Rail and mass transit placement suggestions.

[MayorFumble 3]

I'm curious what the more experienced simmers out there do to incorporate rail into your mass transit network. Do you place rails parallel to major avenues, on the outskirts of towns, behind buildings, or anything else?

How frequent are your stops? Do you structure your rail lines like real cities that typically have N-S, W-E lines that allow for transfers at certain points (with deviations due to terrain and demand)?

If you grow your city organically from small town to large metropolis, do you find yourself bulldozing large areas to make way for the new transit lines? Do you grow your city in sections adjacent to each other, or in disparate communities that leave space between each other for mass transit once it is required?

Do you pass your bulkier mass transit lines (rail, highways) through the smaller region tiles or do you make the inhabitants of those tiles travel to the larger tiles that have the room for them? Or do you just keep their jobs local?

To add context to these questions, I've created 3 medium sized cities: one that is only commercial jobs, below it is a city that provides lots of R$ and to the right of the commercial city is another city that is mostly R$$ and R$$$. Both residential cities have ~80K-~100K residents. The commercial city offers 87K commercial jobs. I'm having huge traffic problems at the moment and I never planned for this much growth. I've added some rail, EL and mono as well as a highway but they've been kinda clumsily laid about. They are getting tons of use, with my ground rail having as many as 16K passengers (my poor stations). 3 EL lines that leave the R$$$ area are carrying anywhere from 9K to 13K people. A center avenue and a couple of other roads are carrying 3-4K each into the city.

The commercial city makes use subway stations and I even found myself having to bring in some of those into the residential cities to give more ways of bringin in residents, though I was really hoping to keep rail/EL in the residential and subways in the commercial city.

I find myself demolishing a lot of the town to bring in mass transit lines. And I'm OK with that. But it just feels like the final placement of the transit and the new buildings are clumsy at best. Realistically, it's best to plan this out from the very beginning but it kinda kills the fun of growing organically. Or I just suck at city design :-P.

I'll admit I'm not much of an urban planning and architecture connoisseur so I'm fishing for some ideas for the big picture, transit wise. I read the transit guide here and lurked through some of the "show us your..." posts but most of them zoom in on specific areas. I'd love to see a complex region that uses all forms of mass transit at a high level so I can analyze it and see what lines intersect which region tiles for that types of transit, etc.

Any thoughts on any of these questions and any other insight anyone can offer will be greatly appreciated.

[Gurning_Chimp 398]

I tend to have multi platform terminals in the city centre of my major cities and extend the rails in the 4 points of the compass (sometimes with an encompassing loop). I tend to use viaduct rail because I think it looks better and I have stations wherever I feel I need them.

Here's a transport map for the metropolitan area for my biggest city if you're interested.

And the actual thing.

[MayorFumble 3]

Great. Stuff like this is what I want to see.

A couple of questions: the transport map shows your city surrounded by highway with one straight line through a third of it. Yet it looks like avenues on the screenshot. Am I misinterpreting that or are you using some kind of skin for the highway?

Second, how many tiles make up that city and what size are the tiles?

[Gurning_Chimp 398]

Great. Stuff like this is what I want to see.

A couple of questions: the transport map shows your city surrounded by highway with one straight line through a third of it. Yet it looks like avenues on the screenshot. Am I misinterpreting that or are you using some kind of skin for the highway?

Second, how many tiles make up that city and what size are the tiles?

I'm using RHW for my highways (or if you mean in the centre tile, it's avenues, something to do with the coding), the loop is actually 10 lanes and the straight line is 8. The whole city is one large tile (in the middle), 6 medium tiles and 10 small tiles (interspersed around the edges).

[MayorFumble 3]

Great. Stuff like this is what I want to see.

A couple of questions: the transport map shows your city surrounded by highway with one straight line through a third of it. Yet it looks like avenues on the screenshot. Am I misinterpreting that or are you using some kind of skin for the highway?

Second, how many tiles make up that city and what size are the tiles?

I'm using RHW for my highways (or if you mean in the centre tile, it's avenues, something to do with the coding), the loop is actually 10 lanes and the straight line is 8. The whole city is one large tile (in the middle), 6 medium tiles and 10 small tiles (interspersed around the edges).

Thanks for the information. Did you plan the layout of the city in general before growing it to a large pop or did you improvise as you went along?

[Gurning_Chimp 398]

I planned out the rail and the highway first then just built it as I went along and as I needed/wanted. I actually have around 2.1 million Sims living in that centre tile at this time.

