What do you think about the buses?

[Marc... 0]

So are buses useful and worth making or are they pretty useless and what are they good for? I lost the manual and only information I get is "Sims can only board buses at bus stops" ...and it ain't helping.

I have allways made some bus stops but they never worked for me. But in this city I was really careful placing them and made a lot of them and got it to somewhat working (as you can see from the pic) and I am really happy about that. And now I would like to know if it was worth it.

I am pretty new at this game and would like to know about these little things 'casue I really like this game so far.

[Rury 37]

I find buses to be useful sometimes. I believe rich sims want to take a car to work, and not many will ride buses. However if your population is mostly poor and middle class, then your buses will be used more. I usually plop a bus stop for every 12-14 tiles in a grid-like pattern, and then take out the bus stops in areas that aren't being used. I find that in my CDT, bus stops aren't used at all, as sims prefer to use the subway. However many seem to hop on a bus in residential areas near highways and avenues, and in industrial areas.

Ultimately, wherever there is a subway and bus stop, sims will prefer using the subway over the bus. So perhaps placing buses in areas without subway/elevated rail access will improve their usage. There is also an ordinance called Shuttle Service which encourages sims to use public transportation.

Overall about 10% of my population commute by bus, 10% by ferry, 10% by train, 40% by subways/elevated rail, and 30% by car.

  Edited April 27, 2011 by Rury  

[Jazzmaster 716]

I find buses to be useful sometimes. I believe rich sims want to take a car to work, and not many will ride buses. However if your population is mostly poor and middle class, then your buses will be used more. I usually plop a bus stop for every 12-14 tiles in a grid-like pattern, and then take out the bus stops in areas that aren't being used. I find that in my CDT, bus stops aren't used at all, as sims prefer to use the subway. However many seem to hop on a bus in residential areas near highways and avenues, and in industrial areas.

Ultimately, wherever there is a subway and bus stop, sims will prefer using the subway over the bus. So perhaps placing buses in areas without subway/elevated rail access will improve their usage. There is also an ordinance called Shuttle Service which encourages sims to use public transportation.

Overall about 10% of my population commute by bus, 10% by ferry, 10% by train, 40% by subways/elevated rail, and 30% by car.

Buses are the cheapest transit system because they don't require any new railroad network to be built and maintained...and it is a very effective form of mass transit. It is not the fastest, though, and you will need a thorough and elaborate, non-road conformed means of travel for your Sims as your cities grow. At the very least, you will need a subway somewhere down the road. Buses and subways work together quite well.

[Lucario Boricua 7,050]

You know, you're using buses well--at least having an amount of bus users almost the same as that of pedestrians and drivers is a good thing, although your city is still quite small--we'll have to see how your bus usage numbers evolve, alongside the other traffic media usage amounts.

[Piano Man 3]

Even with an un-modded game, a bus system + basic roads will take you far enough to start seeing some of the early stage high-rises.

[ZorusX 1]

Do you use the NAM? If you don't, ridership will probably increase significantly when you install it, since sims will now take the fastest route instead of the shortest one. In another thread it was also said that buses will add to the customers around your commercial areas, while monorail and subway will not. But in my experience sims definitely prefer the subway and especially the monorail over a bus. In my city right now I've got a bus stop which is seeing 14,000 usage connecting a subway. Since you can't blanket your city in monorails (which seems to be the sims' preferred public transit) I tend to build subways to cover the most populous areas, then use buses to connect the remaining areas where my subway doesn't go. This is usually suburbs or industrial sectors. But having ANY sort of public transit boost desirability and growth potential significantly, so even if your bus systems aren't running at max, they are still probably doing their job.

The most effective thing you can do with bus stops, in my opinion is use them to link less dense areas with your main transit lines.

[leaderfrontier 0]

Well,do bus really help in reducing congestion?

I remember someone said before that 1 bus = 1 car(or perhaps I misunderstanding with something)

[z1 566]

Well,do bus really help in reducing congestion?

It depends...

I remember someone said before that 1 bus = 1 car(or perhaps I misunderstanding with something)

This is true, because there aren't really any vehicles in SC4 (aside from the automata eye candy). So all trains, subways, etc. are single-passenger as well.

The effect of buses on traffic depends on what traffic simulator you're using. In the original Maxis traffic simulator, buses run 50% faster than cars. Even more importantly, they don't contribute to traffic. This means that you can have thousands and thousands of buses on a road (or even a street), and congestion doesn't increase at all. These two properties certainly encourage the use of buses, but they also makes the traffic simulation as a whole unrealistic. If any other form of transportation (other than monorail) gets fully congested, buses will be faster than that form of transportation, no matter how many buses are already in use.

