This is one thing that I’ve been struggling with most while building my cities. My cities never have the same vibe as the old Swiss cities I’m used to IRL. Thank you for making this vid.
I was thinking something similar to this, though I thought maybe tweaking it from just Desire, to Désirée, the name, so it also gives a little history to the area. That being said, I kind of love the idea of it originally being named after a founder named Désirée, but Desire Heights was the unofficial nickname, because people enjoyed the play on words because of the streetcars, and now, folks just know it as that.
Your blue tram route could really use with a stop in the middle to allow easy transfer on to the red route! Would greatly increase the usefulness of the line.
@@kajmaklover Downtown to Port Liability is too long imo (from the game standpoint). I'd expect a different mode of transport for this in the future (direct train or bus line)
The slope at 19:10 is a reasonable slope for a *cable car* like they have in San Francisco, but I’m not sure if a tram could handle it. I think the max grade on my local light rail system is something like 5% though, so they can definitely handle decent slopes, but I think 15% might be a stretch 🧐
Huh, I wouldn’t have thought that. But would make sense I guess. The cable cars or old streetcars (like in El Paso or Lisbon) are single car vehicles and modern trams are typically articulated with multiple cars. I’m trying to remember from my trips to Europe if there were any steep trams I’ve been on.
@@SiderealRails oh wow! I took the DLR out to Greenwich Royal Observatory when I was there a few months back. I wonder what part of the line that’s on. I’ve not yet been to Portland, but one of my goals for next year is to get to Cascadia
also cable cars don't have internal engines but attach to moving cables, essentially the same concept as on rollercoaster hill climbs. So they can really handle any slope@@anthonyfrushour537
Hey, I've really been enjoying the series but I have 1 little suggestion (is it really a suggestion, I don't know ^^). Would it be possible, at the end when you do a city tour, to do a tour at night time also? I think that it would be a cool addition to see how the city lights up at night
As a European I absolutely love trams and I think the difference between the two really does show the difference between North American and central European city design perfectly. Just to throw out a name - Loop de ville, a bit naff but I found it amusing
Hi from another European there! I personally like the trolley-buses more, since those can also avoid obstacles thanks to not being confined to a fixed track. But trams also have their uses, so yeah, to each their own.
A tip from real-life street railways: Very often tram stops on signalized intersections are placed so that the trams stop immediately before the signal. So on an East-West-road, the east-bound tram stops on the west site of the intersection and the west-bound tram stops on the east-side. That way, if bunching occurs, trams don't block the intersection (very relevant for this game). Trams also don't have to stop twice in short succession when encountering a red light. They just dwell a bit longer if necessary. An example would be the Universitätsstraße tram stop in Cologne.
Some more row homes might be a better fit behind the mixed use buildings along the collectors. It would be a more gradual drop off in height to the single family homes on the other side of the street.
There’s an old timey trolley suburb where my grandmother lived called Aldan. Maybe if this town were called something like Aldan Hills because of the pre-development terrain it would be a nice legacy name. No more hills sure but it was named before they were developed
This is such a fun way to approach it. My enjoyment of this kind of game is so much higher when I slow down and think carefully about what I'm doing. The moment I start mass gridding and zoning without a thought is the moment I need to take a break
@@witchblade9888 I find that I run into a lot more issues when I hardscope the demand meter. I think of the meter as more of a “if I wanted to start a project what zoning could I use?” If I have low density C&R and a small bit of industry I’ll make a small rural suburb with a couple farms and just a few houses for workers.
I would love to have building themes for different decades, and then an optional rescale of the game clock to go through years/decades instead of months, advancing the build theme as it goes. This would naturally make the layers of history for a realistic town, and could be achievable through DLC (or even a nice mod collection!)
really cool would be if you had the option to progress through centuries, so you wouldn't have to deal with electricity at first, but all of your industrial would have to be by the water. Then, you would have to choose to either demolish old buildings, or keep them and have a higher tourist/culture value to your city
So, Phil, are death-waves no longer a thing in CS2? I watch you zone massive areas with wild abandon (well, to amount, not placement), and am wondering if they fixed that particular messy result of mass zoning in this version?
