Ferries work or what?

[Leesx.fina 6]

I don't talk in the forums as much as I should being a devoted Rush Hour Player., but this has been bothering me  for literally years.   I have had great cities none of which utilize their ferry systems.   I have had transportation networks overflowing with no relief from ferries.   Creating a new city with extensive waterways...please help   Sorry so long winded...lol

[raildigga666 2]

When you say none of the cities you have built utilize the ferry system, do you mean very few people use them or no one uses them? It all depends on how you lay out your industry, residential, and commercial. If the residents are on the coast and the commercial and industry are in the middle of the city, the ferries will not be used. An easy way that I get sims to use the ferries, is that I build miniature cities on islands off the coast. Typically generates significant ferry use. Good luck, let us know if you have more questions. Also, I am sure you know this, but make sure you are building ferries that will transport cars. If you chose not to use ferries that transport cars, make sure the bus and subway transit system is effective.

[jerry101 1]

I have made ferries work very well, well over ten thousand riders across my region of about 400k.

I used the stock San Francisco map for this particular region, and I have several major areas. In one tile, facing the bay, is my main downtown area. It is served by a ferry terminal, and is heavily used, both by people coming from across the bay, and north and south on the coast line. I have a major highway, but that is near the center of the SF Peninsula, so high rise commuters are inclined to take the ferry as it can be the shortest route downtown, especially for those who aren't in range of a subway station.

People also come from across the bay, which could be hard to execute using the stock map, but I found a way to use a 99% water big tile, placing ferry terminals on both little slices of land on the east sides, with road access.

There are also a number of major industrial areas along the coasts. I have a large high tech industrial park on the east side of the bay, which people will take the ferry to. A dirty/manufacturing industrial park is along the south end of the bay, which also gets some ferry riders. A handful of ferry riders even go to the manufacturing industrial park on the west side of the San Francisco Peninsula, mostly from a residential area just to the north.

I've spent a lot of time learning to properly utilize mass transit though, it takes a lot of tweaking, and some ferry terminals just never take off. Sims take the shortest route, not the fastest route.

Ferries can also work along rivers, especially in areas where bridge access is limited.

The key is to have large residential populations up against a coast, and then job centers along other coastal areas, and a lack of options to drive straight there (or take a subway/train straight there). People will be forced to take the ferry to work.

[taedwards 0]

How do you make the passenger ferries work. I have repeatedly tried but they fail all of the time. For instance, Ellis Island and the Statute of Liberty islands has no roads, how do I get these ferries to work? My email is taedwards2000@hotmail.com

[silverwood 0]

I have a simmilar problem, I have a city on an island. The next tile over is an industrial center. A small bit of land comes across the city limit into the island city and I built a ferry (car and passenger) on it, it has power. There is a matching station on the island city. Although 200 or so people come off the island ferry, none of them go to the other terminal. There are no other terminals in the surrounding cities, and there are plenty of jobs in the industrial city.

I have built the Island city twice, the first time people did commute to the industrial town, but when i deleted the island city and rebuilt it, the residents never went back to the industrial city.

[DITRO 15]

silverwood: Do you have jobs in the island city that offer a faster commute than across the bay? That might be why nobody went back to the industrial city. Also, do you mean that 200 people get off the ferry into the island city or get on but don't go anywhere (I wasn't sure what you meant by "come off")? What ferry routes does the route query show? Sometimes the game designs ferry routes that go nowhere.

dedwards2000: people will only use ferries to commute to work, not to visit landmarks

[mrbisonm 1,622]

May sound stupid, but just make sure that you have at least one station on each sides, whether in the same or in another citytile. I had someone that didn't know that......lol...He only had one station and thought the sims could go anywhere.

mrb

[Livin in Sim 83]

I think there's also something about the placement of the station and depth of water.  But if you see the ferry coming and going that should be good.  Does anyone else remember this?

[Meg 368]

Yes, it helps to have a bus station next to it.   It helps to have bus stations everywhere. 

I do have a picture of a working ferry:

I do have working ferries without train stations nearby.  This one has a very well used train station:

The airport is getting some traffic too:

 

Results may be different, depending on which modds you have.   This region is vanilla.

 

[Jezus53 18]

Jus make sure that ferries are the fastest or best way for sims to get to work. Ferries are tricky because you can only put them on the shorelines. Big maps divided by big bodies of water work great. I'm on the New York map and on the big tile on the left most side of the map on the bottom is great. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, you'll know it when you see it.

