The Ugly Truth About STROADS & How to Fix Them!
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- Опубликовано: 10 сен 2024
- Stroads are a blight on our cities, so lets see how to identify & fix them!😀
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Is there a turn on red feature with timed lights? I feel like it's not an American city unless you have someone pulling out in front of you from the corner
Thank you! I can finally buy everything in the game without having to spent over 100€.
The subway station is now facing the wrong way, connect it to the road with the houses and shops instead of the street with basically nothing for them.
And I just paid full price for Industries yesterday! Aargh!
(At least I can get the other expansions I’m missing)
even this bundle does not include all DLC. This game sure has a high cost entry barrier. But at least its cheap and besides airports you dont miss much. So its fine. And even gives you a discount for the 5 missing DLC (that cost more than the bundle but hey...).
The biggest miss in Cities Skylines is the lack of mixed use zoning (residential and commercial in one building). That would make nice lively streets.
It's also the main gripe many Europeans playing the game had with it...you just can't really create mixed-use town centres with it.
@@leDespicable there are some mixed use building assets that you can get on the workshop
@@sevenstars0711 Yeah, but I wish there'd be things like buildings with stores on the ground floor and apartments on the upper floors in the base game, which is not really the case unfortunately.
This would especially be useful for American cities, there are a lot of residential area on top of small shops in my city.
@@astropurpless Interestingly, that used to be how most cities were built, but the potpourri of car-centric zoning laws that grew out of the 1950's and 1960's mean that mixed-use zoning is literally illegal in the USA and Canada.
It makes me so incredibly happy to see the message of Strong Towns and Biffa’s content combined into one video. I’ve been following Biffa since 2020 and discovered Strong Towns a couple months ago.
I can also recommend Not Just Bikes.
@@reformCopyright Yup not just bikes is great too. I wish the people in my real life city would watch some of their content.
@@odizzido i discovered his channel and city beautiful channel two months ago and watched almost all of their videos. Now i realized how shitty my cities are 😂
Just start the new one a week ago, trying to make it more cyclist and pedestrian friendly 🤙
Watching Biffa made the RUclips algorithm recommend Not Just Bikes, who recommended Strong Towns, who recommended Walkable Cities... and now I'm getting involved with my local city's public transportation and planning department to advocate for better walkability.
So thank you Biffa, for your amazing content. It's been a wild couple of years.
Well, kind of. Ironically the end result is the exact opposite of what Strong Towns advocates. He took the american approach of butchering a city by applying an incision in the middle with a stroad that has dislocated and separated it into two separate communities. As an american city simulation it's perfect, but it's a dystopian nightmare and exactly what Strong Towns advocates against.
It makes me so very happy to see the discussion of stroads and an example of a conversion to a road here in Mississippatea. I've been following Biffa's content, Strong Towns, and Not Just Bikes for a bit over a year to two years now. I'm hoping that ST and NJB will notice this episode! 😇🙏
We got into Strong Towns in my hometown with development on the main street ages back and we're so glad of it. People were pushing to add lanes due to traffic caused by a new Big box store that was being built just outside town on our main street, but there are two roads (one to the north and one to the south) to use instead if you need to travel through town fast. The center of town looked like two long thin boxes stacked on top of one another with the five "main roads." All stroads, no foot traffic that wasn't drunk.
They narrowed the main stroad and made it back into a street with wider, nicer sidewalks and space for bikes. [On the sidewalk, which isn't great but better than a painted gutter.] The two roads parallel to the main street were repaved with more lanes to soak up the traffic, with brush and hedges cut back for better visibility. While the houses and such are still there, when the curbs were redone they encouraged shared drives and corner homes to move their driveway to the side street if at all possible with some amount paid by the city and low-interest rate loans for the rest. We also got a 65+ apartment tower with street-level shops and public access parking garage where a small dead strip mall and grain silo used to be near one end of the main street [no train has delivered grain to that silo in my lifetime] and cheap loans negotiated for the main street shops to fix their facades up. The local bank went in on it since it was all guaranteed by the town. Something like 80% of the shops used the facade money to replace old signs, repaint, replace siding, and fix/add awnings. New signage had to meet certain aesthetic standards, painted and sculpted signs with lights aimed at them were preferred, but "historic or iconic" lit signs like the old theater's neon were cleared for a glow-up. The street lights also got an upgrade to LED lamps aimed DOWN at the sidewalk to be green and reduce light pollution.
10 years later all this means our main street doesn't have a single empty storefront despite world events and the Wall of Marts opening with its acres of parking. People walk around to do their errands and even to go out at night with the nice streetlamps. One of the new shops on the main street is a bike shop and they are doing great, got a nice city bike with a basket in the window. Nice crowd of seniors walking or biking from the apartment block to the Church, Synagog, or library as they do. One of the shops on the ground floor of that building sells mobility gear like scooters. They used to be off the county road with no sidewalk and 45mph traffic, moving there is probably the smartest decision that business owner ever made. The local mall has about 1/4 or so empty shops, and the big one half an hour away has been a ghost town since the lockdowns. Anyone who could do business outdoors had all the sidewalk they could ask for, and everyone else did curbside pickup with the new 45-degree parking that lines the street. Was it legal to put up a posterboard sign on a 2 by 4 held up with a sandbag saying "curbside parking for XXX only, please don't honk more than once" in front of your shop? Yes. Were any fines issued? Only the one business [because there is always one] that tried to put up six of them.
