作者：Mike Rose

《模拟城市》的第一个测试周结束后，我读了Norman Chan写的一篇文章，作者试图根据游戏推导出最佳城市布局。真是一篇有趣的文章！坦白说，那时我还没想过如何将新版《模拟城市》的概念用于分析现实世界。

所以当《模拟城市》的第二个测试周来临之际，我决定用一些我知道的游戏理论分析我家乡Northenden（目前的人口应该是1.5万）的交通情况。

Northenden是一个巴掌大的小地方，从城南开车到城北大概只要5分钟。这座小镇主要由民宅和位于镇中心的商铺组成。然而，考虑到居住在当地的人并不多，再加不想从小镇周边绕道，在交通高峰时段，你绝对不会想到这里来。我说的是停滞不前的交通，有时候会让你干等上个把小时。

看看这片地区的地图，不难看出为什么。小镇的街道通向数条高速公路，还有一条熙熙攘攘的Princess公园街直通向曼城中心。在小镇的北部，你可以看到两边被高尔夫球场环绕着的一条笔直的公路，通向繁华的Didsbury地区。

Northenden (from gamasutra)

图1、现实生活中的Northenden。

基本上，在上下班的高峰期，Northenden的交通就会打成死结，成百上千辆小车不是涌向高速公路，就是往Didsbury方向挤。每星期，我都要数次往返于Didsbury，因为我的孩子在那里的幼儿园上学。简直可以说，我就像在人间地狱中开车。

至少，这是我觉得这里的交通极其恶劣的原因。事实上，我已经无数次思考到底是什么导致了Northenden的交通堵塞，有时候也很怀疑这难道是因为小镇的格局不好。现在，借助《模拟城市》的科学理论，我终于抓到了根本原因。

问题1：交通问题是由小镇的格局导致的吗？

我用第二屏幕显示这座小镇的Google地图，然后在《模拟城市》中建立Northenden。对于设计，我并没有太细致——我的意思是，我又不是想把这个东西上交给建设委员会或什么相关部门，所以只要保证Northenden在游戏中的布局，特别是主要的道路与现实中的大致相同就够了。在下图中，你可以看到小鎮与Princess公园街/高速公路相连，而在左上角的道路则通向Didsbury（或一段铁路，这个之后再说）。

northenden(from gamasutra)

图2、我制作的Northenden

切换到区域视角，你可以清楚地看到小镇的房屋类型。蓝线表示Northenden中心地区的商业街，右边的黄线表示Sharston工业园区（我添加这个是因为如果没有工业区，就不会有太多人想入往我的小镇了！）。有趣的是，我创造的小镇人口居然达到1.8万，只比现实中的Northenden多了一些些而已。可以说达到我的目标了。

northenden(from gamasutra)

图3、Northenden的区域图

Northenden的中心地是四条路的接合点，大家称之为“乐购十字路口”，这主要是因为角落处有一家老乐购商店。这个地方就是现实中的交通症结所在，所以我决定密切关注游戏中的交通问题如何产生。

结果不太坏。在早晨的通勤高峰时段，虽然人流车流有点儿多，但堵塞情况并不严重。我肯定不介意这种程度的交问题，因为这比现实状况好太多了。在下图中，你可以看到高峰期的交通情况，以及一家机器人商店的位置就是现实中的乐购商店所在。

northenden 3(from gamasutra)

图4、乐购十字路口

这并不算太出人意料。以它现在的状况，干道不算真正意义上的干道，因为小镇的居民在这条路沿线并没有太多地方要去。不过，我真正要测试的是，通过Northenden中心地带的交通流量是否构成交通问题。

问题2：将Northenden作为过路小镇是否有问题？

问题是，《模拟城市》中的地图是相当小的——至少，在测试版中是如此。因此，我不得不临时发挥一点儿。在《模拟城市》中，与Northenden相接的铁路就是在现实中通向Didsbury东部和西部的唯一干道，这两个地方都是非常繁华的区域。为此，我制作了一个90度角的长干道，与铁路平行，表示现实中的Didsbury地区。我又做了一个商铺林立的综合区，在区域边界还有一家赌场（在现实中的Didsbury东部有一家叫作“Parrswood”的赌场）。之后，我将从赌场延伸出来的大路直通向Northenden的另一端——相当简单，但非常接近现实中的情况。

northenden(from gamasutra)