Is this series over? It was incredibly helpful following along building a city with it and I would love see more game features such as airports, harbors, and passenger trains explained and shown! It would also be neat to see how to tie all of these larger areas together as the city expands. I've started other cities since but I would love to keep following along with this one!
i kinda wish you start building citys in the victorian era, and then develop its history naturaly. im mostly just thinking of the old west towns that turned into sprawling cities... i feel like most of the US was built and founded during the victorian era/old west, when the cross country railroad was built, and even before then. it would be cool to have a choice of starting a city in the victorian era with only a railroad connection and a mine, or little fishing village, then develope it into the moddern era, even going further and developing it into a futuristic utopia... or distopia
A little thing about tram stops. It's best to place them right before the crossing, so that when green lights turn on cars won't stuck behind the tram. And it looks a little bit nicer to have crosswalk between stops. And as for the name of neighborhood I suggest "Tram Crossings" since the core of that district is crossing tramways
Given the large numbers of hills I'd propose naming the new suburb Highland after Highland in Denver, another great example of a turn-of-the-century streetcar suburb. It was definitely in my head while you were building, and the area feels like it could have a similar history where a separate city formed across a geographical division, and was later absorbed into the larger main city as it grew.
We have an area of Preston commonly referred to "The Birdcage". It has a similar grid layout, with all the streets named after birds. Housing in it is primarily terraces (row homes) and there's even an old tram depot. The greater area, called Deepdale, is also home to the city's football club, Preston North End, built within walking distance so its fans could get there on match days.
It's really cool to see you lay out a city factoring in historic tramways like this - as someone who lives in a city where they didn't rip them up, it's very realistic.
I think the area for Birdsong Peaks is a bit too large compared to the main city. I suggest splitting the district in four, using the main 2 streets as a base line. Maybe you can name each district something like "West Corner", "Northern Corner" "South Corner" and East Corner"
For naming the new suburb, I honestly love the generated name! Birdsong peak is beautiful! Though "peak" doesn't fully suit it, so maybe we can do Birdsong Heights!
minor thing but you don’t have to swap to the one-way tram or bus tool when adding lanes on one-way streets, the game automatically will make it one-way. you can also select the two-way bus lane and it’ll add those in both directions (like on the 4-lane avenues) so you don’t have to go up and down with the one-way
11:46 I think this local access bridge for the trams should be the same height as the highway bridge because this is where shipping will come through. I know it would be a tall order, pun only slightly intended, but in the long run, it would be good to not block the shipping traffic?
The "streetcar" system you first mention, that connected a municipal center with a farming community, those weren't, at least in Canada and the USA, streetcar systems, they are known as interurban systems. And they were actually built to connect already existing communities that lacked for one reason or another, a railroad connection. They not only carried fare paying passengers, but mail, and small car loads of frieght. Streetcar suburbs were built by owners of the first urban streetcar transit systems ( yes, most early streetcar transit systems were privately owned),the streetcars brought the "customers" to the new suburbs. In later years, usually the 1920s and 1930s, private SC lines were either both by their municipalities and were the basis of publicly funded mass transit, or abandoned. Great vid.
Edinburgh's tram network was extended this year to cover Leith, a historic, waterside area of the city (and once a city in its own right!) So how about New Leith?
My brain initially read that as New Leaf - which made me think animal crossing - someone else mentioned this was midway between two other communities - so Leith Crossing?
Barnabas Bluff - named after William Barnabas, who's sons sold their father's once prosperous farming land shortly after their parent's passing. Zachary, the eldest, suggested the name as a way to honor his father. The old farm house, deleted while building the suburb, was condemned and ultimately wasn't worth saving.
I feel like the most jarring thing about this new area is the height difference between the arterials and surrounding suburbs. While purely zoning-wise, what you did is more accurate; it looks a bit odd from a top down (particularly because CS2 doesn't do 3 story buildings too well), and I'd be worried about noise without a tree buffer of some sorts. I would either zone row housing along the frontage streets, or eliminate the half-blocks between the frontage streets and arterials and replace it with a dense green buffer.
Name suggestion for "Birdsong Peak": It is a bit Europe centric, but could be cool. In German you can say Tram instead of Street car, so maybe play with that and use something like Tramton
Personally ,when I hear "streetcar suburb", my mind automatically goes to Los Angeles with the Pacific Electric. So maybe a play on Hawthorne, Huntington Park, Rosemead, etc.
Places like "Birdsong Peak" typically have an official name, and a more gritty local nickname that the residents call it. I don't know what the official name will end up being, but the nickname could be "The Rails"
Love the expansion! I really like how you skipped the roundabout to avoid traffic back up. I always put my bus stops/trams just before the intersection so when they’re stopped they don’t block the intersection. I live near an intersection where the bus stop is just after the light and there’s always back up/near miss accidents whenever a bus stops there.
