No bus use in a city of 450k?

[lordfly 0]

Right, so I've started a new city on Hard difficulty. It's a completely flat, large size city. Being that this is a "casual" playthrough for me, I'm really just slamming zones down like crazy without much thought to planning (making the city pretty comes later). With the settings I installed (can't remember, been a few months since I've installed), the streets have a lot of excess capacity. Regardless, I've been getting a few traffic issues along streets. Especially along those areas where the high-density buildings start coming in. Inevitably, these huge buildings get built, complain about lack of jobs, and then abandon. I thought perhaps placing a bus station in these areas (and stations in C/I zones) would do the trick. Alas, the bus stations are completely and utterly unused, even with parking garages attached. Does NAM disregard transit options until the roads are jammed with traffic? I've never seen ZERO bus use; there's plenty of pedestrian traffic, and I have no highway system; not even an avenue!

[AspieGamer13 11]

Not sure exactly how your network is, but in general, pedestrains go from R to C and I for work. Your bus stops would need to be along the route they take for them to be used. Parking garages only help on the R side as when they get off the bus, they walk.

That is my understanding of the bus system.

Never really got to using one effectively yet.

If I'm wrong or I'm missing something, don't hesitate to post.

[z1 566]

Which traffic simulator are you using? In your NAM folder, it's a file that begins "NetworkAddonMod_Traffic_Plugin_".

[lordfly 0]

Originally posted by: VashTS240

Not sure exactly how your network is, but in general, pedestrains go from R to C and I for work. Your bus stops would need to be along the route they take for them to be used. Parking garages only help on the R side as when they get off the bus, they walk.

That is my understanding of the bus system.

Never really got to using one effectively yet.

If I'm wrong or I'm missing something, don't hesitate to post.quote>

Well, granted I just slapped them down willy-nilly; however, because the I and C zones are all over the map (and I placed the bus stops in the middle of the clusters), at least SOME of the people should be riding the system, right? At the very least, the people on the far end of the clusters. Alas, nothing.

[lordfly 0]

Originally posted by: z1

Which traffic simulator are you using? In your NAM folder, it's a file that begins "NetworkAddonMod_Traffic_Plugin_".quote>

NetworkAddonMod_Traffic_Plugin_Z_Medium, with a modified file version of June 19, 2009, so not sure which version that would be.

[z1 566]

This sounds very strange indeed. I've never seen a situation with zero bus usage, either. Which bus stops are you using?

Assuming that you have reasonable car traffic, it would help if you would post the following: 1) Your Traffic Volume Graph with a five-year period; 2) your Traffic Volume Data View for cars; 3) your Zones Data View; 4) your RCI Demand Data Graph. I would think that there would be a clue in at least one of these.

[lordfly 0]

Originally posted by: z1

This sounds very strange indeed. I've never seen a situation with zero bus usage, either. Which bus stops are you using?

Assuming that you have reasonable car traffic, it would help if you would post the following: 1) Your Traffic Volume Graph with a five-year period; 2) your Traffic Volume Data View for cars; 3) your Zones Data View; 4) your RCI Demand Data Graph. I would think that there would be a clue in at least one of these.quote>

Here you go. Hopefully this attachment thing works. edit: Apparently not. Let's try photobucket.

[z1 566]

The first graph pretty much tells the whole story.  Your problem is not a traffic problem; it's an economic problem.  Your city is in the grip of a long-term recession.  Demand is pretty poor across the board, with the exception of your industrial sector.  Demand is also worse than it looks (at least on the positive end), because the scale of this graph is inaccurate; demand is actually shown in a logarathmic scale.  This means that the farther you go below 6000, the lower the actual demand is, compared to what the scale says.

But the worst thing here is that the demand for low- and mid-wealth Sims is negative.  Based on this, your city zoning, and your total population, I think that if you look at your Pop & Jobs graph, you'll find that you have almost no R$ and R$$ Sims living in your city.  Almost all of your population would seem to be high-wealth Sims, and demand even for them is weak.  Very importantly, high-wealth Sims have a very strong preference for driving over taking the bus.  Time is money (that's how they got to be high-wealth Sims), and walking to the bus stop from home and from the bus stop to work just takes too much time.  Also, with just a few bus routes, your buses usually won't go between where your Sims live and where they work.  So they don't take your buses.  If you built a really extensive bus network, you'd find that a few of them would take your buses, as there would now be cases where they wouldn't have to walk far on either end.

