Urban Development in full flight in Grand Manukau/Layton Cities
After some path finding issues with the transit system and realising you can not start a Metro Line at a “deactivated” station (a station that has been built but not online to receive passengers) I got some good old fashioned urban development underway in Grand Manukau/Layton Cities.
The objective this week was two-fold:
Establishment of the Ore Industry
Continued residential expansion to support a City Centre and the new Industry
So the Ore Industry has been established and is functioning well while Parnell and Franklin District have both come on-stream.
At the moment I am in Expansion Mode – that is pretty much cookie-cutter standardised urban development through the Twin Cities and Urban Islands Urban Geography concepts. This is because the major infrastructure is already laid down from the earlier Planning and Building Mode thus all that is happening is existing infrastructure is simply being extended rather than adding entirely new Lines and so on. The other mode is Consolidation/Mature Mode where I have stopped expanding the City and am going through the existing urban area either upzoning or optimising the infrastructure for efficient operations.
Let’s Ride the Metro
So to start the videos off today we get to ride the newly expanded Metro Line 1:
Let’s ride Metro Line 1Transport Line Manager in use
Checking Out the Ore Industry
I built some Ore Industry – this is how it went:
Ore Industry – after a quick ride on the Metro
And finally a look at the new urban areas of Parnell and Franklin District. Also a final drop down to First Person mode to see the Downtown and LOTS OF TREES!
Bus lane woes, logistics and a new urban area
Next week we are traffic problem finding and bringing online another heavy rail line to help remove some of the road congestion. Also more urban expansion and the placement of the Lemonade Factory in time for Christmas!
Auckland Transport Executives and the Chair again prove that they are talk and no action when it comes to the livability of a City especially its City Centre. The latest from AT in regards to Customs Street having busses removed to improve the flow of cars through a core City Centre area made me shake my head at the minimum. Greater Auckland were not impressed either:
A phrase that sends shivers down my spine "buses will be removed to improve traffic flow"https://t.co/nQoWqvQfvj
To turn Customs Street into a 6 lane car sewer will sever Britomart and the Ferry Terminal from Queen Street and the core of the City Centre that follows Queen Street to uptown. Thoroughfare traffic should be using the motorway network and Grafton Gully if people need to get from east Auckland to the Harbour Bridge and vice versa. Customs Street would become an excellent transit mall for busses and maybe Light Rail linking Britomart to Symonds Street, Fanshawe Street and the Light Rail Lines heading to Wynyard Quarter and the North Shore. Speaking of which where is 6 lanes of Customs Street cars meant to go when part of it and Fanshawe Street will reduce those lanes to make way for Light Rail.
Again Auckland Transport Executives not exactly thinking nor seeing the value of Integrated Planning.
Cities Skylines Urban Design Offers Lessons
While marco-level planning is what I usually do it does not mean I am going to skimp out in creating quality public spaces for my Cims and the tourists. And of course the City Centre is the prime public space.
Large roads will still be seen but they will not be running through the guts of the City Centre but rather forming the border with smaller 4 lane roads feeding into the guts of the City Centre from the 6-lane roads and then the 2-lane roads, shared streets, lane-ways, transit malls and pedestrians malls forming the interior network.
You will see 4-lane roads running through the City Centre but these roads will often contain one or more of the following:
bus lanes
Light Rail
Cycle ways
This allows transit and service vehicles to have continued access to core of the City Centre as people, goods and even the trash have to be moved around (and out of) the City Centre.
But I am not going to put large 6-lane road or the huge 12 lane road right through the middle of my City Centre as it would split it in half causing severance (and a tonne load of noise)
If you are wondering about this 6-laner that has two bus lanes with that runs right by the Central Station there is a reason why I have done this. First of all a large 12-platform heavy rail (with subway underneath) station to place it in the middle of the City Centre would sever the place even worse than the 6 or even 12 lane roads. So in this instance the station sits on the southern border of San Layton City Centre to which (and keeping consistent with above) a large road forms that norther border of said City Centre. Remember heavy rail is bringing in commuters from longer distances so to travel within the City Centre itself you have:
Subway
Bus (hence the bus lanes)
Cycleways
Monorail
Light Rail
All which are less space intensive!
