is there such thing as too much mass transit?

[soldyne 111]

I have been working on a new city design lately and I want to incorporate lots of mass transit into the design.  I am posting this thread in this forum because my question is more about mass transit and RH than it is about city design.

 

anyway, I want to use many different forms of mass transit and road types to include: roads, oneways, avenues, highways, heavy passenger rail, subways, busses, and monorail.  But is that just overkill?  I usually dont use rail or monorail and have very rarely used highways, one ways or avenues in any of my designs.  unfortunatley most of my cities collapse due to commute time around 200k population or so, which is what is triggering this desire to redesign.

 

Busses and subways are so versitile.  They have a small foot print and go everywhere and anywhere.  Busses of course use the road that is already there, and subways are underground and out of the way not taking up valuable space topside.  I am using Road Top Masstransit and the foot print for a buss/subway station is even smaller now that I can combine them and put it on the road tile instead of taking up valuable zone worthy realestate.  I never used to use the other forms as they take up a lot of room not only in station foot prints but also in laying down the tracks.  you cant build facing a rail and you cant build under a monorail.  they just seem to take up space.

 

<edit> 

I forgot that RTMT does cause no road zots infront of the zones where they are and so it is almost as bad as actually ploping them on the zone.  however, it is possible to zone a 2x2 (3x3) footprint or larger zone area which allows the building to still have at least one road tile of access so RTMT still takes up less space

</edit>

 

What I am ultimately seeking is for some expert advise about using multiple forms of mass transport;  is there a point at which using more forms (or even all forms) in the same city just becomes overkill and no longer adds to the efficiency of the network?

 

There is the idea that multiple forms reduces station congestion, but I can just add more bus and subway stations to reduce congestion, I dont really need a whole new form of transport to solve that problem.

 

I am sure you can show me all kinds of cities which are prosperous and use multiple forms of mass transport, but could those same cities also be prosperous with just a good bus and subway network?

 

I have heard people talking about certain forms of mass transport catering to different types of sims, like R$ will take the bus and rail, R$$ will take rail and subway, and R$$$ will take monorail (but prefer their cars).  this might not have any truth to it but that kind of information would be useful.

 

Thanks in advance for any info.

[tungston 19]

Soldyne:  I am sure you will get a lot of pro's and con's on the subject.  I use them all, and I think a lot of the lost real estate is made up by increased occupancy.  Of course a balance is needed just like any other aspect of the game.

I don't lend a lot of credence to the theory of the wealth versus transit, sure some prefer one over the other, but that doesn't stop them from using the other.  I do my cities with mostly grids, but in sections, so several transits are needed.

 

EDIT:  I also try to connect the cities with water so I can make use of that form of transportation.

[jglei701 8]

The only place you'll have trouble with the no-road zots is in the residential zones... so don't worry about it in the commercial and industrial.

$$$R sims like their cars and so they will tend to drive if allowed.

 

There ARE ways to force them to use mass transit...  make the only connection between commercial/industrial and residential zones a type of mass transit (such as subway, or rail).  But if they can possibly use their cars, they will.

 

The first city I built myself, I used every type of mass transit.  I was new to SC4 and I wanted to see how they all worked... and for the most part, they worked pretty well.  I still had alot of car traffic, but I had a decent percentage of my populace using other means.

 

If you really want alot of mass transit use, you have to plan well.  I planned my MT BEFORE I zoned and I made sure that I gave the sims enough different ways to get to work.

 

You should start a CJ and post your results... let us see how this goes!

[soldyne 111]

thanks for the good replies.  And as a matter of fact I am planning on starting a CJ soon which will include all kinds of cities (rural to urban and all inbetween).  I am also trying to plan out my urban settings with Mass transit in mind.  I am trying to incorporate as many different types as I can with the grid system (only for urban settings).  the farther away from city center I get the less grids there will be.  I dont want to start the CJ until I have most of my designs worked out.

 

I have been thinking about the multiple mass transit types in one city and have come to an interesting conclusion which I plan on testing.  Rail, subway and monorail are the big three when it comes to transportation.  Monorail is very fast but takes up a lot of space (hard to tunnel with monorail).  Subway is very expensive to lay out but takes up little space and is 25% slower than monorail.  rail is cheap but it takes up space and is 50% slower than monorail, rail however has the added advantage of moving frieght in addition to passengers.

