Road Viaducts
The Elevated Road Viaducts are a series of elevated viaducts in the NAM for the game’s base Road, One-Way Road (OWR), and Avenue networks, allowing them to cross over and under other networks at two different height levels. The draggable functionality supports overpasses of virtually every network and network family in the NAM. The legacy puzzle piece functionality remains available. Basic, easy-to-use, single-plop FLEX-based Overpasses also exist as part of the system.
Installation
The Elevated Road, One-Way Road, and Avenue Viaducts are available under the 2 Network Features → Road, One-Way Road, and Avenue → Elevated Viaducts option. These options are installed by default.
- The main Elevated Viaducts box installs the Draggable Elevated Viaducts.
- The Legacy Road Viaduct Puzzle Piece Menu Access box installs the menu buttons to access the puzzle piece form of the Elevated Road Viaducts. If unchecked only the menu icons are removed, not the required files, so that cities using the legacy puzzle-based Road Viaducts do not break. Unchecking this leaves less to navigate on the Roads menu.
- The Viaduct Additions box installs the Alternate Viaduct Additions, some aesthetic alternate styles of Road (and Street) Viaducts, with very limited OxO-only overcrossing capabilities.
FLEX Overpasses
The FLEX Overpasses feature provides a quick, easy to use option to build variable length overpasses for Road, One-Way Road, and Avenue.
Select the FLEX Overpass from the menu. Using TAB and Shift-TAB (Ctrl-TAB and Ctrl-Shift-TAB on Mac) cycles between the three networks. Using Home and End both rotates and lengthen/shorten the overpasses, resulting in a total of 12 overpass configurations from the 3 TAB loop entries. These option allow for anywhere from 1 to 4 tiles of space underneath the overpass. Nearly any network or combinations of network, with the exception of Maxis Highway and the Maxis Highway Override, can be dragged underneath the viaducts. All FLEX Overpasses are at L1 (7.5-meter) elevation.
To build an overpass, plop the desired overpass, and then drag any networks you’d like to cross over underneath the middle section, between the two height transition ramps. Dragging the base network out the ground ends or through the overpass will allow one to continue the ground level network, and dragging through the overpass with the One-Way Road network will set the direction of any One-Way Road overpasses. Yes, it’s that easy!
Draggable Viaducts
The base set of Elevated Road Viaducts includes six override networks: Level 1 (L1, 7.5 meters high) and Level 2 (L2, 15 meters high) versions of the game’s base Road, One-Way Road, and Avenue networks. Aside from being elevated off the ground, all other network properties, including capacity, remain intact. The menu button, which contains the starters and height transitions, can be found on the Roads menu.
To build a draggable Elevated Road Viaduct, place down the appropriate starter and drag the network through the starter (Road for Road Viaducts, One-Way Road for One-Way Road Viaducts, and Avenue for Avenue Viaducts). The dragged network will show with a brown background to indicate it is being overridden with a viaduct.
Height Transitions
There are two methods to connect to the draggable Elevated Road Viaducts from ground level–the standard Height Transition, and the On-Slope Transition.
With the standard Height Transition, place the transition, drag the network out of both sides, and release – the elevated side will convert to a viaduct, while the ground level side will remain at ground level.
With the On-Slope Transitions, which may initially appear to be a RealHighway upon placement, place them on the appropriate height embankment with the viaduct portion of the transition piece beginning at the edge of the slope. Drag the appropriate ground-level network up to the tile just before the On-Slope transition, and it will convert to match. If using Avenue, build two side-by-side On-Slopes. To continue the viaduct, drag the network starting from the tile just after the On-Slope transition transition.
The NAM’s Hole Diggers & Raisers are perfect for creating the proper height embankments.
Crossings and Intersections
With most Elevated Road Viaducts crossings, all you need to do is drag the crossing network perpendicularly across the viaduct, or vice-versa. This works with overpasses, underpasses and elevated at-grade intersections.
Overpasses
Elevated At-Grade Intersections
Puzzle Pieces DEPRECATED
A series of legacy puzzle pieces exists for the Elevated Road Viaducts as well. Static versions of the overpasses exist, along with sets of puzzle pieces for L1 and L2 Road, L2 One-Way Road (there are no L1 One-Way Road puzzle pieces, nor will they be developed), and L1 and L2 Avenue. The only items that are not yet covered by the newer draggable system are the Diagonal On-Slope Transitions, and Maxis Highway crossings may be more flexible with the puzzle pieces at this time. FLEX versions of these will be added in a future release, rendering this set completely deprecated.
Network Capabilities
Refer to the Road Viaducts Technical Data for the available network capabilities.