Realistic Cities For Dummies

[Pioneer]

 
Excellent airport building tutorial. It will be very helpful for me. Thank you!

[Schulmanator]

Zounds! That's very impressive! Great work. 

[yochananmichael]

My question is this airport merely aesthetics ie it looks like a real airport or does it also function as an in-game airport that the game will actually use?

[thebagleboy]

My question is this airport merely aesthetics ie it looks like a real airport or does it also function as an in-game airport that the game will actually use?

It will only be aesthetics however downloading the "Functional Airports" pack will give you a bunch of buildings such as bus ports that act as an airport. Just think of them as an airport commuting centre.

[smileymk]

Hey guys. This isn't a proper update, but an important announcement regarding Lesson 9 which you need to pay attention to.

Important Announcement

I'm pleased to report that Lesson 9 (Transport Infrastructure) is now ready for posting.
However, it has turned out to be considerably longer than I anticipated. If posted in full, it will weigh in at 94 pictures, which will comfortably be the longest lesson ever posted here - the airports lesson was a measly 78 pictures long.

Therefore, I propose two different ways of delivering the content of Lesson 9 to you guys:

Option 1: Post the lesson in full. You'll get rail, Project Symphony, roads, metro lines, stations and depots in one comprehensive - but very long - lesson.

Option 2: Split the lesson into 4 different parts, to be posted as separate updates, as follows:
- Part 1: Railways
- Part 2: Urban Motorways (using Project Symphony)
- Part 3: Roads
- Part 4: Metro lines (including use of el-rail, GLR and subway, as well as metro depots, station selection, and station placement)
This would give shorter reads, but would mean you'd potentially have to wait longer to get the whole content.

I need you guys to decide which option you would like. Please post your choice as a reply. This MD exists for you guys, so I want to deliver the lesson in the way which suits you best. Thanks for your time.

Now it would be rude of me to run off without responding to the comments made in response to Lesson 8, so let's do that now:

Pioneer: You're welcome. I hope you enjoy creating your airports.

Swordmaster: Thank you. I didn't hold back with the lesson, did I?

yochananmichael: As thebagleboy correctly states, the RMIP, TMIP and ACB-VLT sets are purely aesthetic and do not function as airports in the simulation. However, you can download lots called 'airport trams', such as this one, which look completely inconspicuous but function as airports, allowing you to bring the benefits of the airport to the city in question.

thebagleboy: Welcome to SC4 Devotion! (Yes, I noticed. You can't hide anything from me ;-) )

Before I go, you may remember that Mapleford Airport's control tower mysteriously vanished during its construction.
I did say I was aware of it and would bring it back, and here it is:


That's better. Time for me to go now. Let me know how you want Lesson 9 to be delivered please.

See you next time,
Chris

[yochananmichael]

I say give us the whole thing but if it has to be in 4 parts so be it. Cool at least I know now that I can have a cool looking airport with some lots that make it function as a real airport for game purposes.

[CharlieLord]

I think I'd prefer the next lesson in 4 different parts.

While I'm not looking to build an airport in my current region/project, that lesson was too long for me, and so I skimmed over most of it rather than reading it properly, and so didn't really learn much 

Either way, keep up the good work and I'll enjoy the next lesson regardless 

[Harry29]

I'd prefer it in one big lesson. Your lessons help me a lot in my cities, so I don't mind spending a long time reading them. Keep up the good work.

Or, you could combine the best of both options; by posting it as 4 separate posts, but posting them all at the same time,  people can choose whether to read them individually or all at once.

[zwitser]

Option 2 for me 

[rooker1]

Option 2 sounds better to me.

[veger]

I do not really have a preference, but if I must choose: option 1! (So I do not have to wait for too long )

[Coxswain]

Option 2 please

[APSMS]

Definitely option 2. At the very least, it'll be easier to index for future reference, so that we can find the information easily instead of being hidden in one gigantic tutorial.

[smileymk]

Hello there.

Well, the readership has spoken, and the majority of you would prefer Lesson 9 to be delivered in 4 parts, so that is what will happen.

My thanks go out to yochananmichael, CharlieLord, Harry29, zwitser, rooker1, veger, Coxswain and APSMS for taking the time to give their opinions regarding the delivery of this lesson.