[MayorFumble 3]

I planned out the rail and the highway first then just built it as I went along and as I needed/wanted. I actually have around 2.1 million Sims living in that centre tile at this time.

Wow, 2.1M? Highest I've gotten has been ~160K in a medium tile and it kinda blew up due to traffic. I really need to plan it in advance. It's also hard to get a sense of scale until you build your first couple of large cities.

For example, I had no idea that high density residential buildings had 2K+ people living in them with 600+ workers. And that's just the early ones. A couple of those buildings is enough to saturate any road with traffic. I, unaware of this, had just started blindly zoning high density over my medium density and letting them develop as they will. Demand and environmental conditions were good so the big buildings started rising like wild fire. In the span of a couple of minutes I had climbed from ~100K to 160K residents. I had absolutely not planned for any of it as my expectations were well below reality. Panic set in as frantically tried to replace streets with roads and tack on a subway system to no avail.

I scrapped that city.

Lesson learned: don't zone high density until you are ready to handle high density. And if you are new to the game, you are not ready for high density.

[uiuiui172 3]

Never underestimate the power of buses. I used to neglect them due to the space the stops take up, most RL stops are right on the sidewalk. Once I installed RTMT (a transit must-have) and bus stops would be able to be plopped right onto roads without taking up space, I fell in love. Soon, I had plopped bus stops in most congested roads and streets. According to my graph, most Sims walked or took the bus, while a small few drove cars. No congestion whatsoever. Later on, when my city grew a ton, people where starting to prefer cars, and soon they overtook buses in the graph. To fix that, I made a bus mall. I used the Traffic Controller Pack and 3rd and 4th avenues (both were one way streets) in my downtown area bus and ped only. I then placed bus stops two blocks apart. Las ter, I brought the bus system into the suburbs and place stops every four blocks. Then, all was right in my city once more, cars were the minority. I was rolling in mass transit fare dough.

Anyways as far as rail goes, I like to use a little imagination to plot it. I find landmarks or important locations on opposite ends of the map and link them at the city core to make a mass transfer station right downtown. For example I made a two major lines in my city, the Blue Line (to Stadium, Elmonica, via Vertoit City Center/ to Frontier Park Transit Center, Torrington, via Vertoit City Center) and the Red Line (to Airport, Albina, via Vertoit City Center/ to Council Crest TC via Vertoit City Center). The blue line linked my western suburb (Torrington) with my NE suburb Elmonica by going E to W through my city core. My red line connected the airport in the SE suburb of Albina, goes N to S through my city core, and ends at the upscale NW suburb of Council Crest. I then installed the SES (Southern Express Service) which is a passenger rail service (viaduct) that allows commuters to travel along the waterfront at high speeds with a total of three stops.

Torrington--------------------------------------------Vertoit City Center----------------------------------------------------------Albina/ Airport

|-----------------------------------------------------------------|--------------------------------------------------------------------------------|

After that system, I develepod my inter-regional transit. I used undergorund rail to save space, it runs from the W border and splits off to either go to the north or east border with one stop in the city core.

I personally like to use GLR in my downtown areas because you make a very effective system without taking up space at all, plus it looks great! Out in my suburbs I either extend the GLR through it but have the tracks run off of the street and then use suburban center-platform stations. I also use El train in my suburbs and I avoid subways as much as possible, I like being able to see my transit. I only use subways when I have to tunnel under tall mountains or hills.

As far as station placement goes for GLR, in downtown areas I place them 3-5 blocks apart or at landmarks such as the convention center while in suburbs I place them every 10-15 blocks, same for el train. I have nothing to contribute about monorails because i hate them. They look hideous and unrealistic. They can also be a pain to build.

I build highways in simply the most useful areas I can find where they are garunteed to be used (like through sprawling suburbrs) and link send it through or near the city core.

Hope this helps!

  Edited June 30, 2012 by uiuiui172  

[MayorFumble 3]

*snip*

Very informative. Both your example Gurning_Chimp's leave me scratching my head though. I guess you both understand where to optimally place your stations, lay your transit lines and highways. My cities pale in size yet, despite a bunch of subway pipes with heavy use as well as EL, I'm still having traffic problems. In your example, I noticed your red and blue rail lines are not connected. Did you make it so as a conscious decision or is there some game-mechanic-reasoning behind the separation?

