Ive made the jump to NAM: One mass transit question

[Marc Collins 36]

Got rid of all my Traffic Cop and older transit and traffic mods.

Installed the latest NAM and Road Top Mass Transit - Chris's Mods (03/09/04) [is that the latest version?].

 

All works beautifully--no conflicts with my pre-existing RTMT stops (I'll eventually replace them).

 

I chose the Better Pathfinding 5x capacity 10x speeds 10x commute variation (is there a detailed expolanation of these somewhere?).

 

Now to my real qustion: MT usage seems too high compared to cars.  I used to be able to adjust this with Traffic Cop precisely to my liking.  Is there any adjustment now?  Are the default Maxis preferences for the wealth levels still being used?  What are the settings?  Clearly, the MT use is too high even by high density European standards.  It is totally out of whack for USA.

 

Thanks.  I love these mods!

 

Marc

[Marc Collins 36]

Have tried a couple of other options and see the changes--but MT usage always remains so high!  Cold it be because I make extensive use of the RTMT stops?  The original game bus stops were more like small stations in terms of size, so you didn't use them as much.  I have a bus stop on a road/street in almost every block.  Is that too many?

[Tropod 144]

If you haven't already done so, please read the Q&A included in the NAM. There's a little snippit there regarding affects on Pathfinding (i.e. MT usage).
As for detailed explanation of the Traffic files; in the same folder as the Traffic files themselves, there's a HTML file detailing the modifcations.
As for the latest version, try this URL;
http://ndex.simvision.net/files/Signature.html

[Marc Collins 36]

Thanks, but that file doesn't specify whether the original Maxis MT vs cars wealth-specific preferences are maintained or not.  You could tweak these with Traffic Cop.  I had tweaked mine to increase MT preference as I tend to build higher density cities.  I can't understand how the MT use increases dramatically with several of the NAM choices vs. my already biased towards MT Traffic Cop mod.  The docs say nothing about this issus as far as I can tell (I have read the entire 87 page NAM thread before posting here!).

 

The docs also don't explain what the effects of these choices are...just the obvious values that have been changed.

 

It also isn't clear which options include the change to the Commute Time graph scale.  My scale has remained low even after switching to an option that I didn't think would do that.

 

Thanks,

 

Marc

[Tropod 144]

If the docs don't mention that something has changed, chances are it hasn't been modified. The MT vs cars wealth-specific preferences though have not been modified. You can still use Traffic Cop to adjust any of the Traffic Files.
The docs do actually include a mention regarding the affects of the Traffic files, perhaps not in a very specific fashion but they do cover it sufficently enough I would think;
From the Q&A file;
Q: I use one of the

[cogeo 960]

The usage of MT appears too high because the through traffic of the road is added up to the station's or stop's usage. There is no solution to this, only increase the capacity of MT stations to road capacity + net capacity. Of course, this means different versions for each NAM capacity set.

 

An updated version for Road-Top MT (that will be NAM-compatible) will be released soon, so check the STEX periodically.

You can see some previews at https://www.simtropolis.com/idealbb/view.asp?topicID=57410&pageNo=1#469849

[Marc Collins 36]

So I should ignore the Traffic Volume graph's report of high bus use, for example, because it is actually just showing me how many cars are passing over my bus stops?  Do the queries for the bus stops also do this?

I guess the only thing we can pay attention to is individually querying buildings to see the commuter/jobs breakdown.  I must say when I did that (before reading your reply), things seemed much more reasonable than the graph suggested...so I am probably OK!

 

Thanks,

 

Marc

[cogeo 960]

For the graph, I'm not sure.

Queries for individual stops for sure include the through traffic.

 

I think the mini-queries (the hover ones) display the correct number though, plus they show the transit types individually (not just the total).