Well, what are we waiting for? Let's get cracking:

Lesson 9 - Transport Infrastructure

Part 1 - Railways

It's fair to say this part will be a mix of old and new. Some of the following content may be very familiar to you, either from earlier projects or your own knowledge. But we're going to cover some new, more advanced material too, so everyone will hopefully learn something about railway construction.

You may remember from Lesson 8 that we built a railway station to serve our airport, and some NAM rail viaducts extended from there in both directions. It makes sense to start by completing this line and progressing from there.
First, we'll go eastwards. The plan calls for the line to run straight to the end of the city tile without any messing about.
Because we're going through suburbs and then rural land, it doesn't make much sense to continue the NAM viaducts becuase they'll look out of place. It's better to run the line on the ground in this case.
As you might expect, bringing the railway back down to Earth requires a proper, smooth transition.

I'll go through it quickly as this is a basic technique many of you will know already. First, use the NAM 15.5m ground lifter to create a stub, before extending it with single road tiles like so:


It's important to have at least 2 tiles of stub in order to provide room for a proper transition to ground level and for the on-slope puzzle piece to be built.

To construct the transition down to ground level, drag a suitable network from the end of the stub furthest from the viaduct as far as is necessary to produce the smoothest possible slope:


What's a 'suitable network'? It's simply the network with the strictest slope settings, as determined by your chosen slope mod. In my case, the suitable network is rail, but for some of you it may be something else, like monorail/BTM or RHW. The easiest way to find out if you're unsure is to create a few stubs of the same height and drag different networks off each of them.

To complete the transition, simply delete any remaining single road tiles and put in a straight on-slope rail puzzle piece:


Easy stuff, and nothing new to most of you. Let's head east and address the only obstruction our rail line faces in this direction:


We need to get across the road. And before anyone suggests otherwise, a level crossing is not an option. The rail line is too busy and the line speed is too high, so putting a level crossing here is too dangerous. In general, level crossings should be restricted to lightly-used branch lines and small industrial spurs (like our port railways).
The only practical option is to use grade separation, and it's better in this case to elevate the road rather than the railway line. This is because the railway most likely came first, so the road will have been built around it in real life, and also because roads are far less sensitive to gradients than railway lines are.

Elevating the road is going to require the use of 7.5m overpasses, which we haven't used previously on Realistic Cities for Dummies. As you might expect, this will create a far more realistic look as it's always better to keep terrain adjustments as small as possible when dealing with grade separation. Bridges over water are a little different, but we'll come to that later.

Let's begin. The first job is to clear the area to give us room to build the embankments:


Now use the NAM 7.5m ground lifter and single road tiles to create an embankment, including room for a roundabout if you want one, and use rail to smooth out all of the slopes a road will be running on:


You now need to demolish three tiles - the tile your railway line will run through, and the neighbouring tiles on both sides. Then place single road tiles from the railway line to create a depression for the railway line to run through:


Note that the depression is at ground level, so our railway line can run straight through the junction without any gradients.

The approaches to the junction, together with the railway line, can now be dragged into position. Don't place roads within 2 tiles of the railway line, as doing so will cause trouble when building the overpass:


The overpass is built with 3 7.5m road overpass pieces. At each end, place a T On-Slope piece, and place a road over rail piece in the middle. Then drag roads from the T-junctions that appear on the on-slope pieces parallel to the rail line as shown here:


You can now delete these new road stubs, one tile at a time, and then put all your roads back together again. Oh, and if you use a roundabout instead of a regular T-junction, don't forget to stick a nice roundabout filler in the middle of it:


There's a couple of stubs of embankment at the top of the flyover which are now redundant. Not to worry - just create a chain of single road tiles from ground level to get rid of them:


OK, so the game decided it didn't want to get rid of the left stub, so we'll have to leave it. It's not a big deal, and the stub is only visible when the gridlines are on.
Anyway, we did it. After demolishing any leftover single road tiles, we've turned a sticky point on our railway line into something quite beautiful:


Let's now move to the other end of the viaduct. This ends on a diagonal and we're going to build a bridge over water shortly afterwards, so this embankment will need to be constructed differently.
First, the transition. Using the familiar method with the 15.5m ground lifter and single road tiles, construct an embankment that looks like this:


The single road tiles are now demolished, and in their place goes a diagonal rail on-slope piece. The preview of this piece has one rail tile not on a viaduct, and the piece needs to be positioned such that this tile is on the last flat tile of embankment before the viaduct. Some diagonal rail over road pieces also need to be placed:


As I've said previously, shortly after this to the west is a bridge over water. This is a standard orthogonal bridge, so we need to build a smooth curve.
Since railways are more sensitive to curves than roads, it's necessary to use 2 pieces to build the curve - a diagonal - FARR piece followed by an FARR - orthogonal piece.
The embankment must therefore be suitably extended to take these puzzle pieces. You need to use single road tiles to create the following pattern:


I recommend trying to memorise this pattern, as you'll be using it an awful lot. Once the pattern is completed, replace the single road tiles with the FARR transition pieces stated above:


We now turn our attention to a topic that causes a fair bit of frustration among SC4 players - bridges.

