Tram developments?

[The Arrowz 3]

I've been wondering lately about what you all do regarding tram/glr systems in your cities.

Do you guys add the ground transport while planning your city? Or demolish buildings to make way for transit after your city develops? The thing I'm the most curious about is above ground transportation (el-rail, GLR, T-RAM). Subways are easy since they don't require much demolishing (can be none at all with the RTMT). 

Do you guys opt for el-rail? Or ground transit? How do you choose what to use? 

Personally I've always been unsure of when to add things like glr. If I add it while planning, then it might not be used much as the area that I added it to didn't develop as I had hoped. But if I add it afterwards, it makes for a lot of demolishing to make way for the new rail (although ridership is great), which can be complex and tedious. I mean, I could just use a subway system, easy, outta sight. But where's the fun in that right?

[Randomtaskk 1]

I've actually just been experimenting lately with on road transit (T-Ram, El Rail over Road etc) and sunken highways and have typically just picked a large map, built a small city in the corner to give me money and then laid out the entire transit network over the rest of the map.

Heres my current city (not finished as I havnt got any el rail over road in yet - wanted to see how trams only fared first).

Its pretty easy to tell where the sunken highways are, all of the onramps etc are at the junctions too to save space. All of the avenues are T-Ram avenues and the outher limits of these are joined up (near the sunken highway juctions) with road T-Ram just to give people some alternate ways around the network.  Im not quite sure how I plan to lay out the elrail over road yet, perhaps some concentric rings around the city with spokes heading into the centre midway between T-Ram avenues... but thats yet to be decided upon. (I'm using CAM so expect some pretty high densities!)

You can also see how the road network is denser in the inner CBD in comparison to the suburbs to aid in transport flow.

As this is experiment only its not pretty.

Heres a transport query for an inner part of the T-Ave section:

Original: img5.imageshack.us/img5/7709/zoomedoutquery.jpg

Scaled: 

And heres a rough map of the current network (red = highways, orange = T-Ave, yellow - T-Ram)

[Apologies for the horrendous photoshop skills]

Original: img5.imageshack.us/img5/2702/zoomedoutroughmap.jpg

Scaled: 

Heres a close up of one of the juctions between TAve and TRam showing the puzzles pieces etc.:

And heres a rough map of how I reckon I'll place el rail over road if needed (cyan).

Original: img8.imageshack.us/img8/8940/zoomedoutelrail.jpg

Scaled:

[Retep Molinari 68]

I'm building a town in a City Journal named Balboa City. It's a small port town for now that will grow into a large city soon!

The old port district has a tram that I'll keep even after the rest of the city is built with EL and subways. But her are the trams for now:

The layout:

And here is how they look in action:

That's all for now.. come on and check out my City Jorunal for more!

[fozzy2020 0]

sorry for the interruption...

im having problem wit the tram thingy..

the problem is, i cant find the tram station..

its in the NAM mode rite..

i installed ..

the trams puzzle are all there..

but the station is not..

so..help me...

[Merlin of Flyote 8]

Originally posted by: fozzy2020

sorry for the interruption...

im having problem wit the tram thingy..

the problem is, i cant find the tram station..

its in the NAM mode rite..

i installed ..

the trams puzzle are all there..

but the station is not..

so..help me...quote>

You have to load stations from the Stex separately.

[Memorex 0]

where do you get theses tram tracks

[mayor_brando 8]

Originally posted by: Memorex

where do you get theses tram tracksquote>

From the NAM...

[RedImperator 16]

I use GLR-in-avenue, road, and street almost exclusively, so I never have to demolish anything to extend my streetcar network. This allows maximum flexibility (the lines go where the demand is), at the cost of dealing with thousands of fiddly little puzzle pieces. Still, it looks good and it works great, so I'm not likely to go to anything else.

[ROFLyoshi 1,760]

Thats pretty much what I do. Except I use rail with it. I find GLR better than buses.

[RedImperator 16]

Originally posted by: ROFLyoshi

Thats pretty much what I do. Except I use rail with it. I find GLR better than buses.quote>

I do use heavy rail for intra-city commuting.  My region is developing satellite cities strung out along the rail lines radiating from my central city.  I build a high capacity rail station in the center of each satellite city, and that station acts as the central hub of the satellite city's streetcar network.  So the streetcars service local traffic and funnel long distance commuters to the heavy rail, and the heavy rail connects the cities (and since each city has a streetcar network, sims can rapidly move around the local network).

I DO use buses sometimes.  They supplement the streetcar lines in very congested neighborhoods (since all my streetcar stations are dual bus/GLR, sims generally take the bus to the nearest streetcar stop and then transfer there, rather than take the bus all the way from point to point).  I also use them in outlying neighborhoods beyond the end of the line, and in newly established neighborhoods.  The main advantage of buses is that they're quick and cheap to place, so I can get a new neighborhood running quickly.  Once a traffic pattern develops there, I can decide where to lay the streetcar tracks.

[jim 546 43]

it's interesting to see people actually use the "old" platform cover on the stations. i couldn't stand that thing, i went with shmails as it matches his glr-in-avenue station.