Layton City: Rolling out the Mass Transit Network

An 8-80 City needs mass transit

With the foundations now laid down for Layton City the expansion begins towards a large-scale city. Yesterday the City went over 10,000 residents which signals time to start investing in the mass transit system.

With Cities Skylines you have the mass transit options of:

Bus with bus stations
Trams
Heavy Rail passenger
Subway
Taxis
Ferries (if the Ferry mod is installed)
Cycling lanes and cycle ways for active transport

I also have some mass transit improvement mods that allow me to better fine tune the mass transit systems (including vehicles to a line and even the fares), network extension pieces to build bus-ways, and transit hubs that have rail, subway and bus all together. For ‘park and ride’ I downloaded some parking buildings that combined with the Rush Hour mod allow people to actually drive up, park and catch mass transit (the game allows I believe up to two mode transfers).

With all this in mind a challenge automatically presents itself for a city a young as Layton City, future-proofing to allow expansion of the network. And by future-proofing I do not mean an NZTA or Auckland Transport version where they build a duplicate Mangere motorway bridge that was future-proofed to carry heavy rail to allow the airport line. Catch is their version of future-proofing was to allow a single track and the train to travel at 25km/h meaning an entire new bridge would need to be built (hence why via Onehunga for Airport rail is no longer viable).

My version of future proofing includes the Manukau Objective (leaving aside large areas of blank land for future transit (something that has worked to Manukau’s advantage)) and the Future Objective (building the infrastructure ahead of time but deactivating it until ready). This means you might see large plots of land in an existing urban area blank or stations in “inactive” mode as I follow both objectives in laying out the transit network. It means unlike Auckland yes I do have surplus infrastructure but it also means I am not playing catch up and doing expensive retrofitting like Auckland. The only time this might happen is when I lay down subway stations but the land size for that is very small.

The start of the mass transit system

Transit control screen where you can oversee and fine tune your mass transit system

An example of a suburbia transit hub. One station has metro rail the other inter city. Also a bus station, taxi rank and parking building. The metro rail station is currently deactivated

Bus only tunnel connecting the two stations

As I noted in Layton City – Starting Out #CitiesSkylines Layton City will be only my second city with heavy rail used as passenger rail. Trams and subways will be still used but I am trying to replicate a bit of Auckland through using heavy rail connecting the suburbs to the dual city centres that will be established later on.

The suburban metro rail stations are currently deactivated (meaning they are built but not in operation) allowing me to place the transit network down ahead of time and bring it online as needed. I rather do this at a smaller upkeep cost than go through expensive retrofitting on already developed land where demolition of buildings is needed.

Following the Transit Orientated Development method the area around the transit hubs will often be high density with lower densities further out. The extensive use of cycle paths and cycle boulevards expands the reach of the transit hubs while allowing localised riding in place of the car as well.