I'm going to be brutally honest here. We have a saying in England that says that failing to prepare is preparing to fail. Yet when it comes to bridges, a lot of people don't prepare properly. They simply drag straight over the water and hope for the best. So they fail, in the sense that their bridge doesn't look as good as it could.

What I'm trying to say is that building bridges is easy if you prepare properly and put enough thought into it. Here's a few simple rules to follow to help you create good bridges:

- Elevate the bridge. A bridge looks much better when it has some height to it. It doesn't have to be elevated much - 15m for road and 15.5m for rail will suffice. If you want ferries to pass under the bridge, then you will need to make it at least 25m high.
- Use abutments at each end of the bridge. This enables a smooth transition to ground level, or a consistent height to take the network onto another bridge. The abutments will improve the appearance of your approaches to the bridge. However...
- Abutments must not extend into the water. This is because the game requires that there is at least one tile of land on at least one side of the bridge before it will let you build it. Extending your abutments into the water will violate this condition, meaning that the bridge will extend onto one of your abutments, which will hinder the look of the bridge.
- The abutments on each side of the bridge should be at exactly the same height, lest you will end up with that pavement bit on one side of the bridge where the game tries to compensate for the difference in terrain. We will go over how to ensure your abutments are at the correct height shortly.
- Support pillars should be kept to a minimum. I also like to build in some approximate symmetry into my bridges as far as the game will let me, as this gives a bridge that is very easy on the eye.
- Think carefully about the type of bridge you choose. Railway bridges tend to be older, so girder, truss or cantilever bridges would be more appropriate. Newer road bridges can use more modern bridge types. The length and height of the bridge is also important. Beam bridges are good for short spans. Arches are good for tall bridges. Trusses are good for longer spans. Suspension and cable-satyed bridges should be reserved for long or very long spans.

With these points in mind, let's build our first rail bridge. We already have an abutment on one side, so it only remains to construct the other one and we can build our bridge.
However, we need to make sure the abutments are at exactly the same height. To do this, we use the terrainquery cheat, which will provide 3-dimensional positional co-ordinates as a tooltip when the Query tool is hovered over a point in the landscape.
Let's find out the height of our existing abutment. Activate the terrainquery cheat, put on the Query tool and hover it over the last tile of the abutment:


The important co-ordinate is the y co-ordinate, which gives the height of the point queried in metres. Here, as you can see, the height of our existing abutment is 271.5 metres. So we need to make sure our second abutment is also at 271.5 metres.
To get the other abutment up to the correct height we need to use hole diggers and ground lifters as appropriate. The lifter and digger lots at our disposal can change the height of the terrain by x.0 metres and x.5 metres, where x is a suitable integer. In other words, we need to make sure the difference in height between ground level and abutment level is a multiple of 0.5 metres before we can use the lifter/digger lots.

Let's do that now. We need to mark the position of the network on the other side of the bridge. To do this, drag a network straight out from the abutment, over the water and onto the other side, like so:


Then press Esc to cancel the drag, and, without moving the mouse outside of the square it covers, place a single road tile:


Then use the terrainquery function to find out the height of the land where you've marked out the other end of the bridge:


We're in luck. The height of the land here is 256.0 metres, giving a difference in height of 271.5 - 256.0 = 15.5 metres. This is, of course, a multiple of 0.5, and indeed is the height change produced by one of our hole diggers.
Well, what are we waiting for? Let's raise this row of tiles 15.5 metres and extend the new abutment to the water's edge, but without going into the water:


And now we can build the bridge. To ensure the bridge doesn't extend over the abutments, drag from the first tile inland of one abutment to the first tile inland of the other. Then choose a suitable bridge from the bridge selection panel, keeping the bullet points above in mind, and click 'Accept'. Here I've gone for the standard cantilever truss, as this span is quite long and the bridge has quite a long gap between supports:


That's one good-looking bridge we've got there. And all it took to create that was a bit of preparation beforehand.