In the NAM traffic simulator, buses are treated more realistically. Their speed is just slightly below that of cars, but due to the extra start-up time required for cars (and the preference of many Sims for mass transit), there is still healthy bus usage over routes that are laid out well. (Due to other limitations in the Maxis traffic simulator, this option was not available to Maxis.) At first glance, it might appear that buses don't reduce congestion this way. If used by themselves, this is true. However, if buses are used to carry Sims to faster forms of mass transit such as subways, trains, el trains, and monorail (which typically don't have parking facilities), then they can reduce overall traffic congestion substantially.

For those who prefer the Maxis behavior of buses, an option is being added to the Traffic Simulator Configuration Tool which will allow that to be enabled. This version of the TSCT will be available soon.

  Edited April 28, 2011 by z1  

[Urbanator 7]

Buses also tend to reduce Commute Time for sims that use them, which can encourage more sims to live near busstops.

[AmpsterMan 5]

I find it best to combine any rail transit with buses. That is, have rails take sims from the residential areas to the industrial/comercial areas, and then have them take buses from there. This helps in many ways, first rails are faster than other forms of transport, and in the case of comercial zones, the added bus traffic increases land value. Also, for eye candy effect, tend to use Trains for industrial areas, and subways for Dense Comercial areas. As for monorails, I tend to have those be Intercity travel.

P.S. If you don't have them, NAM and roadtop mass transit help A LOT with subway and bus systems.

[HyperGaruda 0]

You don't have a lot of citizens, so a bus system would not be very useful. Only after developing a large amount of congestion, I'd say you should think about implementing a mass transit system of busses/subway/trains.

On a sidenote: busses DO contribute to traffic congestion, but at a much smaller rate: it takes about 1000 busses to congest a street, while only 100 cars are needed to make the same street go red. At least i thought those were the numbers...

[z1 566]

On a sidenote: busses DO contribute to traffic congestion, but at a much smaller rate: it takes about 1000 busses to congest a street, while only 100 cars are needed to make the same street go red. At least i thought those were the numbers...

This is incorrect, and the truth can be verified by a quick look at the traffic simulator exemplar. There is a property called "Travel type generates traffic" which determines whether travel types contribute to congestion and which can be set to either True or False; no intermediate values are possible. In the Maxis traffic simulator, this property is set to False for buses, which means that no amount of buses will cause any increase in congestion anywhere. This has been verified by experiment many times. As for the way congestion works, the description in the quoted post is also incorrect. For example, streets, which have a capacity of 100 in the original Maxis simulator, will show green up to a daily traffic volume of 100 Sims. If the daily traffic exceeds that, the color will gradually become yellow, then orange, then red. It becomes solid red at a volume of 250 Sims, at which point congestion has caused the speed of vehicles on the street (including buses) to drop to 30% of their nominal speed. However, no matter how much higher the traffic volume rises on that street, the speed of vehicles never drops below 30% of the nominal speed. This 30% figure cannot be set any lower due to a bug in the game.

The fact that the maximum congestion occurs at 2.5 times the street's nominal capacity applies to all networks, as does the lower speed limit of 30% of the network's nominal speed. In the real world, if a road gets congested enough, its speed would drop to essentially zero. In SC4, the lower limit of 30% of the nominal speed means that all networks really have infinite capacity, although the problems associated with congestion arise as soon as you pass 100% of the nominal capacity.

[Marc... 0]

hmm...

I am not using any mod 'cause I hate cheating and making games easy, I allways want to play the hard way for some reason. And most of the time I'm not getting anywhere with that... oh well

Anyways, I was wondering if people will use buses when the city is really big or they need subway then? And if there is subway will the buses be totally pointless?

I was doing a test other day and got I really big house (atlest for me) it had over 5000 people living in it. So let's say that, a bus stop has 2 houses like that next to it and maybe 25% of people will take the bus, that makes 2500 people using the bus... massive! Or is that not going to happen?

[mrbisonm 1,622]

hmm...

I am not using any mod 'cause I hate cheating and making games easy, I allways want to play the hard way for some reason. And most of the time I'm not getting anywhere with that... oh well

Cheating??? lol....most of the mods aren't for cheating but to "repair" the game that Maxis did not do so well with. In other words, the game does not do its job properly or as supposed to and that is why some mods were made.

So, playing without any mods is like playing only half the game or an unfinished one....no cheating there at all.

I have learned that busses are very helpful , I use them all the time and as soon as my town hits a population of 20,000 or more. I have seen locations in my towns and cities that do not want to develop for years and years (mostly situated on those grey roads/streets) and as soon as you plop a busstation nearby, the residentials start growing again.