Nobody defaulted on the loans, and even with the cheap rates the town still made money off their cut of the interest payment. Strong Towns works, and it pays for itself in increased sales and property tax. Though I will mention - the city owns the power plant. City utilities are a good chunk of the revenue for the town, and that's why the local bank was willing to make the deals.
Wow, sounds like that went really well 👍
@@BiffaPlaysCitiesSkylines It was a huge financial risk, but it paid off. Hometown has a healthier budget without having to raise taxes.
This made me realize one of my city's long-time trouble spots for traffic is a big stroad.
That's all my home town does. It creates giant parking lots at major intersections, then adds more lanes, then adds more busy commercial buildings, more concerned about tax revenue than safe roads. One half mile stretch (and this is NOT a large city) can take 30 minutes to traverse. They put an expressway right between the main city and another expanding city right next to it, and it is the ONLY large highway on that end of town. So all the people from both cities who need to drive between them or get to other parts of the city have to wade through this mile (half a mile on each side) to get to that highway, with a ton of commercial, including a Sam's to one side and a Wal-Mart on the other, slowing everything down even more than the traffic itself.
Ideally, where possible, I would sink the road by at least a meter (3 foot). I will reduce noise and make the pass-overs for the pedestrians and bikes a bit lower and smaller. It worked quite well here in Paris, France with the Peripherique as an example.
It's an American inspired city. We don't have that. Are cities are not designed to be walkable unless it's a college town/campus.
I would make the intersection on a hill-shaped bridge and have a flat sidewalk and bike path under the intersection (especially for the bikes, who hate hills!). The hill helps the cars slow down as they approach the intersection to make softer collisions.
Biffa plays Cities: Skylines with the 'Strong towns' mod. Top work chap
Now is also educating people. Very good. Great game play and city planning content in one. 👍
The results here are beautiful, but never in a million years would a small town in America agree to have its primary commercial street destroyed like this. Absolutely never. The American way would ALWAYS be to build a highway bypass around the town.
I think that's the point of Strongtown - encouraging minor change instead of spending $1B on a new massive highway. His example is the Netherlands I think. They've started this change over the past 20 years.
Nah they would want to put the highway through the city 😂 or over it blocking the view of the ocean lmao
@@macsound I think the bypass would still be the way to go (it wouldn’t have to be a freeway though). Forcing cars to go around rather than through would be the Dutch way of getting this done-and they’d have kept the shops & the tram, reconnected the grid for bikes & pedestrians, and made it so cars couldn’t pass through the center.
So if this was my build…I’d have converted this stroad to a street instead of a road. I think if the town still had active shops, this is how it would get done in both the States & in the Netherlands. 🙂
Thats fine, the option was to build a road, or a street. The alternative of a bypass is a good one, but only if the road then restricts vehicle access, makes more room for pedestrians and cycles. I will try something similar on my build and see what happens.
Also in America there are more plazas to ensure that there aren’t any stroads. You’d have to turn into a smaller street connected to the plaza in order to access commercial buildings. you can make realistic plazas in city skylines using a parking lot to separate the road from the street therefore you aren’t accessing the building directly from a busy road congesting traffic
You can actually get pedestrians to use an elevated path/ramp to get to a tram stop if you put one end of it on the tram stop (in the middle of the road). Using node controller, you can then make the path thinner so that it only overlaps the median of the road, and it actually looks quite good.
That turned out amazing!! Big fan of Strong Towns and Not Just Bikes!
Now that the stroad is now a road we can made extremely walkable/transit focused streets for downtown! I think by Strong Town's definition that's make it a "Place" for people.I think the idea is that roads to meant to get to walkable human focused, rather than car, Places.
As an American (USA) born and bred who has visited all 50 states, lived in 6 of them, and served as a city manager for 30+ years in 3 states I have never heard of a "stroad" except as a humerous amalgation or as a grammatical flub. Still learning! Great shows by Biffa. Keep 'em coming. A happy suscriber and rare commentor.
Thankyou and glad you enjoyed 😁
I feel like this only applies to CSL. I've never seen a city where the back of the commercial buildings are facing the main road. But again I'm not the city planner here.
@@slurmy329 A "stroad" is a real life concept that comes from a criticism of American city planning (the Strong Towns book biffa mentioned), where you get big main streets with 4+ lanes that are designed for high speed though traffic but also have various things facing it. The "fix" of turning buildings around is a very game thing, (although I have seen something sort of similar irl a couple times) in real life city planners usually prefer to just ignore the problem, but the idea is basically right (limit the amount of stuff facing onto the road; another way to do this is by putting smaller side streets immediately beside the main road to serve as a lower speed, more pedestrian friendly way to access shops - I've also seen this irl but only once). The other option would have been to try to reduce through traffic, but in this case that would have been a bad idea.
