Realistic Cities For Dummies

[nemanjanv7]

Hey that looks great as always . Just one noob question: Where can I find that nice-looking grass? What's the name of it?

[smileymk]

Hi all.

Schulmanator: Thanks.

nemanjanv7: That would be the dense grass MMP, part of the HBS Tropical Plants set. Highly recommended.

Now who's ready for some advanced planning?

Lesson 5 - Advanced Planning

In Lesson 1 you learnt to complete a detailed preliminary plan for your region, which should have provided you with a clear idea about what you want to do.

However, the plan you did then did not take account of the terrain involved. If you were to follow it exactly, your city would not look right, as you'd have retaining walls everywhere as well as steep slopes on your transport networks.

It's important to remember that the landscape came first, and we humans had to build our settlements around it. To create a city realistically, you must make it fit the terrain. And a big part of that involves modifying your plan to fit the terrain.

To do this, you need a region image which you can print off to make a paper plan (or put into Paint to make a computerised version). You could do this in-game in the Region view, but you'll probably find it doesn't fit the screen properly, making it unsuitable to use as a plan.

A better alternative is to use the Region Census, a simple program allowing proper region images to be made. 
Once you've downloaded the program, load it up and you should get something like this:As you can see, it's a fairly simple program. The first task here is to load up our region. To do this, go to File > Open Region:


Then find your region - the correct path (underlined in red) is loaded by default, so it's just a matter of finding our region folder and clicking OK:


Now the display in the main window should look something like this:


Here you've got some info about your region's RCI population. Fascinating it may be, but we're after a region shot.
To get at our region image, you need to click on the Image tab (underlined in red). The screen will now show this:

That's a proper region shot! Make sure you tick the Shrink to Fit and Show Borders boxes (underlined in red) to ensure you a) get the whole region in, and b) have the city tile boundaries showing for guidance when planning.

Now save the image by going to File > Save Image:


Save it somewhere you can find it. It's a good idea to save it as a JPEG file, because a JPEG takes less space than any other type of image file.

What we're going to do now is put the image into a Word document so we can print it onto paper, enabling us to have a region shot to refer to at all times during development.

I'm going to assume that most of you have Word and know a bit about it, so I won't show you what it looks like at first.

You will notice that the paper is portrait. Whilst this is great for documents, a region image is landscape, and hence the paper should be landscape for a region image.

To change to landscape, you need to go to File > Page Setup like so:


You'll get a new window with all sorts of fancy, mostly irrelevant stuff on it. The only bit you need to pay attention to is the Orientation menu:


As you can see, you need to click the Landscape option, then OK. Your page will now go landscape.

Now you can put in your image. To do this, go to Insert > Picture > From File... and find your image:


Now you'll end up with something like this:

Now you need to resize the image to fit the page. Click on it and you will get little white squares at the corners and sides, as well as a Picture toolbar. Unfortunately, they don't let you resize the image freely.

What you need to do to overcome this is to wrap the text differently. On the Picture toolbar, click the button showing a black dog in a box. Then click either Behind Text or In Front of Text, like so:

You will see that the little white squares in the corners turn to white circles. Move the image to the top left corner by click-dragging it. Click on the bottom-right circle and drag the image to the other side.
Make sure to hold the SHIFT key to keep the image in proportion.

After all that, your screen should look like this:

Don't worry about that white space at the bottom. It's good to have this because it allows you to make notes about the finer aspects of your region.

Now that you have a suitable region shot for advanced planning, print it off and get out your coloured pens, as well as your original plans.

Now you need to make an advanced plan, using your region shot. It's very simple - just copy your original plan, but make adjustments so that the city fits the terrain.

You can also change other aspects of the plan you're not happy with. Don't add too much detail - you have your original plans for that.

Here's my advanced plan:

You can see it's simple and easy to follow, and is very similar to the original plan. But there are a few adjustments to fit the terrain. Here are some points to bear in mind when doing your advanced plan:

- Transport networks should be kept as flat as possible - and that means going around hills instead of over them. This is especially true of railways and motorways, less so of roads and paths.

