Mass trans, parking garages, etc

[Pengwuino 2]

I have a pretty big city, 600k people in the largest squares. I'm having quite a problem with laying down mass transit with any effectiveness.

For 1, I have no idea how to use parking garages. At one point I did see them magically working when I plopped one down near a monorail station and train station that was one of the two entrances to a zone just north full of HT jobs. Great! People using my monorail, trains are going.... maybe I should dense zone it up a lil. Big mistake. The train station immediately went 600% over capacity as like, 5 new skyscrapers simultaneously popped up. So I was like "OH NOES!!!!" and figured I might as well build 2 roads to the city. Well, of course, they both immediately went to 100% conjestion and my monorail went empty. I suppos what I want to know is how do I make my people use mass transit effectively in this case? It seems like if I build roads, the rich and long distance commuters flock to that road irregardless of the conjestion and abandon the monorails. The trains seem to stay pretty crowded, though, so that's not too bad. And really, how do you use parking garages effectively?

I feel kind of screwed trying to accomodate the rich with parking garages and monorails considering such a large city has like 100k+ rich folk and trying to put them on little mass transit things that accomodate 2000 people.

I quite like mass transit considering it really gives me some nice income. I think i have about $15k/month income simply from mass transit. It just feels like everyones dead set against using mass transit though.

Another question I have relates to how many jobs actually exist in a zone and hwo many people really do "travel" to some place. When I make a small zone full of industry, i can easily get around 14k jobs. I then link it exclusively to a big city full of residents who will commute there. The thing I notice is that the number of jobs available never jives with the number of people who travel into the zone. I noticed this earlier in one of my 14k job zones that only around 8k people were traveling into the zones through all the routes. Is the 14k a maximum based on the number of buildings you have? And how in the world do you get almost all the jobs that are available? Or does "1 car" possibly mean more than 1 person in the car?

Although now that I loaded my game up, I do have 1 parking garage that seems to be doing osmething t least. It's really weird though... It says my morning commute involves people coming up from teh subway and walking to the parking garage?? Ahhh!! weird game!!!

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Generally, Sims take the shortest route.  If the road route is shorter they will drive.

There are some nice sets of rail and other mass transit stations on the STEX.  Rail stations have unlimited parking, but other light rail stations do not.  You need parking garages at monorail and El stations as well as for GLR and subway when these are in or near residential areas.

At the business end of any rail line, you need bus transport for the passengers to get to work unless the commercial/industrial pod is small.  Bus lines are also useful in residential areas, but be careful of setting up bus commuting to work.

The regular ground rail (heavy) stations are cheap and can be placed every couple of blocks or so if need be.  With parking included, and fairly well scattered through a residentail pod, you shouldn't need buses there.  Don't be chinzy with laying down rail spurs to act as collectors.  If you could have put a road there, tracks work too.

One of the big uses I have made of pedestrian malls is plazas for transfer points.  A decent ped mall with commercial buildings on its sides can also house both a monorail station for intercity transit, and a subway station for local commuters to switch to the monorail and vice versa.  You can obviously use this as a drop point for any transit system.  Because of the way ped malls work the terrain, lay down the stations and any parallel tracks first.

One of the problems some gods have is that they are reluctant to perform urban renewal projects.  When things get congested, some sort of transit project is needed.  Happens all the time in cities.  Most cities only have two seaons: winter and road work.  Don't be shy about knocking down some cherished high-rise to get your transit system working.  Municipal buildings such as fire statons and cop shops should be kept off the main drags because they are a nuisance to move when you need to put in a traffic circle.  Remember that needs must be serviced or your city will collapse.

[Pengwuino 2]

Ok thank you for the information!

Do you happen to know what the situation is with industry jobs in another zone?

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Please define "another zone".

[Pengwuino 2]

Another ... square on the region map? I'm not sure what everything is technically called.

I suppose technically it's a new city but when I load a new city and just fill it completely with industry, it sure doesn't feel like a city .