When you got a road or street clogged with traffic, just plop a busstation and the clogging usually goes away, sometimes it needs two.

Of course with little population the stations aren't useless, also if you only plop them in residential areas with no other places to go.

In short, busstations are useful.

mrb

[HyperGaruda 0]

Oops, excuse me for making that mistake, busses really do not contribute to traffic congestion. Just tested it and it turns out that even with nearly 3k busses, a street stays green as grass. I think i might have mixed up the observation i once made where a dedicated bus street turned orange, but after a closer inspection there were cars running over it. Guess it wasnt completely dedicated :|

Mind you, it is the vanilla deluxe game + official ea patch i'm playing; no mods and the like.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

The traffic handling of individual Sims (I use the NAM) is entirely unrealistic. Since each Sim gets his own vehicle, it is hard to talk about "mass" transit. The only effect of something other than a car is it is faster.

Ideally, a bus should run on a fixed schedule stopping at designated places for a given period and leaving when that is elapsed with the following logic:

Arrive at bus stop.

If full and nobody gets off, leave immediately.

If full and people get off, OR if not full then

Board enough people to fill the bus or the time to leave arrives, which ever come first, and leave.

This can also be applied to trains, monorails, etc. The idea of vicariously adding cars to the train is a non-starter. Trains can only add or remove cars at the beginning or end of the run. When en route, the capacity if fixed. If necessary, the route dispatcher can start another train from the main depot.

The unrealistic treatment may make it easier for the simulation, but it is not good enough.

[Marc... 0]

aha... Sorry then, I don't know much about mods and stuff like that. But I do know that there is a "money tree" and a thing that kicks up your demands, that must obviously be cheating.

Anyway, yeah it's a little bit unfinished. I wish they made another simcity instead of that society. No offence but I think it's a total failure. I bought it and thought "Wow! New simcity, how cool is that?" To be honest I was very disappointed. It felt like it was made for 6 year old children. Into the subject, whatever nevermind.

So my coal is to hold the buses higher then cars as long as possible and see what happens, and if buses are useful, it gives motivation hehe. Also it's great when the streets are blue from all the buses driving there hehe.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

aha... Sorry then, I don't know much about mods and stuff like that. But I do know that there is a "money tree" and a thing that kicks up your demands, that must obviously be cheating.

Anyway, yeah it's a little bit unfinished. I wish they made another simcity instead of that society. No offence but I think it's a total failure. I bought it and thought "Wow! New simcity, how cool is that?" To be honest I was very disappointed. It felt like it was made for 6 year old children. Into the subject, whatever nevermind.

So my coal is to hold the buses higher then cars as long as possible and see what happens, and if buses are useful, it gives motivation hehe. Also it's great when the streets are blue from all the buses driving there hehe.

Because (with the NAM) a bus is just a fast car, that is their worth.

[Jazzmaster 716]

This can also be applied to trains, monorails, etc. The idea of vicariously adding cars to the train is a non-starter. Trains can only add or remove cars at the beginning or end of the run. When en route, the capacity if fixed. If necessary, the route dispatcher can start another train from the main depot.

That's actually not entirely true...I've ridden a route between Chicago, IL and South Bend, IN called the 'South Shore Line' and there was a certain station stop where the trains traveling eastbound (into Rural Indiana) cut a couple of cars--they were certainly useless going into such sparse population--and left them sitting before being collected to use for a westbound train, that would certainly fill as its heading into Chicagoland. I'm not sure if they changed this though.

The unrealistic treatment may make it easier for the simulation, but it is not good enough.

Not sure I could've said it much better myself. For every few points about this game that make it great, it's lacking quite a bit on some points. In terms of eye-candy it certainly excels, but I want more than just something that looks, I want something that DOES.

  Edited May 2, 2011 by Yoshiisland  

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

This can also be applied to trains, monorails, etc. The idea of vicariously adding cars to the train is a non-starter. Trains can only add or remove cars at the beginning or end of the run. When en route, the capacity if fixed. If necessary, the route dispatcher can start another train from the main depot.

That's actually not entirely true...I've ridden a route between Chicago, IL and South Bend, IN called the 'South Shore Line' and there was a certain station stop where the trains traveling eastbound (into Rural Indiana) cut a couple of cars--they were certainly useless going into such sparse population--and left them sitting before being collected to use for a westbound train, that would certainly fill as its heading into Chicagoland. I'm not sure if they changed this though.

You do understand that I was speaking from the point of view of writing a simulation. I agree, an additional complication would be to shunt cars at various places to add and subtract them from trains, but we are not that sophisticated as to get Sims going the same place in one car. As you say, it doesn't really accomplish anything in the game.