Our railway line is currently on one of the islands that form Mapleford's delta. Therefore we have to construct a second bridge to carry the line on to the mainland.
This is built in exactly the same way as the first bridge, but the span this time is much shorter, so I've gone for a brown girder bridge:


When building multiple bridges in quick succession, consistency is important. It doesn't make much sense in most situations for a railway line to go over a truss bridge and then go over a suspension bridge 200 yards later. A small truss followed by a large truss, like we've built here, is much better.

Before moving on, let's take a sneak peek into a future part and find out what we do if we don't have a good height difference. As an example, here's the marker for the urban motorway bridge we're going to build in the next part:


The height at this point is 255.7 metres, but the height of the initial abutment is 15m above ground level, i.e. 271.0 metres. That corresponds to a height difference of 15.2 metres, which isn't a multiple of 0.5.

To rectify this, we use the terrainquery cheat again, this time looking for a point where the height difference is a multiple of 0.5 metres. Once we find one which might work, we plop a single road tile there and check the height again. If it's good, we run a chain of single road tiles from that point back to our marker for the bridge. If it isn't, we try somewhere else until we're successful:


Once we've got everything in order, we can use single road tiles to adjust the height of the marker, then demolish everything and plop an appropriate ground lifter, or combination of ground lifters and hole diggers, and carry on as normal.

Moving back to the railway line we're building, after the bridge system the railway runs through our port industrial area and then on to the CBD and the main station.
As you can imagine, this part of the city will be quite old, and many buildings in this area will have come before the railway line was built, certainly in the CBD.
Therefore it makes sense to use NAM viaduct rail to take us from the bridge system into the CBD. You should be able to build a transition to viaduct rail from the abutment to the bridge, and it's all puzzle pieces from there:


The neighbour connection is built in the same way as a street neighbour connection, but instead of placing a SAM starter piece on the tile with the arrow, you place a plain rail puzzle piece (diagonal or orthogonal as appropriate).

Our passenger line is now finished. There is only one station planned for this city tile, and we've already built it because it's the airport station. So let's move on to the freight lines.

The first rail line is planned to run from the passenger line east of the airport, over a new set of bridges, and then to curve down into the port area. Immediately, however, we face an obstruction:


The road is so close to the railway line that we can't plop a diagonal-FARR curve piece. We could circumvent this problem by putting the road in a tunnel, but this is a costly option. Instead, we'll shift the road by one tile downwards, construct a 7.5m overpass on this new alignment, and then use dragged S-curves to put the road back on course at either end:


Note that the abutments had to be put a little bit back from the railway line, as this railway runs diagonally. This is just requires using the blank terrain puzzle pieces, alternating between the pylon and no pylon versions.

The railway can now be continued along the planned course:


Now we come to the bridges. These are exactly the same as the bridges we built before. Do the preparation, get the abutments at the same height, and choose the right bridge for the job. Here I've gone for a metal arched over-deck girder on all of the spans:


Note that the railway runs on embankments rather than viaducts in between the bridges, as this is better-looking and more realistic.

Having crossed the delta, the freight line now needs to curve 90 degrees to the left to reach the port. This is constructed as two 45-degree curves back-to-back, so I hope you remember your flattening patterns because you'll need them. The following diagram explains how to construct the curve out of the puzzle pieces, and will allow you to see how we can trim the embankment by bringing down some redundant tiles after we've built the curve:


The line can now be connected to the existing port line. We're also going to start a line off to the west which will connect the port with the mainlines to the west and north:


At the top of the new line to the west, the line splits, with one branch going north and one west. Unfortunately, there aren't any diagonal - FARR points yet, so we'll have to make do with the 45-degree diagonal point available in the NAM:


I should point out that that FARR curve is no longer there, as it got in the way of the urban motorway. But the railway has still been carefully routed to avoid the power pylons. Doing this will save you having to reposition your power pylons to keep them together.

Now that our freight lines are complete, we need to build a marshalling yard to process all of the trains entering and leaving the port, so the right cargo goes to the right place.
A marshalling yard does not need to be complicated - it's just a set of sidings. However, as this yard serves an international port, we're going to need a lot of tracks. So we're going to call on the services of the BLaM Modular Railyard System, which will allow us to build a high-capacity freightyard in a small space.