 

so I was thinking that I could create some kind of transit hub at various locations in my city design which would include a monorail station, rail station, subway station, and bus station.  I can then place bus stations at varying intervals throughout the city.  with perfect pathfinding from the NAM they should be smart enough to take the bus to the transit hub and use the residential hub to get to either the industry or commercial hub and use the bus there to get to work.  this should reduce the need for lots of stations all over the place and hopefully maximize valuable zoning land.

 

This is just a theory at the moment.  I'll try to put it into action tonight or some time soon.

[SkyTearer 10]

In my opinion, no there is no such thing as too much mass transit, infact i force mass transit between cities, with only rail connecting them, not only gains income but looks nice and leaves nature be. -Out

[tungston 19]

Soldyne:  It is a extremly tedious task to work the monorail, and railroad around each other.  And then there is the dreaded monorail crossing over the elevated highway, there is a bridge for it in the NAM, but it is too long, and the texturing is atrocious.  So I stick with the ground to elevated transition.

I like your idea of a CJ, so I will be watching for it.

[nadavs 2]

Too much mass transit? I desperately want my residents to use it and refrain from driving. Sadly, they choose driving instead (but pay me

[goldielocks 1]

Well elevated highways are no prob i find. Its when your areas are clogged and u got to rip down stuff to get the monorail in there that causes me problems. I guess i should plan better

[soldyne 111]

Well moderators, its up to you now, either keep this post here in Rush Hour section or move it game experiments.

 

So after posting here and getting some ideas I began planning a city with Mass Transit already in mind.  I am using all forms of MT except elevated rail (and ferry since the map I was using does not have water, but I would use ferry if it did!).  I dont show any subways in these pics as subway is mostly underground and I am using Road Top Mass Transit building to put bus stops and subways on the same tile.  so everywhere you see a bus stop it is also a planned subway station.  I also plan on using the NAM with perfect pathfinding installed to increase transit efficiency.

 

I'll mention this again later on in this post but I want to make it clear that I am designing this city layout with the idea of producing a residential surplus.  I want to use this surplus to feed connecting Industrial areas and my large Central Business District.

 

I also want to remind people that when the city first starts building i will destroy all the trasit stations to reduce upkeep costs.  I will gradually replace the trasit stations as they become needed.  right now the transit upkeep for this map is about 2k every month.  not bad for a large city but it could kill a fledgling village especially when you add in power, water and garbage.

 

which reminds me that water can easily be supplied within this cities limits (there are plenty of open tiles between the rail and highway for water pumps.  Power and garbage will most likely have to come from a neighbor connection, but that is how I play the game most of the time anyway (at least until solar or hydrogen plants become available).

 

here is a pic of the region transportation view:

 

here is an overall pic of the layout:

 

 

next we have a closeup of what I like to call a neighborhood.  here is where you can start to see how I have laid things out.  I have avenues along the outer edge of the neighborhood.  surrounding that I have passenger rail and highway.  I use monorail to cut my neighborhood up into quadrants which I call blocks.  I have a set of complimentary oneway roads on either side of the monorail with a large oneway roundabout encircling the monorail intersection:

 

In this pic I am highlighting the connection between neighborhoods.  notice the use of tunnels to remove rail crossings over avenues.  I also opted for only one highway entrance/exit per neighborhood connection.  not sure if that is a good idea or not but I like tunnels so there .  using a highway tunnel here also gives me a few extra tiles for zones (more zones equal more taxes) and provides room for pretty much any reward building (even the dreaded 12x12 country club and the airport tram), of course the avenue would have to be moved slightly for it to fit!  this pic also demonstrates how the web of mass transit networks can work in unison and not get in eachothers way if laid out properly:

http://img456.imageshack.us/img456/9106/transitcrossings7xv.jpg align=baseline>

 

