) which is full of a lot of this sort of stuff, but I thought I'd edit and move one of the entries over here since it is more of a tutorial than a diary entry, so is probably useful as a reference.

When you're building a city and traffic demands make a road so conjested that it needs to be upgraded to an avenue, it is often very expensive (and heart-breaking) to knock down all the surrounding suburbs and rezone it all around a nice shiny new avenue.

So below is a "tutorial" or a guide about how I upgrade roads to form avenues in a realistic way, taking the time to calculate costs and keep destruction at a bare minimum...



This is the area we've identified as being heavilly conjested and requiring re-development.
It needs to be done as cost-effectively as possible, and at every stage we need to limit the amount of public upheaval and inconvenience.  If possible we need to ensure that at all times during construction works traffic can still flow, even if its in a limited way.



Area's 1 and 4 (and 5, which is not shown in the above map, but is a little further to the north in Poshland) are the areas that are least conjested.  But if we're gonna upgrade the whole area, we might as well do it all now to prevent us having to upset sims later anyways.  If we upgrade just areas 2 and 3 now then the resulting traffic flow will only ensure areas 1,4, and 5 become rapidly more conjested, so we'll treat the entire thing as one big project.

Area 2 is the most conjested through-flow road (Miller Road).
Area 3 is heavilly conjested with bus and car traffic taking sims to and from the rail terminal and the ferry (immediately next to the rail station, between Cove Park and Outlook Park).

So let's begin.

Step 1) - Rail crossings (especially with realistic slope mods) are the most difficult to work with because rails have such a slight incline allowance.  So where-ever possible I work with the crossing FIRST and make everything else fit to that road-works.



Step 2) - Use the bulldozer tool and hover over the various buildings and structures in the area you want to upgrade, to get a feel for what costs what.  Always choose to upgrade and build infrastructure in the least-expensive way possible, so that means spending as little as possible bulldozing as well as building.  Notice how public structures and commercial buildings are always more expensive, and how higher-density buildings are more expensive than lower-density buildings.  This gives you a good idea of where to place your new roads.




Step 3) - Having identified what buildings you'd like to issue a "Compulsory Acquistion" notice to, let's begin at the rail crossing, and work through the road upgrade from there.



Step 4) - Surgically bulldoze individual structures that are in your way, and especially road intersections and street to road tiles, as these can make dragging a new avenue difficult.  It's much easier to drag an avenue and then connect roads and streets to it, but remember you're trying to be cost effective AND disrupt traffic as little as possible, so dont bulldoze unless you are having difficulty dragging your avenue.



Step 5) - Drag your avenue rail crossing.



Step 6) - Repeat the process for the next stage of the development.  Take the time to delight in the number of phonecalls and meetings that are being disrupted by the jack-hammers and earth-moving machinery's noise.



Step 7) - Continue the development carefully, one stretch at a time, always choosing the least expensive direction, but without letting your bean counting make your avenue start heading off into low-density suburbs... remember what point A and point B that you're trying to connect is and ensure you're always choosing an efficient route between them as well.  It's a balancing act.  Nobody said it was gunna be easy.



Step 8) - As you create new roads, try not to interrupt existing roads' traffic flow.  All this development can and should be going on while the simulator is running.  Roads never just pop into existance overnight.  They shouldn't in your city either.  If you're a real nutbag like me, build them slowly over months of game time, for that added realism.  Traffic will NOT thank you for it and sims will almost certainly move out, but sacrifice for the greater good, eh.



Step 9) - To minimise the amount of cleanup and risk of "isolated streets" and other misfortunes from your development, re-zone and reconnect roads as you go.  This is a great opportunity to make zones near the new (and what will become very heavilly trafficked in the future) road into commercial (loves traffic) instead of residential (hates traffic).



Step 10) - Try to go around commercial buildings if you can, because a single commercial structure can cost as much to bulldoze as building 100 or 200 meters of avenue through low-density residential.  That beige scraper above this stretch costs $700 to bulldoze, and those smaller ones to it's right cost about $500 each... the decision to go around them is easy.



Step 11) - Dont forget to connect your roads and streets as you go!  It'll be a shame if you come back in a few game months and find enter suburbs that were "cut off" from the new development being abandoned because you forgot about one lousy street connection.



Step 12) - When larger buildings are demolished, they leave their "driveway points" in the direction the entire structure had faced, which can often be different to the smaller constituent zones you had originally laid which it had amalgamated to build onto.  Make sure these are re-zoned to face their neighbouring streets or of course they wont develop.



Step 13) - If you thought rail crossings were hard, try rail crossings close to rail bridges.  Make sure you dont build right up to this sort of crossing and then find out too late your road needs to cross two or three tiles to the left.



Step 14) - Build your crossing first, and then connect to that - it's SO much easier that way.



Step 15) - Admire your handiwork.  The fewer buildings you've knocked down, the better the job you've done.  Of course unless you have reserves near your road then some buildings WILL be knocked down, but try to minimise it.  Now let the simulator run while you work on other areas and when you come back this area should be developped as well or better than when you started, and should have zero road conjestion problems for many, many game years to come.



I hope that this is a useful tutorial for anyone that wants to upgrade their roads in a realistic way.
It is much more time consuming that a complete bulldoze and re-zone but the end result is much more satisfying I think.  Matter of opinion, of course, you may disagree completely, but there you have it.

Enjoy!