- Landmarks need relatively flat terrain - otherwise you can expect ugly retaining walls.

- It doesn't matter if estates aren't that flat. In fact, it can be a good thing.

- Marinas and beaches should be on their appropriate bits of terrain (you can see this on the plan).

- Add labels so that you know what's what - but don't put in too much detail. 

And that is that for advanced planning.

Now that we've done the planning and terraforming, we can start to build our city.

We'll start with the infrastructure, and the railways, which will be the focus of our next lesson.

See you then.
Chris

[mike3775]

Although I don't follow everything you mentioned in this thread, I have followed some of them and I have to say thanks for the tips. 

Usually when I build a city, I get bored with it before 20 years game time, but by going slowly and going on a plan ahead style, I am now on year 50 of a city and only have 20K people(usually after 5 years I am above 100K) and I am having fun creating way different styles in the city.

I love the 3x3 industrial zoning idea the best, now instead of having a major industrial area in one part of the city, I now have several small "industrial parks" surrounded by "commercial parks" with residential area's around them, which seems to be working well.  Also great idea on the pedestrian paths, I have a crapload of people walking to work when usually I have few except for a few tiles away.  And they take the bus now also, no idea why, but I am glad that I am not wasting my time on buses anymore  lol

Thanks for this awesome guide 

[amapper]

Nice helpful tutorial. Even though I have the Scracc tool, I liked the tip using paint to work with the config file.

[smileymk]

Hey guys.


I'm afraid that, due to this lesson taking quite a bit longer than I expected to make, all you'll get today is the first part of Lesson 6. I'm doing this to a) keep you guys from having to wait too long, b) to have a good-quality update posted within 45 days of the last, and c) to preserve the quality of the lesson (this being more important than speed!).


Don't fret, you'll still learn lots today.


mike3775: You're welcome. I like the way you're building your cities - it sounds like you're adopting a similar system to what we have here in Milton Keynes. It works well here, and it should work well for you. Feel free to show a few pics of your work here if you want some advice.


amapper: I'm glad you feel that way, and can I ask you what Scracc is? I've never heard of it and would quite like to know about it now that you've mentioned it.


Now for the first bit of the Railways lesson.


Lesson 6 - Railways (Part 1)

First of all, you might be wondering why you'd build the transport infrastructure before anything else.


It's the same reason why railway modellers lay their track before anything else - because it's much easier to build and do properly now than it would be if we had to put it through the middle of a city.


Railways are probably the hardest transport type to do properly, so it makes sense to do this before roads and motorways - it's much easier to build a motorway around a fix point (e.g. a bridge) than a railway.


This first part will concentrate on the south-west city tile, where, if you remember our plan, the railway begins at a terminus station, and then continues to the north through the hills.


So, as our railway starts at a terminus, it makes sense to start construction with this station. The first job is to decide on a suitable building. Being at the end of a main line, it needs to be fairly big and have somewhere between 6-12 platforms.


It's also a good idea to choose an impressive-looking station - remember that this station would have been built in the Victorian/Edwardian era, when the railway companies considered stations a big part of their corporate image, and hence built them to impress.


Oh, and make sure you actually use a terminus station. It's not good enough to use a through station and only drag out the tracks on one side.


The model I've chosen for this is the ITS King's Cross station, which, with 8 platforms and an impressive facade, meets our criteria well:



Of course, we can't just leave it like that. We've got to put a few essentials around it, starting with roads.


How you do this will depend on your plan and what station you use, but generally speaking, you'll want road access at the front and sides. It's also a good idea to leave a bit of space at the front for some essentials we'll come to in a minute. Here I've used streets to get to 3 sides (and the access roads at the back), which connect to a road:

You can also see 2 parallel, alternating one-way roads, which we're going to put bus stops on.