I understand what you mean with landmarks. After my first catastrophic failure with a large city, I opted to make my latest city in a new, completely flat region so I have no landmarks so-to-speak. Wanted to focus on the technical aspects of transit as I don't feel ready to tackle the challenges non-conforming terrain will provide. My latest city is doing better but still not quite right. Your example brings a good contrast to tha tof Gurning_Chimp's as your transit lines are also cleanly defined but very different. It also looks like I might be packing too many high density buildings together as opposed to the core of the city having the bulk of them and then tapering off.

Thanks a lot. This gives me more to consider.

[uiuiui172 3]

My red and blue lines cross each other to form a square with stations at each side of the square, then I put a nice park right in the center, or you can put a very high densit building.

The extra stations are somewhat unecessary except for that they provide eye candy, designate a central transit HQ, and since these stations are highly used, they prevent overuse. each side of the tracks provides stops at different locations. For example, if red line track A stops at 15th, 10th, 5th, and Oceanfront Aves, then track B stops at 17th, 12th, 7th, and 2nd Aves. Again this provides a nice look and allows sims to board at more stops without actually adding more stops to a line and thus causing an increase in commute time. It is also an idea to provide bus service at each station, as well as parking garages at your major suburban stops.

By the way, a little warning, do not get carried away with the subway placement. Laying out a subway in a grid pattern with 4-way stops at every block is TERRIBLY unrealistic. The goal is really to cut commute times, provide service to most of your city, and to do so without covering your city in rail. Also, imagine your rail lines as major rivers and bus lines as little creeks. You can't have a thriving river without the little creeks feeding it. So in summary, make bus lines feed each rail station so you can provide widespread transit coverage without spending loads of cash and having rail lines all over the place. To help accomplish that, I can post some links to handy mods if you want.

  Edited June 30, 2012 by uiuiui172  

[MayorFumble 3]

Interesting. Good suggestion on the alternate stops for different tracks. I am using a lot of buses, but since they count towards congestion with NAM, all they are doing is allowing for R$ to take longer trips. Some of my rail stations in the residential area have garages, but not all of them. I should probably add garages to the rest. My EL rail is a bit all over the place. I'm gonna take a stab at focusing it's intent and cleaning it up a bit. My subway is a mess. It is getting heavy use but it was kinda arbitrarily laid about. My high gets some use but I'd wish more sims would use it, especially considering it is a mostly R$$ and R$$$ city.

I should probably have a convergence of my transit systems at some location as well. They don't readily meet in any location. What mods can you recommend? Also, do you use the vanilla train station for ground rail or a modded one. I don't mind using the vanilla one but it always feels a bit clumsy to work with.

[uiuiui172 3]

Could you please upload the transportation map of your city plus the map of your subway system?

And as far as buses go, Maxis's failure to create a bus route system makes the game much more difficult and causes congestion, buses in real life typically stick to main roads, not streets and highways. I use the Bus Blocker mod to prevent buses to go on certain streets and it also creates bus routes, sort of.

Then on roads that buses traverse but are highly congested by cars, I use UrbanLegends Traffic Controller to create bus and ped only roads (no cars allowed). I use the Road Top Mass Transit mod plus addon pack and Interim Stations to provide stations that don't take up any space at all.

For GLR that is not road-top, I use stations downloaded from the STEX, and for heavy rail I also use stations from the STEX that are appropriate for the location (an urban station would look very different compared to a station in a small farming town).

  Edited June 30, 2012 by uiuiui172  

[MayorFumble 3]

Here's my transportation view. My colors are different than yours or Chimp's. I take it you guys use mods for those views?

The colors are the game default (Red = highway, purple = EL, black = ground rail, off-white = roads)

I don't know how to get subway to show on the map.

My focus are on the 3 left-most regions. The other that are zoned in are just me messing with agriculture and a small suburb. The city below the yellow square is mostly R$ and R$$ and is now at 97K, the city left of that one is strictly commercial jobs at 87K jobs, and the city below it is mostly R$ with some R$$ and ID/IM at 101K residents.

[z1 566]

How frequent are your stops? Do you structure your rail lines like real cities that typically have N-S, W-E lines that allow for transfers at certain points (with deviations due to terrain and demand)?