@@slurmy329 It's not about the back of the buildings, a stroad is very common, it's a road with a lot of exits for parking lots that belong to stores onto the road, making it no longer a through road, but a stroad, the problems of a road and the problems of a street and the positives of neither of them.
I was watching a documentary about stroads a few weeks ago. Apparently they're to blame for the high accident rate in American towns and cities. They're too fast for people using pedestrian crossing, drivers pulling out onto them etc etc.
There are a lot more reasons why they are bad, but that is a good summary.
I would just like to add that since they are so toxic to people outside a car, people might say “why not just drive a car” - but cars are expensive and not spending time outside decreases happiness, and being outside is useless anyway if outside is a giant paved rectangle surrounded by suburban nightmare.
Not Just Bikes by any chance?
@@lennystudios3.14 Also the people who say "why not drive a car" in the middle of a global fuel crisis 🙄
@@ihateregistrationbul Dude you're posting everywhere, make you look unhinged
@@ihateregistrationbul even if stroads are a made up word, sometime long ago someone made up the word car too. Also, why not listen to cyclists, in most countries (where the happiness is high) they are a large portion of the population. I’m probably not going to continue this argument, since I have stuff to do, but I would love to see your perspective too!
Also, more people than not just bikes say this stuff, including strong towns and other people. And, North America has made walkable neighborhoods too, and they are helpful to cities and really nice to live in. And you could say they are expensive, but that’s since there aren’t enough for people to live in
Nice episode again Biffa! Tip: watch videos from the youtuber "Not Just Bikes". He's a Canadian living in the Netherlands, vlogging about why North American road design & urban planning s*cks so much. Really great videos with a humoristic tone to them. As a Dutch transportation scientist I can recommend his channel very much!
I second this! Not Just Bikes is an incredible channel.
Thanks! I just started binging his videos and loving it!
@@ihateregistrationbul Found the angry American
Love it! Stroads are the worst. A few things I was thinking about.
1) The U-shaped pedestrian bridge in the middle, couldn't it just be the same shape as the other two? Except that it doesn't cross the main road? There's space for it, inside the new bicycle path you added.
2) There's some free space for more commercial zoning near one of the pedestrian bridges. Three squares deep.
3) Is the subway entry now better off, if it faced the other "new" commercial street? Details, I know. But just seems more logical if the stairs out of the subway came out on the new commercial street?
4) As the park on the right side (when entering the city from the highway), now is almost twice as big (as you removed half the businesses on the stroad, the one's on the right side), maybe one or two places inside the newest city area, there could be a few cafes or smaller shops, inside the park, on the road that is nearest to the WIS™ (Wastly Improved Stroad)? Just to get more business back replacing the ones that had to go to improve the road?
As always, great episode. Going to check out the two books you suggested!
2) Wasn't it just 2 squares deep? Might look better to put some trees or other greenery or a plaza there.
3) Good point. Or at least make sure that there is a crossing through the shops close by.
4) Building up the park is an excellent idea. If he's ever short on cash he could also replace the paths with entry/side gates.
One huge problem I notice right away: if your Stroad is the main east-west thoroughfare for your autos and trams, there IS NO main north-south thoroughfare providing access between the southerly neighborhood and the northerly one. That means ALL traffic with a north-south component to their motion has to turn onto the Stroad and back off of it!! Provide a contiguous north-south connection, either with an at-grade intersection with the Stroad, or with an overpass flying over it. That will decrease the traffic on the Stroad--especially the turning traffic--dramatically. Cheers
Love to see you featuring some content from Strong Towns. I'm a big fan of their work, as well as Not Just Bikes, City Beautiful, and a couple others.
The stuff they discuss inspires a lot of what I do in my C:S builds. It's pretty standard for collectors in my cities to be completely empty of any zoning, and instead have long expanses of roadside detailing and the occasional plopped building (usually underground metros). It's actually very helpful for traffic management and makes for a nice aesthetic.
Re: the traffic stopping at the nodes where the BIG road transitions from 4 lane to asymmetrical; you should check the node type in node controller. You want them to be “bend” I think which will make them act like a “middle” where traffic doesn’t stop and there’s no crossings, but still gives the nice visual of the median gradually changing width.
The size of the concrete slabs needed to create that underground bikepath look ridiculous. Surely there must be some other more realistic assets available for tunneling? This looks like a WW2 bunker :)
Great video Biffa showing how to carry out an effective conversion. I too used to have stroads in my early cities but I now tend to set up gridded areas of streets surrounded by main roads. I have nothing at all zoned on the main roads and have a roundabout in each corner joining the main roads together. I have pedestrian paths over the top of the roundabouts and over the middle of each section of the main roads getting people from one gridded area to the next. I play vanilla so can’t use Traffic Manager but I remove lights from all junctions and use asymmetric roads to get traffic in and out of the gridded areas off the main roads. Seems to work well from a traffic point of view.