Being quite important, those junctions off the main road are going to need turn lanes:



Now you need to add the bus stops. You put these on the one-way roads, making sure to use road-top versions and to put the shelters on the side of the road which the cars drive on (this depends on how you have it set):



Now add a couple of car parks on the sides, using your preferred models - I used this Modular 2-level Parking system that I have in my Plugins:



Now we just need to finish off the station by filling in that grassy patch in between the bus stops and the building - for which plazas are best:



You can see I've also used the NVBC Fountains for aesthetic purposes and the Sandstone Ped Mall piece to create a central walkway to the station door. And about those trees - I don't like them either. They'll be got rid of when we come to do modding later on in the project.


With the building done, we can now focus on the railway itself.


We'll start with the station throat. You need to make a layout that allows a train to get from any track to any platform. You also need to make sure that you use the wide-radius points you get with the NAM. This image shows how it works in this particular case (8-track terminus to 4-track main line):



Now you need to take the railway along its route, which you should have planned already.


However, you will need to think very carefully about where your railway will go - you need to keep gradients to a minimum, which means you'll have to go around hills instead of over them. Where you have to climb a hill, you need to create a path whereby the slope is as gentle as possible. This will often involve building curves.


To make sure you pick the best route possible for your railway, I would advise you to have the grid on at all times when building, and also your mini-map, which will show you the elevation of your city and give you a best path through it.


Where you need to build curves, you need to make them as smooth as you can. You'll need to start by flattening the terrain for them, because the wide rail curve pieces seem to have issues with even the smallest terrain discrepancies:



Make sure you use the layout you see here. This will give you a flat area that is the correct size for the curves you're going to build.


Now bulldoze the road tiles (keep one as a reference point) and, starting from the orthogonal end, place an Orthogonal - 18.4 FARR piece, and then a Diagonal - FARR piece immediately afterwards:



Then you can connect up the rails.


Sometimes you'll have to be a bit creative when it comes to routing your railway. You might have to use curves and FARR pieces. As long as you keep the curves smooth, the gradients gentle and the railway going in the right direction, you'll be fine - but it's a good idea to plan what you're going to do before you do it, because you do have to fit it to the terrain, and getting a satisfactory result isn't always easy:



Are we done? No. Our plan calls for this main line to be electrified, so let's get on with it.


The best tool for the job is the SFBT Rail Catenaries. DON'T use the Rail Catenary mod, you'll see why when we build the branch line in the next instalment.


Placing catenary is fairly straightforward - you just have to remember these simple rules:


- On plain track, the spacing between masts is 3-4 tiles on orthogonal track* and 2 diagonal tiles** on diagonal track.


- The spacing needs to be reduced on curves, such that the overhead cable (you'll have to pretend it's there) stays over the track at all times.


- There should be a catenary mast at the throat of every point, and at the back as well on each branch.


(* 4 tiles if you want accuracy, 3 tiles if you're more concerned with making it look nice. Probably best to mix it up a bit.)


(** '2 diagonal tiles' = 2 tiles up/down, 2 tiles across from the previous mast.)


You should be able to see how these rules have been applied at the station:



On the curve:



And on the complex bit through the valley:



And that concludes the first part of the Railways lesson.


The next part will focus on the north-west city tile, where you'll learn how to build a junction station, a single-track branch line, and a freight branch.


See you then.
Chris

[smileymk]

Time for Part 2.


Lesson 6 - Railways (Part 2)


Continuing from where we left off, we'll start by constructing some more main line, using FARR pieces in this case to keep the cutting and filling to a minimum and the railway relatively straight. FARR puzzle pieces are not slope tolerant at all, so you need to first prepare the terrain with 3x2 blocks of single road tiles:



Now you can bulldoze the tiles and plop FARR straight pieces in their place:



After this, our plan calls for a junction station where the main line reduces to 2 tracks and a single-track branch goes off to the east, so let's build that.


