Railroad capacity

[PolytAffe 0]

I was never a big fan of railroad, but today i tried to use it, and  sims seem very eager to get on the train, but the rail just have such a low capacity. Is it like 3000 ?  That doesn't move alot of sims, and makes it almost not worth it compared to how much space railroad needs.

And I am using more than one track. I have a modded station with over 30k passengers (room for 20k) but i can only fit 2 tracks in it.

And is it even realistic at all that the rail have such low capacity? Altough it doesnt seem like the sims care much about extreme congestion on the railtracks.

[tungston 19]

The rail itself doesn't have a maximum capacity, just the station, which will add time penalty if the capacity is exceded.

[RippleJet 36]

Oh yes, all networks have a maximum capacity. it is when traffic exceeds that capacity that you will get congestion. Rail capacity is indeed 3,000. The capacities of all networks were recently posted here.

[tungston 19]

Technically that is the network traffic capacity, not a maximum capacity. If it were, my Grand Rail Station reward would be useless. That value is the point at which the sims start to feel the congestion.

[PolytAffe 0]

Now when it is confirmed that the capacity on rail is 3000, what does that exactly mean? Is it 3000 people? What about freight trains? And is it realistic? As i mentioned my sims doesnt seem to care too much about the extreme congestion on the rails. There is 8k-10k on some of my rails, and a 2 perfectly nice highways that no one seems to care about using. Everyone wants to ride the train.

[RippleJet 36]

The nominal ("maximum") capacity of a network is the traffic volume per day that will cause congestion. From a traffic volume of 100% up to a volume of 300% the congestion causes the speed of the network to drop linearily from 100% to 30%.

However, after that no speed reduction is experienced, and you will always have a speed of at least 30% (33 km/h for passenger rails). Because if this there is no real upper limit for the network capacity. Once your railroad transports more than 9,000 passengers per day, there is no further reduction in the speed of passenger trains.

Another factor is the accidents occurring on the network. The chance of them occurring (per minute of real time) increases up to a traffic volume of 200%, but after that it stays unchanged at 25%. On the other hand, accidents have no influence on the network speed.

Both these properties are in the Traffic Simulator exemplar and are shown in the graph below:

[PolytAffe 0]

Interesting. But does anyone know if there are special rules with rail? My sims really go out of their way to take the train. An overcrowded train wouldn't necessarily go slower. I can try and take som SS of my city and show what i mean. There is definetaly routes that would be faster. But some of my sims dont mind riding the bus from the nothernmost part of town to the southermost and take the train north into my industrial quarter instead of just driving in a car or atleast take the bus there.

And to add to ripplejets post: I would guess that air pollution from traffic also increases with congestion. Or is it fixed based on the number of cars/busses?

[PolytAffe 0]

Originally posted by: PolytAffe Now when it is confirmed that the capacity on rail is 3000, what does that exactly mean? Is it 3000 people? What about freight trains?quote>

RippleJet, do you know the answer to that question? And now im at it. How does busses count in regards to capacity on roads, avenues, etc. ?

[cogeo 960]

he whole traffic simulator in SC4 is far from realistic.

Rail capacities are way too low, real railroads can transfer many thousands of passengers per day. The NAM has optional capacity sets, ie the Sandard, the x2, the x5 and the "Radical" sets. Unfortunately these sets affect all networks, not specific/selected ones. So if you select the x2 set. you will get the double capacity for ALL networks (streets, roads, avenues, rail etc etc). I would prefer a rail network of much higher capacity, but for this I would need to... mod NAM myself. Commuter and freight rail should be fair-speed (which really is) and high-capacity (which is not).

Another unrealistic setting is that buses are faster than cars. I guess this was intentional, just to give sims an incentive to prefer buses over cars.

Not to mention that all rail types (Commuter Rail, Eleveted/GLR, Monorail) have exactly the same capacities, how many pax can those little monorail cabs really accomodate?

@Polytaffe, buses can transfer many passengers, and this can indeed ease congestion (and is realistic too)!

[PolytAffe 0]

Ok. To clarify my question. 20 people travelling by bus on a road (with 1000 capacity), how much capacity do they use? I could ask the same question on rail, but it seems that one person travelling by train takes up 1 capacity on the rail.

And if the NAM people can do it, it should be possible to mod rails to carry more passengers. That would be really sweet.

[RippleJet 36]

Actually none at all. Buses don't add to the traffic on the network. The road capacity is only consumed by cars driving on them, not by buses.

This peculiarity is true for only two travel types in SC4; walking and buses!

[PolytAffe 0]

Lol. Then i guess that people travelling on trains take up 1 capacity :S

[PyroManiac 0]

Hi all. My first post here. I have tried searching for the answer but can't seem to find it. It's most likely something small and stupid but it's beyond me right now. I'm trying to find a replacement for my train station as it does not fit into an urban enviroment. I found some larger urban stations but when I use it, the capacity is tiny. Like max capacity is 1 person or 5 people. It's not just the train stations but bus stations, subways stations etc... So for the past few months I'm forced to use the in game original stations. Any other station has a screwed up tiny capacity. Any advice? Thanks

[tungston 19]

Pegasus has posted a 2x2 railroad station, for the MTP theme. It has a capacity of 3,000, I think. You can do a search in the STEX for Peg, Pegasus, or MTP, you should find it. He put out one each, freight and passenger.

Edit:  The rail station has the same capacity as the default station.  I gues I changed the capacity.  It's called the MTP Rural Station.  Search for Pegasus in the STEX.

[Swamper77 90]

Pyromanic,

Would you happen to be running SC4 on a MAC? If so, there is a bug that comes from creators using SC4Tool's Transit Editor to make transit-enabled lots. Unfortunately, only PCs or MACs with emulator software can make the changes to solve the problem. I'd detail the problem here, but it is very technical and would go right over your head....

-Swamper77

[edd17 1]

The values for capacity aren't realistic at all, the regular rail should have a greater capacity then the highway. I increased the capacity of the rail, subway and monorail with the iLive reader, if you have the NAM installed you have to edit one of the NAM files in the plugins folder.

[PyroManiac 0]

Actually yes I am running SC4 on a Mac. Thanks for the heads up. Not a very technical person here and numbers confuse me. More numbers confuse me even more. Think I'll leave it as it is and not try to mess around with it. Thanks!