This video will get notice by not just bike channel,someday
Thanks for the tip!
I think the Stroad to Road conversion was a great success and a big improvement to the traffic in the city. The one main thing I would have done differently is that I would have changed the part on the south side of the (st)road. You removed a lot of shops and only added them back on the north side. On the south side you have a lot of room which is now mostly a park. I would have changed the area slightly, moved the park paths more to the south and added another road in for shops between the park and the former stroad. Basically mirror the north side. With that done I would probably have changed the bike path to run through the park. Or I would not have added a bike path at all and used the roads with the shops for bikes.
Enjoyed hanging out in the premiere chat. You should do this more often or perhaps start streaming cities skylines?
The City Skylines community is pretty nice and wholesome in chat, you're right about that ☺ For me it was not the first time Biffa premiered a live episode event. I'm starting to wonder how many more I've missed, because it doesn't show after the event. Or maybe it's a recent development, because the one other I have seen was not long ago.
Biffa just went full CPP mode with all this theorecrafting and explaining of road hirarchie/planning aspects LOL
It's wonderful to see stylistic synergy like this -- it produces a richer knowledge base for the whole community!
I would recommend a barrier behind the shops bordering the stroad.
Thanks Biffa! I discovered why my main roads where so ineffective to reduce traffic, my city is working way better! I had to many stroads, and before this video, I had everyone doing their business on the main roads!
This is incredibly cool- not only does it show off a lot of good design for cities skylines, but it also makes a lot of the strong towns design ideas immediately click in a very visually apparent way. There's a difference between hearing or thinking "Yeah, separate out pedestians/bikes from cars! Of course, don't make roads a destination!" and actually *seeing* it, and how it can be done. Gives me a little bit of hope for us here in the states.
it was a great improvement, removing the trams.
Why did you move them 'Up" into the suburbs? all the residents gave unhappy faces.
you could move it "Down" to the nature strip where you added the bike path . looks like it would fit really well!
They complain but overall they don't really care :-)
Unhappy faces because of the "quality" of the road. Overall, it's not a problem.
@@guy_autordie ok i didnt know this. looks like Biffa will not change it, but I personally still think it would fit better "Down"
@@guy_autordie Yeah, They think the road has gotten worse but actually they are still happy because they have public transport options and other values are still good because of parks and stuff. Trams also carry a bit of noise polution with them. (In real life, not sure if that's a factor in C:S)
@@dezignateddriva if you’d go down with the trams, they would need to cross the road twice to connect to the tramloop on the “up” side.
That gives two more big intersections with complicated traffic, Biffa just got rid of complications, not a good idea!
TIL I learned that the road I live on is actually a stroad, which really does explain why I hate driving on it. It's nice that the cims are civilized enough to not park in bus stop spaces or randomly double park right next to an intersection, because people IRL do both of those things and good grief is it just the worst. If I lived in Mississippatea, I would be over the moon with the mayor's dictator-like implementation of these new zoning and construction policies! (After I got over the fact that my home had been destroyed and re-oriented, of course.)
There's no such thing as a 'stroad', it's a made up term that doesn't actually apply to anything. It's just a road. What the 'stroad' inventor labels as 'roads', the rest of society calls them freeways.
@@War450 All terms have been "made up" at some point or another, but that doesn't change whether or not the concepts make sense. Any road that's a throughway with too many connections or abutments is going to be a nightmare to drive on, regardless of what you call it.
But for the record, my area of the US doesn't really use the term "freeway" either. We have highways or interstates that have no connections apart from designated on-ramps/exits, and then we have big roads that are usually just called by their route number, e.g. "Route 9" or "Route 100," and those are more akin to what this author meant by "road." Industry-specific terminology often overlaps with conversational terminology, but sometimes it's actually a bit more specific to better convey certain concepts between people within the industry, so I suspect that's the case with "road" in civil engineering/planning.
I’m currently reading the first strong towns book and it’s fascinating! I also follow notjustbikes, city beautiful, and citynerd, who are all fantastic resources for understanding the flaws in american city planning and how it can be fixed. Now, if you’re planning on making your city a realistic american city, keeping the stroad would definitely tie in with the realism and highlight the some of the traffic problems that show up in irl stroads. But if this is more of an idealized american city, then yeah getting rid of the stroad was a good idea.
The main problem is that you have an arterial road functioning as a collector, but without enough roadway connections (which would ironically mean that traffic was distributed across all three lanes, meaning traffic light changes would be more frequent and there would be less queueing).
Either commit and make lots of connections, or none/with ramps only.
Refacing all the shops away from the road makes the tram stops/tramway placement less useful.
Refacing the shops in this game doesn't effect too much because people are willing to walk quite a distance after the tram stop. The turn of a single corner is negligible. In real life? Absolutely yes, this would be protested hugely unless the tram stop was moved to the side street too or the pedestrian way funneled people there somehow.
Good point about the collector road, though.
@@sofiadragon6520 Well there aren't any paths or roads between the arterial (where the tram stops are) and the streets (where the shops face) so they'd have to walk best part of a mile to get there.