You need to prepare your terrain like you did for the FARR pieces. You need to flatten the tiles that your station will occupy (find this out through the preview of the lot - that blue block you get before plopping something), and then add a stub at the other end, in line with your track, for the track to come out of on the other side. The end result should look a little like this:



Now delete the road tiles, plop the station, drag the tracks through and drag a road/street out at the front, like so:



It's important to choose the right station for the job. As this is a minor junction station, the building should be kept quite small and unspectacular (functionalist buildings are best), and the platforms should be >6 tiles long, like you see here.


Now we have to add a car park and a bus stop to this station to make it complete. This starts with flattening a small bit of terrain behind the road for the car park, like so:



Now replace those tiles with your favourite car park lots (I've used the Hooha47 Modluar Parking set here), and also plop a bus stop or two outside the station:



Now it's time to create the actual junction with the branch line. You'll need to have the Rail Addon Mod installed.


Again, prepare your terrain first. You need to create space for the following puzzle pieces:


- Dual Track Crossover
- 90-degree STR off Orthogonal Rail
- Orthogonal Rail - Parallel Orthogonal Rail Switch


We're going to plop these in the above order, on the right hand side, so you can figure out how big an area you need to flatten out (and don't forget to include space for the stubs).


Once you're done, plop the puzzle pieces:



Now it's just a case of extending the main line by dragging it along the best route through the terrain, and putting in smooth curves as appropriate using the technique you learnt in Part 1:






Notice how it runs between the hills.


Now, the plan called for a freight branch to the left at the northern edge, but as you can see, there's a hill in the way. So instead of doing it now, we're going to do it when we build the power plant and design the railway so that it connects to the mainline about a mile further up the line.


So, with the region boundary reached, you might be forgiven for thinking we're done with it. Not a chance. We still have to electrify it.


You learnt some rules for electrifying railways last time out. Well, you'll be happy to hear that this task is just a case of applying these rules:



And no, we're not going to electrify the branch line. Electrification is something reserved for big-daddy main lines, important connecting routes and urban routes - not single-track country branch lines. (This is the main reason why I'd advocate the use of the SFBT Rail Catenaries rather than the Rail Catenary Mod.) Moving on:



OK, now we can start work on the branch line. From your STR curve, drag out some rail (to return to ground level smoothly) and then plop an STR Starter Piece, like you see here:



Now, building a branch line is much like building a mainline - you need to pick the best route through the terrain. But a branch line is slightly easier as it can be more curvaceous than a mainline, and slopes don't matter as much either (within reason - use your slope mod!).


However, you still need things like smooth curves to make a branch line look realistic. It is perfectly possible to do this with STR - however, as FA-STR doesn't exist yet, we're restricted to using the 45-degree curves. That, however, is perfectly alright for a branch line.


The technique for making STR curves is as follows. Begin by, well, you can probably guess:



Now bring the track to your stubs:



Now drag out the curve to convert that 2-track rail into STR:



We've done this to ensure that it stays as STR on the other side of the curve. Now it's time to rip out that model railway curve and replace it with a proper branch line curve:



Now you know that, you can take the STR along your planned route:



When you move into the next tile, you'll see that the STR has sadly reverted to its twin-track state:



Not to worry - just plop an STR Starter piece to resume order:



Now you can continue your STR as if nothing has happened:



Our plan calls for a simple branch station on the right edge of that picture - so let's make it happen.


The station you choose here should be as small as possible, with minimal facilities. I've chosen one of the STR stations from www.bripizza.net (well worth a look if you don't know about it, there's some stuff there that's very useful - although knowledge of Japanese might be handy) (and this is just a suggestion, BTW, I'm not endorsing the site!!!), which occupies a 3x1 footprint - so it follows that we need to flatten a 5x1 area (you should know why):



Now replace the middle 3 tiles with the station, and connect up the tracks (and provide road access):



Now you can complete the branch by dragging it to the end. When done, your regional rail network should look something like how you planned it:



And that is that for railways.


Next time we'll look at motorways and expressways.


Until then,
Chris

[Risu]

Wonderful! Fantastic! I learned alot from this one.

[smileymk]

Hello.


Risu: Thanks.