图5、Didsbury东部和Parrswood赌场

做好这些后，我希望有大量Northenden的居民去光顾Didsbury的赌场，这与来自高速公路、前往赌场的光观客流混成一股更大的交通流。在10分钟内，模拟效果很好，如下图所示。

northenden(from gamasutra)

图6、添加Didsbury东部后的交通情况——注意从Northenden中心通向Didsbury的红带。

Northenden的大部分地区的交通状况都不错，道路上的绿带和黄带表示交通良好。然而，通过小镇的许多干道是红色的或桔色的，这意味着交痛堵塞比较严重。特别是通往Didsbury东部的道路全线飘红。

这完全呼应了通勤高峰时段的交通状况——当人流车流扎堆时，要通行可能得浪费半个小时。事实上，这甚至告诉我一个用于避开交通问题的小技巧：当从Didsbury东部（图中右上角）进入Northenden（道路红带沿线），如果你从Northenden大路的第二个路口左拐，你就可以从交通顺畅的地区通过，从而避开上述交通堵滞。看《模拟城市》的地图，似乎也管用！

当高峰交通拥堵初露苗头时，一度容易通行的乐购十字路口就突然车满为患。

Northenden(from gamasutra)

图7、添加Didsbury东部以后的乐购十字路口

所以，这说明了什么？来自Didsbury和高速公路的通过交通流确实是Northenden交通问题的元凶？地方管理委员会应该怎么解决这个问题？

好吧，答案当然是，什么也没有说明。这只不过是一次电子游戏实验，甚至没有任何接近科学的证据来支撑我的理论，也不能用于诊断现实的交通问题。我的所做所为太含糊了，根本与现实不同。

可以说，这个小工程绝对让我相信，如果使用适当，《模拟城市》还是有实用意义的。在玩游戏时，我还注意到许多其他有意思的东西，比如我一建好Didsbury东部，Northenden中心的商铺收益就下降了，有些甚至倒闭了。走在Northenden的大路沿线，你就知道那是什么情况了。

至于我个人，我迫不及待地想看看游戏的最终发布，以及那些掌握了真实科学的人如何用它来赚钱。

Northenden(from gamasutra)

图8、这是我接送孩子上下幼儿园要经过的路。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Using SimCity to diagnose my home town’s traffic problem

by Mike Rose

After the first SimCity beta weekend had ended, I read an article by Norman Chan over at Tested.com in which he attempted to discover the best suburban city layout according to the game. It’s hugely interesting stuff, and quite frankly I hadn’t considered the idea of putting this new SimCity to real-world use.

So when the second beta weekend rolled around, I decided to have a crack at testing some theories that I have about my own hometown of Northenden, Manchester (population of roughly 15,000, as far as I can tell).

Northenden is a pretty small place that you can drive straight through in around five minutes. The town mainly consists of residental housing, with a strip of shops that is known at the center of the town. And yet, considering the low number of people who live here, coupled with the low number of reasons to want to be driving around the town, you still wouldn’t want to visit during rush hour. We’re talking standstill traffic that you can sometimes expect to sit around in for up to an hour.

Look at a map of the area, and it’s not hugely difficult to see why. The town features connections onto multiple motorways, plus the extremely busy Princess Parkway, which goes all the way into the center of Manchester city. To its North, you’ve got a straight road surrounded by golf courses, that leads to the bustling Didsbury areas.

Essentially, during both the morning commute and the drive back home from work in the evening, Northenden becomes a traffic bottleneck, with hundreds of cars either trying to get onto the motorway, or out into Didsbury. I have to pick up and drop my child off at nursery in Didsbury a couple of times a week, and quite honestly, the drive is like hell on Earth at the worst of times.

At least, this is my reasoning for the ugly traffic. In fact, I’ve contemplated numerous times exactly what causes the pileups in Northenden, sometimes wondering whether it’s simply that the town is laid out in an awful fashion. Now, with the incredibly scientific power of SimCity, I will finally get to the bottom of what is the real cause.

Question 1: Is it the layout of the town that causes the traffic?

I began by sticking Google Maps on my second screen, and then building Northenden in SimCity as best as I could. I wasn’t meticulous about the design – I mean, I’m not submitting this to the council or anything – but I made sure that the layout was roughly the same as the real-life town, especially when it came to the main through roads. At the bottom of the following screenshot you can see the town connecting up to Princess Parkway/the motorway, while at the top left, the road connects to Didsbury (or a railway track, as is the case here – more on that later).

