*SOLVED* Walk through train station - bug?

[alfredquack 0]

2nd Edit:

Problem SOLVED. See solution in post below.

Edit:

Problem is also described here.

Original:

I've SC4 deluxe with NAM May 2010 installed. I observed a problem with a railway line and multiple stations along this line: Stations in the middle of the line are over-crouded (>4000 passengers) although there is few traffic out of these stations (<1000).

Analysing this problem with these traffic paths analysis thingy, I found out that some trains passing these stations actually stop at the station, passengers walk one or two tiles through the station, and then take the train out on the other side of the station to continue their way. As walking does not take time, passengers save one or two tiles of railway traveling time and are faster compared to passing the station by train moving over the two tiles next to the station. From a computation point of view this makes sense but it is (1) unrealistic, and (2) causes this overcrouding of stations. This behavior looks like a bug (in NAM?) to me.

You can try this out very easily by choosing a station that is near or over the limit and place a few more stations next to it. You will see that (after commuting paths have been recomputed) all these stations have a lot of passengers altough there is no more traffic out of the stations (by real walking, bus, car etc.)

In one example, I had a station with 4,500 passengers. By adding three more stations next to it, the total amount of passengers in these four stations added up to 14,000 (!!!)

Is this problem already known, and is there a solution to it?

[SC4BOY 20]

If you put those station on "station spurs" you can avoid that problem. If you wish to approach it with brute force, you can mod them to have ever-increasing capacities. The stations have a "passenger hop" if you don't do that and almost all traffic passing loads the station. I suppose you could consider it a "bug" but it is a natural consequence of the way transit transition are implemented on lots by Maxis. It has been written about endlessly..   If you wish to read about it, do a search on "transit entry cost"

[alfredquack 0]

Thanks for that keyword that brought me a lot closer. Now I know that I have to change this "transit switch entry cost" value for the railway lot. I've read that a couple of times. They never say how to do that, though. It sounded like they were using SC4Tool which contains something called TE Editor. I managed to load that .dat file which contains the railway station but I can't see how to read/write this specific value there. There is some section called "transit switch" but it's empty.

this whole thing is really difficult for someone who actually only wants to play this game and not develop it ;-)

[SC4BOY 20]

That's why I make passenger spurs.  

The solution is not quite as simple as one might expect. \

Here's a fairly thorough discussion of it.

This is a broader discussion

[Ocram's Razr 963]

Or you could just use the default stations that do not have tracks as part of the building.

[SC4BOY 20]

The default stations work the same way. Further it is all stations, not just rail stations.. for example the bus stops do the same thing.. as I said this has been discussed endlessly. In fact it even applies to custom lots which have been transit enabled.. for example Peg's waterfront lots (those that have traffic enabled) or lots with rail built into them (plopables). Various modelers have tried to make theirs work better such as the RTMT stations or Simgoobers stations (don't know if he corrected ALL of his lots, but many do)

[alfredquack 0]

I got it solved by now. Thanks to all you guys.

If anybody else is interested in a quick solution:

* Use "iLive Reader" (e.g. to be downloaded here from STEX),

* choose SimCity_1.dat from the sidebar (->"Simcity DAT"),

* click "Fill the List" on the right,

* click "Analyser" on the tool bar.

* In the new window, select "Filter" from the tool bar, uncheck all on the left side except "Transport", confirm.

* Select "Search".

* When the list fills, browse for the passenger station (or bus station, ...), make sure you choose the items that have "0x02 Buildings" in the "type" column.

* in the right pane, edit the value for "transit switch entry cost" to 0.07 (for the train station, some higher value for buses... see discussion to that topic).

* Select "Add to patch" from the "Exemplar" menu for each building you have changed.

* When you've finished all values, close that Analyser window.

* Back in the main window, select "Patch" from the tool bar.

* Check the list of changes and select "Create DAT". Save the dat with any name to "SimCity 4/plugins" in your home directory.

* Close iLive Reader and start the game.

* Existing buildings in existing regions won't change automalically, you have to re-plop them.

* If you want to change the values later, open the saved DAT file instead of simcity_1.dat.

[z1 566]

For train stations with tracks going through them, the proper value of the transit switch entry cost is .007. For train stations without tracks going through them, the proper value is .064.

These values are specifically designed for the current NAM traffic simulators, but they work well enough to be used with any of the more recent traffic simulators, as well as the original Maxis traffic simulator.

The formula for the TSEC for any station is .96/speed, where "speed" is the speed of the fastest travel type that is designed to pass completely through the station at normal speed (excluding subways).  If the travel type passes next to the station instead of going through it, the pedestrian speed should be used in that formula.

[alfredquack 0]

If a good value for the small passenger station is TSEC=.064, and the formula is TSEC=.96/speed, then the speed for trains would be 15, right? (speed=.96/TSEC) I've read somewhere that the speed of passenger trains for Simulator Z was 150 "kph", so I assume there is a factor of 10 between these two different notions of "speed"?

[z1 566]

Originally posted by: alfredquack

If a good value for the small passenger station is TSEC=.064, and the formula is TSEC=.96/speed, then the speed for trains would be 15, right?quote>

No, because of this:

For train stations without tracks going through them, the proper value is .064.quote>

And this:

If the travel type passes next to the station instead of going through it, the pedestrian speed should be used in that formula.quote>

So the number 15 is correct, but it's the speed of pedestrians in kph.  This is unrealistically high of course, but certain individual speeds have to be set to unrealistic values in order for the simulator as a whole to perform realistically.  The reason for this is that the traffic simulation is actually fairly crude, and does not include a lot of factors that contribute to real world traffic.

[quicksilver991 37]

do these pedestrian bypassers pay a fare like regular train riders?

[z1 566]

Fares are collected on a per-tile basis. So the city doesn't collect fares for the bypassing pedestrians for the tiles on which they walk. The city still collects fares for the rest of their train journey, though.