Have you ever thought U-drive it was so awesome, except that you had to spend 20 minutes driving a school bus around your city before you could get your lump sum of cold hard cash? Turns out you don't have to install mods to speed up literally all gameplay in SC4, including all graphics and yes, U-drive it as well. There is a cheat engine called cheatengine, and with it, it's possible to speed up or slow down all gameplay in the game, or even temporarily change the population in your cities. (Sadly the population is recalculated monthly, so you can't change it permanently. )

Simply install cheat engine, start SC4, open the process in cheatengine, then check out the speed hack part of it.

I know, it's pretty much useless as far as making your cities better or more creative, but I still find it pretty interesting what can be done with some technical know-how.

EDIT: Fixed broken link