Heavy traffic with SC4

Pic related but not mine.

I'm playing SimCity 4 + NAM and built some towns. One has over 10k people, the other is nearing 5k. The one connection I had between them started getting a lot of traffic, over 1200 sims going through a single road. I want to attack this issue before it becomes real bad.

I tried a lot of things. Buses just increased traffic overall. If I had, say, 1200 cars, then I'd have 1000 cars and 400 buses (don't ask me how that even happened). I also tried adding more connections to the neighboring city, but sims barely if at all use the extra connections. I could detour freight trucks though so that's something.

What am I forgetting to try before outright changing roads to one-way roads or avenues?

traffic in sim city 4 without mods is fucked and im pretty sure theres an actual bug that makes it so no matter what you do your streets shit themselves. i used to play that game to death and still never figured traffic out.
as i said there is a mod to fix it though.

I have NAM installed though

Subway, sims love this and it's decrease traffic by a lot.
but usually adding more road connections helps too.

This game is so comfy, my brother is playing it right now.(he paly it for years on and off)

I'd add subways, but aren't those for bigger cities anyways, when the bus traffic gets too bad and the avenues are full? They're high in maintenance, too.

At one time I tried adding two subway stations on adjacent cities and I kept getting a message that I had to add a second station somewhere.

But are subways/trams/trains/whatever the only solution to traffic?

And yes this game is super comfy, I can easily play it for hours straight.

Maybe provide workplaces for sims closer to their homes so they don't have to travel that much? Or use trains?

>I'd add subways, but aren't those for bigger cities anyways, when the bus traffic gets too bad and the avenues are full? They're high in maintenance, too.
You can start even in medium city, It's also makes you money. don't wait to much.
>At one time I tried adding two subway stations on adjacent cities and I kept getting a message that I had to add a second station somewhere.
How much station did you had in your city?, have a few stations in your city first and than one station in the adjacent city is enough.
>But are subways/trams/trains/whatever the only solution to traffic?
They are the best and easiest solution(especially subway because it's doesn't take space).

>Maybe provide workplaces for sims closer to their homes so they don't have to travel that much?
Okay I just double checked and in fact I've got residential close to or at the border of the city. Because of this there's one section where it goes from 600 to 800 cars and then straight to 1200, so possibly the branching streets are feeding the main street with extra traffic.

How do I deal with this? Do I have to move those districts to other places, or do I just add extra jobs by the border?

>Or use trains?
I'm confused whether to pick trains, trams or subways and where to place them. Do I have to rebuild the city transport?

>You can start even in medium city
How medium is "medium"?

>have a few stations in your city first and than one station in the adjacent city is enough.
While connecting the main places I guess?

>They are the best and easiest solution(especially subway because it's doesn't take space).
This is true, it doesn't force me to add rails through the city, so there's that.

>Okay I just double checked and in fact I've got residential close to or at the border of the city.
Thaaaat is not too good. I think it works in the way that edge is considered the travel end for a sim looking for work, but how far away is the actual work from the border in the neighbour city is not calculated. Thus a sim living near will prefer to travel to the neighbor than to a work within the current city. It's probably better to put residential in the center and offices/industry on the edges.

Only now I'm figuring that out. I'm following what I usually know about cities, that the downtown is at the middle of a city and houses sprawl to the edges.

Now I should clearly find ways to fix that. Maybe I should start zoning commercial at the edges? How about restricting the movement of sims by removing some streets and pushing them to downtown?

Both are acceptable solutions.

I tried the second one. It indeed pushed the sims to downtown. Not only I didn't reduce any traffic (the traffic at that road in fact increased to 1600 near the edge), but now I almost made my downtown collapse (2000 sims in one single intersection) so I clearly made something wrong.

Not enough different routes available perhaps?
And different transport options. Cars are one thing, but metro, trains, trams, and even pedestrian malls for walking should make a big difference. Busses are ok but they still share roads with cars.

Discussion like this is why i love SC4.

I don't think this will particularly help but I take any opportunity to post these

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>watch video of someone showing off their city in cities skylines
>get urge to reinstall and play
>load up game
>faced with blank map
>can't even start laying out my roads because i'm already unhappy with what i've done
every time

is there any other source of income besides tax in sc4?

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selling stuff like energy to neighbouring cities.

i think in sc4 or sc3k you could make money taking in the rubbish from nearby cities?

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just build a single circular road with buildings built on either side, simple

You can also allow gambling or let military stay in your city.

the pain is real

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I read somewhere once that as soon as you make a link to another town, most of your sims immediately go and find jobs there, commuting backband forth rather that taking employment in their home town. One you have several towns linked you basically had to make a loop because every sim wants to work in the next town down the line.

I will have to try other transport options, then, and maybe I should try expanding the roads first. Thank you.

I forgot this was a thing, I'll double check it. Thank you!

How so?

Just build concentric circles about one screen big, put your services in the center and zone accordingly. Repeat that circle over and over again, bam you've beaten SimCity 4.