Ferry accessable districts

[Deuce Flyer 0]

Ok, this is my first post here.

I have Simcity 4, no mods of any sort, running on a Mac, if it matters.

I have been experimenting lately with different city builds, some have been good, some have been great, some have been utter failures, but this one has been stupidly successful. I've figured out a way to use rivers and ferries to solve traffic problems and shorten commutes.

Random details. Medium sized map, city size of just around 300,000 people. The top one third or so was all industrial, with a narrow river, (almost to narrow, the seaport just barely fit) and roughly two thirds residential areas down at the bottom. There was a narrow band of commercial properties along the river's edge on the residential side. City was doing rather well, until I broke the 250,000 mark, and then things went sour, and boy howdy, how so. City was built out, before building up, I had started with a system of elevated rails and a bus system, the elevated rail was mostly bulldozed and monorail was placed where the elevated rail was previously. Subways were added. Below 250,000 people, after upgrading the elevated rail to monorail, most of my commutes were medium, with a few shorts, and not to many long commutes. After 250,000, for some reason, the commute times went crazy. I noticed that some of my monorail, subway, and even some of my train stations had 10,000 passengers or more. Commute times went long, very very long. Also of some interest, adding the monorail shortened commute times considerably for many sims, many of the elevated rail commuters who had medium commutes went to short commutes after the elevated rail was bulldozed and the monorail system put into the elevated rail space. Made a huge difference, and that's when my growth boom happened and the massive problem that hit when the population hit about 300,000 in a medium sized map. Playing on a medium difficulty setting.

So, I hit the pause button, and began brain storming.

The city was laid out more or less in a grid. There were a few fudge points, like for the university.

I had one of those half baked ideas that I get, I don't know if they are good or bad, but I try them any way. I decide to funnel everything into ferries. But you can only have so many ferries in a city. So, I figured I'd turn the city into test subjects and see what happens when I implement my idea.

I started bulldozing like mad on one half of the city, breaking my east to west road connections. I redid the roads and touched up a few zones, and created districts a few blocks wide, roughly four to six blocks wide, and each block usually has six tiles. In the center of each district, I placed an avenue. Mass transit still went from east to west and all over the city, but you could only drive a block or two or four going east to west. Choke points had bus stations to connect halted roads. I did the same thing over on the industrial side of the river, and also added avenues. The avenues lead down to the river, to the ferry station. At the ferry station was a bus stop. (I would later put a second bus stop, and will soon explain why) Commuters had no choice. If they wanted to go some where, they couldn't drive there. It was now physically impossible to reach certain places with out taking mass transit. My avenue bridge had also been choke pointed, the road physically ending on both sides, with bus stops at each end, and roads beyond the bus stops. The bridge it self had tens of thousands of busses running on it in an endless loop.

After all the bulldozing and rebuilding, I hit the gogoomgfast button and watched my city go right down the crapper. Buildings were abandoned due to commute times. Money began burning. Population dropped from 300,000 down to less than 200,000, and I started to think this was a bad idea. Commute times had become impossibly long. Bob Newbie the sixth began complaining that his egg salad would spoil during his long commute. I was starting to think that the whole idea was a failure. Monorail and subway stations were getting numbers that had to be seen to be believed. I had angry red messages coming in through the ticker and sims screaming for rail relief.

And then things began to turn around. New buildings began to go up. I started to notice a LOT of boats in the water. And I do mean a lot of boats. The new buildings going up had short commute times, with some at medium, the ones furthest away from the river along the edge of the city. Some folks were driving to the ferry, but most were taking mass transit of various forms, and here is where it gets weird. They could have continued taking the mass transit right over the river and didn't. I have a half a dozen monorail bridges and several subway lines, all leading to various points on the river. But the route check showed the passengers getting off at the ferry, hopping on a boat, going right to the terminal they needed on the other side of the river, and then getting back on the monorail or the subway or bus and going to their factory job. Suddenly Bob Newbie the sixth was talking about how he loved his short commute to be the general manager at the Quantum Dish installation.

And then the population exploded again, jumping back up to over 300,000 in just a year or two.

On the ferry accessible districts on one half of the city, commute times are short. On the other side of the city, where there is a lot of east to west type travel going back and forth trying to find the best route, commute times were still pretty long. But wait, there's more.

The people on the other half of the city begin taking mass transit in droves to the ferry districts, crossing, and throwing everything out of wack. A good sized chunk of my industry began to die off with transit zots, saying abandoned due to commute times. Everybody wanted to work on the ferry district side... and bus stations began seeing well over 15,000 people or more. I added a second bus station to most ferry locations and both bus stations were still scoring 10,000+ riders. But the people on the other half of town with out the ferry divided districts, their commute times began to drop as well, even having to scoot way over to the left side of the map. The problem, as I saw it, was that once on the left side, they wanted to continue to travel straight up, directly to an industrial job on the other side of the river, and were unwilling to travel back over to the other side of town.

So now, I am trying another city, with ferry divided districts, trying to see if I can stretch them over the whole map and what the ideal size is, how many blocks can I keep in a district before the system falls to pieces, etc.

Things I noticed.

The districts were aligned. Ferry stations where almost directly opposite of one another. When looking at the route the sim took to work, most sims didn't hop more than a district or two over in either direction. Once on a boat, they tended to head north, maybe going to the next district over on either side, but very very few went half the map over to another district once on a ferry. In short, once at a ferry terminal, there was very little east to west type travel. They took the boat directly to their job. The industry blocks on the river's edge exploded, the land value skyrocketed, and hundreds of brand spanking new high tech buildings sprang up. Even stuff farther up changed at an alarming rate, growing and getting better. Dirty industry began to disappear, and I ended up bulldozing most of it and moving dirty industry tax up to 20%. Industry demand remained capped out even after doing this.