In any case this is the urban geographic layout of San Layton City – to which I will be focusing on the City Centre:
San Layton City is a dual-core City with multiple satellites all connected by either road or some form of transit (usually rail).
If you are wondering what the following picture and subsequent pictures like it are this is the closest I get to a Shared Space:
While these are pedestrian or transit malls:
Right without further ado here is 9am Sunday morning in San Layton City Centre:
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Monorail does look quite Gotham:
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Street Trees do wonders:
And now for Central Station and some big roads – oh and a sky cafe. You can also see the monorail running through the City Centre as well:
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And now the main road that connects the City Centre up to the Satellites further east. Centre Bank is the main leisure area on the other side of the rail station:
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Finally the second bit minor City Centre – Washington Heights and how that is built around a bus station. Again the larger roads form the boundaries with smaller roads often transit malls or shared spaces forming the interior network :
This is how you outlay your City Centre. Not with big 6 lane car sewers but with public spaces and extensions of living rooms using shared spaces, pedestrian and transit malls and of course transit lanes!!!
Even 9am on a Sunday the City Centre is teeming with Cims!
I have updated the domain name for Ben’s Cities from wordpress.com to Ben’s Cities.blog as well allowing for video content to be put to this blog. Of course the upgrade also means more space for lots more Cities Skylines photos as I have a wee back log of photos to upload and share on San Layton City.
Again thank for your support on all things Cities Skylines and as San Layton City (and others) continue to evolve.
There is even an essay on Monorails and Urban Geography: MONORAIL: A KEY URBAN LESSON FROM THE SIMPSONS. So last night I decided for the first time in Cities Skylines to build a monorail line from the City Centre to Thorton Park halfway across the map.
At the moment the line only has two stations on it (same as the heavy rail network) as San Layton City is a very young city having only being founded a month ago (real-time).
None-the-less I built the line and it designed for more stations as the City expands. Once you get the 70km/h speed restriction off the train moves as fast as heavy rail allowing very rapid connections.
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You can also see some of the first developments here:
Now to get the daily rush hour of traffic under control (caused mainly by inter city traffic rather than intra city commuting)
Four new tram lines were built with two connecting to the wider city and two travelling within the area forming a City Link type circuit. The photos below are of City Boulevard Lines 1 and two that run as a loop down the new Boulevard and through Forrest Road (one of the two east-west parallel roads). The other two lines that were later built are:
City Centre to Airport LRT Line. Think of it as Solaria’s City Centre to Airport via Dominion Road, Auckland equivalent with the Airport-Solarian Line (a metro/subway line) as the express Southern Airport Line).
Thorton Hills Interchange – City Boulevard Line. This links up the new urban area to a major interchange that serves busses and an inter-city train station
Lessons for Auckland?
Do not be afraid of Light Rail and also Light Rail is good for small intra suburb running as well as big trans-city running like Airport Lines.
Two of the four new tram lines are intra-suburb running – meaning the line runs within a single district rather than multiple districts. I can control individual line budgets meaning I can select capacity ranges from 75 to 210 passengers. As a comparison a bio-fuel bus holds 40 passengers while the bendy busses hold 130 and let off a pile of diesel fumes along the way. So rather clogging my nice new urban area up with smelly busses I can use smaller trams to move passengers around while stepping up capacity as demand increases.
Manukau City Centre and Manukau/Wiri would be a perfect example of such a Light Rail scheme that connects into a larger LRT scheme like the Southern Airport Line (Manukau to the Airport via Puhinui Station) or in Cities Skylines the two City Boulevard Lines connecting into the bigger trans-city lines.
The two bigger lines being the Thorton Interchange to City Centre Line and the Airport to City Centre LRT Line both which run through part of the City Boulevard Lines.
Airport and NW Lines Source: AKL Urban Design via Twitter Note: Not final for statioms
In this case these two bigger lines run through multiple districts and centres so using the big E-class tram that holds 210 passengers will be more viable (remember my biggest bus is only 130 passengers).
The rule of thumb I usually follow with transit is this:
Busses for short distances and feeders into major interchanges
Light Rail for medium distances
Heavy Rail (and Metro Rail with Cities Skylines) for long distances or high capacity shuttling such as a major transport interchange and a stadium
In Cities Skylines I usually follow the above rules with a couple of exceptions. From time to time I will build a busway to allow busses to do medium distance running while light rail can be used for short distance running.