@@iainjames313 Cims are willing to walk a considerable amount of distance. Probably 5 miles in real life, if not more. Much further at least than I would be willing to walk, and I am very keen on walking.
@@wohlhabendermanager Sure, but if the purpose of having the tram stops is to facilitate access to the shops (which faced onto that road originally) then the logical thing would be to either have the tram stops on the street (and make it into a frontage road, which would help with the road traffic as well) or put pedestrian pathways from road to street where the tram stops are.
@@iainjames313 Yes, it would give a more realistic look (which is what I aim for in my own CS cities as well), but the game mechanics don't really care either way. :)
The intersections on the road formerly known as stroad where a left turn is involved, could benefit from the asymetrical 3/2 road you have used on different parts of this same road. Traffic flow would improve even further :)
The most interesting result of this makeover is that they don't even need 3 lanes. In the beginning its 2 car lanes were not enough to handle the traffic. Now it's the best flowing road in town, still with 2 lanes. In fact, it would easily work as a 1+2 lane road (or a 1+3 on the few junctions that are 4-way).
Loved every minute of this- you are an amazing commentator. I have become obsessed with Marohn's work on North American urban/transportation design. It put a name to the things I've hated all my life but never even knew what they were. I'm considering joining Strong Towns as a member because I have never felt so strongly about any sort of cause before. Stroads and car dependency are disastrous on every level, and I seriously dream of living in a place where I'm not forced to drive literally everywhere.
Time to get Skylines back out and put all this to the test myself!!
At 25:00 the dedicated turning lanes mean that you are halving the capacity of the junction to process traffic. Better to have RIGHT and STRIGHT-ON sharing a lane. Lane mathematics works at junctions too.
Or upgrade it like some of the other roads that have an additional turning lane
@@magicalmac7505 You don't need to do that, just make one of the lanes do two easy things (straight on and, in this context, right).
@17:48 You can't turn off the crosswalks there. Then the pedestrians are trapped because of the tram stops. You need more walking access in and out of the tram stops.
Biffa! It’s so great to see Strong Towns principles put to work! 👍🏻 I love it!
Thanks Lee, I've been learning a lot 😁👍
@@BiffaPlaysCitiesSkylines their blog makes great fodder for videos 😃
biffa you're the man for referencing strong towns! Bravo with the work done in this video. Getting rid of that stroad was the only suggestion i had for your build!
On other good addition resource is "not just bikes"
ding ding ^^
Just had to do this one of my cities. Great tips and works so well to reduce traffic.
My current city uses semi-Stroads very successfully, which sounds weird but it works. The main roads are large 6 lane roads (sometimes with bus lanes), with bridges across the road rather than crosswalks, as few intersections as possible, and office zones on the sides. In my city, cars are heavily discouraged and public transit and walking routes are everywhere, so the offices which typically just create civilian traffic now only create pedestrian traffic which can travel using the bridges. The main roads have the inner lanes going faster for people who just want to get from one side to the other, and the outer lanes are uses by whatever few trucks, municipal services, and cars that need to pass through and enter the buildings, and the bus routes; most of the offices are just only used by citizens who visit the offices on foot.
I have way too many stroads in my current IRL city, I love this. I really hope that I see more Cities Skylines youtubers work on eliminating their stroads
I have learned so much about traffic from Biffa. The Traffic god....
Another Great book is "Sick Cities" a 1965, yes, 1965 book by Mitchell Gordon on a similar theme, albeit with slightly less focus on transport and more on social mobility and other associated socio-economic issues
You should get some proper elevated pathway mods with stairways and raised railings to really complete the look. Love this series!
Amazing. I was just watching a video on this thinking "it would be cool if Biffa or CityPlanner would do something with this concept in game. Thanks!
Biffa's most popular videos is of New Tealand and the Fixing Your Traffic videos, I wish we could go back, I don't enjoy these videos as much as I enjoyed New Tealand.
Edit: I think I started a war in my comments lol
People always have a favourite city, but things always end and new things always start. It's the ciiiircle of liiiiiiiife
@@BiffaPlaysCitiesSkylines Whats the point then to continue watching💀💀
@@homeprojector2592 Exactly, it's not like he cant control what he uploads. Why stop recording your most successful content.
Great work! I can't help but think connectivity between the two halves of the city would be improved with a couple of low-speed flyover streets crossing (but not connecting with) the road you've been working on in this episode.
So you reverse the fronting of all the commercial and thusly force all the traffic to/from them onto a street that also serves the residential(which that 5×5 has a lot of intersection) and then also pump the tram traffic onto said street. So you switched one stroad which was equipped for medium flow into a street now a stroad that is far less equipped to handle the lode. Instead of taking the trams off the road system on Laurel there and adding a tram only road parallel in the nice newly created green corridor where the commercial on the south side was... Only Biffa would implement such a roundabout fix... But kudos on actually using a tunnel for the bike path mate! Cannot say how often I yell at my screen "no use a tunnel it would work sooo much better"!