In this next pic I am focusing on the highway intersection and the rail inverted intersection.  since the rail needed to cross here and go beneath the cloverleaf I had to divise a slick way to have the rail turn back on itself.  if you follow the rail closely you can see that it is very possible for the train to go in any direction it needs to go with little hassle:

http://img456.imageshack.us/img456/4611/fourcorners9gn.jpg align=baseline>

 

here we see the center of a neighborhood with the monorail intersection and the large one way road roundabout.  This area is left unzoned to provide a centralized location for civic buildings.  my neighbor hood size is just nearly the perfect size to fit within the radius of a large hospital, large elem school and large high school.  fire and police will need to be placed more startegically however.  I also know that later on I will need more room for more civic buildings, but this is just my first design and the whole point of an experiment is to find out the truth:

http://img456.imageshack.us/img456/4360/roundabout4qp.jpg align=baseline>

 

next we see a zoomed out pic of a zoned neighborhood.  This layout is mainly going to be used for large cities which will generate a surplus of residential population.  that surplus is intended to feed into Industrial cities and my large CBD.  I use the sparse Commercial zones here to help reduce overall commute times and make sure to envelop the mass transit stations with residential.  I am also working with the idea of creating small downtown commercial areas in the spots between neighborhoods.  this area is also going to be used for rewards, parks, and city wide civic buildings (university, college, large library, museum, etc):

http://img456.imageshack.us/img456/1159/zonedneighborhood7qj.jpg align=baseline>

 

In this next scene we see a closer image of the zoned block.  you can see better how I have laid out the bus stops (and future subway stations).  I plan on using the Road Top Mass Transit found on the STEX so I can have the almighty busstop/subway station and only use one tile.  The excess of bus stops here is to show how congested stations can be expanded later on.  what might not be so visible are the oneway busstops on both sides of each monorail station.  As I mentioned in a previous post I beleive that bus stops should be used as funnel transit to help get the sims to the big three (rail, subway, monorail) faster and more efficiently:

http://img456.imageshack.us/img456/7418/zonedblock2iy.jpg align=baseline>

 

in this next pic I am zoomed in even further to the block to show you all how I faced the zones on the roads.  notice that this strategic placement of zone fronts will not cause any NO ROAD ZOTS to appear due to the RTMT stations.  The commercial zones laid themselves out in the 3x3 pattern, that was not my doing, but I like it anyway.  Another thing to note is how I concentrated most of the residential facing on the avenues and tried to limit residential facing on the roads.  As residential buidings increase in capacity this will become a major issue for traffic and noise level:

http://img110.imageshack.us/img110/1447/zonedfacing3is.jpg align=baseline>

 

thats all I have for the moment.  I don't know when I will get around to continuing this little experiment as I have a bit of Real Life Situations to tend to (getting ready to graduate from college in a few weeks YIPPIE!).

 

please comment and make suggestions.  The experiments on the forums are not just for the people posting.  the results of these experiments are for the benefit of the entire Simtropolis community.

[stefano666 0]

hello i have a question how do you get those left turn lanes on the road ?? look at the crossings http://img110.imageshack.us/img110/1447/zonedfacing3is.jpg align=baseline>

[soldyne 111]

Date: 11/17/2005 8:18:47 AM Author: stefano666 hello i have a question how do you get those left turn lanes on the road ?? look at the crossings

quote>

 

excellent question:  the answer is in the latest NAM download from the the modding files section or the simtropolis homepage.  when you install the newest version of NAM be sure to select the turn lane mod from the plugins options.

[stefano666 0]

thanks and I am going to download the NAM

[Jayayess1190 3]

Congrats on graduating college!

[tungston 19]

Soldyne:  I prefer to have the commercial zones more closely grouped.  But I am just watching, with interest.  I may have already said how I like the transit network.  It is very creative.

[TheCrybKeeper 300]

Soldyne: yessiree! I will watch this as well, right along side Tungston. This will definitely give me more insight on MT. I haven't really gotten passed buses and subways.

 

Fantastic idea with the underground rails and highway! Now you really got me brainstorming!

 

Maybe you could bury the entire railway, except at depots? That would save some much needed space.

[soldyne 111]

thanks for the encouraging words everyone.  I am currently planning a way to integrate an industrial city and CBD city with the residentail connections.  I dont want the same grid pattern to extend into those cities mainly because I don't want the entire region to be monotonous and Industrial and Commercial zones work a little differently from res.

 

Ill post more stuff when I get it.  thanks again for the encouragement.

