With our first expansion, Bridges & Ports, just around the corner, we’re taking a closer look at what you can expect from the expansion. We have two development diaries for you, creatively named “Bridges” and “Ports,” where we cover the features we’re most excited about. We hope you will have fun exploring everything Bridges & Ports has to offer when it releases on the 29th of October.
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Today is all about bridges, but before we dive in, let’s talk about how we picked the theme for the first expansion. Cities: Skylines II has a lot of potential, and we had no shortage of ideas from both our team and all of you. We looked at what would be new and exciting to explore and quickly settled on waterfronts as an overarching theme. However, we couldn’t cover every water-related idea in one expansion, so we chose to focus on ports and thus, Bridges & Ports was born. With customizable ports, offshore oil industry, industrial fishing, and ferries, you will have a lot of ships and boats on the water, and building bridges with enough clearance for them can be tricky. You will need some new additions, and we have you covered with 20 new bridges!
Let your citizens cross waterways in style using one of the 20 new bridges.
We’re excited to introduce ten movable bridges that halt traffic and open to allow ships clear passage. While they are constructed in a way very similar to other bridges in the game, the movable section only appears when they cross a Narrow Seaway, meaning you can use them anywhere in your city, not just across the water.
Five of the movable bridges are drawbridges, also known as bascule bridges in real-world terminology. They all have two sections that swing upward to allow ships to pass safely, while traffic waits for its turn. Our drawbridges come in various sizes, and you can find them in the Small, Medium, and Large Roads Menus, as well as in the Landscaping Menu under Paths for pedestrian-only versions.
Watching the new drawbridges open and close can be mesmerizing, but don’t forget to check on your city once in a while.
The remaining five bridges are vertical-lift bridges, or just lift bridges for short. As the name implies, these have a section that is raised vertically to create enough space for ships to pass underneath. Lift bridges require less counterweight than drawbridges, making them better suited for heavy loads like trains, which is why many real-life rail bridges use this design – and it’s why our rail bridges are also lift bridges. You can find four of them in their respective Transportation Menus as they cover train, tram, and subway, while the double-decked option, combining double train tracks and a four-lane highway, is found in the Highway Roads Menu.
The Four-Lane Highway Double Train Track Double-Decked Lift Bridge has quite a name and an even more breathtaking design.
Both drawbridges and lift bridges are closed by default, allowing pedestrians and vehicles to cross unhindered until a ship approaches. At this point, traffic at either end of the bridge is stopped while any vehicles or pedestrians already on the bridge make their way to the other side. Once it’s all clear, the bridge begins to open, and once it’s fully up, the ship passes through. Then, you guessed it – the bridge closes again, the traffic control beams open, and traffic resumes crossing the bridge.
As you can imagine, this process takes more time than a red-to-green traffic light cycle, meaning movable bridges can cause more of a delay in travel time when a ship needs to pass through. Keep this in mind as you design your city – you may not want your busiest crossing to be a movable bridge, at least not if you have many ships coming in and out of your port area.
The bridge stays open long enough for the ship to pass through. Once closed, traffic proceeds to cross the bridge.
The double-decked lift bridge isn’t the only double-decked bridge we have for you. Though these do not open, we have two additional bridges that stack various networks on top of each other, combining them into one cohesive bridge. Let’s start in the Medium Roads Menu, where you can find a new bridge with a two-lane road above the larger four-lane road. This extradosed bridge is a great choice for busy crossings, offering a total of six lanes of traffic, or for connecting areas with tiered road networks. Instead of building two bridges, you just need this one.
Connect each deck of the Two-Lane + Four-Lane Double-Decked Extradosed Bridge to different parts of the city, or continue the stacked network through your city.
Moving into the Highway Roads Menu, we have the Three-Lane Highway Double-Decked Suspension Bridge, complementing the first double-decked bridge you got in the Quays & Piers update. With its double three-lane highway roads stacked on top of each other, it saves a lot of space and cost, making it a great option when you’re expanding your highway network.
The Three-Lane Highway Double-Decked Suspension Bridge gets you two highway roads for the price of one!
Bridges don’t need new flashy features or multiple networks to be both functional and visually interesting, so naturally, we have eight regular bridges for you. Let’s start small and work our way up to the largest bridges. For pedestrians, we have a new bridge in addition to the two drawbridges. This wooden bridge is covered, sheltering pedestrians from the weather, and uses the new Wide Pedestrian Path for those busy areas. In the Subway Transportation Menu, you’ll find Double Subway Track Truss Arch Bridge, while the Small Roads Menu now houses the elaborate Two-Lane Suspension Bridge, complete with protective barriers to keep pedestrians safe.
Your choice of bridge can define the look and feel of your city, and the Two-Lane Suspension Bridge is a stylish option.
For Medium Roads, we have three new additions, two of which share the same design. First, the sturdy Four-Lane Truss Arch Bridge with that classic look. But fret not, if you’re looking for a more modern design, the Four Lane Extradosed Bridge offers just that, and with its one-way and two-way options, it offers just the solution you need. All can, of course, be upgraded with bus lanes or tram tracks for all your public transport needs.
The Four-Lane Truss Arch Bridge can handle a lot of traffic, or be upgraded with bus lanes and tram tracks to support your public transit network.
In Large Roads, you will find two new suspension bridges that live up to the “Large Road” name, as both can span not just Narrow Seaways, but also Medium and Wide Seaways, making them perfect for crossing wide fjords or bays. The Six Lane Suspension Bridge offers three lanes in each direction, while its one-way counterpart is ready to tackle even the heaviest traffic.
The impressive Six Lane Suspension Bridge comes in both two-way and one-way versions.
With so many new bridge options to choose from, we hope you find a new favorite as you’re building your cities along rivers or across canyons. Do you already have your eye on one or a spot in your current city that will be upgraded with one of these new bridges? Let us know in the comments below. Next time, we dive into the details of how the Port works and take a quick peek at all the port-related features in Bridges & Ports, but you will have to wait until the 21st of October for that.
