Monorail across cities

[SteveB 0]

In my nice residential area, I've built a monorail system and my sims are getting richer and it is now getting good usage. Since most of the sims need to go to the industrial section to go to work, I created a connection and put an extensive monorail system around my industry section. But the monorail is getting next to zero usage in my industrial sector. I'm guessing this is because it is all dirty and they assume people are less intelligent and therefore won't use the monorail? Can I use monorail at all like this? Is the game smart enough to see a route across two cities, or should you just create a connection and leave it at that? Thanks, Steve

[pnorrell 4]

Welcome to Simtropolis, SteveB.

Yes, you can use monorail like that. However, from my own experience, I would discourage using monorail the same way you do subways or elevated rail. Monorail works best over longer distances, with fewer stops, where its speed advantage can be realized. I would suggest not more than 4 stations across 2 medium city tiles. You can have other forms of transit feed into the monorail in your residential city and out from the monorail in your industrial city and use the monorail itself for the inter-city connection.

Make sense?

[KT3 5]

Its perhaps a question of cost. The workers in the industrial areas will be relatively low paid, and they have to PAY to use the Monorail

[SteveB 0]

Ok, I was hoping to only have the monorail, I guess I'll link it to a subway system and do like you say. I was playing after I posted and found I had 2000 passengers leaving the residential area on the monorail, but had none coming into the industrial area. Not too sure what to do about that.

In the industrial sector I would usually have a train system to deal with the cargo and passengers. Since monorail only deals with the passengers, should I build a secondary rail system as well, is this the only feasible way to move the cargo? And where should the cargo be going, other industrial and commercial sectors?

On a semi-related note, the industrial area is completely filled with dirty industry, which has made keeping a fresh water supply a realy problem. I tried building my pumps in a neighbouring city and connecting the pipes, but I found the coverage of the pipes was rubbish, only really being what the pipes went under. Can you not share water like that effectively? I currently have resorted to clearing a corner of the map and dumping a water cleaning thing and it just about works out.

Thanks,

Steve

[pnorrell 4]

If your cities haven't gotten too large yet, buses will probably suffice to connect to and from the monorail. As they get larger, subway or elevated rail makes a better network to reach out from the monorail station to the outlying areas. You might also consider limiting the road connections between your residential and industrial city, to force them to use the monorail for the commute. It's kind of an underhanded way to do it, but it will improve your commute times, traffic and pollution.

About freight - industry will ship out goods by whatever route gets them to the nearest map edge the fastest. In most cases, this will be by truck, assuming you have road connections to neighboring cities. You do not have to use freight rail, if you don't want to and, if you do want to, it can be tricky to make sure the rail represents the fastest route to the map edge and actually gets used. Again, you can control this by limiting your neighbor connections, or using some downloads from the STEX like the "no trucks" lot. It does not matter what, if anything, is in the neighboring cities. Freight goes to the map edge and disappears into oblivion. There is no final destination other than the nearest neighbor connection.

One final note - sometimes all-industrial cities suffer from a kind of bug. You can see that the buildings have workers, but they do not show up on the commute graph or route query. Many of my industrial cities have this problem and I've never found a solution for it...

EDIT: Oh - forgot about the water. Sure, you can supply water from neighboring cities but, if it is being fed to dirty industrial areas, it will become polluted when it gets to those areas. You have to build water treatment plants to keep it clean but, if your city's all industrial, I wouldn't worry about the water quality too much. Pipes distribute water 6 or 8 tiles on either side of the pipe, assuming you have sufficient water supply flowing through them (think of it like water pressure).

[SteveB 0]

Originally posted by: pnorrell If your cities haven't gotten too large yet, buses will probably suffice to connect to and from the monorail. As they get larger, subway or elevated rail makes a better network to reach out from the monorail station to the outlying areas. You might also consider limiting the road connections between your residential and industrial city, to force them to use the monorail for the commute. It's kind of an underhanded way to do it, but it will improve your commute times, traffic and pollution.quote>

I actually only have 1 highway linking the two areas right now, along with the monorail. I even put two toll booths on this highway link. It's still massively overcrowded, but it does however pay for all of the cities police and medical coverage

Oh - forgot about the water. Sure, you can supply water from neighboring cities but, if it is being fed to dirty industrial areas, it will become polluted when it gets to those areas. You have to build water treatment plants to keep it clean but, if your city's all industrial, I wouldn't worry about the water quality too much. Pipes distribute water 6 or 8 tiles on either side of the pipe, assuming you have sufficient water supply flowing through them (think of it like water pressure).quote>

I have 4 pumps in the other city, way more than I need. I have a treatment plant, although it is on the other side of the city (does that matter?) and my water distrubution is only 1 tile in rare cases, rather than the 6 tiles I get from water pumps from within the city. Edit: Why is this thing stealing my line breaks? Works fine in Quick Reply but not in this seperate window.