[Dizastrow 4]

On a similar note.  Ive been having problems with my ferries even being in service.  I plop them down and the little anchors are not colored in?  I dont know why?  They used to work very well.  Ever since I started downloading things from the STEX, these little things have been happening.  

Any ideas of why my ferries wont work?

[tungston 19]

Ferry stations need to have a road [or avenue] into the station. If you are using Pegasus' ferry station, they need deep water up to the dock because they don't extend into the water as far as the default stations.

[Dizastrow 4]

So, you need a road connecting to the ferry station, leading right into it, or can you just have a street going past it? 

[DITRO 15]

I don't think you need an actual connection for the car and passenger terminal. But even if you have a road going past it, you can just drag a road onto each of the two driveways that are part of the terminal, thus creating two intersections.

[io_bg 249]

Originally posted by: Dizastrow So, you need a road connecting to the ferry station, leading right into it, or can you just have a street going past it? quote>

I think this doesn't matter.

[Livin in Sim 83]

The car ferries are transit enabled, and I believe they need to have the road connected to function.  If you have Peg's large one, it needs an avenue.  Just line them up and drag them onto the lot so that they connect, and there you have it.

As a side note (sorry ), Dizastrow, if you're still have trouble with props showing up, and it's widespread, I believe you might have a prop ID conflict.  I will try to explain this, others please correct me if I'm wrong.  In short, all props have ID numbers that control how they're displayed in the game.  If new ones are created (especially prop families that change each time the lot is placed), they must be manually assigned a new number.  If not, they will either override the old prop with the same number, or conflict so that neither shows.  To find out if this is the case, I would suggest you start a new city and gradually add plugins, keeping track of what you add each time, until you recreate the problem.  You can do it by halves at a time, etc.  But if two plugins are conflicting, you may not get them in there together by doing it any way but adding one at a time.  It's a good bit of messing around, but to me would be worth it to identify the bad plugin.  If you do, please let us know so we can pass on the word to the designer and the rest of the community.  If you don't have the problem anymore, please let us know as well, and what you did.  I ask because I see a fair amount of this missing prop problem occuring, and would like to get to the bottom of it.

[Dizastrow 4]

Livininsim,

Thank you for your advice, and yes I will do that test and get back to you about it. 

[Da1e 0]

Sorry for joining the partial thread hijack, but I have the same problem as Dizastrow and I couldn't find another thread about this problem. In the vanilla version of RH Car n' Passenger ferry terminals were working fine for me (btw the terminals worked fine with just having the road pass by instead of connecting into the terminal). I then did the following 'changes': - changed left-hand drive version of game to right-hand drive - installed NAM (January) - installed Opera house fix; bus stops on top of roads; city halls unlocked; functional landmarks. The ferry terminals, both previously and newly built, didn't work, and by 'didn't work' I mean that there was no traffic and the anchors were not lit, but there were ferry routes on the transport map in region view. I uninstalled NAM a little while ago and the ferry terminals are now working, both old and new. I don't want to play without NAM though. So, did anyone find out what the problem is with this? If not, I guess I'll have to try removing plugins one by one to see if anything happens..

[kschmidt 6,179]

Ferry Terminal strange layout, sollutions !

Passenger ferry trips are fully functional, car terminal have a strang layout ! Withou knowing road directions you think one side is for loading the other for unloading. When drawpath´s you find something different; both side´s are lik a road connection so two roads would fit, avenue do connect but one driving lane dissapëars back into the station, there directions actualy going onto the ferry ?

What sollution is there to invisible connect two road systems or terminals any other way ?

Sincerely your´s

kschmidt

[badwithnames14 35]

Solution: Download a new ferry terminal. Like this one

 

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

In some situations I connect two roads, bending one off sideways. However, in most cities I run TLA-5 straight into the terminal. Since TLA-5 is based on road not avenue, it seems to work well (though I haven't looked closely at the pathing arrows).

[McDuell 301]

Never thought about TLA-5, good thinking here @jeffryfisher. 

The connection can also be done with the base Avenue and the use of the disconnector piece to be found in the RHW menu. First, place the Avenue right to the shoreline, Next, disconnect the end pieces, leaving the avenue 'open' at the end. Then place the ferry terminal.

[kschmidt 6,179]

9 hours ago, badwithnames14 said:

Solution: Download a new ferry terminal. Like this one

 

Thank you, That seem the sollution as other offer no clear path way . Maybe the shown Ferry terminal aswell can be adjusted for Oneway traffic.aswell some other like the rural ferry and train ferries !

Sincerely Yours,

kschmidt