Now, who wants to build some motorways?


Lesson 7 Part 1 - Motorways


IMPORTANT: Since I use the LHD version of the game (i.e. the cars drive on the left), all instructions here are written for LHD users. Those who use RHD should use the opposite direction to what is stated here.


In this lesson we'll build the motorway that we planned to run through the north-west city tile, including the 3-level stacked roundabout and flat roundabout interchanges that we planned back in Lesson 1.


You'll need the RHW for this lesson (and the next). You really should have this already, but if you don't, you can find it here. I'd also highly recommend an RHW-compatible slope mod to go with it.


With motorways it is usually best to start from a junction - so we'll start by building the 3-level stacked roundabout, from which we can drag out a motorway to the south.


You might also see this type of junction referred to as a 'volleyball interchange', since it looks a bit like one. Essentially it is a grade-separated junction where two through routes are connected by a shared roundabout, which is accessed by slip roads.


They're great for motorway-expressway* and expressway-expressway interchanges, especially when most of the traffic passes straight through the junction.


They're not recommended, however, for junctions between motorways, unless you like major congestion on your motorways.


* For the purposes of this MD, 'expressway' refers to a road built to (near) motorway standard, but which does not carry the legal designation as 'motorway' and hence is open to all traffic. It's basically a dual carriageway with grade-separated junctions.


To create this interchange, start by dragging a one-way road circle exactly as shown below, in the clockwise direction:



As a guide, there should be 4 clear tiles between the stubs. The stubs should be oriented so that the entry ramps point away from the roundabout, and vice versa.


If you're wondering what those single road tiles are doing, they're part of the preparation for the expressway to run over the top of this. We'll finish that later, but for now, we'll focus on the motorway, which will go underneath the roundabout.


Since we don't have 3 levels of RHW to play with yet, we have to put the motorway into a tunnel to go under the roundabout and expressway.


Start by preparing 15m holes on two opposite sides of the roundabout, using the hole digger lots. There should be 2 clear tiles between the bottom of this ditch and the roundabout, as shown below:



Now, since RHW can't have tunnels, we have to use the avenue tool instead to build the tunnel. Drag it out between the ditches:



Now drag out the Avenue to create a gently-sloped approach to the tunnel on both sides. (You can also use Rail to create a much gentler slope first - and this is what I'd recommend doing for a much better-looking interchange):



Now plop, on both sides, Type C or Type F RHW ramps. Which ones you use will depend on where you're setting your city:


- RHW-4 should always be used to lead into the tunnel, since this provides the best transition to Avenue.


- If you're in the UK, plop the RHW-6S - RHW-4 splitter piece.


- If you're in Europe, just use the regular Type C RHW-4 ramps.


- If you're in the US, use whatever piece takes your fancy.


- Use RHW-4 for exit ramps, and MIS for entry ramps. If you can't go straight to RHW-4 from the carriageway, use the MIS piece and plop a MIS - RHW-4 transition as soon as you can.


If you're elsewhere, you're going to have to find out how wide your local motorways are and choose your pieces appropriately.


We're going to use the RHW-4 Type C ramps on the south side, and RHW-6S Type F ramps on the north side.


Flatten the terrain beforehand, plop the pieces and replace the avenues with RHW-4 (up to the tile before the tunnel starts):



Now use the appropriate pieces to complete your ramps, as shown below:



Good! Now we can turn our attention to the expressway that will go over the top.


Start by flattening out a couple of tiles on the 2 sides of the roundabout you didn't use for the motorway, making sure to make the flattened areas 2 tiles wide and halfway between the ramp stubs:



Now use hole-digger lots to make 15m embankments for the expressway, making sure to keep 2 clear tiles between the stub and the roundabout:



Now place RHW-4 Ground-Elevated On Slope transitions on the stubs (place the cursor on the steep bit and get them the right way round!), and then use the RHW tool to drag out a beautiful ERHW-4 flyover:



On the west side of this, we'll build the ramps.


