I recreated a REAL AMERICAN CITY to test Cities Skylines 2! 

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Matt, add the Road Builder mod. You can create your own road layouts, it changes the game completely...and will most likely result in nightmare fueled creations.

SF local here. I believe the bridge they have in City skylines is the older version of the Bay bridge and the one you see on Google maps is the new one. also, the freeway did connect through the city for a long time but in 1988 there was a massive earthquake and all of the elevated highways collapsed so they never rebuilt them.

San Francisco's trolleybuses (the 'electric buses' you refer to) are a vital part of the Public Transport scene there, due to their ability to climb hills more effectively that normal diesel vehicles.

@3:44 - the Central freeway was going to connect up but got cancelled. In fact, SF removed freeways after the '89 quake when some of them were damaged.

I always found it weird that universities and schools in general are SO massive in the game. Like universities don't need to have a huge park around if they are in the middle of the city

14:43 FYI, in the US, yellow road lines separate lanes going in opposite directions. White road lines separate lanes going in the same direction. So just seeing yellow lines there is an easy way to tell that it's a two way. Also, they're dashed, indicating you can pass a car in front of you (sold means no passing allowed).

Urban universities in the US commonly have multiple buildings dotted throughout the city, rather than a single campus. That's why you were seeing tiny buildings labeled as "Universities." They aren't individual universities, but rather part of one larger university.

a twelve mile long traffic jam sounds like my usual commute to work. 25 minutes with no traffic, an hour and a half to two hours when it's busy. The longest time it took me was 10 hours when the bridge was shut down.

In SF we don't have a lot of dedicated commercial space. Most of our commercial space is on the ground floor of office and converted row housing. The older parts of the city are all Victorian/Edwardian style buildings. The newer buildings are more north american styled. The freeway used to connect but was damaged by an earthquake. The city has a lot of one way roads because the incline is too steep for a vehicle to drive up. Some roads have restrictions against freight or commuter vehicles. Some inclines have such a sharp crest the bottom of your vehicle scrapes the road as you drive over the top. The bridge Matt was asking about was the original Bay Bridge.

The reason the bus lane goes down the center of that road (Van Ness Ave) is due to the utilities being underground on either side of the street. Makes maintenance easier since the center red lanes are concrete, other lanes are asphalt

You should try recreating Pittsburgh Pennsylvania. it has lots of bridges and is a nice relatively small city.

"And everyone's happy even though it's raining." If it's raining in California, that's cause for happiness.

‘Motorways in the UK don’t just go to a crossroads’ 😂 Oh Matt. Come to Glasgow. It’s a nightmare… and there’s literally a crossroads. The motorway(s) go through the centre of town, yet if you watch old public information films (engineering porn on RU-vid) about their construction, it was such a bright future they were imagining! You should recreate Glasgow. It’s very griddy and keeps being used in movies. The last Indiana Jones movie was filmed here (the New York bits anyway)

The fact that he showed my work, my house, my partners house and my school in this cid makes me love it even more.

Bus lanes on edge are for standard bus routes. Bus lanes in the middle is for Bus Rapid Transit. Works similar to a tram system just without the tracks.

Not sure about England, but in North America, Universities sometimes have annex buildings, which are smaller buildings for specific classes or faculties. They can be spread out throughout a city as properties become available for the university to purchase. This is why you saw so many small buildings listed as universities and colleges.

Very cool to see you building my neighborhood! While Alta Plaza Park might look cool because of the terracing, Lafayette Park is nicer, IMO...and also just across the street from me, so maybe I'm a bit biased.

What is so fascinating about the default SF map is that I could clearly distinguish two pre-backfilled areas - Marina District and Mission Bay area. Marina District was backfilled in 1915 due to World Fair. Mission Bay was backfilled in the 1800s and again after the 1906 fire. I wonder why the developer chooses the older version of SF.

Used to live in SF when I went to college there, and the MUNI busses do have batteries- they use the pantographs to charge and have a backup diesel generator!

15:33 hey RCE! these bus-trams are called i'm pretty sure, trolleybuses!

18:15 traffic level is totally realistic

Try making Portland, Oregon if you want to be confused by the roads. One of Portland's nicknames is "Bridge City", because we have 12 bridges across the Willamette and two bridges across the Columbia.

When he talked about bridge I wanted to hear "Bridge review" line...

