SimCity

First step, is to identify your highway, either you'll have one extending through your zone or, or if you just have an off/on ramp poking in, you'll plan to extend it across your whole zone. The key to your highway is to absolutely minimize intersections to it, it should only have 3-4 connections spaced across the whole map, two of these will be to your major avenues.



Step two is to start planning your road spacing. If you want an optimial grid, you won't be able to eye-ball it. Instead start at one edge of your map, and use small segments of dirt road and the built-in grid system to start determining the correct spacing.



Next up is to determine the location, of your main avenues, These are the primary roads that are going to connect back to your highway. I suggest placing them 4 blocks from the perimeter of the city. Unlike the smaller roads, you can't rely on the built-in grids to space the avenues, as they give too much room. Instead, you need to eyeball it at first, then test your spacing with the zoning tool to ensure it's one block width away from the dirt roads you placed.



Next up is to use the same technique to determine the grid spacing going in the other direction, this is going to be your first local street and it will prevent the other local streets from actually reaching the highway.



So these two shots illustrate the central concept of the guide which is that smaller streets run parallel to larger streets in order to minimize intersections and keep traffic flowing quickly.



This layout gradually expands across the whole map as the game progresses, you can avoid dead ends with temporary streets that you delete later, but I've found sims are pretty tolerant to long dead end streets so it shouldn't cause too much grief.

The next part of the strategy is to minimize unnecessary corners by using curved roads, this is especially important on your main highway/avenues but you should implement it where possible with small streets as well.




As you extend your grid across the map, you can change the direction of avenues using curves and change the orientation of your smaller streets so they stay parallel to the avenues.



Break the grid for large buildings in low traffic areas in a way that doesn't impede the busier cross streets. This keeps traffic flowing and helps to keep your police cars and fire trucks from getting stuck in traffic at rush hour.

The above road grid layout is only really effective when your buildings are all oriented to take advantage of it.


This is the wrong way to zone, it gives you no control over which way buildings are oriented which means you can't control how cars access your streets.



This is the correct way to zone, cars only access the street from one direction which means the other direction can flow freely. Additionally it prevents buildings from enter/exiting off the busier cross streets which connect to the main avenues.




Completed zoning across the whole region, all roads are single loaded parallel to the main avenues, there are few buildings facing onto the cross streets and absolutely no buildings with access to the main highway.

Bus stops should all be placed on the same side of the road, and spaced as far as the green area allows, this helps control traffic flow in the same way as the zoning strategy.



Park and rides are really important, they need to go in key areas, like the entrance to the city, where they can intercept a lot of would-be drivers and get them into buses instead which reduces the total number of cars driving across the city.



The street car entrance should go in the middle of your avenue loop. You should only make linear street car tracks with no intersections, the street cars will drive until full and then turn back with no regard for where they are trying to get. You can use this to your advantage by allowing the street car to circulate from the back of your city (opposite the highway) to your highway and then back again.