Changing the Maximum Speed in a City

[majosc]

How do you change the max speed inside a city zone? I know it's default at 50 km/h, but is there a way to change this?
I've gone into the config file and changed the type of road the city should build, but it's just not building the correct road.

Thanks!

EDIT: It's building the correct road, but since it's still in city limits it's still limited to 50 km/h.

[Václav]

majosc, this was discussed some time ago - that max speed in cities is only 50 km/h. If you need transport cargo faster, I don't know with what pakset you play, you may use tunnels or elevated ways (I am worried about that both is available only in pak128). But else, in own cities (city downtowns) max speed should be only 50 km/h - but where roads are not surrounded by any buildings may be higher.

[Isaac Eiland-Hall]

City speed limit is by design, and is limited by the game itself.

[Carl]

Few city-roads IRL have speed limits larger than 50kph/31mph, anyway.

[Isaac Eiland-Hall]

We've had this discussion before, and I must again say: This is not true in the US.

I live in a relatively small metro area - my city is 30k people, and there are around 100k in the entire metro area. The major thoroughfares are 45mph (nearly 80km/h); most of the smaller main roads are 35mph (55-60kph), sure.

In the Dallas / Ft. Worth Metroplex, 35mph and 40mph are common for major roads; some major roads are upwards of 50mph; freeways (which are hard to make in large cities in Simutrans since you can't mark roads as no-city-build) are 55mph-65mph even in the city.

So when you saw "few city-roads IRL", you are not speaking universally.

I understand that this is a decision that has been made for Simutrans, and even though I don't personally like it, I have no choice but to live with it; but don't think that it matches reality everywhere, because it doesn't.

[Carl]

Apologies for my ignorant generalisations! And I'm sorry to hear about your country's poor road safety -- I kid, obviously.

I should say that I was excluding freeways since I take it those are the sorts of ways one can simulate with elevated roads. But it's certainly true, now I think about it, that major cities often have major thoroughfares at 40mph+.

[kierongreen]

In the UK at least 30mph (50km/h) is maximum for "city roads". There may be restricted access roads passing through cities with higher limits - motorways or dual carriageways (i.e. major thoroughfares) but traffic from buildings would not be allowed to enter directly onto these for safety reasons. Having driven a bit in the US I found it quite similar there - freeways having higher speed limits, but ordinary roads still around 30mph (40mph city roads would have separate carriageways in either direction, plus maybe only one entrance per block from surrounding buildings - simutrans doesn't simulate low density cities though). Therefore I think the current limit is quite reasonable - it might be nice to have ground level limited access roads that did not count when placing city buildings though (if you are a fan of roads).

[Isaac Eiland-Hall]

If there was some method for building protected roads inside of cities, I would be extremely happy. As it stands now, such roads have to be protected from the city, either with fences, or being built as elevated roads.

I think it really depends where you go as to what is normal. I would argue with kierongreen's assessment of the US, based on where I've lived and been; however, different places are certainly different; and certainly a good point is that higher speed limits tend to be on roads with medians (separate carriageways), although these are very common in, e.g. Dallas. They happen to be rare in Panama City, where the major roads in the city are set at 45mph; most have a center turn lane (for a total of five lanes), although some do have a median; where it's 55mph, there's a median, for sure.

[ӔO]

In ontario, generally speaking, the built up, inner cores of the cities are 50km/h for major roads and 40km/h for residential and school zones.

The outskirts, with wider spacing between traffic lights, have 60km/h to 70km/h limits on major roads. Even some of the well built places have 60km/h if the traffic light spacing is wide.


The key difference between speed limits on city roads seems to be the spacing of intersections.

[kierongreen]

I was driving around New York, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio, Virginia, Maryland and Washington D.C (on roads ranging from residential streets through to the large highways around NY and Washington, scary!) - oh, and Ontario. Of course, this was only a 2 week road trip, my experience won't be anywhere near complete as someone who has lived in the US (or Canada since that was mentioned) their whole life! To my mind 60km/h or 70km/h is near enough 50km/h it's not worth worrying about the difference or increasing it from 50km/h (my suspicion is that if the limit were removed people would use much higher speed roads within cities).

I wouldn't mind roads faster than 50km/h being "invisible" to the city, not being upgraded or used for city building calculations. It's probably not high on my list of things to code though, and to balance this I'd support banning stops in simutrans on roads faster than 50km/h for safety reasons!

[ӔO]

oh yes, on the faster 60km/h and 70km/h roads, which are usually 4 to 7 lanes wide, the buses get an extra lane at the curb where the stops are. Sometimes they get reserved lanes where there is no room.

I'm still waiting to see how good the new one way and private roads will be.