The Laytonville Busway
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But it is the LRT system I have set up that is of more interest as it gives lessons to Auckland as we try to set up an LRT system of our own.
This map shows the transit system in San Solarian City. The dash lines are the ferries, thick lines the Metro Lines and the thin lines are the trams:
As noted before I run both trans-city tram lines and tram lines that run within a single district (local loop running). Both classes of lines connect to each other either at a common station/stop or a slight over lap of the lines in some areas (two tram lines sharing the same bit of road/track) to allow transfers.
The question is why am I using trams for shot distance running? Answer One is capacity while answer two is ambience.
Busses are smelly, noisy and hold fewer passengers compared to the trams. Don’t get me wrong busses have their place including the biofuel bus but in a large City they just don’t cut the mustard when wanting to move people between areas (and between Metro Stations).
In high ambience areas like City Boulevard, the City Centre and Laytonville having lots of busses running around isn’t my idea of fostering ambience. This is why the trams are used in local loop running like City Boulevard Lines 1 and 2.
I can control budgets of individual lines so I can determine the capacity required:
So for the City Boulevard Lines trams that hold 75 passengers (still more than the biofuel bus (40)) are adequate while the Trans City Lines get the big 210 passenger trams.
City Centre – Thorton Hills LRT Line via City Boulevard
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Airport to City Centre via William and City Boulevards
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City Boulevard Line including Forrest Street
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Lessons for Auckland?
The Northern Airport Line will be Light Rail while I am pushing the Manukau to Airport section of the Southern Airport Line to be Light Rail (Manukau to Botany will be bus).
The first is about capacity to meet demand (The Southern Airport Line intersects Manukau Bus Station and Puhihui Train Station that have heavily patronised transit lines running through them) and the second is about ambience especially in a major Metropolitan Centre like Manukau.
Manukau or rather Transform Manukau is 600 hectares in size compared to the main City Centre being around 385ha (this does NOT include Port of Auckland but does include Wynyard Quarter). Manukau is also in the middle of a large regeneration program that includes intensification and upgrades of public spaces. Manukau is also forecast to house 20,000 new residents (I say it can hold double) over the next decade or so.
Simply put given its large size busses are not going to quite cut it moving people around Manukau nor to and from it to another major employment area like the Airport. Ambience is also in play and like the City Centre having a high amount busses inside Manukau doesn’t exactly work either.
Running higher capacity trams along the Northern Airport Line through the Airport and down to Manukau via the Southern Airport Line would be Auckland’s example of my Airport to City Centre LRT via William Boulevard Line coupled with the Airport to Laytonville Metro Line.
A LRT Line doing a circuit of Manukau and Manukau City Centre linking up the main commercial area, main residential area to the south, the events centre to the south-east and AUT to the north-east would be an example of my City Boulevard Lines.
Botany Sky Train Line Revised Manukau Loop
The Southern Airport Line is Option 1 (Red). Source: Auckland Transport
Remember via budget control you can use smaller trams (that can be coupled up to make larger units as I can in Cities Skylines (75, 150, 210 (same as the single unit E-class)) to start with and up the capacity as the demand allows.
I believe in the dig once, get it right policy that New Zealand struggles with (due to our often lack of foresight). While building LRT instead of a busway for the Southern Airport Line between Manukau and the Airport is more expensive those costs are paid off pretty quickly from the demand and ambience side.
Transform Manukau Framework Plan Source: Panuku Development Auckland
Transform Manukau Framework Plan Source: Panuku Development Auckland
Transform Manukau Framework Plan Source: Panuku Development Auckland
Transform Manukau Framework Plan Source: Panuku Development Auckland
Transform Manukau Framework Plan Source: Panuku Development Auckland
Transform Manukau Framework Plan Source: Panuku Development Auckland
Transform Manukau Framework Plan Source: Panuku Development Auckland
Remember the Southern Airport Line intersects the Southern and Eastern (heavy rail) Lines widening the catchment of that particular Airport Line. You also have the Manukau Bus Station that is THE PRIMARY bus and inter-city bus station for South Auckland (like Britomart is for wider Auckland). So the demand for trams will be there straight off the bat (even if we use smaller single car trams to start with that can be later connected up like our current electric trains). As for bus congestion not applying in Manukau? Well I do not want to get to that point unlike the City Centre and as I try to avoid in Cities Skylines (and when I don’t it is a mess to untangle).