This is me! I restart soon much, I think I’ve finally got myself a solid town and thirty minutes later I’m starting to hate it, and quit and start over again lol … city with most pop I have so far is 30k 😂
It might help to view the "bus lanes" as "public transit lanes", at it sounds like that's largely how they function with how you've shown they can dedicate a lane to trams. It's another way to encourage public transit because the traffic is going to be lighter on those lanes, and if some citizen movement prioritizes time to arrival, that could actually work well in game (even if the numbers don't seem to show that right now). Using the bus lanes to separate tram lines also makes sense, as if the trams were in the middle with a divider, more people would have to cross the street to get to the tramp stop (or back across to their destination). The "public transit lanes" means there are fewer things to stop a tram between stops and keeps pedestrians off the road, making traffic potentially faster and safer.
In the same vein as the Jane Goodall Institute and the Bob Ross Memorial Interchange, how about Rogers Hill in honor of Mister Fred Rogers and his neighborhood trolley.
I wish the tram/bus/etc stops matched the colors you assign for the line. Also wish you can choose the color first before laying down the route. Helps to see what routes to have already in place.
I think some buildings on the frontage roads should be upzoned to row houses. It makes more sense because they are so close to the stops and amenities yet aren't on the arterial road, making them highly valuable. It will also help increase tram ridership. Also maybe add some pedestrian connection between the frontage roads and the arterial roads, to facilitate movement easily into the downtown.
You can remove traffic lights (or put them on) by clicking and dragging down your arterial through the intersections you want. Same with side walks but less control with that
In case you didn't realize, a quicker way to get the transportation Overview panel is to click on the button at the bottom, next to the economy button.
The "trams" in San Francisco are cable cars that pull the vehicle up the hill. A streetcar or light rail has limitations similar to heavy traditional rail.
A thought about the blue line, make that one have a stop by the school. So instead of a school bus, you have a school tram if you like. Could make the usage more prevalent or at least acceptable to why it’s not as used as the others
I am so glad to see you an older grid pattern. I grew up in a western railroad town. The grid there is about 115m by 50m with an alley through the middle. It was immensely walkable, especially since the whole town was a mile across in essentially any direction.
As someone who grew up in Melbourne, Australia, which today has the largest tram network in the world, let me offer two pieces of advice: 1. Tram lines historically were always in the centre of the road, not the gutter. That is a modern trend. 2. Tram stops at intersections were never both on the same side of the traffic lights. They were always diagonally opposite each other. This is because since the tram lines were in the centre of the road, a way had to be found for pedestrians to safely get on and off. The law for all tram stops in Melbourne was (and is) that the tram had to come to a complete stop and other vehicles had to stop behind the tram before pedestrians were allowed to enter or exit. In practice, since trams had to stop at red lights like every other vehicle, putting the tram stop at the lights where the tram had to stop anyway killed two birds with one stone.
I've never seen an American streetcar suburb with a road layout quite like this, with the frontage roads and all. What I've seen in most places is long rectangular blocks with the narrow parts of the blocks facing the main road, the one that had the historic trolley line on it. The reason developers oriented the blocks like that was because they wanted to maximize direct access to the trolley, and they made the blocks long leading out from the trolley in order to save money on street construction.
I think this is my favourite of all the builds you've ever done. That's probably because it looks a lot like my corner of south London which sprang up in the 1920s after the extension of the Northern line tube - a similar time period and story to American streetcar developments. There are examples in South London of neighbourhoods that didn't exist until the tube network was extended, and that consequently were essentially named by the train companies. Colliers Wood near me is one such example, being named for a charcoal-producing woodland that used to stand there. I suggest this place should also be named for one of the rural features it subsumed. Given the trees in proximity to water here, we could call it Willow Grove.
As a midwesterner, I definitely wish for a renewed focus on walkability and public transit. Modern suburban developments are sprawling areas of low density residental, typically with one park for the entire neighborhood and no shops, and it can be a 10-15 minute walk from one end of the neighborhood to the other. It's great for "privacy", but requires that you own a car. My parents' neighborhood built in the '70s was already like this, and it's only gotten worse with newer developments.
I think if you were to get that lesser utilized tram line ( 3 I think) to go straight over to the industrial area it would better get those 5000+ people to their jobs in industry. As far as a name for your new Suburb, my submission would be The Midland Downs. Or just go strait Arrested Development and go with Sudden Valley.
You checked your transit utilization at 4 in the morning game time. You should try again during rush hour to get a better idea of total utilization since the percentage you see in the infoview is the live, current value, not an averaged one (it's literally doing the division between current number of riders and total capacity of every vehicle on the line). The number of jobs and households seems well balance, too, which means lots of cims are likely walking to work. Converting downtown Twotoria into more of an employment center will increase ridership, and be in-line with how our suburban->urban development played out during the 20th century.
You can modify the route by going into the tram/transit line interface and click-dragging the existing line and pulling it onto the new unaffiliated stop.