[soldyne 111]

A NEW UPDATE! 

 

I have finished laying out both a large city mass transit network and an industrial city mass transit network.  I centered both layouts and created a block of 9 city squares as shown below.  I have not put in highways or monorail yet as I will wait until those forms are needed.  but you can figure out where they will be going by looking at the previous update.  also, I have not placed any bus stops in yet so you wont see them in these pics, but again, look at the previous pics to see where they will be going:

http://img512.imageshack.us/img512/3380/freshregionwhole2ll.jpg align=baseline>

 

the layout of the city portion changed hardly at all.  the industrial portion is slightly different.  I opted to go with a slightly larger grid of avenues:

http://img512.imageshack.us/img512/5756/regionindustry5ha.jpg align=baseline>

 

here is a pic of one of the industrial neighborhoods with zones placed:

http://img512.imageshack.us/img512/7567/industryzoned3ev.jpg align=baseline>

 

this next pic is close up of the industrial zoned block.  you can see that there is a frieght station next to each passenger station.  you can also see that the center line within the avenues is different when surrounded by industrial as compared to being surrounded by residential or commercial (ie less landscaping):

http://img512.imageshack.us/img512/6364/industryblock8ic.jpg align=baseline>

 

here is a close up of the parceled industrial zones.  yep they are parceled to be 3x3 industrial zones.  I got the idea from a thread in the game experiments section.  it is supposed to make the industrial zones look a bit more organized.  we shall see:

http://img512.imageshack.us/img512/4884/industryparcel6fz.jpg align=baseline>

 

this next pic is an aerial view of the residential city fully finished:

http://img512.imageshack.us/img512/7033/cityfull8uo.jpg align=baseline>

 

when I started to redo the city layout I wanted to make sure that the neighborhoods were centered and evenly spaced.  unfortunately, my neighborhood design has an odd number of tiles because of the monorail in the middle.  this caused a slight anomoly when I did the center neighborhood.  it is not a big deal, I will just fill the extra tile space with parks or something.  what I am talking about is the extra tile space between the one way roads.  this is where the monorail is supposed to go and two tiles wide is one tile too big:

http://img512.imageshack.us/img512/5249/roundabouttrouble7mn.jpg align=baseline>

 

this next pic is showing what I did with the space between the neighborhoods and the map edge.  when I centered everything I had this buffer zone of empty space.  I am not sure what kind of purpose this space will serve yet; low rent housing projects, strip malls, we shall see:

http://img512.imageshack.us/img512/5075/bufferzones2fg.jpg align=baseline>

 

That is all for this update.  Next on my list is to actually start building a city in this mess!  I dont plan to have any trouble until the maps start getting full, that is when we shall see if this mass transit system I designed really holds up.

[tungston 19]

Soldyne:  I think, but I hope not, you are going to have problems with that size of industrial zone.  I use a 6x6 and occasionaly I get a stupid company that will build if there is an empty space left in the center.  Then of course the no car zot appears.

It is looking good, so keep it up.

[ap8806 0]

Wow! Looks amazing! Is there anyway for you to allow us to test it out for ourselves? Like saving the city and making it available?

[TheCrybKeeper 300]

Going along really well, Soldyne!

You may run into various problems, but that's a good thing; it will give you tremendous insight, into how your design/layout will effect things.

 

Also where you can cut corners or modify MT.

 

The Traffic Data view is simply beautiful! Symmetry is artistic too!

[soldyne 111]

thanks everyone.  Yes I may indeed have problems later on but as it has been said an experiment is not a failure if it does not yeild expected results, it is a failure if it yields no results at all.

 

as far as grids and symmetry are concerned this is how I like to live my life; efficient and orderly.  and so it is the style I fall back on when designing a large city.  When I begin my actually CJ in the City Journal forums I will have a hand terraformed region with mountains, hills and rivers and most of my rural and suburb areas will be more freeform.  this current experiment is for the main downtown area.  I want something different from the basic grid style but still efficient enough to get large buildings and high populations.

 

as far as the industry areas go, I have already used this parceliaztion design in a limited fashion and was please with the results.  of course it was just a small experiment at the time so things may not work out as planned.

 

but that is the fun of an experiment, to see what happens!