[z1 566]

Are you using the NAM (specifically, the NAM traffic simulator)?  From your descriptions, it doesn't sound like it.  If this is indeed the case, then you should either install the entire NAM, which I would recommend and which you can find here, or you should at least install the NAM traffic simulator, which comes as part of the NAM Traffic Subsystem.  This will make your parking garages work much better, and you will get far greater usage from your mass transit.

As for the number of passengers per car, all vehicles in SC4 are single-passenger.  This includes trains and buses.  They just look like normal vehicles so that the game looks more realistic.

[Pengwuino 2]

I believe I tried to install NAM, but it made my Zone display look all screwed up so I uninstalled it. Maybe I should give it another shot.

EDIT: Woo, ok, so I got it installed with a minimum installation and it all looks nice and what not. So at least now I have a nice little transport network kind of going  Although now I have to figure out how to fix my cities so that they take advatnage of mass transit that actually works!

So far I boosted one cities revenue by like 30% just off the mass transit working as expected, but another I put into the red because I noticed an avenue was super busy and I noticed they were all from commuters going from city A -> B -> C and I simply alloewd them to use the subway........ which meant they no longer took a rest stop in my B city which hurt revenue a little  FUN STUFF 

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Originally posted by: Pengwuino

Another ... square on the region map? I'm not sure what everything is technically called.

I suppose technically it's a new city but when I load a new city and just fill it completely with industry, it sure doesn't feel like a city .quote>

While I do Industrial cities, they are never just that.  For me, an Industrial city is usually on a small tile with a fairly dominant industrial pod.  With this pod, I also have high-rise buildings for the R$ who work there, and I take care of the pollution.  I also lay down an elementary school, a health service, fire protection, and, if need be, police.

I also create a commercial shopping area, often with a mall, to give the R$ someplace to buy groceries.  By use of the taxes, I can keep other levels of R out of the city, or control who is allowed to live there.  R$$ and R$$$ are welcome to commute in from the adjacent, more balanced city using the inter city connections, which gotten includes rail or monorail as well as roads.

You don't have to sacrifice a city tile to pollution with the right set of controlling lots.  Hunt around, and you will find them.  I don't want to influence your eventual style by putting you on my track.

Thought you might like a screenshot or two.  This is a matrix from my Muronia city showing zones, traffic, and a close up of the Residential/Industrial interface.

About the NAM.  Some of the displays are changed.  IMHO this is for the better.  If you are also using RTMT, the enhanced traffic congestion display (hit the flow button) is vastly improved.  You also get a better measure of the traffic density, in living color.  The basic congestion display is not at all helpful when the NAM is present.  Real hot streets show up much better in the new display.  Further, if you are interested in a particular type of traffic, you can switch that display to examine it.

[z1 566]

Originally posted by: Pengwuino

I believe I tried to install NAM, but it made my Zone display look all screwed up so I uninstalled it. Maybe I should give it another shot.quote>

If you download the NAM Traffic Subsystem that I mentioned above, you can use the Traffic Simulator Configuration Tool to turn off the NAM Zone Data View, which will leave you with the old Maxis one Zone Data View.  There are also a couple of intermediate settings that you might want to try here.

[Pengwuino 2]

Well my zone section is working correctly now and I LOVE the enhanced traffic volume display.

So how about land value? How important is that as far as getting welathy sims and corporate offices to spring up? I just went into my industrial zone that was red land value everywhere and just tossed up a bunch of high density residential without keeping R$$ and R$$$ out through taxes. Well, initially I had a ton of R$ buildings popping up... but soon after, I started seeing R$$ buildings... after a few minutes there were more middle class buildings then R$! Then a couple R$$$ skyscrapers popped up!!!

I suspect I have not enough places for poor people to move in so they move into the better parts of town and pull down thta part of town and drive out the R$$$ people. So i want to make a big lump of R$.... I guess that means I'm forced to use taxes to keep R$$ and R$$$ out?