Since this is an expressway, it can be realistically built to a slightly lower standard than a motorway and hence we can use the RHW-4 Type A Wide ramps instead of the Type C ramps, and save on a bit of space.


Start by flattening out an area as shown below. Make sure it is far enough from the roundabout such that you have room to build properly graded slip roads:



Now drag roads to create the gentle-ish slopes required between the ramp and flyover/roundabout:



Now replace these with your ramps and with the RHW:



On the east side, it's a bit trickier, because we have a city tile boundary getting in the way. So all we can do is build the slip roads and put the ramps on the next tile over.


The good news is it's nothing complex. Prepare the slope as before:



Now drag out the ramps and carriageways, and plop neighbour connector pieces as shown below:



We'll come to do the ramps when we build the expressway in the next lesson.


Now, with all the ramps and carriageways finished, you'd think we were done, wouldn't you? How very wrong you are.


To finish off the interchange, we're going to use some Exit Lane Marker pieces on the RHW-4 and 6S. They are found under the RHW Cosmetic Pieces menu. Plop them as you see below:



Really there should be arrows as well, but the interim Euro Texture Mod I'm using doesn't support LHD arrow texture pieces, so we'll just have to leave them for now until mrtnrln releases his completed version (which, as I understand it, he'll be doing very soon).


OK, now we've completed our interchange. Let's step back and admire our work:



This can be prettied up with trees, road signs and other eyecandy - but that is something for another lesson.


Right now our focus is on building this motorway. Like with railways, you need to pick your route carefully so that it takes the flattest route through the terrain. That will require you to build curves, for which there is a technique to use.


Start, as always, by flattening:



Now drag out the curve, and a bit of motorway beyond it to ensure we keep the RHW-4 after we build the curve piece:



Now plop an RHW-4 Double Curve piece over the top of the dragged curve:



I think you'll all agree that that's much better. Now, take your motorway along its path, going between hills and keeping the course as flat as you can:



At this point, we've managed to run into our STR branch line, so we need to build a flyover to cross it.


You know how to start:



And what to do next:



Now, the ERHW-4 / STR intersection needed here isn't supported yet, so we have to temporarily revert our STR back to regular rail with the STR - Dual Track Short Transition piece. Place one on each side, as shown here:



Finish by connecting everything up:



Now we progress to the end of the motorway, where it ends at a flat roundabout.


You learnt how to do this in Project 1. If you've forgotten, go back there and read up on it. It will teach you to do this:



Now, that fountain in the middle is part of the piece. It indicates that there is a north-south FLUP underpass running underneath the roundabout. We don't need to finish this underpass for now, but we'll keep the infrastructure in case we want to install the underpass later.


And that is all for this lesson.


Next time we'll build the expressway.


See you then,
Chris

[MandelSoft]

^^ The cosmetic pieces with model arrows are actually standard included in the RHW mod and thus my mod will work with an LHD version of the game. Only the TuLEPs would not be fully supported.

Anyway, nice tutorial, although I would use another interchange setup, like a cloverleaf or a cloverturbine...

[Terring7]

Your tutorial about railroads is very interesting . I guess it can be very useful for also monorails and trams, right?
As about the highways, I prefer to mix the Maxis highways with the double decker R.H.W.. It takes less space and it's still very effective. Of course my favourite way of connecting cities is by subways

[Risu]

Excellent. I recently have had the urge to build an expressway, just for the sake of practice.

[ricardomiranda]

Good job !

[smileymk]

Hey guys. I thought I'd just do a quick replies post, if you don't mind, because you haven't heard from me in a while and the expressways lesson still needs some work before it's ready (mainly due to my typically temperamental laptop).


mrtnrln: In the lesson I was using the interim V5 textures. Since then, they've been replaced with your more complete version and I must say it is excellent. I've yet to see if the arrows work but I know you wouldn't release it if they didn't.