 

If anyone wants a copy of the city layouts just send me a pm with your email address and Ill send you a .zip.  I can't attach them (even as a .zip) because the city files are just too darn big.

 

 the way I made my region was to do the first city by hand and then I copied the city file itself (out of game) multiple times and then imported the copied versions.  I then used the ingame cheat:

 

whererufrom City_name

 

to change the name of the city.  changing the file name will not change the city name in game.  if I did all the cities by hand I would still be on the second one!

 

[storms991 0]

WOW thats some hardcore planning rite there. I have to use that technique.

[soldyne 111]

NEW UPDATE!

 

here is the state of region.  I have one main res city, the north is High Tech industry, the south is Manufacturing and Dirty industry and the east is the beginnings of a Central Business District.  I have only zoned low density res and com for the moment.  yep that is a large map with nothing but low density res.  they have all the services they could ever want and I am making a profit of about 10k a month.  the residents have everything they could ever want, art museum, main library, resort hotel, advanced research center, minor league stadium, radio station, a few cemetaries and an airport tram (which goes to the airport that does not exist).  The only cheats used thus far is the god mode trees cheat (and the city renaming cheat).  all the money and rewards were earned the old fashioned way.  I dont have any pics of the city proper since it is pretty boring right now, but once things pick up Ill take more pics:

 

http://img512.imageshack.us/img512/7720/sateoftheregion19fc.jpg align=baseline>

 

here are the current data views describing the transit network and the zoning pattern I used for the main city.  as you can see commute time for this large city is only about 30 minuets (not bad so far).  the second most common form of transport is walking!  thats a new one on me!  of course with only 60k peeps in the city the transit network is still a little bit overkill:

http://img512.imageshack.us/img512/2502/dataviewsnov221en.jpg align=baseline>

 

here is a close up of the parcelized IHT area.  I originally just threw down some random, non parcelized zones and things looked like carp.  I rezoned with 3x3 parcels and now everything is moving along swimmingly and it looks good too!

http://img512.imageshack.us/img512/3100/parcelizedindustry0ak.jpg align=baseline>

[TheCrybKeeper 300]

Oh how I love this design, Soldyne! Exceptionally well done, on the commute times!

I can't believe I never realized the parcelling of Industry. Why was it not obvious to some of us, I wonder?

I still haven't tried it yet, but plan to, in my next adventure in SC4.

 

Thanks for giving the community this great POV, Soldyne!

[soldyne 111]

<edit>  ap8806:  I got your PM and have not had a chance to send the files to you.  I will try to remember to do it tonight.  as you can see by the post below, i was kind of tied up with things yesterday.  sorry </edit>

 

Quick update: (sorry no pics  )

 

I had some trouble in my city yesterday...first some background on the way I mayor.  Whenever I place an incinerator I reduce the funding for it to 0.  this basically gives me a garbage burner for free with some pollution as incinerators will burn garbage even with no funding, they just wont produce any power.  however, when this is done all subsequent power buildings will be plopped at a default funding level equal to the average of all other power buildings including all incinerators...

 

so, my city was doing well and I was given the solar plant reward, so I decided to replace my coal plants with them.  well I pause the game, destroy the coal plants, replace them with solar power.  everything looks great...I unpause the game... ... see where this is going?

 

well I forgot about the default funding and all my solar plants were funded at 0.  when I unpaused the entire city (at this point around 100k pop) had a city wide blackout!  and because there was no power, there was also no water.  by the time I was able to pause the game, fix the funding issue and get water and power up and running again my pop had dropped to 7k........

 

it was a nightmare.  I had done so much development before hand I did not want to reset so I kept going.  so many abandoned buildings, so much horror.  my income dropped from 60k to 5k in the blink of an eye.  but my expenses stayed at 50k.  good thing I has some money saved up.  I let it run for a while and eventually people started to move back in.  but there are still areas of town with eniter blocks of abandoned buildings, remnants of the Great Black Out of 102 (that was the year it happened).

 

ever since then my city has not been quite right.  some areas will develop well, and other areas still have undeveloped zones even with high desirability, land value, and civic services.

 

what makes this disaster even worse is that I made a post on gamefaqs.com to someone about the very issue of underfunding incinerators and making sure to check power funding on all new power buildings...shame on me, shame on me...