No, because he's separated the street from the road. The issue with a "stroad" is that it's trying to be both a fast arterial road for efficiently moving people around, *and* a local street full of chaotic traffic patterns as cars pull in and out of shops. The commercial zone now fronts a dedicated street, so the slow moving erratic commercial traffic doesn't foul up movement on the road.
16:00 those tram stops need access to cross the street, so those crossings need to remain or else the tram stops will be highly inefficient.
Seems like you’ve started to build the way I do, though your tracks are bigger where mine are more modular. I call them “cells”, but not the prison sort. I did some experimentation and found a cell type that can be zoned with a singular type of rci, so you can just copy the cell and zone in whatever you need at the time without having to worry about how the connections will manage. Complete with metro connections, and interstitial spaces for services.
About the "issue" with tram stops in the center and people randomly crossing: I found nice "pedestrian bridges" on the workshop that also connect the tram median with stairs or an elevator. That way they can safely enter/leave the median and you can disable crossing on the nearby junctions.
And a nice example for avoiding stroads can be seen in my home town in Germany: the main ring road has no traffic lights, all junctions are either below or above it (or smaller streets have a separate join/leave lane) and wherever possible they have moved it to a tunnel to avoid noise pollution and put a park in top.
I love the "Lift 09m for Pedestrian overpass - 4lane Tram 0m" stream asset. It provides an overpass with access to the median and elevators down to the tram stop. Basically, it provides a tram stop + 4 lane tram road overpass + access to the median WITHOUT the need for pedestrian crossings. Be sure to place it with Anarchy turned on or the overpass may connect to the side of the road instead of be elevated.
Ooh a surprise. Great timing. I have some traffic fixing to do and this was helpful to get me thinking.
Glad it was helpful!
I see you talked about mixed bicycle+ped paths again and using assets from the workshop that ultimately caused more problems than fix. But all of the paths accept both pedestrians and cyclists by default, the bike path only restricts peds from using it.
Interesting take on the StrongTowns approach. I know this is just a game but I'm not sure this approach would be endorsed by StrongTowns. Yes, you converted a Stroad into a road, but it deserved to be a street. Think about it: Strong public transport, commercial district, connections between housing and offices. But it was all destroyed to move cars faster through the city. You've essentially carved an urban highway straight through the city!
They re-tweeted my tweet about my video, so I guess they didn't mind my approach and decisions 😀👍
Biffa I like the road changes you made and I have a minor fix for you at time index 34:40. You have a building overlapping into the road you modified at that intersection. Otherwise everything else looks real fine.
Also, I have been doing some research on Node Controller and find out it can also be used to adjust the nodes on paths, key walls and I think canals as well. Plus, I find out its good for making Dead End roads looking better too. You might want to consider trying it out in these areas as well.
Never thought I'd be happy to off work with a bad back, thanks for helping me heal biffa ol' chap.
Feel better soon! Or else!! :-)
@@BiffaPlaysCitiesSkylines crusty cheese ( I am not the same guy on this account)
I think I'd now call this road an avenue instead of a stroad. After all, even though it's a busy road, it seems too short to be considered a highway, but it doesn't allow for zoning along it, so it can't be called a stroad either.
IMO, an alternative way to fix a stroad, particularly one with at least 4 lanes on each side, would be to turn it into a narrower road running down the middle, plus a pair of narrow streets running parallel along the sides, then connecting the streets to and from the road via frontage-road-style slip lanes.
To be an avenue, it needs trees.
I had a busy street like that in a city with trams, what I did was build a pedestrian overpass, and then let the overpass have a way down the middle of the road where the trams would stop. Had to make the ramp smaller to fit, but worked like a charm
"Biffa stroad confidently into the game, making the necessary changes to enable traffic to run smoother." Yes, he did this... 😆👏😌
Nice you're doing strong towns stuff.
I know safety isn't really a thing in C:S but from a safety perspective sharper turns at junctions are better, though it seems the US (and to a lesser extent the UK) rarely seem to truly optimise for safety. This is especially important with cycles and pedestrians crossing at-grade at those outer junctions or where they need to access transit (I noticed you left the buses on the road - but who really likes to wait by a loud smelly road for their bus if given a choice?)
Never heard of strode or whatever its called. Interesting concept. Great episode! awesome changes. I'm sure besides the one person who was going to a shop as it got deleted, everyone is happy!
It's a killer infrastructure. Some of these urban freeways may have a speed limit of 50 mph with few pedestrian crossings and many level intersections. The problem is the high concentration of intersections (of streets or entrances and exits of private property) and the high speed to be an urban road in the case of some American cities, in addition to the fact of their peculiar mega-intersection with at least 4 lanes in each direction
A Dutch-Canadian RUclipsr "Not Just Bikes" has a great video series about strong towns and a video about stroads, I recommend it!
Lots of garbage trucks coming from the industrial area and get into the main road. Maybe you can adjust a service road for them to reach the other side of the city and ban them from main road.
Come to São Paulo, Biffa!