In SC4, due to the nature of the commute model and the fact that commutes are much shorter than RL, you should generally make your stops much closer together than in RL. The more stops you have, the more Sims will use your mass transit. For buses and subways, I recommend stops every block. Many people consider this heretical for subways (it's certainly unrealistic), but it can clear up traffic problems like nothing else. For trams, I have stops every two or three blocks. For el rail, one stop every four blocks; for commuter rail and monorail, maybe one stop every five or six blocks. If you have large distances between stops, Sims won't use your mass transit.

I planned out the rail and the highway first then just built it as I went along and as I needed/wanted. I actually have around 2.1 million Sims living in that centre tile at this time.

Wow, 2.1M? Highest I've gotten has been ~160K in a medium tile and it kinda blew up due to traffic. I really need to plan it in advance. It's also hard to get a sense of scale until you build your first couple of large cities.

My average large tile is about two million; that's not really a lot if you use custom content. You mention traffic problems, yet later you also mention using the NAM. Are you using a recent version? If so, what capacity version of the traffic simulator are you using?

For example, I had no idea that high density residential buildings had 2K+ people living in them with 600+ workers. And that's just the early ones. A couple of those buildings is enough to saturate any road with traffic. I, unaware of this, had just started blindly zoning high density over my medium density and letting them develop as they will. Demand and environmental conditions were good so the big buildings started rising like wild fire. In the span of a couple of minutes I had climbed from ~100K to 160K residents. I had absolutely not planned for any of it as my expectations were well below reality. Panic set in as frantically tried to replace streets with roads and tack on a subway system to no avail.

I scrapped that city.

That probably wasn't necessary. For high density cities in SC4, a good traffic system requires far more subways and stations than in RL. For example, I have built a region that simulates inner Chicago rather closely, and it was necessary to put subways under every road and stations at every block. Not very realistic, but above ground I had a very realistic and functional Chicago, with essentially no abandonment.

My red and blue lines cross each other to form a square with stations at each side of the square, then I put a nice park right in the center, or you can put a very high densit building.

The extra stations are somewhat unecessary except for that they provide eye candy, designate a central transit HQ, and since these stations are highly used, they prevent overuse. each side of the tracks provides stops at different locations. For example, if red line track A stops at 15th, 10th, 5th, and Oceanfront Aves, then track B stops at 17th, 12th, 7th, and 2nd Aves. Again this provides a nice look and allows sims to board at more stops without actually adding more stops to a line and thus causing an increase in commute time. It is also an idea to provide bus service at each station, as well as parking garages at your major suburban stops.

All vehicles in SC4 are actually single passenger, and they never stop at intermediate stops. So adding stops to a line doesn't slow anything down. In fact, if you stick to Maxis stations, vehicles travel through them instantaneously, so the more Maxis stations you have on a line, the faster the vehicles travel. Properly built stations (such as RTMT) are built to be neutral in this respect, so that they neither slow down nor speed up traffic. The SC4 commute model does not behave well if you allow stations to slow down traffic.

As for parking garages, I don't think they're really necessary on a large scale, and they take up precious real estate when you use a lot of them. Instead, your suggestion of bus service at each rapid transit station makes more sense in general. Combination stations are great for this. If you put separate bus stops near a station, don't put them right next to the station; there has to be at least one network tile separating the two mass transit stations, or else Sims won't travel between them.

By the way, a little warning, do not get carried away with the subway placement. Laying out a subway in a grid pattern with 4-way stops at every block is TERRIBLY unrealistic.

Most definitely. But extensive testing of this strategy during the development of the NAM traffic simulator showed that it was one of the most effective ways to eliminate abandonment due to commute time, especially in high-density areas. The reason for this has to do with the way the traffic simulator's destination finder works; for more information on this, please see

The goal is really to cut commute times...

This is no longer very important at all when using the NAM, and the commute time graph should be disregarded, as it is irretrievably broken. Instead, it's important to have good traffic routes to where Sims travel, keep congestion reasonable, and make good use of rapid transit.

Interesting. Good suggestion on the alternate stops for different tracks. I am using a lot of buses, but since they count towards congestion with NAM, all they are doing is allowing for R$ to take longer trips.

With the NAM traffic simulator, Sims always take the fastest route (although you have to take their preferences into account here). So your R$ aren't taking longer trips. Meanwhile, carefully setting up your bus stops allows you to direct your traffic flow to some extent. And buses provide great access to your rapid transit.

Some of my rail stations in the residential area have garages, but not all of them. I should probably add garages to the rest.

As I've indicated above, I've found that quite unnecessary.