Constructing the yard is simple. Build a line parallel and adjacent to the main freight line, and on it, place a 3x24-tile right entrance. Next to that, place the same lot again, this time with the preview arrow facing the other way, and offset from the first lot such that the tracks line up neatly like so:


These lots are transit-enabled along the entrance line. On the first lot, this line provides the access to the marshalling yard. But what to do with the second lot?
The answer is to extend a couple of STR spurs from each end of the transit-enabled part of the second lot (the part furthest from the mainline) for use as headshunts - areas for engines to turn around without blocking the yard:


We now need to ensure all tracks can be accessed from both tracks of the mainline. At the top of the first yard lot, there is a scissors crossover to provide this functionality for trains going to and from the north. However, there isn't one on the other end to provide the same functionality for trains to and from the south.
To correct this, we need to place the same scissors crossover lot that we used for the power station's rail terminal on the south side of the marshalling yard, before the access line merges with the main line:


With that done, we have our completed marshalling yard:


Our freight railway system for this tile is now complete. It remains only to electrify the passenger line.

Why don't we electrify the freight line? Because most freight trains are diesel-hauled anyway (at least in the UK), and because if we did electrify it, we'd have to electrify the marshalling yard which would be difficult.

The catenary I'm using for this is the Railway Electrification Mod by frogface, but it's not the only set you can choose. In particular, those from continental Europe may prefer to use the SFBT Rail Catenaries, as this set of catenaries is based on that used on German and Belgian railways.
Whatever mod you choose, be sure that it doesn't automatically place catenary over your railways, unless you want all of your railways to be electrified.

Plain straight track is easy to electrify. Simply place gantries every 3 tiles for orthogonal rail, and every 2 tiles for diagonal rail:


The points where the freight line branches off are a small obstacle, requiring the use of the 2-tile gantry in order to maintain a consistent spacing between gantries:


Curves are more problematic, because we've got to use a combination of different gantries that keeps the wire over the track as far as possible:


We don't need to worry about the bridges, because they are trusses and so we can assume the catenary is connected to the bridge structure. However, we do need to worry about the viaducts.
There aren't any elevated catenary lots, so we'll have to go into Lot Editor and make some. However, if we simply elevate the catenary props, they will not be connected to the viaduct as the viaduct is less than 16m wide. Therefore they will be floating in mid-air unless we put them on an auxilliary prop. The only suitable props available that I know of are only suitable for use in dense urban areas and are orthogonal only.
So we're unfortunately restricted to electrifying the orthogonal section of the viaduct through the industrial area. Correcting the issue would require us to create overhanging props, which is very advanced and hence reserved for Project 4.

Let's open up Lot Editor and focus on the industrial viaduct, whose electrification is within the scope of this project. Open up the single orthogonal gantry lot:


The gantry is a prop, shown in blue on the plan view on the right. So we need to go to the Props tab and click on the blue rectangle. The gantry will now highlight:


We now need to elevate this gantry by 15.5 metres. To do this, hold down the CTRL key, and whilst doing so, press the Up key. This will raise the prop by 0.1 metres. As you might expect, pressing the Down key instead of the Up key will lower the prop by 0.1 metres. Holding the Shift key down in addition to the CTRL key and pressing Up or Down will raise or lower respectively the selected prop(s) by 1 metre.
The height of the prop appears on the plan view on the right as a white number, circled in red below. You need to adjust the height until it reads 15.5:


Good. To finish, we need to add a suitable overhanging prop. The prop shown below is designed to take elevated transport networks, making it perfect for our intended use here. The prop needs to be carefully positioned such that the catenary poles appear to be connected to it:


I'm afraid I can't remember where that prop comes from, but a search of the STEX should bring it up.

Save this as a new lot, run the game, and place the lot every 3 tiles:


Nice! We'll fill in the rest when we come to build the industrial area, since we'll know where the streets will go then.

And that's it for this part. In Part 2 we will build the section of urban motorway that will run through this tile. We're going to buid this using the Project Symphony highway, so you'll learn how to use that. The part should be up in the next few days.

See you then,
Chris

[yochananmichael]

excellent update chris can't wait to see the urban motorways project

[smileymk]

Hello.

yochananmichael: Thank you. I hope you find the urban motorways part useful.

