Question about pedestrian tiles

[Mcnamara 1]

So downloading NAM has been the best mod ever. I love how my city is turning out.

 

Now, about the pedestrian tiles, it says they're for Malls (commercial zones). So my question is, if a commercial zone needs to head to a street, do the tiles do the work?

 

I don't know if I explain myself correctly (english is not my native language), but for example, instead of the commerial being directed to a street, can it be directed to pedestrian tiles and NOT show the "no car access" icon?

 

In other words, what is the best use of pedestrian tiles? thanks in advance!

[AcronShinra 60]

COM zones can be surrounded only by ped malls and still be used, >BUT< you need to put a transit stop like Bus/Subway stop on tile adjacent to one of ped malls. Pedestrian traffic is unable to move from street into ped mall directly.

[nos.17 5,112]

COM zones can be surrounded only by ped malls and still be used, >BUT< you need to put a transit stop like Bus/Subway stop on tile adjacent to one of ped malls. Pedestrian traffic is unable to move from street into ped mall directly.

 

Yes, all of what Acron said. You might pick up some ideas from but I would recommend you not use pedmalls on a large scale; rather they should supplement roads/streets.

[Prophet42 1,500]

Actually, I like to use the Ped Mall tiles for parks and plazas.

[Mcnamara 1]

They look pretty great actually, I just wanna make them usable by the sims.

[Nekroosi 3]

There is a connector piece somewhere on STEX that allows them to be connected to the roadsystem, i use pedestrian bridce pieces to cross railways so my sims can access trainstations easier.

 

Here's one way to use them so that pedestrians can walk straight to the subway without congesting the roads:

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Pedestrian Malls make a very nice extension to rail stations, especially those that have no platform external to the lot.  They make a very nice transition plaza if you have, for example, a monorail line and a rail line with stations along two of the mall edges, a road along the other edge and a few commercial buildings on the remaining side.  Very nice looking.

[infamousjbe 592]

Has anyone tried building a 'roadless' CBD using only the ped mall tiles and an extensive subway/glr system? Probably an extensive Park&Ride system to back it up. Could that even work? 

 

Been thinking about attempting this recently and seems like a good time to ask the question.

[AcronShinra 60]

Never tried such idea, but considering game mechanics it would work as long as you would be able to tunnel/redirect traffic to/through your original CBD. Doesn't matter for Sims if they travel on foot, in car or via mass transport, they only care for speed and getting to destination in shortest route. So, yeah, GLR/Sub or maybe even Monorail would work wonders, parkings too with adjacent bus/sub stops.

[cogeo 960]

Pedestrian mall tiles are networks that form pedestrian-only thoroughfares. Commercial lots can grow, even if served exclusively by such pedestrian streets. There are two major problems with ped-mall tiles though:

- The lots around pedestrian-only streets lack high traffic (=customers) and are therefore less desirable for commercial development, compared to normal roads and avenues. Older NAM versions attempted to conuter this by providing a strong park+landmark effect; many tiles put together resulted in an excessively high effect. The effects were removed in some NAM version, but I think they were btought back later (you must check to make sure). Anyways, the low customers problem can be worked around to some (large) extent by utilising the transitional aura effect of plazas and trees. You need some experimentation, to learn how to use this technique effectively.

- Access is problematic, even for workers. They must reach their workplaces as pedestrians, but as the distance from their homes is usually too long to walk, they need some form of mass-transit, with stops close to both the residences and the workplaces, to get there. And not all workers can use the MT system, and many of them won't use it even if they can, due to the Traffic Simulator settings. What can prove helpful, is to put a parking garage at the commercial end (it must be touching both the road and the pedestrian tiles to work). Then workers can drive to the parking and then walk to their workplaces (through the pedestrian tiles). But the ingame parking garage is ugly and humongous, while open air parking garages take up a lot of space and look unrealistic in dense urban areas. So the solution would be... an underground parking garage. Underground? Ehmmm... yes, at least it looks so! This is the idea behind my Both parking garages and subways have pavements that match the pedestrian tiles' ones, so they integrate better visually. Check the readme for details.

Any parking garage or MT station would be functional though.

[infamousjbe 592]

I understand the need for traffic to grow the larger buildings, but in this case, since you're deliberately trying to build the CBD, it would probably be better to just plop the buildings you'd want. If you build it, the Sims will come. 

 

When I mentioned 'extensive', I did mean over the top. The only roads would be for the R buildings to grow, but their streets didn't actually take them to the CBD, they'd be forced to take the subway by putting a Sub station on every block, as well as adjacent to every C building in the CBD. The time they'd actually have to walk would be minuscule.

 

And to get it straight, you're saying that the TC is set with a % of Sims that will refuse to take the subway system? Sure that could probably be tweaked if necessary.

 

Cool little lot pack you have there. Have not come across that set yet. ty

[Mcnamara 1]

All good info, thanks a bunch.

[paeng 2,510]

For me I went a different approach, without any pedmalls -

 

 

 

* an alternative version with sandstone is available over at simpeg.com...

[.anonyman 28]

Has anyone tried building a 'roadless' CBD using only the ped mall tiles and an extensive subway/glr system? 

 

I'm convinced that this could work, but so far I've only tried it with small industrial areas:

 

 

That's 1500 workers using the monorail station; there's no other way for them to get to work. Traffic and pollution are almost zero in this city.

[IljaS 54]

How is your freight getting out?

[infamousjbe 592]

That's 1500 workers using the monorail station; there's no other way for them to get to work. Traffic and pollution are almost zero in this city.

 

 

 It certainly seemed feasible in theory. 

 

As reformed asked, and also curious, how does the Industry freight reach the boarders with that technique?

 

At least for Commercial zoning, you wouldn't have to worry so much about freight.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Freight is easy.  Add a ground rail line with freight terms.

[Ro-Bo 183]

...or seaport.

 

Probably mix in subways so sims can travel further and faster.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

If you can use a rail-enabled seaport, then you can have rail spurs mixed within the industrial areas.  Done properly, no stations needed.

[infamousjbe 592]

Well most know how to deal with freight, but I think Reform and I were specifically interested in how .anonyman deals with his industrial freight from that image.

 

Wouldn't the route query also show lines for the underground rail if there was one present in that image? I've never used underground rail, so not sure how the query handles that outside of the Traffic menu.

[tjg 0]

I found that within a dense population base I do not require the adjacent mass transit.  Sufficient pedestrian suffice. 

 

Question:  Can anyone point me to the NAM mod that changes the default ped mall option 1 with the better tree/planter/parking mod as well as changing the standard ped mall with the white stone to match? 

 

My system blew up - still working to restore - and I can't stand the visual of all that chaos on each tile.  Thanks!

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

The ped mall tiles are what you get in the NAM unless you override them with something else.

 

What do you mean your system blew up?  Like in Bang! or did it just die of not doing disk maintenance?  Mine quit this morning and wouldn't even power up, but I just tightened all connections and reset the power bars.  All OK now.