Also, do you use the vanilla train station for ground rail or a modded one. I don't mind using the vanilla one but it always feels a bit clumsy to work with.

I'd strongly recommend getting various mass transit stations off the STEX. For one thing, they tend to have at least somewhat higher capacities, which is important. SimGoober has made a number of beautiful, high capacity train stations.

[MayorFumble 3]

*snip*

Thanks a lot for those numbers on stops and spacing. That gives me even more concrete data to work with. Not necessarily to duplicate blindly but to give me an indicator of whether I'm doing too much or too little. And the answer is too little. I only have 5 EL stations across 3 lines on one of the residential cities. That's nowhere near 1 every ~4 blocks. I'll try adding a few more and spacing them out more intelligently.

To answer your question, I'm using NAM at Medium capacity. I know I could just up the capacity count to the highest setting and worry about it later but I'd rather learn now. I don't mind having traffic problems and I do want to work towards solving them. Just trying to get an idea of how the more experienced of you solve these problems and whether I'm going in the right direction.

As far as custom content goes, I'm not using any custom buildings. In part because I want to understand how to play the base game and in part because I don't know some of the differences between content. For example, I don't know what the differences are between LOTs and BATs. The only custom content I'm using, other than NAM, are for aesthetic uses (Hole Digging Lots, Rain Tool, Highway Walls) and custom maps uploaded on this site. I would like to use some of the aesthetic mods for trees, roads, etc. and I've seen some amazing screenshots of custom industrial buildings but I'm still figuring out what is what.

I never did give much thought to using buses as a means of traffic control, only as a means of facilitating R$ transportation. I figured since any one bus can go to any other bus station, there is very little control. But now that you've brought up the point I'll put that into consideration. That's the kind of stuff I haven't (and probably never would have) figured out on my own. And it is exactly why I started this thread. Thanks again. Oh, and I assume that buses lets R$ travel farther because apparently NAM gives R$ a time penalty for using a car over a bus. I figured that since the penalty does not exist for buses and time=distance, then they can travel farther in buses over cars.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Now it depends on what you mean by rail. I tend to put my heavy rail into my port/industrial complex because the PEG ports are TE'd for rail as well as road. Most of my cities are on water. The heavy rail then connects to other tiles, usually far from the built-up areas initially. I try to stick to bus to heavy rail terminals in the 'burbs, and have rail terminals in the CBD. Please note that I say terminals and not stations. I try to avoid putting stations on through tracks.

I use light rail as needed. As the congestion mounts in my CBD, I add subways to the main lines (usually bus routes), and if necessary, surface the subway to EL for long hauls over empty terrain, usually next to a road artery (avenue). I don't use highways unless I have a very long busy stretch that needs the higher volume. I've come to dislike highways in the downtown areas because they disallow zoning adjacent lots and take up space better used.

On some occasions where heavy rail seems to be inappropriate but volume is high I use monorail. Monorail is very nice for neighbour connections.

[MayorFumble 3]

Now it depends on what you mean by rail. I tend to put my heavy rail into my port/industrial complex because the PEG ports are TE'd for rail as well as road. Most of my cities are on water. The heavy rail then connects to other tiles, usually far from the built-up areas initially. I try to stick to bus to heavy rail terminals in the 'burbs, and have rail terminals in the CBD. Please note that I say terminals and not stations. I try to avoid putting stations on through tracks.

I use light rail as needed. As the congestion mounts in my CBD, I add subways to the main lines (usually bus routes), and if necessary, surface the subway to EL for long hauls over empty terrain, usually next to a road artery (avenue). I don't use highways unless I have a very long busy stretch that needs the higher volume. I've come to dislike highways in the downtown areas because they disallow zoning adjacent lots and take up space better used.

On some occasions where heavy rail seems to be inappropriate but volume is high I use monorail. Monorail is very nice for neighbour connections.

By rail I'm only referring to regular ground rail and elevated rail (the stuff that ships with the unmodded game). I have NAM but haven't messed with its light rail options.

I dont know what the acronyms PEG and TE are, if you don't mind explaining? I'm also not 100% certain what you mean by terminal? Is there a terminal building as opposed to station. Or do you mean a terminal conceptually (End-of-line then find another mode of transportation)? If it is the second, is your terminal made up of multiple stations? I had my ground rail getting nearly 19K use on one track (more than 200% use with NAM at the Medium controller settings) and ended up adding two more tracks with the track switch loops (don't know what they are called irl) across every station. This allowed trains to take any track in any direction at every station. Ended up nearly evenly distributing the traffic across all 3 tracks. Was kinda proud of that since I was able to discover the 3-track switching on my own :-P

However, it didn't fix the big picture. But, one step at a time I guess.

