Philosophical Transportation Question

[baran3]

First off, let me say I'm blown away with the amount of content I'm finding for this game. You folks are incredibly dedicated and talented.

I just started playing SC4 and have discovered/installed the NAM (v29), the NWM, and the RHW (v4.1). There is plenty of technical help available on the web, but my question is more philosophical. BTW, I'm not sure if I'm posting in the right thread, so please feel free to move it if necessary.

I've spent the weekend playing with the different road types trying to come up with a 'standard' transportation model for my cities. I'd like to have good idea of what different road types I want to predominantly use. The standard Maxis road's seem well enough, but I like the NWM roads too. They seem to have good transition options for the basic city transportation structure; they tie in well with both themselves and the Maxis roads. The turn lanes and other eye candy are nice too. But I can't figure out how to bridge over them. All I can do is intersections with traffic lights. Am I missing something obvious here?

As far as the RHW mod goes, I've got a real basic question. I see all kinds of info describing 'how' it's used. I'd like to know 'why' it's used. They're huge, and can move a lot of cars. They have great flexibility in creating interchanges. But they don't transition to anything but a 2-lane highway. They're easy to build bridges over, which is a plus. What is the thought process behind when and where to use these RHW systems? Is it to move sims from one city to the other? Is it to move sims from one end of your map to the other in the fastest possible way? How do you end a large RHW system? Short of down-sizing it to a 2 lane highway I can 't see any other transitions.

Is it smart planning to try to stick to one particular type of transportation structure in your cities (either Maxis roads, NWM systems, or RHW 2 lane highways)? I hate to overthink this; I just want to better understand how all these different options interact with each other.

Thanks for your thoughts,
Ken

[rooker1]

 The best part of this game is experimenting.  I would try them all and see what you like the best and go with that.

Robin

[MandelSoft]

Hello Baran3, welcome to SC4Devotion!
Let me answer your question with my own experiences.

I've built my region Imaginia with no plugins at the start. Just plain SC4 + Rush Hour. You'll still see traces of my building styles in my older cities: packed up tight together. It's also in these cities where I use Maxis Freeways, which I'm replaceing with RHW lately. In Imaginia I've used many aspects of the NAM, like the SAM, GLR (looks very nice in old city districts), the NWM and of course, the RHW. Man, I just can't get enough of it. In my new region, Schellingen-Stadt, I've used the RHW widely.

The NWM is mostly eyecandy and it looks nice and realisic in your cities. Unfortunately you can't bridge them yet, but note this is only the first public version. I remember the first public version of the RHW, which only had RHW-4 that only connected to one-way roads. No ramps, no overpasses, that's it. And look how much features there are now. As a member of the NAM Team, I can ensure you that there will be significantly more content for the NWM in the next version, like diagonal capabilities for the two tile NWM-networks. Also, the RHW-3 would be the highway-variant of the ARD-3 in the next RHW version.

About why we use the RHW: it just looks awesome and realistic. The standard freeway interchanges were quite undersized (you can't fit a cloverleaf within a area of 250x250m, you'll need at least an area with four times of that dimension). Also, the flexiblity of the system is a pro of this mod. The RHW is ment for inter-city traffic and large traffic volumes.

You say that you can only see a transistion to a two-lane highway (I guess), but there are a lot more. Just select the RHW transistions button and hit the TAB-key to go through the TAB-ring (that's how it's called) with all sorts of puzzle pieces. And the MIS and RHW-4 can connect to Avenues and One Way Roads and the RHW-2 can connect to regular roads and streets.

About how to use the RHW, I'll give you some tips:

- Check out the RHW Interchange Guide for ideas and tutorials.

- I rarely use RHW-10, since the network is very limited, and in most cases oversized.

- For me there are three ways to start a RHW-4:
    1. At a T-interchange with another RHW. (can also be used for wider RHWs)
    2. At a roundabout (in rural situations)
    3. A transistion with an avenue. (I often use when a freeway is ending in a city)

- Don't pack up your interchanges thightly togehter. Even in a large city tile, I place three interchanges tops on the same stretch of RHW. You may think this is overscaled, but my cities stretch over multiple city tiles. Schellingen for example is 10x12km, or 3x3 large city tiles. It even has a ring freeway, running in the surrounding tiles of the center city tile.

- Leave some space between RHW and other development. It looks nice and you wouldn't like to live next to a freeway, would you? Example:

You can also do this with your main avenues:


Well, this was a long post to write, but I hope you'll find some useful tips here. For the rest, I wish you good luck with construction 

Best,
Maarten

[rooker1]

Thanks Maarten, I found some useful tips. 

Robin

[baran3]

Thank you Maarten; that's great stuff.

With all the reading I've been doing in the forums I've seen how the NAM and RHW have matured. I just assumed that the NWM had also been around a while; I had no idea it was new. Bridging would be real nice; can't wait to see the next version.

As far as transitions for the RHW, I looked through all the available choices and didn't see the one's you mentioned. I then did some experimenting based on your comments and discovered that the RHW4 does flow smoothly into the avenue, etc. As you said, I now have a way to terminate a highway going into a city. Thanks for the tip!

So I guess the larger RHW (6 and 8 lane) are more intended to act like an interstate system, connecting all the tiles in my region?

One last question. In your second picture I see a 4-way intersection with 2 avenues. The start of your turn lanes have lots white slash lines, narrowing to make the divider line between oncoming traffic. I was able to recreate this intersection, but I don't have those lines (they look pretty cool). I'm guessing this is some other add-on pack, maybe a separate turn lane add-on? You wouldn't by chance remember which download this was, would you?

Thanks again for the helpful info,
Ken

[MandelSoft]

Those textures are part of the European Road Texture Replacement Mod  You can find them over at the LEX (click the button top-right of this screen, don't forget to make a seprate registration for the LEX!). Link: http://sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=1302