As for the interchange, I would not use a cloverleaf myself, due to the weaving, the space and the fact that there are only 2 in the whole of Britain. I know they're the norm in Holland and Germany, but they're unheard of here, and remember, I can only teach you what is realistic to me - i.e. how it is here.


A cloverturbine is a good idea and wouldn't be too hard to make - but it's more suited to inter-motorway interchanges than motorway-expressway interchanges like the one built here.


Terring7: I'm sorry to say that monorails and trams are rather different, because they have different uses to railways. I guess in terms of routing it's fairly similar, but that's it.


Maxis motorways might be compact, but they don't come close to the standard achieved with the RHW. Try it - you'll find that you can actually make very good interchanges in a relatively small space.
I can see why you like the DDRHW, it is cool, but for realism, it needs to be kept to urban areas, and even there it should only be used occasionally.
Remember that real-world examples of double-decker motorways are very rare (there is only one in England and it is a very short section).


You say you use tubes to connect cities? A good idea, seeing as how you don't have to make room for them. It doesn't fit my style, purely because I like building roads and railways and the challenge of building them, but if you like using subways then it's well worth sticking at it. Your cities, your rules.


Risu: An excellent idea. I'll be keeping a close eye on the 'Show us your intersections' thread, should you post something there. And feel free to show it here if you'd like some pointers.


ricardomiranda: Thanks.


So that's it for now. Like I said, this was no more than a replies post. The lesson will come when it is ready. Thanks for being patient, and remember the timeless maxim - "Good things come to those who wait".


Oh wait, I almost forgot something:



I'll just leave you to , er, wonder as to how this was made...


Chris

[j-dub]

I know exactly how that was made.

It was made by someone whose not forgotten, and actually engineered some better highway setups then I have seen in the states. However, since someone like me is used to a flipped driving direction, and you would not want someone like me turning down the wrong way at a high rate of speed to a head-on, due to no direction signs. You can trust me when I tell you that type of thing has happened here in my reality for me to witness way too many times, and by far is not a laughing matter. I guess its possible the signs down there are just not visible from this high up. I forgot if Do Not Enter signs automatically appear or don't when connecting MIS ramp to the roundabout.

[smileymk]

I'm happy to say that the expressways lesson is now ready. But first I must run through proper procedure:


j-dub: Well then, you should find this lesson easy. And so should everyone else, because the methods used in it are easy.


Of course, proper signage is essential for realistic results - we'll cover that in a later lesson. If people are going down the wrong slip road then that has 3 potential causes:


a) unusual design - how many dumbbells are there in the US?


b) poor signage / road markings - inevitably lead to a wrong turn, if one is not used to the layout


c) incompetent drivers - let's face it, there are some people out there who really should not be allowed anywhere near a driver's seat, and who couldn't correctly navigate a junction for toffee.


To ensure these problems don't happen in SC4, you'll need to use proper signage lots and proper turn lanes, in a prototypical design, and put schools down so you have less bad drivers.


And finally, do No Entry signs appear when linking MIS to a roundabout? From what I've seen, no. They would not be hard to add, though, and I've already scratchbuilt some for that purpose.


Now, time for the lesson.


Lesson 7 Part 2 - Expressways


IMPORTANT: As before, this guide is for LHD users. Where left and right are involved, RHD users should do the opposite of what I say here.


Firstly, what is an expressway? For the purposes of this MD, it is not a motorway. Instead it is a road that is built close to the standards that you would expect to see on a motorway - BUT is legally classed as an all-purpose road.


A motorway has a legal designation as such, and only certain traffic types are permitted to use it. There are also laws that specifically prohibit certain actions on motorways, such as stopping, reversing and U-turns.


Expressways do not have these restrictions.


They are dual-carriageway and feature grade-separated junctions, although they are a bit less sophisticated than motorway junctions. They can also slope more and curve more than motorways.


So now that you know what an expressway is, how do you build one?


We've already built a bit of it in the 3-level stacked roundabout we did last lesson. So it would make sense to start there, heading west as we have all of that city tile to cover.


