Ever notice what happens when you add mass transit?

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

I've been aware of this for a long time, but today I had it brought home to me with emphasis. 

I am working one of the small tiles in the Maxis Fairview region, and I have been zoning high-density to go with my heavy industrial base.  The game has been generating single houses, and I've been running this for a couple of sessions.  So I tried to force some high-rise tenements by zoning some 2 x 4 lots.  More houses.  Foo.

So, I started dropping in RTMT bus stops at all the major intersections, and quite suddenly the simulator started a redevelopment of all the high-density zones to produce medium rise apartments.  The population went from around 1200 to around 3500 in practically one jump.  The bus stops were all that I did.

The industry has been fully developed for some time, but there were lots of vacant jobs.  Things are now picking up, and fewer Sims are coming in from other parts of the region.

Someone asked when to add mass transit.  In this case, the answer was when your high-density zones are not generating multiple dwelling places.

Anyone else noted this or have other tips?

[guns_of_fire 3]

Yeah I actually notice this too. It also helps bring in residents of higher wealth. I once built a monorail station in a real poor neighborhood and then I started getting a bunch of medium wealth stuctures popping up around the station.

[Dennislp3 2]

Wealthy don't like mass transit (from what I understand). So perhaps the wealthy come because the roads are more open? (since lower class/average people are using mass transit). Population increase would be from the infrastructure (Roads in this case) can support more people. Also mass transit affects sims on its own doesn't it? (even if traffic isn't a problem its seen as a feature that they want). Also it would affect pollution (depends on how much traffic it alleviates of course)...and that affects a few things...who would have thought it would be so complex to place a few small things lol

[Cob92 360]

Monorail is actually the only mass-transit system in the game that specifically attracts wealthier people.

[Dennislp3 2]

but in a roundabout way they all do...congestion influences desirability to wealthy people doesn't it? if so then by making the roads less congested they attract rich people. But they don't (except monorail) attract rich people to use them...they want the road to themselves.

[paulmc 391]

does it mean if you want to grow a suburb only with houses you need to keep the mass transit away from it? If it does, is another tip, and a tip for myself , because sometimes i need to bulldoze the highrises among my houses in the suburb.

[Rymac91 15]

Originally posted by: paulmc

does it mean if you want to grow a suburb only with houses you need to keep the mass transit away from it? If it does, is another tip, and a tip for myself , because sometimes i need to bulldoze the highrises among my houses in the suburb.quote>

Actually, if you want to make a suburb only with houses, then you use low density redesidential zones instead of Medium or High Density. Adding mass transit doesn't effect the overall density of development unless you have pollution or traffic issues. 

[Joetropian1 1]

That's hilarious because I used to have problems getting my high-density zones to act high density... but I always promised to put down some bus stops or connect the area to the subway system once I get a suitable population. I guess I've been going about it wrong!

[guns_of_fire 3]

Originally posted by: Dennislp3

Wealthy don't like mass transit (from what I understand). So perhaps the wealthy come because the roads are more open? (since lower class/average people are using mass transit). Population increase would be from the infrastructure (Roads in this case) can support more people. Also mass transit affects sims on its own doesn't it? (even if traffic isn't a problem its seen as a feature that they want). Also it would affect pollution (depends on how much traffic it alleviates of course)...and that affects a few things...who would have thought it would be so complex to place a few small things lolquote>

Actually I didn't mean that it gave me high wealth developments. What I meant to say was I built a monorail station in Low Wealth Residential and it developed at least in the area near the station into Medium Wealth.  Though you may have a point about that they may have developed just because the road was less congested, because hardly anyone was actually using the monorail. Only 200 - 400 people were using it. Most of them were using the subway which was about 1000.