But your primary problem is economic.  I've seen that type of RCI demand graph many times before, and it's almost always due to tax rates' being too high.  For a city of 450K, the neutral tax rate is 8.8%.  (You can find the list of neutral tax rates on page 76 of the Prima Guide.)  My guess is that your tax rates are higher than that; is that true?  If so, drop them to 8.8%, and I think you'll find your main problems will be solved.

[lordfly 0]

Hmm. Here is my R$, R$$, and R$$$ graph.

I have nearly quite a bit of my population being either R$ or R$$.

My tax rate was %9.0 across the board; RCI demand is now rather violently negative after setting it ti 8.8. I suppose it doesn't help I just built another huge (250k) city to the south...

[z1 566]

Very interesting indeed.  There's one way that your Pop & Jobs graph could be not inconsistent with most of what I had said previously.  This graph accurately shows your residential population, but it doesn't show how many of them are actually employed.  The unemployed ones just stay home and watch SimTV all day long (or play on the Simternet).  The combination of your lack of use of buses plus the negative demand for R$ and R$$ would tend to support the view that you actually have less of these workers than it might seem.  You can actually check this out fairly easily; position the Route Query tool over a R$ or R$$ residence, and it will show you the number of commuters.  (The number it shows may be higher than the actual number of employed Sims in the building, as it shows commuters for each route, and Sims who take two or more travel types to work get counted multiple times.)  This will give you some idea of the actual number of R$ and R$$ workers that you actually have.

There are still going to be a fair number of R$ and R$$ workers, though; otherwise, their residences would be abandoned due to commute time.  So there is still something of a mystery here.

Your initial tax rate of 9.0% is what I would have guessed.  Dropping it to 8.8% is pretty much a necessity for a healthy city of that size.  The fact that it caused RCI demand to go negative is quite unusual, though; I think you're right that this is connected with your other city.  My guess is that the lower tax rates are increasing the desirability of your commercial buildings in a way that's drawing in workers from your other city and displacing workers from your main city.  Why this is happening, I'm not sure.  This situation may balance itself out if you simply run both cities for a while.  Besides that, I can't say what's happening, other than that your problems lie in the areas of demand and desirability, and you need to look into those more closely.  From what you describe of your city, you may be running into demand caps, which could explain a lot.  I'd recommend downloading the Census Repository Facility and using either the Repository or the Vault to get more information about your cities; if you don't already have an account at the SC4 Devotion LEX, you'll need to create one to get access to the download.

[local_authority01 3]

Originally posted by: lordfly

Right, so I've started a new city on Hard difficulty. It's a completely flat, large size city. Being that this is a "casual" playthrough for me, I'm really just slamming zones down like crazy without much thought to planning (making the city pretty comes later). With the settings I installed (can't remember, been a few months since I've installed), the streets have a lot of excess capacity. Regardless, I've been getting a few traffic issues along streets. Especially along those areas where the high-density buildings start coming in. Inevitably, these huge buildings get built, complain about lack of jobs, and then abandon. I thought perhaps placing a bus station in these areas (and stations in C/I zones) would do the trick. Alas, the bus stations are completely and utterly unused, even with parking garages attached. Does NAM disregard transit options until the roads are jammed with traffic? I've never seen ZERO bus use; there's plenty of pedestrian traffic, and I have no highway system; not even an avenue!quote>

Your graphs lead me to belive that all of the jobs in your city are filled witch leads to unemployment and abandonment.  Newer I and C buildings that offer more jobs may not be developing because you may be hitting some stage caps.  Your city seems to fill alot of the map and in order for it to grow you need to add a neighbor connection and create jobs there.  If you put bus stops near the jobs in your new city, your sims from the developed city will likely use them.

A note about bus stops:  Place many in both your residential areas and especially in your industrial and commercial disrticts.  You can also place parking gurages near your bus stops in residential areas to help increase usage.  Parking gurages and bus stops may need to be placed 1 tile apart so that sims will transfer.