Consider this guide as a collection of heuristics to frame your Mini Motorways experience. Other guides and videos that can be found may offer data, statistics, and specific play-styles to Min-Max the design of your motorways. In parallel to such activities, this guide offers insight on how to manage in-the-moment decisions that are required to adapt to the emergent system behavior of Mini Motorways.

The first section provides images and observations for each of the 21 cities the first time that the "Driver" achievement was obtained. The second section distills these observations into a set of strategies and tactics for framing your motorway placement decisions. The guide concludes with some remarks on useful resources if you would like to learn more.

Los Angeles

Upon re-assessment, not the best of layouts. Roads are numerous and bridges well-distributed but cars tended to prefer highways. Most highways are multi-use - especially highway 1 and 3 - which allow multiple car types to leverage the asset.

Beijing

Notice that significant effort is made to get cars from the upper-right and lower-left neighborhoods out to appropriate parts of the city. Neighborhoods have multiple exit routes and embedded highways contribute to ease of access.

Tokyo

Most highway placements are quite effective, but it's apparent 3 and 2 could be adjusted just a few tiles to reduce the burden of congestion. Circle destinations are easily accessed by their respective car types. The left-most side of the city is composed of square destinations so relying solely on normal roads and a roundabout is sensible.

Dar es Salaam

The middle two roundabouts are strained under heavy traffic. Most roads and highways offer quick ingress to their destinations but egress back to neighborhoods is difficult. A few roads should be added for shortcuts and highway 1 should clearly be relocated deeper into the neighborhood to reduce congestion.

Moscow

Moscow represents my personal high-score. Blue car types are extraordinarily well-served and almost completely segregated. All circle destinations are accessible and a couple traffic lights are introduced to boost efficiency of key intersections. Again, notice that highways are embedded deep into neighborhoods to influence the balance of transit between roads and highways.

Munich

Munich was the most difficult city to achieve 2,000 trips... evident by the lowest global achievement rate of 4% as well. Maybe RNG runs wilder with a one river being the sole limiting factor. The upper-left and center areas of the city provide good examples of main thoroughfares with destinations branching off of them. Otherwise, I will admit this city was hectic.

Zurich

Bridges, tunnels, and highways offer many options to travel between the left and right sides of the city. Highway 3 and 2 are excellent examples of multi-use assets that several car types can utilize. The right-side tunnel required a significant number of tiles but strategically enables the transit of green and purple car types.

Manila

Manila represents the first city for which I achieved 2,000 trips. Clearly there are extraneous roads and highway 4 would be better utilized connecting the local purple neighborhood to the two circle destinations at the bottom of the city - reducing congestion as well. Though, the two central roundabouts streamline some transit and highway 3 exemplifies a multi-use asset that green, blue, and yellow car types can leverage.

Rio de Janeiro

Rio represents the best possible outcome with limited highways. Blue, purple, and green destinations are well-served through a range of tunnel, bridge, and highway assets. The lower-right circle destination is very unfortunate RNG and required a valuable highway.

Dubai

Unfortunately, the island destinations at the top of the city necessitate two highways (likely one with revised placement). The circle destinations and roundabout in the city's center-left are experiencing significant congestion. Highway routes that enable egress from this critical area should be considered. Bridges are well-distributed, and the lower-left quadrant of the city exemplifies a main thoroughfare which several cul-de-sacs and neighborhoods have access to.

Mexico City

This city is brimming with activity... and surprisingly, a few trees are still standing. Most highways are multi-use but could benefit from being shifted by a few tiles to facilitate transit flow. Another beneficial action might be to attempt segregating a few neighborhood-destination pairs. The wide accessibility of the city may actually be an impediment for transit.

Wellington

Every asset is utilized to hit the 2,000 trip mark. Roundabouts and stoplights assist traffic flow, bridges and tunnels provide tactical shortcuts, and highways connect distant neighborhood-destination pairs. This map is a challenge due to the water and mountain features that cannot be easily circumvented. To an extent, the correct RNG assets are needed. The destination that ultimately timed out was the upper-right light green circle - highway 2 should have been moved closer to improve service.

Warsaw

The city is easy to traverse due to numerous road and highway assets, but there is extreme congestion in the middle. A late solution I devised would encompass isolating the central red destination with a highway to eliminate cross-traffic with yellow cars. Otherwise, light-green, dark-green, and blue destinations are well-served from diverse neighborhood locations.

Chiang Mai

This was difficult to achieve. I hit the 1,400-1,500 mark consistently before I broke through to 2,000. Actively managing the development of the central island - through spawn blocking and revising roads - is vital to success. What this image does not show is that many neighborhood-destination pairs were segregated deep into the late-game, which facilitated expedient transit. Blue, light-green, and yellow destinations remain well-served (with some segregated paths still in-effect); while red and dark-green destinations are experiencing congestion across the city. Highway 4 clearly needs to be revised.