Sims seemed to prefer the passenger stations, not the car and passenger stations, the passenger stations, placed next to a parking garage, had the highest number, and wouldn't you know it, the parking garages were actually getting used. A few of them had numbers so high that the service level dropped. Absolutely packed parking garages with no more room for parking. In a couple of places I actually placed two parking garages and still had trouble with overcrowding. I have never, ever, in all my time of playing this game, ever seen a parking garage with over 100 cars in it. And now, I am having trouble with not having enough of them. The high wealth folks drive down the avenue, pull into the parking garage, hop on the passenger ferry, cross the river, and immediately head for the nearest monorail station to take them to their factory management job or working at one of the many solar plants. (For some reason, the wealthy sims all seem to want to work at the solar plant, go figure)

Looking at the graphs, commute times have dropped down to less than an hour.

Also, the scrubby looking commercial district on the waterside where all of the ferries are went absolutely crazy. Just about everything went all mega skyscraper after the tech industry on the other side exploded and brought up the property values. The brown water disappeared, and the population is still growing. I've found that in one area, I've had to plop down six hospitals all right next to one another, raise them all to max funding, and I am still having some trouble with overcrowding.

The new city is way off by it self, unconnected to other cities, so I can study the population growth with the ferry districts. It is already at 81,000+ people after just a few hours of play, with most commute times at medium currently. I am having cash troubles and I am slowly bulldozing the elevated rail sections and laying in monorail. In monorail areas, the commute times are getting shorter. I only have one monorail bridge crossing the river in this city, and, strangely enough, it has very little traffic or congestion. Most people take the ferry to cross the river. There are no road crossings yet. Eventually I might make a walled off avenue bridge for bus travel, but I have my doubts.

[Tysons4 68]

you need to start more cities and more... keep building and building zoning and zoning and laying roads, providing services, adding mass transit options... keep doing it

https://www.simtropolis.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=36&threadid=114421&STARTPAGE=1

[Yuu Caa Sim 55]

This is definitely quite interesting. You say you have no mods. Does this include not having the NAM - Network Addon Mod? If so, then what may be happening is that taking the ferries to work is more direct than going across the river by monorail. In the unmodded game, sims will most likely take the most direct route by distance to work. So for example even if there is a highway, the sims will take a tiny congested street to work if the street is on a straighter line to work. This may be what is happening here, in that going across the river by ferry is more direct than heading through the monorail bridges. It also helps that ferry network have no congestion or capacity limits (if this thread is right). With all of this together to cause better commute times, your desirability is sure to improve and more skyscrapers and high tech would move in.

The NAM changes the workings of commuting to simulate more real and better pathfinding; Perhaps you can try installing the NAM (with the Z simulator) and see if that causes more sims to stay on the monorail to work.

Some of the other things you stated - People wanting to work on the other side of the city only, preferring only the passenger and not the car and passenger ferries, I'm not too sure about. Hopefully somebody more familiar with the workings of commuting in SimCity will come in and provide more information.

[Deuce Flyer 0]

I don't have NAM, not sure if I can install it on a Mac, really haven't looked and not sure if I want the headache of trying to figure all of that out. Game is pretty much vanilla.

The new ferry city is tipping in at over 300,000 on a medium map and the commute times are good. There are a few long commute times on the edges of the map and in other places where I can't quite figure out what is gumming up the works.

Monorail is being tweaked as well... I don't have a city wide monorail on the industrial side of the river. I have monorail loops that run in a circuit around the ferry accessible district, a closed loop, so people will only ride the monorail to exactly where they need to go.

Monorail is proving interesting and I am starting to think I might just start skipping the elevated rail phase of growth and expansion, putting in the monorail early, with a subway support network. As it is now, I put in el-trains first, and as I slowly expand the expensive subway, I bulldoze el-rails and replace them over time with monorail.

As for working on the other side of the city, I think it was because the commute time was so long, and the change shortened the commute time.

The passenger only ferries have a different boat. It looks like it moves faster than the larger car carrying boat. It might not actually move faster in the game mechanics, but visually, it looks faster. It is fairly zippy as it scoots around.

There also seems to be a point where it breaks down, at the farthest points away from the river, people seem to be looking for jobs on the same side, but have long commute times. I'm also seeing east to west travel via ferry, where people travel up to the river, scoot over to the next district, and go to their office job. I'm thinking of placing a highway along the bottom as the only means of east to west travel.

The only real problem to this system is that each district on the industrial side either needs to have its own seaport (expensive) or rail depo as east to west travel is restricted. I've found a few minor issues.

And completely off topic, do elevated rail lines have an effect on property values and or demand? When I was replacing the system with monorail, I'd bulldoze sections and fill in until the cash ran out... I did have the subway stations in place at this time. But after bulldozing the elevated rail and the stations, I noticed a lot of my commercial buildings were abandoned due to lack of demand. Even with the subway stations in place, demolishing the rails had a definite impact on my city. I've noticed a peculiar tendency for my best buildings to be built closest to the rail lines and el-stations, and I get a noticeable clump effect when I add monorail lines and stations. Is it because the stations are larger, 3 tiles vs the single tile of the subway? What is the cause of this effect that I am noticing?

[Mayorm 14]

I find that Elevated rail has more riders than monorail, plus you can connect monorail to GLR and subway allowing you to have a better mass transit system, and I also find that having a closed circutt loop is not as good as having separate lines that connect to each other, also have your transit lines and roads as straight as possible to the work places.