 

well the good news is that the city right now is at the tail end of recovery and I have a few mayoral tricks left up my sleeve to entice growth.  the city is once again profitable (barely) and the connecting cities are all doing well (except my IHT city which is still not making a profit but is close).

 

when I feel my center city is well enough to take pics of I will post em, probably before the end of the holiday weekend.

[TheCrybKeeper 300]

Soldyne: accidents happen sometimes. Glad you got things back on track.

I will be looking for that update, friend.

[soldyne 111]

YAY!  My 100th post!  and its a big one!

 

ok New Update.  The experiment has indeed yielded results although they were not the results I had in mind.  first a few pics to show you the state of the region:

 

 

 

 

 

 

here are some closeups and information from the downtown area.  the downtown area was a huge success.  mass transit was going in full swing and as you will see all forms of mass transit were more popular than driving!  I even had a few skyscrappers, was able to get two landmarks, lower taxes and still come out ahead in the budget.  I decided to use the center grid in each block as a large parking area (courtesy of PEG alleyways).  I thought it gave the look of a more commercial downtown feeling.  it also increase desirability for commercial by quite a lot:

 

 

 

 

 

Now we will start to get into the city proper.  Things did not go so well here.  if you look at the traffic chart you will see that mass transit was indeed being used quite extensivly.  the only congestion in the city was on the monorail, subway, and rail lines.  the roads and avenues and highway were barely being used at all.  the problem though was that eventhough mass transit was being used so much I still had long commute times in almost every single building.  I remember reading somewhere that if a commuter travels out of the city limits they get a surcharge on commute time.  since I practially forced all my commuters to travel out of the city this may have accounted for the increase in commute time despite the extensive use of mass transit.

 

In this first pic, you get an overview of the city center.  I have a few skyscrappers but you can see plenty of abandoned buildings due to commute time:

 

This is a pic of my zone layout.  as you know, I had originally started with more commercial areas, but I wanted to go to the extream and force the population to commute out of the city thus promoting the use of mass transit.  they used the mass transit but commute times were still long:

 

 

here is a pic of the charts and graphs of the cities transit and budget views.  you can see that mass transit is getting used quite a bit.  I underestimated the popularity of the subway system.  It was the last piece to be installed and was the most popular form.  the monorail was somewhat dissapointing though having the least amount of use.  I even installed parking garages near all my monorail stations.  the fact is the monorails were actually overcrowed.  it seems it would have been popular except that my design did not provide enough space for more.  perhaps I will rethink the monorail design in my next experiment.  you can also see in the budget window that my mass transit income was nearly equal to my mass transit cost.  but not quite...

 

It is hard to see the traffic graph now that I have posted hit here, the graph lines from top to bottom are:

1: pedestrian at 90k (people walking to mass transit

2: car at 70k (people driving to parking areas)

3: subway at 60k

4: bus at 40k

5: passenger rail at 35k

6: monorail at 10k

 

 

 

here is a typical route query of a monorail station transit hub.  you can see how the people in the nearby area drive or walk to the parking garage, get out and take either the bus, subway, or monorail.  my transit hub Idea worked just as I thought it would, but those commute times are still counted as long.  if you look closely at the residential building in the bottom right you will see how the sim gets on the one way street and goes all the way around his grid just to get to the parking garage so he can take mass transit.  btw, that is a R$$$ building too, so even the rich will go out of their way to use mass transit even if it is a bit inconvienient to get there:

 

here is a pic of the passenger rail hub:

 

now for some anomolies.  the first pick shows just how lazy sims really are.  you can see the route query on the residence.  the only places these people commute to are right down the street.  the roads and avenues are no where near congested (100 cars max).  yet, this residence regersters commute time as medium!  this should be a short commute I would think, but the sims are just really lazy.  there are even examples in the city(no pics) of what should be short commutes with subway and rail going out of city (meaning they are only about 10 or so tiles long) and they register as a long commute.  take a look:

 

and here is a real winner.  when I started my city out I had commercial near the avenues.  later on I zoned over the commercial with residential.  I did not destroy the bulidings first or dezone the area, just zoned over.  when new res buildings grew the people who had been working in the old commercial buildings were still being registered as working in those buildings even though those buildings were now residential and not commercial.  look closely at the route query, you will see the residence in the upper left corner leave his house and ends up working in another house on the bottom right!  sure we can rationalize this but we all know that the game is not supposed to let this happen.  I let the simulation run for many game years and this situation never resolved.  this was not an isolated incident either.  I had examples of this happening all over the city and all in areas were I had zoned over commercial instead of dezoning first.  eventually I fixed this glitch by dezoning the offending areas and letting the game run a few months.  btw, this was also registered as a medium commute:

 

 

  

So I was able to get a city of about 300k (which is a record for me btw).  however, it was quite a struggle to get that high.  when I reached 300k growth pretty much stalled.  I figure that was because there just as many people leaving due to commute time as were entering due to demand.  My next design will do the opposite of this one.  I will try to keep all commercial and IHT jobs in the city proper while still exporting ID and IM out of the city.  I may try and fix the monorail clogging issue but that will take some work.

 

some lessons learned in this experiment:

1) sims are very lazy

2) commutes out of the city have a commute time surchage added

3) dont zone over, dezone first, wait, then rezone

4) always check funding of power buildings before unpausing

5) sims like mass transit, even the rich!

6) Subway was the most popular form of mass transit, start with it before anything else.  I say this because it was heck trying to install subway stations when the streets were lined with tall buildings!

7) with good mass transit the highway was never really used.  the highway had at most 1k users going to the IHT city but that was before I added subway in the IHT and then highway use droped to about 100.  this makes sense if everyone is using mass transit they dont need highways!

<edit>

take small pictures and resize them larger, instead of resizing large pictures smaller.  maybe then the graphs and numbers will be easier to see! 

</edit>

 

one last note.  my IHT city never really made a profit.  it seems that eventhough they are I$$$ they have a very sparse population (few jobs per building).  since they produce no pollution and have the same requirements for desirability as residential does it seems much more beneficial to keep IHT in the city proper instead of exporting out of the city.

 

well, I would like lots of comments and suggestions please.  I will begin working on a new design shortly.  I have just recieved in the mail 3 more seasons of StarGate SG1 (seasons 5, 6 and 7) and so will be watching that while I plan my new design.  I certainly hope that I was not the only one that learned somthing from this.

 

the next update is on its way!...

[soldyne 111]

well, it has been nearly the entire weekend and I have recieved no replies to this thread, so, I will assume that this topic is no longer of interest.  It takes a great deal of effort to take these pics, cut and paste,  resize/resample them, host them off site and post them, nearly as much effort as it does to run the experiment.  that being the case I will continue to run my experiment but the results will no longer be made public knowledge.

 

see you all around later...

[tungston 19]

Date: 11/27/2005 10:13:30 PM Author: soldyne

well, it has been nearly the entire weekend and I have recieved no replies to this thread, so, I will assume that this topic is no longer of interest.&nbsp; It takes a great deal of effort to take these pics, cut and paste,&nbsp; resize/resample them, host them off site and post them, nearly as much effort as it does to run the experiment.&nbsp; that being the case I will continue to run my experiment but the results will no longer be made public knowledge.

see you all around later...

quote>

I was waiting to see how your industrial zones worked out, I was interested in that.

[soldyne 111]

I see.  well, if anyone else is interested I have come up with a new design which implements a double monorail and double subway line.  I think the big reason my commutes were long was due to congestion.  most every monorail and subway station in the center area was twice over max usage and the main arteries going out of the city were all red.  At least I know the system was workin.

 

oh well, here are some Industry pics.

 

I think the whole parcelization thing worked out quite well.  It let me keep controll of what industry buildings popped up and where.  I will continue to use it from now on.  although I will be experimenting with different sizes based on some new lots/BATS I just downloaded.

 

http://img233.imageshack.us/img233/9674/id6we.jpg align=baseline>

 

http://img233.imageshack.us/img233/5026/im0yf.jpg align=baseline>

 

http://img233.imageshack.us/img233/4158/ihtbig0bw.jpg align=baseline>

 

http://img233.imageshack.us/img233/2148/ihtsmall8an.jpg align=baseline>

 

I need feedback people.  and thanks to those that have given feedback so far.