My version of Northenden – click to expand

Switching to the zoning view shows exactly what types of housing you can see here. The blue indicates the line of shops through Northenden center, while the yellow to the right is Sharston Industrial Estate (I added this in since if I didn’t have industrial buildings, not many people would actually choose to move into my town!). What’s lovely is that my town’s population appears to have peaked at around 18,000, which is only just slightly more than the real Northenden. I wish I could say that I did that on purpose.

Zoning in Northenden

There’s a 4-way junction in the heart of Northenden that everyone just calls “Tesco”, mainly because it has a big old Tesco store on the corner. This is one of the main areas where traffic usually builds up and causes the bottlenecking, so I decided to keep a close eye on how my SimCity traffic piled up there.

As it turns out, it wasn’t too bad at all. During the morning rush hour, there was a slight build up but nothing too notable. I surely wouldn’t have minded sitting in that level of traffic, and it’s a country mile better than the real deal. In the below screenshot you can see the peak of the rush hour, with the robot store in place of where Tesco sits in real life.

The Tesco 4-way junction

This isn’t hugely surprising. In its current form, the through-roads aren’t really acting as through-roads, since Northenden residents don’t have a huge number of places to go along those roads. No, what I really want to test is whether funnelling traffic through the center of Northenden causes jams.

Question 2: Is the issue that Northenden is used as a through-town?

The issue is that SimCity’s maps are rather small – at least, in the beta – and as such, I had to improvise a bit. Where Northenden hits SimCity’s outlying railway track is where a stretching single road reaches into West and East Didsbury, both very busy areas. In place of this, I built a long stretching road at a 90 degrees angle, parallel to the railway, to replicate the Didsbury area. I created a built-up area filled with shops, and dumped a large casino at the far end (there’s a large casino complex in East Didsbury called Parrswood). I then stretched a strip of highway from the casino all the way round to the other end of Northenden – an extremely simple but near-faithful version of the real-world area.

East Didsbury and the Parrswood Casino

With this set-up in place, the hope was that Northenden residents would venture out to Didsbury en masse, and mix in with the traffic from the tourist traffic from the motorway, on their way to visit the casino. Within 10 minutes, the effects were clearly notable – as per the below screenshot.

How the traffic looks after adding East Didsbury into the mix – note the strips of red running through Northenden center and into Didsbury

Most areas of Northenden were fine, with green and yellow strips on the road signifying no-to-light traffic. However, much of the main road going through town is red or orange, meaning pile-ups and standstill traffic. In particular, the road into East Didsbury was red all the way down.

This definitely echoes the sort of traffic you’d expect to find during the rush hour – that latter road in particular can take a good half an hour to get down when things get particularly bad. In fact, this setup even highlights a little trick that I know of for dodging some of the traffic: when coming from East Didsbury (up at the top right) into Northenden (alongside that bright red strip of road), if you take the second left along Northenden high street, you can skim through some of the back roads and pop out in a relatively lighter area, backpassing the through-road slog. Look at the SimCity map, and it seems to work here too!

Jump ahead to the time when the real rush hour traffic starts to kick in, and that once easy going junction at Tesco is suddenly rammed with cars.

The Tesco 4-way junction after East Didsbury has been added

So what does this all prove? Is it indeed true that through-traffic coming from Didsbury and the motorway is causing the Northenden bottlenecks? And what can the council do to fix the issue?

Well… the answer is, of course, that it means absolutely nothing. This was but a mere video game experiment, and nothing here even closely resembles scientific evidence to support my theories, nor can it be used to diagnose the issues. Everything I did was hugely vague and nothing at all like real life.

That being said, this little project definitely gave me a sense for what could be accomplished with SimCity if put in the right hands. I noticed plenty of other little interesting takeaways from my hour of play, including the fact that once I’d built East Didsbury, the strip of shops in Northenden stopped making as much money as they once were, and some were even beginning to close down as my time ran out. Walk along Northenden high street, and you’ll know that feeling.

For me personally, I can’t wait to see what happens when the game is released, and people with real scientific experiments give it a run for its money.(source:gamasutra)

And this is what I’ll have to work my way through to take my son to nursery in Didsbury tomorrow *sigh*（source：gamasutra）