And, without further ado, here is the urban motorways part:

Lesson 9 Part 2 - Urban Motorways

The first thing to understand about urban motorways is that they are quite unlike regular motorways. Because they run through the middle of cities, they often have to be squeezed in to some tight spaces. This means that urban motorways regularly run elevated or sunken and are often built to a much lower standard than regular motorways - indeed, a lot of urban motorways leave you wondering how such a road could possibly be classed as a motorway!

To construct such a road we're going to use the Maxis Highway Override available in the latest NAM, which is also called Project Symphony. This provides a complete overhaul of the Maxis highway system and offers a compact motorway system that is fully compatible with the RHW and is designed to bring Maxis highways much closer to RHW standards. It's essentially a halfway house between Maxis highways and full-scale RHW, and because of this, it lends itself perfectly to urban motorways - hence why we're using it here.
So to proceed with this lesson, you need to verify that you have Project Symphony installed. If not, reinstall the NAM and make sure you tick the box labelled 'Maxis Highway Override'.

Assuming you have Project Symphony installed, let's begin. The urban motorway in the tile we've been building on is planned to start from the main airport roundabout and head west over the delta and the port industrial area towards the CBD.
Our motorway starts running south but must immediately turn west and go up to bridge height (remember bridges should be elevated above ground level, except for very short spans where the land drops sharply). This means we can't build a straight transition from ground to embankment. We've got to make it curved, and put some 45-degree smooth curves on the embankment.

This is quite a tough task. It's very easy to get wrong, and if you do get it wrong, you can easily end up with a roller coaster motorway that juts up and down in a most unrealistic way.
Essentially, you need to go through the following steps:
- Create a 15m high embankment at the bridge end of the transition using ground lifters and single road tiles. Remember it needs to be 2 tiles wide, as that is the width of the Project Symphony network.
- Use rail to transition the embankment smoothly to ground level, running it curved along the planned course. You will need to use multiple rail tracks to smoothen out a sufficiently large area to take the curves.
- Flatten a small section out in the middle of the slope. I found this helped with avoiding jutting and roller-coaster jumps on the road when placing the pieces.
- Use rail to smooth out any areas on the path of the motorway that aren't as smooth as they could be.

In short, you need to use ground lifters, rail and single road tiles to create something like this:


With luck, you can then demolish all that and place two 45-degree smooth ground Project Symphony curves along the planned path of the motorway:


Notice how the road curves up smoothly, without any juts or steep jumps. If you get any juts or jumps on your curve pieces, smoothen and flatten the ground around the location of the discrepancy, and try again. This work is a case of trial and improvement as much as anything else. You just have to keep playing around with the slope until it all works.

You can see that the curve goes right up to the roundabout, out of necessity due to the lack of space. As you might have guessed, the motorway ends at the roundabout, and so needs to be connected to it.
To do this we need to drag out a single tile stretch of avenue southwards into the motorway. It sounds simple enough, but the game and the puzzle pieces make the drag quite complicated. In order to get the game to allow the connection to be built, you have to do an 'out and back' drag like so:


Because of the puzzle pieces, the preview will only appear when you drag as shown to exactly the right tile. If it goes red again, you've gone too far and will need to start again.

Having done that, it's time to build some bridges to take the motorway over the delta.

As with rail bridges, some time has to be spent preparing abutments for the bridge. For this bridge, we're going to set an abutment height of 271.0 metres - that's 15m above ground level, which corresponds to the height of the elevated Project Symphony. We do this because we're going to build some elevated motorway later on, and it makes everything easier if we build the bridges to the same height as the elevated sections.

The first island the motorway crosses is also crossed by the freight railway line we built in Part 1. This runs on a flat embankment at a height of 271.5 metres - half a metre above the height of the motorway bridge. Because we can make a drop of 0.5 metres using the 15.5m hole digger followed by the 15m ground lifter, we can use the rail embankment to help us get our motorway embankment at the right height.
If we mark the motorway's position and then extend the rail embankment using single road tiles like so:


Then we can use the 15.5m hole digger to bring the last tile of embankment back down to base ground level, and run a chain of single road tiles through to the motorway marker to bring the marker up to the right height:


All you need to do now is raise the terrain by 15 metres at the motorway marker, extend the abutment to the water's edge (but once again, not into the water!), and then you can build the bridge:


Note that the bridge is dragged using ground highway (note that with Project Symphony the icon for this is different and has 'L0' written on it), and you will need to choose one of the dual RHW-4 bridges. As with the rail bridges, you want as few supports as possible and an appropriate brige for the situation. Since urban motorways are quite modern, you can go for a more modern design, as I've done here.