We have a bajillion stroads lol (many are uphill/downhill, too!), especially on poorer areas. The amount of commercial buildings on roads that are the only way to go from one place to another (which includes buses, you often see lots of trucks, too) is astonishing. That combined with the fact that São Paulo is one of the hugest cities in the world, the third largest if I recall correctly, people take hours to get anywhere. In my last job, I once took FIVE HOURS to get home on a particularly horrendous traffic day. And no, that job wasn't in another town/city lol. And no, I'm not exaggerating. I actually took 5:12 hours. :')
SO I would say traffic in your CS is pretty chill lol
It's true that people will walk a long way to cross, but the game will take its time matching jobs to people after the connectivity is severed (in this case it wasn't really that connected before, but in a more normal, non-US, space it would have been). As a rule of thumb, one elevated crossing every two blocks would have been paramount at a main road. In CS one every couple is more than enough. In the future this road might be repurposed again back to a main attraction with unique buildings and whatnot, and replaced by a tunnel directly underneath it.
Regarding the cycle path alongside the road, that's actually a trick I picked up from City Planner Plays in one of his vanilla games... in the absence of the zoning control mod, putting a cycle path alongside the road has the effect of blocking unwanted zoning while at the same time improving cycle connectivity.
I like it, but I think it would be even nicer if the cars went underground, such that the pedestrians and bikes don't have to go underground/over the overpass.
Also, maybe you could run the tram line next to the shops anyway, just forbid cars from entering there/make it a small tram-only section if that is possible.
I agree. Much like "The Big Dig" in Boston. Then the area above ground could be pedestrian streets with trams. I love the pedestrian streets in CS because they allow zoning and service vehicles but at very low speeds. Perhaps this might be something to revisit (putting big roads underground) when the city is much bigger.
I got round the tram issue by adding a section with 2 1way roads and a tram way in the middle, you can then add a connection up to the walkway at the end of the tram section, where it ties in with the road footpaths
You should add some paths from the old stroad to the fronts of the buildings
Notjustbikes channel is taking over biffa :D
NotjustBiffas
30:01 why not make it between 3 and 15? If there is traffic it will use more time, and if there is none, it will jump faster to red so other directions can go.
As far as i understand this option is dynamic depending on traffic. If there are many cars, it will take up to 15 seconds and if there are no cars, it will turn faster to red.
I would dare say a there is still a difference of a stroad and a multi-lane street/boulevard, as long as the boulevard is 1) not high speed and 2) pedestrian oriented. The critical part is that it is not the domain of the cars, but it still allows for more shared space between pedestrians and cars (note, I include bikers as pedestrians). That of course would require a proper road in addition that can carry the heavy non-local traffic at an alternative location/stretch.
Yes, this. Lots of pedestrian crossings and not a high speed
Apparently no one had this discussion with the street namers in my Canadian town. I grew up on a single block road that doesn’t even connect to the collector, just the collector’s collector (it connects to 2 “drives” that connect to another road, with mixed housing and commercial on the collector road). Alternatively, a few of our biggest arterials are streets, loaded with commercial businesses and single family housing. One street even just becomes a highway (not a massive freeway, just a more rural highway) as it exits the city. Looking at a map, there’s also the collection of crescents (that aren’t as they end on different “roads”), drives, way, avenues, courts, boulevards, and other random street ending tossed all over the place in nonsensical patterns. I feel like this definition of a street is this and a road is this has come after most of the roads and streets have been named.
My experience (in NZ) is that roads _tend_ to be longer, and streets _tend_ to be shorter. It's not a strict rule, but most of the significant routes that connect parts of the city are _mostly_ called "roads"... only a few are "streets", while in my CBD-fringe neighbourhood, almost everything is a "street". "Drives" and "avenues" are a bit of a lottery... could be big, could be small.
However, I'd disagree that the definition came after everything was named. I think a significant element is that things were often named without the benefit of foresight, and that as the cities have developed, the importance of various routes has changed. I live on a street that would originally have been an unpaved industrial route along the harbour's edge... but then the bay was reclaimed to create more flat land, and sometime later a highway went in, and now that street is one of the main routes into the CBD from the north.
I feel like a lot of early "stroads" in America were turned into main streets. Trolleys/trams, carriages, and bikes can go there. Pedestrians can go there. The commercial and residential use stays. It becomes a pleasant place to walk freely--I particularly enjoy the one in my hometown
its a good thing i took a look at this video. i was watching city planner plays, and he has commercial builds all along his main road
notjustbike is gonna be here asap
The conversion from stroad to road worked well... But I don't think you want a road in your city center. You want to turn stroads in urban centers to streets and stroads in suburbs to roads. Now that you turned the stroad to a road in your urban center, it became a barrier separating your city in to two.
My worlds collide!!! I am a long time Strongtowns member and have both books.
From my point of view the biggest problem on this strode is the tram line the construction of the line in the middle forces pedestrians to cross the road more often then in reality they should and I think that the best option would by just tu take the tram line to one side of the road or the other.
We have stroads in Atlanta. It is fun sitting in traffic for 3 hours only to move 1/4 mile because there is a football game.
