Solved many issues caused by traffic

[Shardak 8]

I was having serious problems with:

 

1) garbage collection not getting to all the areas of the city

 

2) fire/police/ambulances not appearing to do anything at all (had dozens of cop cars, but criminals were all over the place).

 

3)Major gridlock at the entry to my city from the regional highway.  I assume this was causing commuters to get stuck but not sure how to tell.

 

 

I had all the mass-transit options maxed out....tons of shuttle buses, municipal buses, rail, streetcars etc...but my traffic was out of control.

 

As I was zoomed in following a garbage truck to see why it was basically going in circles, I noticed that there was gridlock caused by about 10 buses waiting at a bus stop.  So I decided to bulldoze the bus-stop...and traffic cleared right up.

 

I removed all bus-stops from streets (left a few in place on the high density avenues).  I replaced the bus-stops with a few park and ride lots. 

 

This dropped traffic congestion probably 75% across my entire city. 

 

It seems like if you have too many buses or too many bus-stops, the buses will block traffic as they sit at the bus-stop waiting to load people.

 

After this, my crime, health issues, and garbage issues all went away.  I was able to reduce my garbage and recycle truck count by 50% and they now
clean the whole city, same with police cars.  Following a recycle truck now, I can see it actually working instead of sitting still or driving around the same block over and over again.

 

It was kind of cool that I could actually see the problem by zooming down close to street level.  So kudo's to glassbox for that.  Still I think there may be a bug in the code...as you should not have 20 buses waiting in line at the same bus-stop. 

 

 

 

[wilbursim 10]

oh good tip!!!!!  i have two cities with about 200K sims in them combined.... GRIDLOCK....  i cant wait to see if your tip works... and yes, the buses should be able to tell if the stops are full... now, if the servers would open up....

[floss83 6]

makes sense to replace bus stops with a larger solution...thanks Shardak

[copperreddc 2]

makes sense to replace bus stops with a larger solution...thanks Shardak

In the AI it might make sense but that's not how cities really work. In the real world a park and ride is at the exterior of the city, or the suburbs to let people drop off their cars and ride transit in. It also means someone is driving to the lot and thus taking up more space on the road. Now I'm very aware of bus bunching (thanks WMATA!) and I know it can be an impediment but really bus lanes and bus only streets are more of a solution. I look at their transit model and I think "What is this, LA?" It most certainly doesn't reflect transit planning in any major city, except again, LA, the disaster zone of road gridlock.

I also call bull on their "wealthier residents drive, they don't use transit" concept, which is laughably wrong and a sign they have no idea about transit at all.