The bridge can then be connected to the curve we built at the start of this part. This uses ground-level Project Symphony, and so we need to drag ground highway to make this link.

We now need to build two more bridges to connect the motorway to the mainland to the west. These are built in the same way as all the other bridges - however, we're not going to hook the third bridge up to anything else just yet - we'll see why shortly:


Now, why haven't we built an embankment to connect the leftmost bridge to the middle bridge? The answer is simple - because we are dealing with a motorway as opposed to a railway line, we can build the section between the bridge abutments as an elevated motorway. Doing this instead of building an embankment will produce a better look more suited to the Project Symphony network, at least in my opinion.
Elevated Project Symphony is dragged out using elevated highway (whose Project Symphony icon has 'L2' written on it), and the elevated section is connected to the bridge abutments using the Straight On Slope piece, found under the Project Symphony Transitions tab ring:


Why haven't we done this with the railways? Simply because the rail viaducts aren't nearly as suited to crossing a small island as elevated Project Symphony is.
Also note that, as with the railways, we go from a bridge to an abutment before going elevated, as this provides a visual separation between the bridge and the elevated section, making the whole thing look nicer in my view.

Once that's done, we need to build a connection to elevated motorway on the westernmost side (since we'll be going through a dense industrial area there, making elevated motorway more appropriate).

There's one thing we have to do now before we move on. Because the bridges used are really RHW-4 bridges, there is a small height discrepancy between the bridges and the Project Symphony:


This happens because the deck of the Project Symphony is elevated slightly to give it the look it has. Fortunately, the NAM team knew about this and included a Symphony - RHW-4 connector puzzle piece for correcting this discrepancy.
You need to put this piece at both ends of all of your Project Symphony bridges. Be sure to get the piece the right way round - if it is, the preview will give the impression of a smooth white hard shoulder line sloping down towards the bridge:


After that's done, we can connect everything together that isn't connected already and look at our complete Project Symphony bridge system:


To finish off, let's build the section of elevated motorway west of the bridge system. This runs as elevated all the way to the city tile border, as we're going over a dense urban area here. There are no junctions planned, so it's just a case of dragging the straight/diagonal sections and plopping 45-degree elevated smooth curves for the curves. This is an urban motorway so we don't need to go ortho-FA-diagonal like we do with regular motorways and railways, but we should still use smooth curves:


Note that the neighbour connection just needs to be dragged. Because regular elevated Project Symphony is just a reskin of the standard Maxis highway, we don't need to go through the 'invisible connection' route like we do with streets because we have an elevated highway connection.

I mentioned junctions before the above picture. We haven't got any here apart from the roundabout at the end. This was because it was planned that way - but still, it's important not to put your junctions too close together. It's an urban motorway, so junctions can (and should) be generally closer together than they are on regular motorways, but the limited access principle of motorways still applies.
With that in mind, I suggest a minimum of half a mile / 800 metres between urban motorway junctions. That's 50 tiles - and remember that that is a minimum. They should, if practical, be spaced further apart. In particular, don't put a junction with every major road. Although it can be tempting, it will lead to an unrealistic and dangerous motorway simply because your junctions will be too close together.

We will cover urban motorway junctions in a later lesson, when we come to develop the other city tiles in Mapleford. But we've done the urban motorway for this tile, so that's all for Part 2.

Part 3 will focus on the tile's surface roads.

See you there,
Chris

[thebagleboy]

Good work on the series so far. Your explanation on building bridges really helped me out. Prior to this I'd always build abutments right to the water edge and the bridge would never work as intended.
Looking forward to the upcoming road and metro line update.
Side-note: Thanks for the welcome to the forum :p

[Ralfger]

A really fantastic and inspiring tutorial!
Reading it I decided to realise a project that I have in mind for at least two years stating from scratch with an own map.
It is my first try with SC4TF and came out more or less the way it should.  In one of your first posts you encouraged to show own efforts and ask questions. So here we go with the map that I call "Windwatt" (tideland of wind) and my question what to do to improve it?! A click on the map should show up a bigger version of the pic.

[Huston_N7]

That's a real extensive tutorial, very helpful. Can't really say I'm an expert at using NAM and those other transportation tools, so really awesome to stumble across this! 

[Gugu3]

Well done!