[z1 566]

Oh, and I assume that buses lets R$ travel farther because apparently NAM gives R$ a time penalty for using a car over a bus. I figured that since the penalty does not exist for buses and time=distance, then they can travel farther in buses over cars.

Not at all. The time penalty for cars is balanced out by the slightly lower speed for buses. So it mostly depends on where the bus stops are, along with the Sims' preferences. And in the NAM, the maximum allowed commute time is essentially infinite, so you don't have to worry about trying to shave off a few seconds here and there from your commute; it's no longer Death Race 2000. Instead, you can concentrate on building the proper transportation systems for your city.

  Edited June 30, 2012 by z1  

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

<snip>

I dont know what the acronyms PEG and TE are, if you don't mind explaining? I'm also not 100% certain what you mean by terminal? Is there a terminal building as opposed to station. Or do you mean a terminal conceptually (End-of-line then find another mode of transportation)? If it is the second, is your terminal made up of multiple stations? I had my ground rail getting nearly 19K use on one track (more than 200% use with NAM at the Medium controller settings) and ended up adding two more tracks with the track switch loops (don't know what they are called irl) across every station. This allowed trains to take any track in any direction at every station. Ended up nearly evenly distributing the traffic across all 3 tracks. Was kinda proud of that since I was able to discover the 3-track switching on my own :-P

PEG refers to the Pegasus Web Site (free registration) with their exchange (PLEX). TE is Transit Enabled which means can connect to the transit network.

Some rail fundamentals:

Main Line

================================================Station======================================================

][ Spur

=====================================Station (Terminal)

=========================================================================================================

][.........................................................................................................][

==============================Station===============================

Siding

Now, most of the stations in the game are designed to have the tracks run through or beside them and continue. If you put a station on a main line or a siding, you get what I refer to as a Station.

If you put a station on a spur, then you get a Terminal because the tracks terminate there.

Note, the dots are just spaces. This editor eats spaces unless you use special codes.

  Edited June 30, 2012 by A Nonny Moose  

[husher 18]

I know how mayor fumble feels; when i started a new region i didn't put rail lines in to begin with, i got the cities established first with road, avenue and bus services networks to help the sims move around and it worked alright, In some of the bigger cities i addeed subways between the zones and that really reduced congestion, then the railways came along1, what a pain it is to install them mainly it's relitivly easy to connect cities together but in many cases urban sprawl prohibits cross city connections without major surgery and a lot of annoyed sims. It's taken about ten hours over a week to put in the rail system in only the quarter of the region that i've built on,now on starting a new city i create a sketch on paper of the connections surrounding the empty tile so the roads and rail lines are the correct ones,(its easy to confuse passenger line with freight lines), and yesterdays new city was a roaring sucsess, 6 game yeas old and 50k sims! with a comprehensive road and rail grid-brilliant!!

[Unassigned 23]

Trams, also called Ground Light Rail (GLR), can be very useful in reducing congestion. Trams can run in the middle of avenues and also on roads and streets. The stations are custom content, though. I use tram-in-avenue as the main public transport option in city centres, works great for my cities, but then I never had any tile with more than say 160K inhabitants.

Tram-in-avenue can be a pain to build, and there's an issue with placing stations and crashes, so be sure to save often when building this.

Amsterdam (which is not a square-grid city) has a well functioning tram system, you might find inspiration by takin a look, eg. in Google Maps or ditto Earth.

[MayorFumble 3]

I'm back. Was tied up with some personal things for a while.

Oh, and I assume that buses lets R$ travel farther because apparently NAM gives R$ a time penalty for using a car over a bus. I figured that since the penalty does not exist for buses and time=distance, then they can travel farther in buses over cars.

Not at all. The time penalty for cars is balanced out by the slightly lower speed for buses. So it mostly depends on where the bus stops are, along with the Sims' preferences. And in the NAM, the maximum allowed commute time is essentially infinite, so you don't have to worry about trying to shave off a few seconds here and there from your commute; it's no longer Death Race 2000. Instead, you can concentrate on building the proper transportation systems for your city.