Oooh my city! FYI, about 20 minute south there's a city named San Mateo (Matteo... but yeah not as popular) 3:40 those are glorified offramps for the freeway since there isn't a freeway that actually goes completely through San Francisco other than towards the Bay Bridge (one off to the right) that long freeway towards the Golden Gate bridge doesn't exist, it's all city streets to get to the GG Bridge. Those bus lanes in the middle, with the islands for passengers, are more of a Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system, no left turns along that street so buses can go without needing to stop, where as if they are on the outside they need to stop whenever someone wants to make a right turn (you can use bus lanes as turning lanes here) 10:20 good luck with the shops/housing, most of those main transit ways have mixed use building that's typically commercial on the bottom and residential above it, which isn't something that I think is in Cities Skyline game engine. And the most realistic bit? The traffic coming off the Golden Gate bridge, while the directions things go is way different... yeah it's pretty horrible at times.

15:33 Matt sees a trolleybus for the first time. Very often new trolleybuses will have a battery. The battery charges in-motion, meaning this way you don't waste time standing to charge

15:30 Yeah, we've heard of batteries. They're much more expensive, dirtier, and less energy efficient than running a system off central power generation. Also, the cable car system was built in the 1870s. Yes, 1870s not 1970s. They didn't exactly have much battery technology back then.

The bus you've called a tram is actually a Trolley Bus. They have been around since like 1882! Back then, batteries were non-existant or at least very poor in terms of range. And Trolley Bus network were already grown when the modern technologies came. Actually, trolley buses are cheaper to add to the city, due to fact that they don't need any rails (they have 2 cable connections on the top), and modern trolleybuses can go as fast as 150 KMH, but, there's usually no space for them to do so. However, there is one trolley bus that goes between countries, and this one probably has enough space to go fast. According to Wikipedia, as of 2012 there were around 300 cities or metropolitan areas where trolleybuses were operated, and more than 500 additional trolleybus systems have existed in the past. Matt, you should know that!

Finally, cars driving on the proper side of the road!

"Yeah look you can tell because of the stop signs" Me "Yeah sure, just ignore the 47 cars all parked on both sides of the road all facing the same directions... yup its TOTALLY the Stop Signs that gave it away as a 1-Way Road..." xD LOL Also you can tell by the color of the stripes/dashes on the road. If its a two lane road and the dashes/lines are Yellow its 2 way traffic, however if its a two lane road and the lines/dashes are all white then its a one way road. Yellow denotes the a divide between directions of traffic, sometimes just lines or lines and dashes(for passing) or a "turn lane" dividing the directions which is also marked in yellow. The white lines or dashes denote division of same direction lanes (solid line during a turn denotes "no changing lanes"). The Crossings/Direction markers at/near intersections color varies from state to state and sometimes city to city, but the lane markings are standardized across the whole of the country.

Yellow solid/dashes in center = Two way. White dashes = one way. cars are generally parked in the direction of travel. Another ID for two way is white lines outside yellow double line inside.

whoa, hey, mister engineer man never heard of trolleybuses before? >:D

We have heard of batteries in the US. But what battery technology do you have that allows a 40 passenger bus run for eight hours at a stretch? Here in Seattle we also have catenary busses. Ours are dual powered; they run on PNG until they get into the city core, then extend the booms and go full electric. Battery free.

0:56 Mattsisco? Sounds more like the name of a Real Network Engineer. :)

Electric buses like that are called trolley buses at least here in the UK, and they can come off the lines and run on batteries for a short period of time

I doubt many of the viewers actually drove in SF, so i will confirm. its shit. worst place ive ever driven. its a fkn mess

In the U.S., opposing traffic is separated by yellow lines. That's another way you can tell a one-way road from a two-way road at a glance. If every lane is separated by dotted white lines, it's a one-way road. Even if there is a barrier between traffic directions, there will still be a solid yellow line on each side of the barrier. The yellow lines can have different formats (e.g., single, double, dotted, solid, etc.) that mean different things, but the color yellow indicates opposing traffic.

An easy way of figuring out if it's one way or two way traffic is look at the color of dividing lines. White is one way and yellow is two way.

14:54 IS THAT A SUPRAAAA!?

