Car vs. Public Transport

[tipexcom2 2]

How do I get Sims to use public transport more than cars?

Even in my big cities (with a high-rise commerce downtowns) I have only 25% of the population and the rest always using cars.

Any advice?

[Cleaner475 150]

First irecommend you put toll booths in certain places as this turns people off using the roads. Also place train stations (or any other station for the type of transport you use) in residential places and near large commercial districts. I suggest (if you haven't already) you build a subway network as these are very popular.

[Spinmaster 75]

If you're not already using it... NAM (Network Addon Mod) with at least the Better Pathfinding option. Without this, the sims will stubbornly take the straightest, shortest path - by distance only, period. Oh, they have a nice super-fast monorail with a station just one block north? But they're going west - so they don't care. They'll all take 50 miles of streets and stop signs with 10000 other commuters, then crash and yell at you because the traffic sucks.

With NAM's pathfinding fix, they'll take the fastest route by time, including going out of the way a little to hop on mass transit, taking a faster road/highway, even using multiple networks if appropriate. They're still subject to probabilities based on wealth (the rich don't care how close your el-rail station is, a Mercedes is a Mercedes), but at least they'll have a little more common sense about their route. Even the ones that stubbornly stick to cars will at least wisely go a little out of the way to use the higher speed & capacity roads/avenues/highways rather than bee-line it through the low-capacity, low-speed streets.

Mind you, NAM does absolutely nothing to force the little buggers to use mass transit - it merely puts some brain cells in their heads. You still have to carefully plan and design your transit network and put the stops where they need to be (where the sims live and where they work). But at least you'll be rewarded with sims actually using it thanks to NAM.

If you are already using NAM... re-read that last paragraph.

[Vandraad 0]

Originally posted by: Spinmaster ...Even the ones that stubbornly stick to cars will at least wisely go a little out of the way to use the higher speed & capacity roads/avenues/highways rather than bee-line it through the low-capacity, low-speed streets.quote>

I am using the NAM and even with that there seems to be a lot of "monkey see, monkey do" amongst the citizenry.  Thus, sometimes, if enough sims start using a particular route, they ALL start using a particular route.  Case in point:

I have a medium density residential part of town near a medium density commercial section.  An avenue connects the two sections together.  The drive is literally a straight line and all the sims were using the avenue.  As I expanded, a road ended up running parallel to the avenue that also connected the R and C sections.  Within a month, the avenue was literally abandonded and the road was a 24/7 parking lot.  Commute times went from 30 mins to 2 hours.  No-Job Zots popped up faster than dandelions in summer.  The two routes were physically equi-distant in length but the road was just slightly more central to the R section.

Demolishing the road solved the issue naturally as the avenue was the only means to access the C area.  Any other surface connection from the R to C causes the Ave to be abandonded.  To finally solve the problem and make the Ave the primary access route, I had to repath the Ave so that it's portion that was in the R area bisected the R area equally.  Placing it off center meant any other route became preferable.

[PolytAffe 0]

Have you selected perfect pathfinding during install? If not you should reinstall NAM and do that.

[opbravo 0]

i think certain populations of sims like to use different types of mass transit. like spinmaster said, high wealth sims tend to want to drive more than take public transportation. low wealth sims are happy to take the bus, while middle wealth sims i think like to use most types (bus stops, subways, etc.). using the route query tool (if you're not doing so already) is very helpful in planning your mass transit routes. integrating mass transit may help, too. linking bus stops, subway stops, and rail stops can give your sims some more alternatives.

another thing you could try is to enact the commuter shuttle ordinance. it's supposed to help encourage the use of public transport.

[Barbarossa 51]

Make sure you are setting up an intelligent mass transit system.

Parking is an issue, for example. If you want to put in, say, monorail, then you need to make sure you have a parking garage in your RESIDENTIAL area. You don't need one in the C/I zones, since the simpletons will drive to the station near their home, leave the car, take the rail, then hop a bus.

You also want to make sure that you have bus stops, roughly every 6 to 8 squares apart, since your sims will only wall a short distance.

There are some nice custom stations for just about everything on the STEX, so look into the Ninja Kiosk (something like that, made by RalphaelNinja) or the MMSB station (combo monorail/parking/bus/subway).

There are plenty of other things to keep in mind... read the Omnibus, look at Tutorials, etc.

Barbarossa

[Vandraad 0]

Originally posted by: Barbarossa Make sure you are setting up an intelligent mass transit system. quote>

That really is the key and so far I do pretty well, although there is just one frustrating part:  All forms of mass transit minus Bus and Subway take up far too much valuable real estate.

I grew up in Chicago and came to know the true Elevated Rail system.  And yes, we have El Rail in SC4, but there are pieces missing.  You have 2 El Rail lines running perpendicular to each other ontop of a road.  Everything is fine until the everything intersects.  I can't find a piece that allows both the road AND the El Rail lines to intersect at the same location.  Chicago has that stuff in spades.  Having to run El Rail lines on non-road tiles just to get intersections defeats the purpose of using El Rail...that of saving space.

I prefer the use of El Rail mostly for the visual aspect of it. Sure, I could use Subways and save alot of hassle, but there really is that lack of visibility when it comes to subways.

[The_sanderson 6]

Install the trafficcop and put your values and put in the prefferences menu 100 percente for buses and you see really good results.

[Barbarossa 51]

DO NOT install Traffic Cop if you are using the NAM. They conflict. Given a choice, go for the NAM, it is the best of the best.

Barbarossa

[Sketchley 0]

Sims opted for the shortest (or most direct) route from their R to job site. The only *real* solution to get the sims to take mass transit is to make mass transit the most direct route.

In an already established city, it is probably disagreeable to do some heavy urban renewal, so it may be time to put in the faster forms of mass transit: rail and monorail.

That said, the city is behaving like you designed it. It sounds like you designed a car-centric city. I suggest tinkering with it as much as you can by adding subways (it has the minimum required urban renewal of the MT options,) and just learn to live with a car-centric city. Perhaps on your next (new) city, before zoning anything, take a moment or two to consider mass transit options, and design your city around MT, and make those who use their cars have to take more indirect routes between R and jobsites.

One doesn't need to do any installations or DLing of additions to the base game. The suggested installations above only improve on the existing game mechanics, but they don't rewrite them. This car vs. MT thing is a fundamental and unalterable part of the game mechanics, IMHO.

[tipexcom2 2]

I've installed NAM now and moved some stuff around and lots more Sims are using MT.

Thanks guys!