I see. So buses are more for preferences, bus 'lines', and travel options at destination drop-off.

<snip>

I dont know what the acronyms PEG and TE are, if you don't mind explaining? I'm also not 100% certain what you mean by terminal? Is there a terminal building as opposed to station. Or do you mean a terminal conceptually (End-of-line then find another mode of transportation)? If it is the second, is your terminal made up of multiple stations? I had my ground rail getting nearly 19K use on one track (more than 200% use with NAM at the Medium controller settings) and ended up adding two more tracks with the track switch loops (don't know what they are called irl) across every station. This allowed trains to take any track in any direction at every station. Ended up nearly evenly distributing the traffic across all 3 tracks. Was kinda proud of that since I was able to discover the 3-track switching on my own :-P

PEG refers to the Pegasus Web Site (free registration) with their exchange (PLEX). TE is Transit Enabled which means can connect to the transit network.

Some rail fundamentals:

Main Line

================================================Station======================================================

][ Spur

=====================================Station (Terminal)

=========================================================================================================

][.........................................................................................................][

==============================Station===============================

Siding

Now, most of the stations in the game are designed to have the tracks run through or beside them and continue. If you put a station on a main line or a siding, you get what I refer to as a Station.

If you put a station on a spur, then you get a Terminal because the tracks terminate there.

Note, the dots are just spaces. This editor eats spaces unless you use special codes.

That makes sense. Do you have multiple main lines going to the same places in the event your track is being over saturated? I don't have the concept of a terminal in my city but I had to end up adding 3 tracks shared by all stations to avoid saturating any one of them. Even two tracks weren't enough.

I know how mayor fumble feels; when i started a new region i didn't put rail lines in to begin with, i got the cities established first with road, avenue and bus services networks to help the sims move around and it worked alright, In some of the bigger cities i addeed subways between the zones and that really reduced congestion, then the railways came along1, what a pain it is to install them mainly it's relitivly easy to connect cities together but in many cases urban sprawl prohibits cross city connections without major surgery and a lot of annoyed sims. It's taken about ten hours over a week to put in the rail system in only the quarter of the region that i've built on,now on starting a new city i create a sketch on paper of the connections surrounding the empty tile so the roads and rail lines are the correct ones,(its easy to confuse passenger line with freight lines), and yesterdays new city was a roaring sucsess, 6 game yeas old and 50k sims! with a comprehensive road and rail grid-brilliant!!

Thanks for the input. This mimics my experience of having to go bulldozer happy on my city and it being rather painful. I guess there really is no option but to plan out your general transporation scheme ahead of time.

Trams, also called Ground Light Rail (GLR), can be very useful in reducing congestion. Trams can run in the middle of avenues and also on roads and streets. The stations are custom content, though. I use tram-in-avenue as the main public transport option in city centres, works great for my cities, but then I never had any tile with more than say 160K inhabitants.

Tram-in-avenue can be a pain to build, and there's an issue with placing stations and crashes, so be sure to save often when building this.

Amsterdam (which is not a square-grid city) has a well functioning tram system, you might find inspiration by takin a look, eg. in Google Maps or ditto Earth.

I haven't quite nailed the game's built-in transit options. Once I learn to get the most out of them and grow my cities to the point where they aren't enough, I'll look into third-party options. But thanks for the heads up. Looks like I have to be careful if/when I get around to using them.

[Unassigned 23]

I haven't quite nailed the game's built-in transit options. Once I learn to get the most out of them and grow my cities to the point where they aren't enough, I'll look into third-party options. But thanks for the heads up. Looks like I have to be careful if/when I get around to using them.

Actually tram alias GLR is sort of reskinned el-rail (which is built-in transit), so perhaps my preference for trams is because I'm more familiar with trams than el irl. Also I find tram in roads or avenues aesthetically more pleasing than double-decker el over roads.

There are even transitions available between tram and el tracks, so it's the same network, really.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

My main reason for using terminals is to get the statistics right. Through stations include all passengers passing through as well as passengers using the station. As for multiple lines, I generally have a consolidated rail line somewhere, but I am not shy about laying down spurs and sub-sets as needed. I hardly ever get a multiple line situation where they are actually parallel, but use other forms if the passenger load gets too high. Monorail can provide a great relief.

If you want to play model rail roading, try separating your freight and passenger lines. This is an opportunity for all kinds of overpasses and underpasses.

  Edited July 3, 2012 by A Nonny Moose