If I may, I suggest calling one of the lines the Verde Beach Line, and for some fun, say that the route uses old trams from the older tramlines in Verde Beach.
Overtime I learned to keep the trams out of the roundabouts and also to just have them go down their own dedicated tracks next to a street. And it doesn't hurt to grade separate intersecting roads
Possible buses should travel around this part of the city and connect two end-points of the tram with the people how lives there. So from red line end-point over few streets to the blue line end-point. And some other connections too. I hope the let the car then inside the garage for all things they need. Specially schools need a good connection, police men, hospital worker, and firefighters mostly use own vehicles but they travel from and back to job too right? I not known if help extra bus line to connect all hospitals for visitors together over the big bus station. I love good connected cities then most tourists not rent an extra car to visit around a city inside Asia or Europe. Specially Bangkok is an example that public transportation is faster as with a car - if this part good connected. Most parts are not - and so you need a car or taxi.
stops should not be right across the street from each other, but should be kitty corner because the tram that stops on the other-side will block the intersection.
Can you please continue this playlist. Mabye do the thing were you make more high rise buildings and increase the population from what it is now in this video to 25 thousand people!!!??!
30:56 Honestly, you should have made FOUR (or three) districts as opposed to ONE because you are planning to expand both past the highway and down into the peninsula. Making four of these makes sure if when you expand you can expand the districts as well, and you would not need to redo services and which building(s) serve with districts.
Tram stops close to an intersection is not what they do in my contry, here the stops is always in the middle of a road length. Same thing with a bus too. But then the length of the road sections change where the stops are placed. In cities it's in the middle, outside the city where the road sections are long between each intersection the stops are close to the intersection. I can easily guess why they do that, useability and access. You see glimpses of this choice here and there where a walking path crosses a road outside the cities core, there you will often also find a stop. For bus for sure and for tram if the tram reaches that far. Now I'm wondering if this is a local choice or is this something that's done international or do it vary depning on the country?
lol I grew up in Melbourne where trams were everywhere. My cities skylines towns hardly have any buses and are mostly trams. I use a lot of 1 way roads and have dedicated tram pull overs using the three lane one way that goes back to the two lane one way. You do need to move the 3 lane back and forth to get the dedicated lane.
I do wonder why you never add high school when you add the elementary school. I have been in several small towns and there has ALWAYS been a high school servicing every area. Is there a reason you don't add them?
isnt birdsong peak a big culdesac right now? Just one Street in and One streeet out? I would suggest building in the interchange with the highway for de culdesacing the area. anyway great build
comment on the mod he uses to get rid of the white when zoning, you can just hit "i" and itll close the info graphics. however you will no longer have the info if zoning for specific purposes
Thanks as always for your content. Quick suggestion, you may want to move the tram stops that are right after an intersection closer to the center of a block so that the trams don't hang into the intersections while stopped.
45:10 the utilization is based on the amount of people currently using the trams. Since it’s 4:40am there’s not much activity in the city, leading to low utilization. At the peak hours (around 8am and 6pm) the utilization will be way higher.
Looks great! Love the idea of making the city as if it was founded a longer time ago and how it affects the city layout, thats something I've been doing and imagining as well. Also a fan of the smaller, more compact zoning!
Really great video! One of the main things I've learned from you more than any other creator, it's that it's entirely okay to not have every lot be 6 deep. Mind you, doesn't mean I always dare to have blocks with smaller lot sizes, but I'm getting there 😅 Anyway man, I'm really liking the current schedule of Magnolia Bay + livestream + Tutoria!
i wish the game had a story mode or something in which instead of a highway junction you start with a train station and maybe a rural road with 'older' architecture styles and then it changes through time. Its much more realistic to how cities originally started
I agree. The European version would start you with a train station, the north american version would start you with a 1 mile by 1 mile grid of township roads.
I grew up in streetcar suburban Inglewood, CA which had Pacific Electric Interurban service and then 100 years later now has LA Metro's K Line LRT! 🚋🚋🚋 So name a portion of the new neighborhood Desire Heights like @penguintux3025 says because we very much still desire some streetcar neighborhoods!
I got very excited when I heard you were going to implement some density, but this video was such a disappointment. 95% of your builds are grids of single family houses which is quite boring. You can’t call a neighborhood walkable and accessible if it’s only single family houses, with just one road lined with actual buildings. That’s why your ‘streetcar’ lines are a failure. Why would anyone living in such a sprawl use them? I understand why America looks the way it does with your videos.
I think the new district should be called “Cloverleaf”, named after “Cloverleaf Industries” from “Who framed Roger Rabbit”. I also noticed you didn’t place any radio antennas for the new area.