15:40 Matt being confused about the amount of cables in the air because of the buses made me laugh... you don't want to take a look at swiss cities like zurich, winterthur or basel... that's a mess xD speaking of which: would be interesting to see you trying to recreate zurich in city skylines II :)

should try more like this. id like to see a city from each american region, as well as each uk region/country (can i personally request minnesota for the midwest region as im from there?)

"I want to get some low density residential in." You couldn't have picked a worse city. Maybe some equally bad options, but definitely not worse.

All Hail Grid! All Hail Grid!!

3:20 that’s the difference between interstates and us highways; interstates are freeways (with the exception of I-180 in Wyoming) and are federally funded, and us highways (also called us routes) are just federally designated routes through existing roadways funded by states

Love when you recreate real-life cities! So interesting to watch! I would love for you to try and recreate Stockholm, because it’s a city made up of 15 islands! Would be fun to see how that will work in Cities🤩

5:26 You don't want your busway on the side because of parking or when a car/truck needs to unload or load something it will be on the way of a rapid bus, which only stops at certain designated places

Danielle Steele used to live at the Spreckels Mansion!!

1:03 Matt, it can't be just me! Can you see the strongest shape here?? 😂 the roads...

The freeways ending at city streets are a remnant of an important part of city planning history: freeway revolts. Highway planners had originally planned a lot more freeways crossing the city, but it turns out people don't like having their neighborhoods demolished.

It makes sense to put bus lanes on the outside lanes of the road so it’s easier to pick people up but, the buses would end up getting cut off by people merging and making right turns. With the bus lanes in the middle it allows them to have a dedicated lane so they don’t have as much traffic

I'm expecting this is gonna end poorly

I think the reason a lot of US cities are kind of weird like this is because they are 250 years old and had to develop with a very quickly expanding population.

Just let the sewage run down the streets for the ultimate in realism for San Francisco.

Hint - use the color of the center striping to determine one/two-way. Yellow stripe -> Two way; White stripe -> One way. For public streets and roads in America, at least.

You got to remember that San Francisco is old (1776). It was there long before busses (1917). Thanks for all the great vibes, Matt!

I love Matt’s perspective of San Francisco. I love the city, but there is a lot about how it is designed that is absolutely nuts.

You should see the Allen Expressway in Toronto, perfect example of a highway ending abruptly with a regular intersection.

That other bridge is the Bay Bridge connecting to Oakland! I just recently watched a documentary on its history and design. Quite fascinating! Two bridges in one with a pivot point on an island. Originally half cantilever, half suspension on either side of the island. Suspension side required a massive concrete anchor to be built into the bay midway through the planned span.

I go into the city a few times a year and that traffic over the bridge into the city is 100% how it truly is. So you even got that detail correct. Well done Matt!

The Bay Bridge is BILFy. It has that cool shared anchor, plus a badass tunnel.

This week i was around a bridge, and i thought wow i watch a guy who likes bridges : The Gosse bridge in nova scotia, and apparently it was a practice run to learn a bit before making the Confederation bridge ( very long [12,900 m]) from Nova Scotia to PEI

In the US if the center line is yellow then the traffic is coming the opposite direction on the other side. If it is white then it’s same direction (one way)

Lexington, Kentucky has the University of Kentucky, so UK in the US, and its got an urban area and commercial and residential areas, as well as horse farm and livestock areas.

My grandpa worked on the design of the bay bridge which was the one you were asking about. He’s a civil engineer as well!

I have only been to SF once or twice but I seem to recall that waiting in traffic for like 12 miles trying to get into the city was a realistic feature!

Hey Matt, greatings from Argentina! Next time i recomend you try to recreate La Plata, witch is the capital of Buenos Aires province. It has a very artistic design so it can be a real challenge for Cities 2.

18:30 literally what it's like trying to go southbound on the 101 into the city

As an american your American jokes kill me. I have this thing I say to where the UK, Canada, and US are like 3 brothers. No one else can make fun of us but our brothers 🇬🇧🇨🇦🇺🇲

Every block thats surrounded by one way streets is a square roundabout. You need to do a one way streets only citry with circular blocks in a grid and combined both UK and USA.