The first problem we come to is this:



We need to get over the railway line, and curve the expressway (coming from the east) so that it runs parallel with the railway to the southeast.


In this case, as you can see, I had to build a rail tunnel, first by clearing the area, then raising it 15m with hole digger lots, then dragging the tunnel through and replacing any catenary masts that got demolished. You know how to do all of this, so this is a useful technique for dealing with difficult crossovers.


With simpler setups, it should be possible to build a flyover like we've done before.


Afterwards, it's just a case of dragging out the expressway curve over the top. We're using RHW-4 for the expressway, and we covered building curves with the RHW-4 in the last lesson.


Hence you should be able to get from that last picture to this:



Moving on, the next interesting thing we come to is a roundabout interchange with a road (see the plan from Lesson 5).


You know how to build a roundabout interchange, because we did it in Project 1. If you can't remember, go back and have a look, because I'm going to assume you do remember and therefore will be able to create this:



(You do the flyover like always. The ramps are the RHW-4 Wide Ramps.)


Now, you can see that on the surface road we've got an avenue, when we want a road. You could drag a road straight out on either side, but the result isn't that appealing visually.


Enter the NWM and, more specifically, the AVE-4 - AVE-2 and AVE-2 - Road transitions:



The picture tells you all you need to know. Pay particular attention to the orientation of the transitions - inbound traffic gets the curvy path.


From there, it's just a case of dragging to the edge of the city tile.


East of the junction with the motorway, we start by completing those ramps on the east side that had to go into the next tile.


It's a simple matter - prepare the terrain, plop the RHW-4 Wide ramps, drag out, and remember to put in your neighbour connector pieces:



It's important that, like with motorways and railways, you pick the best route through the terrain, as far as possible.


There is one thing about this that's a little different with expressways (and regular roads), which we'll cover at the end of the lesson.


For now, let's move on and build the dumbbell interchange that I leaked a couple of weeks ago.


I wonder how you should start?



Note that this is the exact layout you should use for your single tiles and hole diggers.


Now raise two squares of 4 tiles up by 15m, starting from the digger lot and going up and away from the junction, like so:



Now run a road through the middle and put in 2 one-way roundabouts where the 3x3 flat squares are:



Make sure you drag the one-way road the right way round - clockwise here, anti-clockwise for RHD users.


Now build a flyover over the middle using ERHW-4:



Flatten out an area for the ramps that is far enough away from the flyover for the slopes to be gentle (10 tiles should be fine) on either side, and then use Rail to create smooth slopes for your expressway:



(We're using rail because it has a stricter slope restriction than the RHW.)


Now you can connect everything up. You can even drag MIS straight into the roundabouts, so there's no need to put stubs on first:



Et voila! You should now have something like this to marvel at:



Now, there's one more thing I want to cover before the end of the lesson:



You can see here that the expressway goes straight over the hill rather than around it.


This illustrates an important aspect of building expressways and regular roads - they can, do and should go straight over hills or through valleys provided that the slope is appropriate.


This is not the case with motorways and railways, which require a relatively flat course to be taken. Building expressways and surface roads like you see above will save on time and expense and will provide a more realistic result, believe it or not.


I'll finish up by showing you how our major road network looks right now:



That's it for now. Next up is roads.


Chris

[Risu]

Geez, no one is asking questions? o.o" Hum. Must be they either know everything already, OR you made your instructions quite clear.

[riiga]

Nice work, but I'd recommend using the FAR ramps and curves for MIS, as well as adding some acceleration lanes. 

[ricardomiranda]

Thank you for your job !

[n1md4]

smileymk, firstly, thanks for a great beginners tutorial.  I've been reading my way through, slowy.  I've read further than I've practised, but have turned my hand to terraforming.  What do you think:-

[mrbisonm]

Geez, no one is asking questions? o.o" Hum. Must be they either know everything already, OR you made your instructions quite clear.

Well, if it is well explained, why ask questions?

Btw smileymk, well done and quite interesting, even for a longtime experienced player like me! Bravo.

mrb