I do have stroads in my city and it's really annoying.... I mean... MY REAL LIFE CITY!!!!!! 🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️
Amazing video, I'm addicted, your commentary is just so fun and perfect, and I'm learning a lot watching you. It's Awesome!
nice eppisode! I would rezone the commercial zone behind the pedestrian bridges. I you use tram roads, I remember them also being used by pedestrians, so the one from the depod could be one like that. On the other side of the tram depod, where the hub is, you did some weird double pedestrian bridge/road thing.
Where you removed the connection to the main road in the end, you could dezone the entire main road and make all the buildings spawn on the side roads (good for traffic and the eyes).
Where you removed the commercial on the stroad you fixed, you could mirror the other side somewhat and build a commercial street with the big parking build in and keep the park in between the housing and the commercial with some of the fancy park/path items.
Interesting distinction between streets and roads. It's different where I live, streets run north-south, and are named after how many blocks away from main street you are. So East 6th street is 6 blocks east of main for example. Roads are also north-south, but exist for when blocks are later cut into smaller chunks, so if a new "street" needs to be built between say, 6th street and 7th street, it becomes 6th "road".
Avenues and lanes are the same, except they run east-west.
Boulevards and courts are ones that run diagonally.
Strong Towns and Biffa at the same time is a hell of a good drug. Bravo
"not just bikes" had a lot of videos on the subject of stroads. might be a nice idea to watch them for more inspiration and other possible issues with the North American road network.
of course as a Dutch person I am biased, most of his videos are about how much he loves the Dutch city planning. please forgive me for it.🥺
The busy street with shops and trams looked like a nicer place to be than either the road with nothing on it or the new shopping strip on a disconnected residential street with no trams on it
the tram system in blackpool is a really good reference to seeing how they work effectivly
[Late but i guess still relevant]
Good that the irl problems are being tried to be solved like irl , wich is helpfull for the CS players that maybe study planning but havent really had much expirience with it
The Stroad problem is a very real problem in Sydney, Australia. Parramatta Road is a Stroad. One of the biggest arteries into the CBD from the Greater West, lined with commercial buildings. The traffic is horrendous and the commercial buildings are struggling with many abandoned. Some of the buildings are 100+ years old having historical restrictions. Many tolled motorways connect to it. Governments add more toll roads connections to it believing it will ease the traffic. To save the commercial buildings and their economy Parramatta Road needs to turn into a street but without an untolled road running parallel to it it cannot be and it will continue to be a main thoroughfare for traffic into the city.
We do have yield signs in America but most residential intersections are either a 2-way or 4-way stop. A 1-way or 3-way stop for a T intersection. 90% of yield signs are at highway on ramps or when you have a dedicated right turn lane that branches away from the main road. Essentially yield signs are used almost exclusively for merging.
looks really good! But you might want a few more pedestrian connections between the shopping street and the main road. Particularly near the metro station as I think they currently have to walk a long way round to get it
Biffa, check the speed on the main road near crest square (where you edited towards the end of the video). The speed drops very slow and then speeds up again after the intersection heading out of town.
Wilmington North Carolina has the worst Stroad I’ve ever had to deal with, and after watching Biffa and other planners teach about road hierarchy, I get SO MAD when driving down highway 17. It’s the arterial that connects a number of cities and it is absolutely packed with housing developments, big box stores, small box stores, everything imaginable. They did an awful job. It takes forever to get anywhere! To New Hanover County: please hire Biffa to fix it 😂
27:55 The most intimidating "What are you doing?" I've ever heard. I thought he was going to start deleting fools XD
Hi Biffa! Enjoyed your episode today. I think it would be nice to turn the tram system into a lightrail system at a future point. You see it in many american cities and it is a good alternative to train or metro. There are also nice lightrail tracks on the Steam Workshop. Have a nice day :)
One thing that occurred to me is there may be a lot of pedestrian traffic as they go to/from work in the grid opposite the mostly residential area. To solve that, pedestrian overpasses linking the grids would work well, especially if they're lined up with the grid.
19:20 Biffa "Now the other elefant in the room!"
Ah, now he will fix the trees in the middle of the road...
"The Trams!"
Since the main road now has a median you can use asymmetric roads on the intersections without compromising lane count and help the traffic flow even smoother. Also a tip for the future, if you want to have some commercial buildings near a main road you can try adding service roads. Can’t wait to see how this city turns out 😊
The strangest signs I have seen (only so far in PA) in America is the "STOP ... Except right turns," which is insane because it means that traffic turning left from the opposite direction has to wait to determine if you are turning right before they can continue through the intersection, even if they arrived first. That is insane to me.
Finally had to come see why RCE was always praying to the benevolent Biffa to come fix his cities lol.
Welcome!
@@BiffaPlaysCitiesSkylines Okay, well, seeing how awesome you are (in terms of your Cities skill and the fact you personally welcomed me after I commented on a weeks old video when you have 617k subs), I'm gonna have to go ahead and subscribe. Must be done. Thanks for making me feel, well, welcome!