[pnorrell 4]

Water treatment plants have an area of effectiveness. You can get an idea for how big it is by plopping one in the middle of a polluted area and checking your pollution data map. Not sure what the deal is with your water pressure - you sure you have electricity to the pumps? Did you do the neighbor deal, to buy water from the neighboring city? If you haven't signed the deal (see the budget menu), then the connecting pipes don't do any good.

[KT3 5]

Reference your water

Have you actually connected the pump stations with a network of water pipes ?

Plus of course, the water pumps need power to function

[+Guest]

Water:Forget about using the game Pump Stations and Water Treatment Plants.Try searching STEX for Black Hole and hopefully you will come across a three in one Pump Station.It pumps 10,000 and cleans the water/air.If you must use Monorail try using Brenda's Station.Goodluck

[SteveB 0]

I have power, there should be plenty of water. I've checked the budgetting and so on. I know some water gets through as some tiles get watered, just very few and tiles far from the connection don't really at all.

I'm not too fond of installing mods right now, but I can't even find Brenda's Station in the listings.

[Sam 163]

It sounds like your city may not be buying enough water from the neighbour city. (Perhaps they don't have enough to sell to completely supply the industrial city.)

If your water pipes are connected properly to a sufficient water source, then you should be able to water 6 tiles either side of the water pipe. If your water is not extending this far from your pipes, then you probably don't have enough water to meet demand, or it is not connected to the pipes properly. Have you also checked your graphss to see how much water your city needs and how much is actually being supplied to it?

[SC4BOY 20]

Agree with sam. .. As water demand (especially purchased water.. no sure why it is more affected) gets close to capacity (look at the graph) you will find that pipes will water fewer and fewer tiles from the pipe. 6 tiles is the normal amount from each side of a pipe (so you should get full coverage with pipes placed every 13th tile) and will drop to as far as NO water.. though normally you get warnings as the water steps down from 6 to 5 to 4 etc.. Sam has it right on the head... its the only reason I've ever had a pipe not supply its full range of distribution.. (unless of course you cut funding and are getting broken pipes)

[SteveB 0]

Well I currently use 3 normal water pumps when they are built within my industrial district. This is with a splash of water pollution too.

When I tried to connect water from the next city, I made a dedicated supply of 4 pumps and shipped it across. Should be plenty of water to provide full coverage, should it not? I'm going to do some experimentation later.

[Sam 163]

Originally posted by: SteveB Well I currently use 3 normal water pumps when they are built within my industrial district. This is with a splash of water pollution too.

When I tried to connect water from the next city, I made a dedicated supply of 4 pumps and shipped it across. Should be plenty of water to provide full coverage, should it not? I'm going to do some experimentation later.quote>

It won't necessarily give enough water or coverage, and I think this is where you are running into problems. Industry needs a great deal of water and four pumps may not be enough. You need to use the graphs to check your city's actual requirements and your actual supply. You also need to check how much each pump is producing to see if there is a problem with it.

Also, I never put water pumps in my industrial areas, as the pollution reduces the amount of water the pumps can produce and may shut them down entirely. I always keep my water pumps in a clean area, preferably a residential or commercial neighbouring city, where the pollution can be kept away from the pumps.

If you have your pumps in a neighbour city, its not enough to just build the pipes into the neighbour city. You then have to run the city until the deal becomes available, and then in your budget sheet neighbour deals section, set up the deal. Also, your neighbour city also has to supply their own water as well, and four pumps is unlikely to be enough for two cities, one of which is industrial. It does depend on the type of pumps though. Some are much smaller than others.

A picture of your problem would be really helpful though.

[SteveB 0]

I'm not sure if you understand. I started a neighbour deal again and I'll summarise the results here.

