Mass Transit-the latest addition to the growing Cities: Skylines family from developer Colossal Order-doesn't quite change my mind on all of this, as I'm also a real-world mayor who focuses on. Mass Transit is the latest expansion for Cities: Skylines, the award-winning city-building game, and it brings several new systems into play to help citizens traverse their towns in speed and style. Commuters can now get around on the water, up high mountain peaks, and even through the sky thanks to the addition of ferries, monorails, cable.
I’ve already reviewed Cities Skylines vanilla maps and the default maps for Snowfall and Natural Disasters. Now it’s time to go for the maps of Mass Transit and Green Cities DLCs.
Mass Transit
Usually, the maps which are released with some DLC should help players to take advantage of the new features of the DLC. Mass Transit was one of the best expansions so far thus after getting it players got a lot of cool stuff to enjoy. And so far it’s one of the best map packs that were released with DLCs. Let’s check out the maps.
Arid Planes
That’s Cities Skylines best map for beginners in this DLC – huge building area (79%), a narrow river, a lake, and some hills which don’t annoy you. Thanks to the river you can play with channels and make something less boring.
Regal Hills
That’s a challenging one – you have a wide strip of hilly land between two water masses. Also, a couple of streams going down the hills to a lake. The build area is 72% and that’s a very interesting map to organize good traffic between seashore and the inner part of your city.
Seven Lakes
It’s all in its title – you’re getting the flattest map cities skylines can offer and in the middle of it, you get seven lakes. You will build bridges and use ferries to avoid transport collapse. The building area is huge – 81%. I personally like it because of the challenges for your traffic planning skills.
Green Cities
As for me, this DLC didn’t have features that require some interesting maps to test them. Maybe that’s why maps released with this expansion are rather boring and simple.
Eden Valley
Like in many maps in Snowfall here you will have to build in a valley between a river and rocky hills. However, here you’re getting a sufficient building area which is 79% and all the needed transport connections plus a lot of raw materials.
Garden Rivers
Two wide rivers with sandy banks, some hills localized in the center, and the remaining flat part of the map with forests. With its build area of 80%, it’s cities skylines best beginner map in Green Cities DLC simply because you have everything for a calm sandbox-like city planning.
Lavender Lake
I’ve got the impression that the creator decided to provide us with all kinds of terrain – rivers, sandy shores, a lake, forests, hills, and plains. As a result, it doesn’t look like a real thing. That’s why I don’t like it but still, it’s a good sandbox with 75% of build area and all the needed connections and raw materials.
I don't know about you, but I've always had a problem with my traffic when playing Paradox Interactive's Cities: Skylines. Thankfully, in the Mass Transit DLC and patch, Finnish developers Colossal Order have alleviated some of that stress by introducing two new traffic-calming measures that you can use to your advantage.
In this guide, I'll go over some of the options that you have at your disposal for controlling traffic flow, and how you can use them to keep transit running smoothly in your city.
How to Keep Traffic Flowing with the Cities: Skylines Mass Transit DLC
Use Stop Signs to Your Advantage
Stop signs are a major addition in the Mass Transit DLC. You can now have either stop signs or traffic lights at intersections, rather than it just being a free-for-all.
To add a stop sign to an intersection, you open the Info View tab and then select the bottom left Traffic Routes icon. Click on the Junctions tab, and you will see grayed-out stop signs and traffic light icons appear on all your junctions.
Cities Skylines Mass Transit Download
When changing who has the right of way or traffic light settings, the effect is instant. So it's a good idea to fiddle around with different traffic flow patterns to see which one will really work best with your city before you let your citizens drive amok.
Choosing who has right of way can make traffic moves smoother on your roads.
If you want to change all the stop signs along a stretch of road, you can click on the road name and turn it into a priority road. Once you do, all roads joining that priority road will immediately have stop signs at the junction. This can be a huge time-saver for those areas where you simply need controlled traffic at every intersection.
Study Traffic Routes to Optimize Your Flow
Another interesting traffic measure added in the Mass Transit DLC is the ability to look at various traffic routes -- whether for a specific type of transportation, or even for a single vehicle.
To view these routs, open your info view and lick over to the Traffic Routes menu. From there, you can choose which kind of traffic you want to look at. In the image below, I've chosen to look at private cars, and narrowed it down to one car in particular so I can see its specific route -- and keep track of when the road is clear and when he runs into a traffic jam.
Using traffic routes you can see where needs traffic calming measures
Looking at traffic routes for a number of different vehicle types will help you see where the problem areas are in your transit flow. This view will help you pinpoint areas where traffic becomes congested, so that you can implement some calming measures like stop lights or stop signs in order to smooth things out and make them run more efficiently.
This new traffic route view can also be useful when planning a bus route, because it's a good idea to create a route that avoids high-traffic areas that are prone to congestion.
Cities Skyline Monorail
No matter what changes you implement, you'll always want to come back to this screen and make sure they're functioning the way you want them to. This mode will help you see problem areas or spot a change that isn't working quite as intended, so that you can quickly fix it up and get your city's roads cleared right up.
That's all I've got for this guide! But there have been a number of new additions to the transport system in Cities: Skylines, so make sure you check back to GameSkinny to find out how these work!