what to do when bus stops are congested

[rob9926 0]

i am in the process of building a region and just added a full bus network in a couple of cities. in one city there is about 130000 people and they pretty much travel on the busses to the commercial district and that's cool. i just wanted to know because the city is so large and busses are the best alternative, what should i do when they become congested. i could add more but i would like to hear some of your ideas first.

thanks in advance!

[bbfan02 23]

There might be some bus stops on the STEX or at SC4 Devotion that handle more commuters. Try searching "bus" or "bus stop" on the STEX. Hope that helps.

-bbfan02-

[GingerBlokey 30]

Well build a subway is probably the best solution, you best option is to download a subway station with a bus integrated into it. That was not only do you get the extra capacity of a subway but if the subway doesnt complete all the journeys you still get the bus. Subways are good because they dont take up anywhere near as much space as rail, el rail or monorail.

Alternativley use higher-capacity bus stops, on-road bus stops or use a mod to increase capacity (as part of the NAM I belive)

[City2TheMax 3]

If you're not into downloading, I'd say add subways. They are expensive, but are really helpful for congested cities. Use them in different areas then buses (if possible) so some people can use buses while others use subways.

[rob9926 0]

thanks for your replies

by the looks of it i will need to increase capacity. i have some bus stops with usage over 5000 and this appears red on the traffic congestion map. i can see downloading road-top mass transit as a possible solution to the congestion, as these have increased capacities right? also the NAM has options to increase the capacity of these MT stations doesn't it? also if i upgraded the busses to subway would the useage be similar? one other thing is that i have heard road-top MT cuts off development on both sides of the road, can anyone confirm the truth in this statement?

thanks again for your suggestions.

[Tidalpool 0]

Not for commerical or industry, they still will develope.  Residential will not develope just in front of bus stop.  However, I have had RES grow if they grow wider than the bus stop.  Hope this helps!

[CDB 3]

You can Download the Road Top Mass Transit by Cogeo ( https://www.simtropolis.com/stex/index.cfm?id=13510 ): this mod has multiple capacity options you can choose when you install it (and standard road-side stops too, if you don't want to build stops on the roads), to meet with the raised networks capacity of the NAM.

EDIT: just seen that you already considered this solution. As for your questions:

1- Yes, the RTMT has incrased capacity stops, designed around the NAM capacity options. So, IMHO is the best solution if you use the NAM.

2- No, NAM increases the capacity of the network, not the capacity of the stations. This beacuse of the non-lots policy of the mod. You have to download custom stations for that.

3- The subway-bus thing is tricky. If you delete the bus stops, there are chances that Sims won't use the new subway that much, because it is'nt integrated with the network. Leave the bus stops or replace tham with higher capacity ones (think about them as capillary distribution of passengers) and build the subway near the stops that already exist to link the most conjested of them. That's for your problem, after that you can extend your subways wherever you like, of course.

4- That's an issue of all the transit enabled lots, not only of the RTMT: they cut the road access in front of them. However, if the building is larger than one tile, or it grows at the corner between two roads, there's no problem. So, you can place the RTMT stop near a crossing and you'll be OK.

[rob9926 0]

so basically what you are saying CDB is that the RTMT by cogeo has increased capacity bus stops and is a good alternative to the standard bus stops in simcity. also the NAM is a tricky when it comes to RTMT, because the RTMT stations have 2 different capacities. one being net capacity and total capacity, the difference being the values you see in the description, opposed to the one you see in the actual query. the NAM if installed with higher capacity options will change the total capacity of the station when you query it correct? right now i have NAM installed as a fix for pathfinding only and the traffic options are otherwise unaltered. lastly can you tell me what you mean by transit enabled lots?

thanks for your answers.

[CDB 3]

First of all, a transit enabled lot is a kind of lot introduced by the Rush Hour expansion pack that allows traffic to pass through it. the default SC4 toll boths, el rail and monorail stations are transit enabled lots.

There's a couple of issues with all the transit enabled lots, even the original made by Maxis: if used on road they don't provide road access to the adjacent buildings and there's no distinction between passengers in transit and passengers who actually use the stop/station to get on the mass transit, si there is only one statistic about the capacity, and it depends on the station.

Nam doesn't affect the capacity of any stations because of it's non-lots policy. So if you build, for example, a standard road top station on any of the roads with the x2 or X5 NAM setting, you make a bottleneck. That's why you should install the RTMT set that matches the NAM settings that you chose or a higher one.

The RTMT allows you to choose to install one of three different sets of stations (every set hase the same look of the others, but different capacities), each ones designed to work with one of the three capacity options of the NAM. So we have a standard capacity (same as Maxis default settings), a X2 capacity and a X5 capacity to match the Nam standard, X2 and X5 traffic plug-ins.

Also, besides the on-road stops, you have a set of three one-tile stations (one for the bus, one for the subway, and one with both bus and subway) that are normal ploppable buildings like the default SC4 mass transit stops, whith the eye-candy advantage that they have the same props of the on-road ones. If you don't like to use the on-road stops, you can still use the last three I mentioned, they work as the default stops only with incrased capacity.

The answer is a bit convoluted , but I hope that is clear.

[rob9926 0]

thank you for your reply CDB, i have a better understanding. i can now see how the NAM and the RTMT work together. the RTMT will have different capacities according to the settings you choose at installation. also RTMT is compatible with each different capacity provided by the NAM. so capacity is easily increased through NAM, but will not take affect unless RTMT is configured to use the same settings as the NAM. i think this is right and it makes more sense now, i will probably change the settings in NAM to compensate for my MT congestion in my current city. i don't think it is uncommon to increase traffic values through the NAM because the game doesn't offer many alternatives when it comes to dealing with traffic congestion and its nasty side effects. i think i have gathered enough information to solve this problem in the future and thanks for your answers guys.