SimCity and Urban Planning/Building Transportation

One of the most important aspects of urban planning, both in real life and in SimCity, is transportation.

The importance of Transport in Real-life Urban Planning

In urban planning, there is a direct, well-researched connection between the density of an urban environment, and the amount of transport into that environment. Good quality transport is often followed by development. Development beyond a certain density can quickly overcrowd transport.

Good planning attempts to place higher densities of jobs or residents near high-volume transport. For example, some cities permit commerce and multi-storey apartment buildings only within one block of train stations and four-lane boulevards, and accept single-family dwellings and parks further away.

Densities are usually measured as the floor area of buildings divided by the land area, or in a residential context, by the number of dwellings divided by the land area. Floor area ratios below 1.5 are low density. Plot ratios above five are very high density. Most exurbs are below two, while most city centers are well above five. Walk-up apartments with basement garages can easily achieve a density of three. Skyscrapers easily achieve densities of thirty or more. Higher densities tempt developers with higher profits. City authorities may try to encourage lower densities to reduce infrastructure costs, though some observers note that low densities may not accommodate enough population to provide adequate demand or funding for that infrastructure.

Automobiles are well suited to serve densities as high as 1.5 with basic limited-access highways. Innovations such as car-pool lanes and rush hour-use taxes may get automobiles to neighborhoods with plot ratios as high as 2.5.

Densities above 5 are well-served by trains. Most such areas were actually developed in response to trains in the middle 1800s, and have historically high ridership that have never used automobiles for their work trip.

A widespread problem is that there is a range of residential densities between about two and five that causes severe traffic jams of automobiles, yet are too low to be commercially served by trains or light rail. The conventional solution is to use buses, but these and light rail systems may fail where automobiles and excess road network capacity are both available, achieving less than 1% ridership. Some theoreticians speculate that personal rapid transit might coax people from their automobiles, and yet effectively serve intermediate densities, but this has not been demonstrated. The Lewis-Mogridge Position claims that increasing road space is not an effective way of relieving traffic jams as latent or induced demand invariably emerges to restore a socially-tolerable level of congestion.

Transport in SimCity

These concepts of urban planning in real cities have been carried into the SimCity games. Roads, trains, subways, highways, bus systems, are all major forms of transportation, and are how your Sims will be able to get around your city. Like a real life mayor, or an urban planner, SimCity requires you to make a choice about which modes of transport are appropriate for your city. Similarly, there are consequences for your choices (for example, choosing roads in a high-density city, as with real life, will lead to traffic congestion and pollution).

In SC3K, look for the button with a picture of a road on it. That is the Transportation Menu. Click on it. Next to it, there will be some more buttons. Depending on which year you are in, you should be able to at least have Roads, Rail, and Rail Station. More options unlock as the years pass.

Note for SC2K users In SC2K, Road-based options (highways, tunnels) and Rail-based options (rail stations, subways) are in different menus. Not only that, but you have to hold them down to select an item.

In SimCity 4, an expansion called SimCity 4 Rush Hour was released giving players additional transportation features other than the original options. On top of SimCity 4's street, road, elevated highways, subways, railways, seaports and airports, the expansion pack included new options. These were elevated railways (which could interlink with the subway network), monorail tracks, ferries (which could serve as an alternative to a bridge saving money) ground-based highways (which were cheaper than elevated ones if used appropriately) and avenues (a two lane dual-carriageway which interlinks smoothly with roads, streets and highways). The expansion pack also came with an option to view the region map in a different way; it marked all the different transportation links clearly.