Lisbon

The city has many neighborhood-destination pairs that remain mostly segregated well into the late-game, notably blue and light-green. Highway and bridge assets facilitate much of the traffic with a few boosts from a roundabout and stoplights. The dark-green destinations in the center may have benefited from restructuring the single highway and road that service them.

Busan

The city clearly has a large amount of horizontal traffic flow - emphasized by how the placement of highway assets emerged. This resulted from the desire to facilitate light-green neighborhood-destination pairs... somewhat to the detriment of yellow that led to game ending congestion. Dark-green and blue had many overlapping routes, and highway 4 could have likely been reallocated to meet the demand for yellow cars.

Reykjavik

Surprisingly, this was completed on Challenge mode. The remnants of segregated neighborhoods for yellow, blue, and dark-green can still be seen around the city. More connections were made as the game progressed to facilitate transit to destinations.

Vancouver

Multiple neighborhoods experienced significant adaptation over the course of the game. The dark-green, blue, and red neighborhood-destination pairs were completely segregated at different times with highways and bridges sometimes swapped. Dark-green still has a relatively exclusive traffic flow. Highways 1, 3, and 4 facilitate long distance transit which was crucial.

Trains add a new dynamic to the game, with two key considerations:

• Cars stop at rail crossings as trains pass through
  
• Trains unload passengers (pins) at stations when they stop

Observations below will be more concise.

Mumbai

Light-green, blue, and yellow have clear transit paths between neighborhood-destination pairs. Red is notably lacking as highway assets were prioritized for other colors.

New York

A lot of horizontal transit paths were required. Highway assets are abundant but not enough to meet the light-green demand. Though, most destinations are functioning quite well.

London

This took several attempts to accomplish. Light-green, blue, and dark-green have fairly distinct neighborhoods with clear transit paths to destinations. Furthermore, yellow on the right-hand side is a good example of complete segregation. Congestion became an issue as the game progressed.

Strategies: High-level, relatively static concepts to employ when developing and evaluating your city. The 800-trip mark is an excellent point to pause and assess if the current iteration is promising or requires a drastic overhaul.

• Influence neighborhood growth. Use excess tiles to expand beyond what is currently required. Houses of the same color will often spawn in the same local area so you can influence the long-term structure of the neighborhood.
  
• Establish main thoroughfares. Construct main roads with few house connections to minimize travel times between key regions of the city. Less intersections equates to less braking. This is easier said than done as the emergent behavior of the city can dictate subsequent alterations.
  
• Compartmentalize related neighborhoods and destinations. Keep related neighborhoods and destinations segregated for as long as possible to minimize congestion. This can be asset expensive though, so weigh such actions against what most benefits the city. In reality, minimal overlap of car types is a worthwhile goal.

Tactics: Dynamic concepts to employ while constructing motorways, observing transit flows, and reacting to house/ destinations spawns.

• Use diagonals. Diagonal roads yield more distance per tile asset than simple grid-style placement. Among other use cases, diagonals are useful in connecting remote spawns, minor cul-de-sacs, and creating quick shortcuts for specific car types.
  
• Declutter intersections. Theoretically an intersection can arise from the product of eight distinct roadways. This is not efficient, rather, it will likely emerge as a congestion point. Try to merge roadways as much as possible to keep intersections <=4 distinct roadways.
  
• Adjust driveways. Minor adjustments to driveways can add up over time. This can take the form of utilizing diagonals, maximizing right-hand turns, and changing orientation toward a local target destination.
  
• Rethink roads. Often it's valuable to entirely rethink roadways that were constructed in the early-game but are losing utility as the city emerges. Seek to merge, alter, or eliminate roads that no long provide significant transit benefits.
  
• Leverage highways. Place highways to maximize multi-use efficiency. Clearly this is not always possible, but in conjunction with optimal right-hand turns, highways can facilitate massive efficiency increases between neighborhood-destination pairs.
  
• Integrate through roundabouts. Integrate odd convergences of roadways and non-highway transit paths through placement of roundabouts. Roundabouts can facilitate expedient movement through such intersections when the transit demand is low to moderate.
  
• Boost efficiency with stoplights. Consider stoplights an end-game asset to boost the efficiency of busy intersections. Such intersections may include neighborhood egress points, main thoroughfare crossings, and double-destination ingress/ egress points.

Amidst these strategies and tactics, remember that RNG matters to an extent. Do not be afraid to re-roll in the early-game. Especially if valuable assets like highways or bridges are necessitated!

Also, If you find this game enjoyable, then you might be interested in Industrial Engineering, Operations Research, and/or Management Science type thinking. Starting points for exploring said fields include:

• INFORMS[www.informs.org]
  
• INCOSE[www.incose.org]
  
• Systems Innovation[www.systemsinnovation.io]
  
• System Dynamics[systemdynamics.org]
  
• Systems Thinker[thesystemsthinker.com]

Regardless, I hope you found the guide helpful. Leave comments if you have any thoughts or suggestions.

Thanks!