Remember ambience is the name of the game and having busses trundle through Manukau is not my idea of ambience. Again LRT like my City Boulevard Lines are great for localised loop running to move people around an area – especially are large area that has many focal points like Manukau does inside its 600ha area.
Source: Panuku Development Auckland
Source: Panuku Development Auckland
Don’t forget that budget control measure for capacity.
Finally and again yes placing LRT down in Manukau is more expensive than bus rapid transit but once LRT is down you will not have to dig up the area again because the busses went over capacity (often too quickly).
Let’s get it right the first time every time!
San Solaria City has offered quite a few lessons for Auckland. I hope you have enjoyed this cross over with Talking Southern Auckland. I might do another cross over next year as San Solaria continues to evolve or when I start a new city on a new map.
Where a motorway once was is now a thriving urban area that connects the City Centre up to the main urban area in San Solaria City.
Putting down some side streets, a lane way or five, building the tram line and placing down some Government buildings marked the coming of age of an area that was once a six lane motorway.
Some quick retrofitting of a six lane roads that runs parallel to San Solaria Boulevard to place some new tram tracks to allow the running of City Boulevard Lines 1 and 2, and the eventual cross-city routes from the Airport to the City Centre (an all stop service compared to the express service run by the Metro system (think of it as the Northern Airport Line via Dominion Road and the Southern Airport Line via Puhinui Station and the existing Southern Line)) were also done before the final zones went down.
Once the zones went down it was time to unpause and let the simulator run through its day-night-day cycle and the new urban area take form.
The tram runs I will post in a separate post.
But here we are the proof in the pudding – once was a motorway is now a brand new urban area that links up two formally separated areas.
The night shots:
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The day shots
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And those lane-ways? Here is a few of them:
Yes the project was expensive and time consuming to pull off but the benefits were most definitely worth it.
It has been a while since I have been on Cities Skylines as I was in the middle of a research project while now I am testing my mettle on Transport Fever (21st Century version of Transport Tycoon).
I will get back to my cities soon enough but it seems in the meantime Cities Skylines is about to go green:
STOCKHOLM – Aug. 22, 2017 – Paradox Interactive and Colossal Order are preparing to make players green with envy in Green Cities, a new expansion for their evergreen city-builder Cities: Skylines. Coming later this year, Green Cities will allow mayors to make sustainable cities, complete with organic stores, electric vehicles, and new services designed to make pollution a quaint notion of the past. Green Cities will arrive for $12.99 via low-carbon-footprint digital delivery for Windows, MacOS, and Linux PCs later this year.
Cities: Skylines – Green Cities adds 350 new assets to the core game, adding a massive selection of new visual options, complete with eco-friendly buildings, organic stores, electric vehicles, and new services designed to make pollution a quaint notion of the past. Players can create more diversified cities, or go completely green as the urban population grows. New in-game services and buildings arrive alongside revisions to noise and environmental pollution, making the skies safer for Chirper at last.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg, with exciting new features such as: Story to Story, Building to Building, Street to Street: New Eco-Friendly Buildings, New specialization buildings, new alternative service buildings, new unique buildings, electric cars, new parks — 350 new assets in all giving a unique new look to Cities: Skylines I Wish I Was Special, You’re So Very Special: New specialized options for all city zones, plus leveled-up specializations for the first time in Cities: Skylines So What So What So What’s the Scenario: New scenarios, new policy options, and a new Monument to make your friends Green with envy Why Do Birds Suddenly Appear More Stylish: Of course we’ve included a flower-crown hat for Chirper.
As always, the expansion will be accompanied by a free content update to the base game, which will include electric cars, road modding, changes to noise pollution, and more beautification options in the form of parks and trees, among other things.
Layton City is still my only City that used heavy rail as part of the commuter transit system. All my other cities either use a combination of subway and elevated light rail, trams and/or busses with heavy rail relegated to inter-city movements.
