Police, Fire & EMS Services.

[dhuffer 2]

I get so mad at these services once my population gets up there. I mean after all in real life vehicles on road ways and people yield to emergency vehicles when they respond to a call. Also they are able to blow traffic lights and such. If they were at least able to blow the traffic lights that would be a help.

[mastorofpuppetz 199]

I get so mad at these services once my population gets up there. I mean after all in real life vehicles on road ways and people yield to emergency vehicles when they respond to a call. Also they are able to blow traffic lights and such. If they were at least able to blow the traffic lights that would be a help.

Totally agree, traffic is still a major mess after being patched numerous times.  I can see why the maps are so small, the simulation would  break if your population got higher.

[AkemiAzula 280]

This is indeed a problem. In my current city there is about 150,000 residents, all packed into 2 by 2 kilometres. I have pretty much nothing but streetcar high density avenues... And the police and fire never get to crimes/fires on time. It's ridiculous.

[Rufus Honker IV 100]

A city 2 X 2 having as many issues as ours do in such a small area no matter the population would be under investigation by the government.  For such a small area, a single fire station should be sufficient to handle the area - instead, when you only have half the area filled with development your fire department is handling multiple fires at once and is still incapable of doing it.

[Noobi-Wan 22]

Does anyone know how the traffic is generated? Does it get a bump in a similar way to population numbers?

I agree that the emergency vehicles should get right of way as a start but it just seems that if the traffic were thinned out a bit then it wouldn't hurt so much if they didn't.

I have resorted to using helicopters only on the fire station as they can disregard the traffic but it is quite an expensive exercise.

[infoman96 27]

This truly pisses me off, at times I'll just build an entirely new station just because the fire is so far from the existing station.

[Noobi-Wan 22]

This truly pisses me off, at times I'll just build an entirely new station just because the fire is so far from the existing station.

I think this was the intent behind the coverage system but I agree that a 2km area in real life would not need so many emergency services in real life!

[MayorQuimbie 13]

Id bet most of the issues posted on this topic are due to poor layout or city design...

 

Traffic isnt a major problem until you have 150 -200k population... even then.... if your city demograph and design are suited its not a show stopper.

 

Yes mass transit & emergency services arnt great but they arnt the sole reason your cities are failing...

[Noobi-Wan 22]

Id bet most of the issues posted on this topic are due to poor layout or city design...

 

Traffic isnt a major problem until you have 150 -200k population... even then.... if your city demograph and design are suited its not a show stopper.

 

Yes mass transit & emergency services arnt great but they arnt the sole reason your cities are failing...

 

Ha, true enough! I think you are right for the most part but I think that some of it may be due to the fact that Maxis never intended for this game to be the massive population city builder that it's predecessors were. I remember watching an early video with one of the guys at Maxis saying that the intent of this one was not to make a huge New York style city. If this is the case then we were never going to be able to get the massive populations without some sort of draw back. Perhaps this is one such issue that becomes part of the real challenge of the game? I know I keep going back for one more go to see if I can get it right.

 

Also I wouldn't say that my cities are completely failing (all the time ), I have tried in most cases to limit population to below 150k and play around with road layouts to get the best coverage of the emergency services and this approach tends to work until I go for the high density buildings which is when my road layouts fail. In itself this is not so much of an issue, I can handle the failure but there is nothing quite so frustrating as watching the brand new buildings burn down with a fire truck stuck in traffic a block away.

 

I have similar frustrations with the hospital/clinic coverage and people dying but this likely comes back to the same issue with road layout...

[dhuffer 2]

I don't doubt that my layouts are not perfect.... I just think these vehicles should have "right of way" just as they do in real life. Thats the point of the lights and sirens isn't it? just saying also my cities are not failing because of this I just wanted to vent.

[MayorQuimbie 13]

Emergency vehicles definitely need tweaking.. but i wouldn’t know if this is possible or not....

 

 

Something a lot of people forget, from watching people play in the public region, is city layout. City areas should be planned out at the beginning allowing you to design the layout in such a way that keeps the various forms of traffic separate...

 

 

I don’t play to specific ratios or rules on having commercial right next to residential.... mainly for astatic reasons but i use that as a basis for my city planning...I don’t want sims commuting across my main city entrance highway for example... A little bit of thought goes a long way to alleviating traffic problems...

 

 

Of course you always end up tweaking once things get going and its not as easy as I make it out to be.... but it helps...

 

 

A good gauge is..... as you have probably noticed..... is how your emergency services cope....

 

 

I don’t think I ever HAVE to place large emergency service buildings and a handful of vehicles seem to cover my cities fine...

 

One tip... when your cities do grow.. make sure you control it. Don’t go upgrading lengths of roads willy nilly...Wait between changes and take note of its effect.  keep an eye on the numbers rather than the graphs...

 

 

Most of all... enjoy the game...no point in rushing your cities, they don’t play out long enough as it is....

[dhuffer 2]

Yep I don't like rushing things it's more about watching things progress.

[specializedguy 193]

This truly pisses me off, at times I'll just build an entirely new station just because the fire is so far from the existing station.

 

Isn't this the way it is in bigger cities? My city has several stations.

[CarloTheCurious 3]

iirc, they did do some tweaks to emergency vehicle traffic, but I forget the details. I'll see if I can find a link.

 

EDIT: I was thinking of 1.7, which obviously didn't help all that much.

 

 

Isn't this the way it is in bigger cities?

 

 

Bigger than 2km a side, you mean?

[infoman96 27]

This truly pisses me off, at times I'll just build an entirely new station just because the fire is so far from the existing station.

Isn't this the way it is in bigger cities? My city has several stations.

Yes, I live in DC where there are many stations; but our cities on SimCity are quite small therefore the need of four stations for adequate coverage is inane. Once we have a full sixteen square miles of land, then I'll understand the need of more stations; but a city of 214k only two or four square miles doesn't need that many fire stations.

[Rufus Honker IV 100]

Id bet most of the issues posted on this topic are due to poor layout or city design...

 

Traffic isnt a major problem until you have 150 -200k population... even then.... if your city demograph and design are suited its not a show stopper.

 

Yes mass transit & emergency services arnt great but they arnt the sole reason your cities are failing...

 

However being a game where your road and zone layout have such an impact on things the game and professing to let us be creative should have better tutorials on how to zone properly or give a heck of a lot of leeway to allow us to be creative.  There should not be a "right way" to build your city.

[Eriseley 4]

I just like when my garbage trucks troll them on single-lane roads.