[Cire360]

I'm stumped on how to go abouts zoning a city block that won't clog down with traffic, thats both efficent and hi-density.  I've tried a number of approaches and the one I have now is beging to fail, I need some help.

I usually begin by creating a city block like so



Between each of the one way roads I place small parks to increase land value and desirability.  In the center of each of the roundabouts I place a subway entrance.  Around the outskirts of the avenues i will fill in with large parks, hospitals, fire department, police, schools, and any other needs they might require.  Running besides each avenu generally they are connected to a highway.   This method seems to work well early and for quite sometime, but now that growth is starting to near stage 10, 11 and 12, traffic is just horrible, and its quite obvious that I need to find a solution to this problem.

Heres a fully developed city block.



At first congestion only was occurring at the overpass ramps, but now its backing up into the one way streets,  I have tried to use the network widing mod with 6 lane avenues, and to some degree this helps but still some serious problems at the overpass ramps, and even the highway itself is now deep orange.  Oddly enough subway which i have put a lot of money into is not doing real well.  The subway system leads to a short hop where they exit and can board onto a high speed rail which can take them to another transit station again exiting it and boarding another subway to reach a very short walk to their destination.  I zone commercial almost the same way, obviously they don't require as much civic buildings as residential zones do.  I've tried alot of various road configurations while tring to keep the same overall zone size and pattern but all fail at some point in time.

Am I zoning the block to big?  Am I missing something  If I fall back to using RHW highways the highway traffic seems to work well except miss exits which clog up badly.  Any and all suggestions are welcome as i'm going bald here from pulling out my hair.  Surely you guys must have this problem at some point or another, and surely there must be viable solutions. As always thanks for any and all help.

++Cire

[Flatron]

Maybe you should stop zoning single-use areas and place commercials in the center of each of your microdistricts. in RL this is done to increase walkability(google for New Urbanism/ smart growth)

[whatevermind]

Flatron has a good point - single use districts are notorious for bad traffic - both in SC4 and the real world.  You get much more efficient traffic by using mixed use neighborhoods - plus, walking becomes a viable transportation mode, taking some of the traffic off the roads.

I would say your block size is fine, I often use much larger blocks without problem.  But, a few suggestions.  Try upgrading your NAM capacity - if you're not already using a higher level setting, you might want to switch to one.  Don't forget about buses - they can take a lot of car traffic off your roads (sometimes with the result of streets clogged with buses, but doesn't hurt to try).  I would also suggest making your subway system continuous - that little transit hop in the middle of the commute adds time that might make subway less attractive than driving.  If your sims can take the subway all the way from home to work, it might get more use.  A final idea is that you might be suffering from an overabundance of interchanges/traffic lights - just like the real world, anything that forces traffic to stop or merge is going to cause congestion - you might get better results with fewer, and farther apart, traffic lights and interchanges.

[Cire360]

Thanks for the tips, I've not tried mixing up my zones, Most of what i read and looked at lead me to keep my zones separated.  As for removing the transit hop, I'm not sure that is a good idea, isn't HSR supposed to be the fastest method of travel?  I've tried to keep the subway ride to the transit station short kinda central to most zones, where the board HSR and from there off to the next central transit station to which they quickly exit the station and onto subway for another short hop to work or home, however you might be right perhaps its better to scrap HSR all together.

I do believe I am suffering from an over abundance of traffic lights though as each of those one way roads has a light on it where they meet the avenue,  not sure how to really go abouts solving it.  I'll experiment a bit and see what i can come up with.

[mike3775]

Use the Avenue roundabout that comes with the NAM.  You can connect the one way roads to it just off center, that will eliminate many of your traffic lights

[lacyk]

how did you create an overpass ramp?
It is not in menu and was never auto-created when I crossed land highway by avenue. Only underpass works under the elevated highway.

Regarding the traffic density - monorail can take away huge amount of traffic and is cheaper than subway.
And buses are essential of course. Bus stop has an advantage it can be placed on the steep slope unusable for zoning.

[whatevermind]

how did you create an overpass ramp?
It is not in menu and was never auto-created when I crossed land highway by avenue. Only underpass works under the elevated highway.

Avenue (and other) overpasses are part of NAM, I think.  Get the latest one installed and you should be able to use them.