Note: This guide assumes that you have Network Addon Mod (NAM) installed and running.

Trufax Part 1

Road Layouts & Traffic Management

You’ve found the perfect place to start a city.. now what?

This simple road layout will demonstrate the basics of traffic flow with low density zones. It features a central avenue flanked with connecting roads and a handful of streets.

Sims commute via car or transit from their home to where they work in commercial and industrial zones. The best way to manage this is to funnel Sims into increasingly larger roads. This way you can also maximize traffic volume to your commercial zones which should be placed in between residential and industrial zones. Not only does this allow the zones to support each other, commercial zones act as a pollution (visual and environmental) buffer to Sims homes.

Notice how the streets don’t connect directly to the avenue. Some touch the edge of the avenue to allow for pedestrian access, but otherwise all road traffic from these areas are funneled into the roads, then avenue.

Intersections are a big cause of traffic congestion. Having fewer intersections on a high volume road will allow traffic to move more freely and reduce congestion.

Using the Route Query tool, we can see that the Sims are all being funneled into the central avenue. You can also use one way roads strategically to make Sims move differently in the morning vs. evening rush hours, which helps ease congestion as well as provide more space for commercial zones with high traffic volume.

Sims don’t always want to live near a busy noisy avenue, but will tolerate some noise. Consider leaving room for commercial zones or park space as a buffer between very busy roads and residential zones.

With a road layout in place, we can now start to expand Sims transportation options with mass transit. For low density residential, busses are more than enough to start with. Only when you are moving into high density zoning do the more expensive mass transit options like elevated rail and subways become more viable. When it’s time to utilize these mass transit services, an existing, effective bus network goes a long way in keeping everything and everyone moving smoothly.

Creating dead end streets capped with a bus stop is a great way to encourage pedestrian and bus traffic, as well as control the amount of traffic that’s being funneled into it’s connecting road.

Road-top transit stops are an option available in a variety of mods, but keep in mind that they limit road access to zones behind them. Zone accordingly.

Sims typically take the shortest road route to their destination, regardless of road size. While it is a factor in their decision making, Sims will take “illogical” routes to where they are going if your road layout isn’t effectively funneling. Sims will travel a fair distance to get to work/home, so you can still do some fairly complex road layouts but still maintain the funnel even over longer distances.

The funnel can also be thought of like a tree. A tree made of roads. A big tree has one trunk (highway, subway, etc), some big branches (avenues), lots of little branches (roads), and many many twigs (streets). A big branch is connected to the trunk, a small twig is connected to a little branch. While this isn’t a perfect analogy, keeping your traffic funneled with the tree method creates for easy traffic management.