I know in CS1 there were mods that made it a lot easier to recreate a city. One that let you do the topography of anywhere you wanted with semi-realistic heightmaps and everything, and another that let you overlay an image (like a Google maps screenshot) over your map. You could 1:1 a lot of places directly. It let you mess with the image size to make it compare better with City Skylines grids. I'd imagine CS2 has a similar thing by this point that could make this WAY easier to do. Probably worth looking at for the future, even if only for doing in your free time to make your own home town or something. (I did it in CS1 for several areas for fun back in the day). Edit: and yes, you could change the image overlay opacity to make it more/less visible.

American trolley buses *do* have batteries for short distances off the wires. But the wires are more energy/emissions efficient overall, in part by saving weight on every trip.

so fun that civil engineer never heard about trolleybuses 😂

Growing up in suburban America, I’m used to the grid system, and I like it in terms of navigation. But seeing that overhead view of San Fran with the tiny city blocks feels like a nightmare to drive through. I’m used to much larger blocks than that

the bus lanes are in the center because its faster for people to jwalk to a bus stop then a bus pulling over and stopping, opens up sidewalks for all the pedestrians and homeless as well

That's kind of a very unique city situation to try to mimic, especially doing just a portion of it. I'm not surprised it didn't do well. Picking a different city of a smaller size that you can more accurately fit the whole thing might show better results.

You can also tell from the color of the lines that split the lanes if there are multiple directions on a road. White means lanes go the same direction. Yellow means the lanes on either side go the opposite direction. You can see that in the Google maps too.

We have heard of batteries but we also know the cable provides power 24/7 once you put the time in to install them, while the battery runs out of juice. Since buses follow a set route, it makes far more sense to install the cables. It helps that San Fran had cable cars since... electricity?

Probably should've implemented some public transport lines to test out the bus lanes and do a proper traffic comparison... that being said, I'm not sure if public transport actually helps with traffic in Cities: Skylines 2 so that might not do anything to help.

This is a lot of fun to watch from San Francisco, knowing Matt did basically no research before doing this. So many grids. So many one way roads.

18:23 yup that sums up any big American city

Amazing how Matt accurately describes San Fran traffic off the Golden Gate Bridge without ever having been in San Fran.

I was HUGE into bridges when I was about 11 and went to SF for the first time. Was most looking forward to crossing the Golden Gate Bridge, but I was much more impressed with the Bay Bridge. Golden Gate has two tower thingies. Bay Bridge has like 6-8.

"Can't pronounce words properly." Big talk for people that can't properly pronounce lieutenant considering you can literally SWIM to France from England... you're what, an hour away by rowboat and you can't just double check with them?

I would definitely watch a megamonday video of a couple hours of you doing an exact ish copy of a city house by house, road by road, shop by shop, etc.

There was a missed opportunity because one of the defining elements of the SF layout is that the grid pivots 45 degrees along market street and I feel like Matt would have enjoyed the insanity of it.

In the US we use yellow lines in the middle of the road to indicate two way traffic, white indicates one way traffic flow

If the opportunity arises to visit San Fran, we would love a live action bridge review. 😂 Also, maybe travel around the city a little with a local who knows the place, its insane.

Generally, in America if the center lines are yellow then it's a 2-way road. If the lines are white then it's 1-way. Some smaller roads have no lines which mean they're 2-way.

I would like to see how you would build a city in a hilly/mountainous terrain

Matt: "I find your lack of roundabouts disturbing."

I really like the fact that he got around to making a paradox account by the time this one has come out

If you want to have custom roads, you can create them with the road builder mod

"I've created a 12 mile long traffic jam..." Then you correctly built San Fransisco LOL Great video mate

You got the traffic perfectly also. 12 miles of traffic has got to be the average with places like this.

Took my wife to the Golden Gate State Park for an anniversary a while back. High recommend! The Japanese Gardens are gorgeous and historic for the US, and the Science Center is absolutely fascinating. Plus they still had the traveling Ferris wheel when we went. One of our more fun anniversaries actually

I think san Francisco has a BRT/Bus Rapid Transport or something similar. They usually have the inside lane as bus lanes and get given priority at intersections

I believe the traffic jam at the end is just another morning commute for the people living in San Francisco.

I wonder if matt would be interested in pittsburgh pennsylvania, theirs lots of bridges

As a Bay Area native, the traffic at the end was the most realistic part of this… 😂

Bus lanes in the middle are superior because you don’t have to deal with right turners both leaving and entering the road. It’s so much faster. And people just avoid parking in the bus lane more when it’s in the middle.