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Buckle Up! - Traffic Management in Pocket City

Traffic management is an important part of any city building game. Keep your citizens happy and ensure your city runs efficiently by creating a good flow of traffic.

Where are they going?

Citizens drive from Residential Zones to Industrial Zones for jobs.
Citizens drive from Residential Zones to Commercial Zones for shopping.
Suppliers drive between Commercial Zones to Industrial Zones for business.

You will need to connect these three zone types to ensure your city runs at max efficiency.

This is my jam!

As your city grows, traffic will grow too. See where your congestion points in the heatmap view:

starter_town-1

Citizens won't travel much between their house and other houses, so traffic is light between Residential Zones. However, citizens need to get to their jobs, so traffic is busier between Residential and Industrial Zones:

res-res-vs-res-industrial-1

When too many citizens try to drive along a single road, it creates congestion. Here, too many citizens are trying to access the same Commercial Zone:

heavy-single

We can add more roads between zone types to ease traffic. For example, here we provide another road for citizens to get to the Commercial district:

lighter-double

Other road types will also help ease traffic. Below, we allow citizens to access a new Industrial Zone by a railway.

Congestion caused by citizens all working in the same area:
jobs-by-car

Congestion reduced by additional Industrial Zone plus railway access:
jobs-by-car-and-rail

Now citizens aren't all stuck in rush hour going to the same job area.

Closer is preferable

However, citizens will prefer to drive to closer zones if possible. For example, we see here that there is more traffic to the closer Commercial Zone.

prefer-closeness

But citizens will drive far if they must

Note that simply extending the road won't reduce traffic - citizens will still drive to where they want to go!

distance-no-effect

More to come!

More road types are coming, including:

  • Walking paths
  • Cycling paths
  • Highways

Additionally, the following mechanics ease traffic congestion:

  • Public transportation
  • Parking garages

Stay tuned to for more updates!

In other news - Updates Nov 3, 2017:

  • Cosmetic improvements for buildings, construction, and cars
  • New "Random Map" mode
  • Layer views for traffic, pollution, water supply, and power supply
  • Added new start screen

Pocket City is coming to iOS and Android early 2018.

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