What are the best ways to get around on public transportation in Cities Skylines?
In Cities: Skylines, your goal is to build a successful city by giving your citizens enough services, a complex road network, and places to live. Public transportation is one of the most important parts of the game because it makes towns much less crowded.
Cities: Skylines has also added new types of public transportation through its DLC packs, which lets you customize and improve your infrastructure even more. Since there are so many kinds of public transportation in the game, check out the list below to see which ones will help your city.
Blimps
Blimps, which came out with the Mass Transit DLC, are thought to be one of the weirdest and worst ways to get around in Cities: Skylines. First of all, these blimps are huge, but they can only hold 35 people at a time. This means that there will be long waits between each trip, which will cause traffic and lines on the ground.
Also, this way of getting around makes your skyline look bad because these flying monsters might block a beautiful view or crash through your tall buildings. But these blimps can be useful for getting people over dangerous places, like big mountains.
Helicopters
Helicopters are another way to travel by air. They were added with the Sunset Harbor DLC. Even though these helicopters are much smaller, look better, and make much less noise pollution, they can only carry a very small number of people.
Helicopters are like blimps in that they are only really useful in terrible scenarios, like a forest fire. But they can be used to decorate the skyline of a port, making a nice place for tourists to visit.
Cable Cars
Cable cars are another type of public transportation that was added with the Mass Transit DLC. They are mostly used to get up high mountains and look nice. You can only fit 30 people in these cars, and you can’t make more than one stop with them, so you should only use them to get around in the more rural parts of your city.
Specifically, you can make an elevated path in your nature reserve or public park by mixing the Cable Car with items from the Park Life DLC.
Taxis
Taxis are another type of public transportation in Cities: Skylines, but they don’t give your city the best benefits. Since taxis drive on your roads, using this form of public transportation if you don’t have a strong tram or bus system will actually make your roads even more crowded instead of making them less crowded.
Also, since these taxis can only carry a small number of your civilians, other types of transportation will be much better than your taxi service, and they will get civilians to their destinations faster because they have their own roads or tracks. If you do want to add cabs to your infrastructure, the After Dark DLC added this type of public transportation.
Trolleybuses
Trolleybuses were added to Cities: Skylines with the Sunset Harbor DLC. They are a strange mix of buses and trams and can carry up to 30 people across different roads. To use these trolleybuses, you must first set up the station and then add electric trolleybus lines to the roads you want to use.
At first glance, these trolleybuses may seem helpful, but there are other types of public transportation that can carry more people and have specific routes that make your city less crowded.
Ferries
Ferries are like water-based buses in Cities: Skylines. They came out with the Mass Transit DLC. The number of people these ferries say they can carry is not reasonable, so they will only be able to hold 50 people at once.
Also, some maps in Cities: Skylines have only small rivers or none at all, so this mode of public transportation is totally useless there. But even though these ships might not move the most people, they can still make your city look nice.
Intercity Buses
The Sunset Harbor DLC added Intercity Bus depots to the game. They can be used as normal bus stations, but they are mostly used with tourism areas. In particular, these bus stops bring tourists from outside your city, which means that your tourist areas will bring in more money.
But these depots can also be used as normal bus stations. This means that multiple bus lines can meet at one point, making it a kind of transportation hub. Also, these intercity buses can hold up to 60 people, which makes them a great way to move big groups of civilians.
Cruise Ships
Cruise ships are the biggest passenger ships in the game, and they were added to Cities: Skylines’ base game. Large cruise ships like these can hold up to 100 people and work mostly like intercity buses.
In particular, these big ships will drop off groups of 100 tourists who want to see all the sights in your city. You should build a strong transportation hub right outside your harbor so that these tourists can get to their places quickly and easily.
Buses
When you start a new game of Cities: Skylines, the first public transportation you’ll be able to use is buses, which can carry up to 50 people around the city. These cars came with the base game, but you can buy DLC packs that add different looks for your buses, different bus depots, and roads with bus lanes.
To use this type of public transportation well, you will also need to set up different bus lines in different parts of your city. As your city grows, though, it’s important to add other types of public transportation to your bus services because there will be a lot more civilians moving around.
Trains
Trains are another form of public transportation that came with the Cities: Skylines base game. Since then, different content packs have added new assets and stops for trains. You can actually tell trains to carry people or goods around your city, which is pretty cool.
You can also upgrade trains so that they can take up to 400 people at once. This will cut down on wait times in your cityscape a lot. Even though these train stops are great for getting people where they need to go, they also make a lot of noise pollution, so make sure to put them far away from your homes.
Airports
Airports are a unique way to get around in Cities: Skylines because they were included in the base game but then increased in After Dark, Sunset Harbor, Industries, and of course the Airports expansion. Also, this type of public transportation can do a lot of different things, like move goods, bring guests to your city, or even make long-distance connections across the map.
Each base plane can hold up to 200 people, so you should have a lot of public transportation around these sites to avoid traffic jams. Even though the airports in the base Eggy Car game can be used, you need a lot of add-on content (DLC) to make them really useful and attractive.
Monorail
With the Mass Transit DLC, you can also use the monorail, which lets you run tracks above big networks of roads to get around all the traffic on the roads. There can be up to 180 people in these railroad cars, but they also make a lot of noise pollution.
Even though the monorail is one of the best ways to get around in the game, careful city planning is needed for these high-up trains. Make sure that when you build your railway tracks, there are no stops near your homes. The noise pollution will cause your people to leave your city quickly.
Cycling
Even though it might seem strange that cycling is one of the best ways to get around town, you should never underestimate how much your people will love riding their bikes. With the After Dark DLC, you can now go cycling, and there are paths and roads with special bike tracks.
By marking your districts with the “encourage biking” policy, all of your civilians will develop a real love for cycling and will even go out of their way to take longer routes, as long as there is enough biking infrastructure. If your city has a lot of car traffic and is very crowded, just getting people to ride bikes will make a huge difference.
Metro
The subway is a great way to get around because it can hold up to 150 people and can go underground to avoid traffic. The metro, which came out with the “vanilla” version of the game, will quickly become the most popular part of your public transportation system because it can move people quickly over long distances while avoiding busy streets and highways.
Even though the metro is fully playable in the base game, you can get the Airports DLC to unlock a faster version that can carry up to 180 people and goes faster. Overall, letting people use the subway will make your city much less crowded and also bring in a lot of money.
Tram
People think that the tram is the best way to get around in Cities: Skylines because these tram cars can do so many different things. Trams, which came out with the Snowfall DLC, are basically street cars that can hold up to 140 people and move along roads with electronic tracks.
As the game has kept getting better, more tram lines have been added, letting you combine trams with pedestrian paths that let you fully avoid road traffic. Also, unlike other rail-based transportation systems, all you need to do to make a tram line is put a small stop along the street, like a bus stop. This means that trams won’t make a lot of noise pollution, and you won’t have to spend a lot of money to build big stations where trams can stop.