Scenario A: Pumps within industrial city.

Number of pumps: 3

Age of pumps: Range of new and old

Pollution: Fair amount

Spread from pipes: 6

Scenario B: Pumps in neighbouring city.

Number of pumps: 6

Age of pumps: Brand new

Pollution: None

Spread from pipes: 4 at best.

I'm guessing that bringing water from other cities somehow lowers the range of it from the pipes, but noone has confirmed that above, so I don't know what the problem is.

[infoscott 0]

On the monorail issue, you should check to see which wealth classes are using it. R$ tends to choose bus or passenger rail over other options, I can't find a particular preference for R$$, and R$$$ seems to prefer monorail or cars. However, I've built a rural to rural monorail system and seen R$ take it when the corresponding bus route was far less efficient, and surface roads weren't even an option.

It seems highway trumps everything far too often. It's one of the better saboteurs of a well layed out mass transit system, toll booths notwithstanding.

Monorail stations are tricky to place to get the desired effect. The destination should be near very high densities, and better if it's adjacent to a subway system. The source destination needs to be near higher density, higher wealth residential, although in theory a Park-n-Ride configuration should also work. I haven't seen many suburbs built with high wealth city centers surrounded by medium and low wealth suburbs, often it's just the other way around. So the Catch-22 seems to be funneling enough candidates to the source destination to make it effective. I'm still working on that problem.

[SC4BOY 20]

infoscott.. Cldn't agree more!! It really hurts to develope an nice rail, etc traffic system and the first road/highway travel option causes all SIMS to rush to it immediately, ruining all your efforts.. ! I guess SIMS love their cars just like we Americans.. hehe

[paperboy15 4]

"I'm guessing that bringing water from other cities somehow lowers the range of it from the pipes, but noone has confirmed that above, so I don't know what the problem is. "

No...the range is lower because your water demand is greater than your water supply or your system is not connected properly. Check your water data view to see if your water supply on the graph is adequate, then if not, build more water pumps or increase the deal. If your water supply on the graph IS adequate, then check your pipe system and ensure that it is all connected together.

[Elite Marksman 0]

I find that road/highway connections don't always kill your MT connections. In my current region, I have a central city of about 200k that started as a industry city only, surrounded by 7 cities of limited population (due to land availibility), and 1 large city tile with  I-HT jobs and CS jobs, to use up my CS demand (havent put a dent in it and I have 20k+ CS$ and CS$$ jobs). I recently connected all cities with a bus/subway thanks to the NAM's road-top transit, and the number of commuters going from the city center to the suburbs and I-HT areas is about 20k car, 10k bus, 11k subway.  The traffic volume chart showed a drop of at least 100k in car usage when I built the intra-city subway, and another 20k when I built the inter-city network. The center city is still the main supplier of jobs in the region (400k I+C). The reasons for this could be that my connections are very limited (highway between any city with population+jobs>25k, avenue 10k>p+j>25k, and road if p+j<10k), and the highways and avenues are all extremly limited access, while the MT has a stop at every intersection.

On the water topic, make sure you have at least 10k m^3 excess capacity, more as your city grows in to stage 6+. I forgot to have lots of excess capactiy in my city and the main city stopped buying all water, forcing me to revert to a saved game. (When you're selling 250k m^3 of water a month, it is a considerable part of your budget.)\

Good luck with your city, and unless your really strapped for cash, toll booths are generally a bad idea, but its your city.

[Vetmosis 0]

all he needs to do is fix the neighbor city deal, hes probably not even funding it as the city grows. if he fixes it it probably would be 6 tiles wide.

[JohnMK 0]

How does one specialize a city for CS? Do you simply raise all other tax rates but not CS (maybe lowering CS too to maybe 5%), or do you have other approaches additionally?

Second question: by limiting the number of monorail stations per city there could be considerable congestion in the surrounding subway system to that station if the monorail gets good use. I have seen this happen and I would appreciate some suggestions as to how best to cope with that, how to design the transfer point best, location, etc.

Thanks folks.

[fmstack 0]

This is probably a question that's been answered before, but does the game actually model the effect of extra stops on commute time? For a while I've wanted to do experiments on that, but I figure (at least one) someone here already has.

[newyorkstate 6]

Well, I build Monorails for fun. I've never experienced anything.

[JohnMK 0]

fmstack: yes.