Consequently there are four heavy rail lines that run either around or through Layton City all of which pass through the City Central Interchange in the City Centre. The four Lines are:
Layton Metro #1 and #2: this is the circular line that around the City in either a clockwise or anti clockwise motion. The Line colours are yellow or white
Onehunga Line: This line runs from Olive Park in the South and runs north through the middle of the City before coming to its major interchange in Onehunga. The Line continues and joins Metro Lines #1 and #2 at Beech District before terminating at Onehunga Central. The Line colour is blue
Manukau to Airport Line (that is Layton City International Airport). This Line starts at Manukau Interchange and follows Metro Lines #1 and #2 north until after the East-West Canal where the Line turns right linking up with the Space Elevator, Stadium Park, City Central and finally terminating at the Airport.
I will post the other Lines later on. But today Metro Line #2 (City Central to Manukau and back around to City Central going in a clockwise direction if looking from the south:
Layton City looking from south to north
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Looking down to the City Centre (from north to south)
If you have the Transport Line Manager Mod you are able to produce Metro-type transit maps of your City. At the moment it only covers Metro, heavy rail, tram and ferries but it looks pretty good for a product only in Alpha-testing.
I got a transit map set up for San Solarian City and this is what it looks like:
Please ignore one of the tram lines going off the map as it seems one of the tunnels is causing a glitch out. But you can see the Metro lines (medium thickness), the tram lines (thin lines) and the ferries (dashed lines). If I had heavy rail going you would see thick lines also on the map. Bus lines are at the moment not included and if they were I hope they would be allowed to be published separately to save clutter in a large city.
The PDF version above is set to A2 paper size and best zoomed at 400% to get a clear look. The file itself is under a megabyte in size so it wont cause your phone to do a Three Mile Island on you.
The above photo is roughly in line with the transit map so you can work out roughly how things are laid out.
As the city continues to expand so will the transit system. I will keep you posted on how it works out.
Slowly rolling out new features in Mass Transit DLC
Last night I managed to get in a few serious hours of game play on Cities Skylines with the new Mass Transit DLC installed (and core mods updated).
My initial reaction is mixed as the ferries do not yet work (game crashes out) and the transit hubs are clumsy as you can no control the amount of platforms you might need. However, I did manage to get blimps going and have started using the new Routes system to find and manage traffic jams.
BLIMPS
While the ferries do not work the blimps certainly do and make quite site to see as they orbit your city. I do warn you though they are pretty useless as commuter services given they are slow and only take 35 passengers (bus takes >40). But when a blimp circuit is connected up between say major commerce or tourist points it gets more interesting. So I created a circuit that travels between these points:
International Airport
Stadium
Downtown (Casino, Sky Tower, Convention Centre and major hotels)
Laytonville shopping district
The patronage per blimp is about 25/35 passengers
Here are the blimps on their orbit (the policy setting is for educational so don’t forget about books and broccoli people):
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Busways and Traffic Congestion
I have only built one small busway connecting a City Centre to its fringe area on the other side of the motorway. Apart from that I have not used the bus-way options available in the Network Extensions mod apart entrances and exits to major pre ‘Mass Transit’ transit hubs (Layton City is an example of this).
With San Solarian City there are several choke points owing to placements of the industrial complexes and the ports meaning industrial traffic can mix with road transit traffic in key places. Bus lanes do not quite work here as they would between a residential and commercial area so you need to try something else. Enter a dedicated busway running parallel to the main road.
At first it was just one way but when busses going the other way were equally as stuck I flipped the busway into a 2-way one:
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This is the congestion I am trying to untangle (traffic flow city-wide is 65-67%):
And here are a few other random things including a custom made bus station using Prop Anarchy:
My goal is to slowly get traffic flow up to 75% in San Solarian City. While the City currently has a small death wave (increase funding for death care required) the new Route Priority system as well as tracing individual journey patterns is certainly assisting getting traffic flow back up.
The new transit hubs available in Mass Transit DLC are currently useless due to lack of tram integration and unable to control platform counts. However, the new traffic AI has meant for the first time the transit journey count equals the non transit journey count meaning more people are taking transit. Now to make transit more reliable starting with bus lane untangling.
Ben's Cities 