SC4 The First Challenge

[Dark One Drei]

This is my first update on the progress I've made in the Challenge.
Northport, Slummy & Polluted, 21,067 residents
I began with Northport and for being a starter city the population exploded. I wanted this city to be able to take the trash of it's neighbors so I gave it a waist to energy plant. I was surprised, the pollution from the plant hardly had an impact on the surrounding area. The city is heavily polluted and full of low wealth residential but I expected that adding the energy plant would have worsened the conditions. I've got lightning in the clouds of smog that swirl around the city.

East Northport, Mostly Med- High Wealth, 8,494 residents
I wanted East Northport to be much more environmentally friendly, unfortunately I couldn't get a good populaton going here. This city is about 96% unpolluted.

Now I've moved to Rockland. I wanted lots of space for this city so I tried a strategy I've never done before, it seems to have worked quite well. First I made a long street along the Western boarder and lined it with medium dencity residential. I gave them a clinic and fire department and half the leighnth of the street of high dencity commercial. Soon I was making a 300 similone profit each month, and I used it to counter my landscaping spending. The only problem is, for this to be effective the simulation speed has to be on High thus causing the time to fly by. I'm almost done re-landscaping at year 102 and my funds are at 488,151 similones. The population is just an insagnificant 1,749 with a nearly balanced 1,057 job oppertunities. I think I may use this process on other cities that need a lot of landscaping.
This concludes my Update.

[Scheets]

Can we use building we have downloaded, that do not help you generate money?

[Ken]

Yes you can use downloaded buildings.

[Scheets]

I am interested in how many people live in their "Swan Islands", if they have any.

[Scheets]

Well guys, I am sorry to say that I cannot finish the challenge. I have to get ready for boarding school coming up, and I will not have enough time to play Sim City. I will have a laptop there, so I can still post on the forums, but I can't play any games while I am there.
Wish me luck, and I cya guys later.

-Scheets

[Ken]

Well guys, I am sorry to say that I cannot finish the challenge. I have to get ready for boarding school coming up, and I will not have enough time to play Sim City. I will have a laptop there, so I can still post on the forums, but I can't play any games while I am there.
Wish me luck, and I cya guys later.

-Scheets

Bummer on the no computer games at school thing. I'm sure this will allow you more time to study.

Good luck in school and get good grades.

You can always continue the challenge at a school break or next summer.

[awesomeadvisor787]

Hmm...I should probably get back and start working on the challenge again...

[Ken]

I haven't worked on it much myself this past couple of weeks. I've been busy in the evenings watching the Tour de France.

I am about to crack 800,000 region wide and my city Northfield is right around 270,000 at the year 36.

I spent some considerable effort reworking the mass transit system for Northfield because my traffic was so bad. When I first built the mass transit system, I started with subway stations at the corners of intersections and then started adding bus stops later next to the subway stations. This was a big mistake. Bus stops should always be at the corner of intersections so as buses can use them from two roads instead of one.

After spending considerable effort swapping my bus and subway stops such that bus stops were always at the intersection, I had to start adding more of both types of stops. I now have a bus/subway stop at almost every intersection. While this tremendously helped improve traffic, it wasn't enough, in part because my subway lines became congested. To relieve subway congestion I added additional subway and bus stops at some intersections (opposite corner) and started adding diagonal subway lines that cut across my other lines. The diagonal lines increased capacity on my subway system and shortened commute times by creating more direct routes between sections of my city. These diagonal lines are set to mesh up as much as possible with subway stops and the most congested subway stops have bypasses such that not all subway trains on routes that go passed those stops have to go directly through those stops. Quite literally, my subway system is becoming a dense spider's web of tracks.

Although these efforts were expensive, they were worth while. Not only does Northfield have more pedestrians than car commuters, it has more subway commuters than car commuters and almost 2/3 as many bus commuters as car commuters. I'd say that only around 1/3 of my commuters use their car. Although I still have some roads that are congested, overall road traffic has been tremendously improved.

As I can afford it, I will continue to add subway lines in an effort to relieve some of the congestion on my subway lines. As some of my subway stops are seeing 4,000 - 6,000 passengers, I will also be adding more subway stops in key areas.

Oh, the extensive and heavily used bus system does cause major hazards with U-Drive missions as there are so many blue busses one must make sure not to crash into. They aren't as bad as concrete trucks, but crashing into them can still end a mission.

[awesomeadvisor787]

Wow, sounds like your region is progressing nicely. That must have taken a long time to switch all of those, but it sounds like it was worth it.

[miquinones]

I'm finally done with summer school and can work on my cities for this challenge once again.