Rail planning city and regional

[johnnybnjp 11]

Hello All,

I am working on my city and regional rail systems (heavy rail) and, before I get too invested, I am hoping to get some suggestions on how to plan for commuter, regional (three or more tiles in length?), and freight lines.  For example:  Should I have dedicated tracks for commuter rail, regional rail and freight lines or should they share rail in some places?  Could a regional rail just have a spur to collect freight and then recombine later to move the freight off the edge of the tile?  I guess what I am looking for is some advice of how this operates in the real world.  Any input is appreciated.  Or, if this has been covered in another string, feel free to direct me there (the search doesn't seem to be working so I couldn't easily browse the topic)

Thanks for your help,

Johnny B

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Well, first of all you should be aware that freight only goes to the border of a city then evaporates.  If you direct your freight rail to a rail enabled port, it disappears there as well.

 

Now, if you are interested in statistics for your rail, avoid putting stations on the main line. Arrange your stations as terminals on a spur that does not reconnect to the main line, but has only one entry/exit point.  This applies to single and multitrack stations, that is they should all be terminals.  With this system you can then read out the stats on any station and get the overall picture using the route query operator on the main line.

 

Try to keep your tracks at least five grid blocks from any associated road if you plan to use FLUPs with crossing roads.  Other than that, you can create your rail network carefully as you go.  It is too expensive to lay it all out in advance as long as you have a consistent plan.

[johnnybnjp 11]

Thanks Nonny, I am still a little bit confused.  When you say to only put stations on a spur that doesn't reconnect with the main line are you talking about freight stations only?  For passenger rail, can't I have a main line that passes through multiple tiles with stations placed right on the line (like in real life)?  And would it make sense to use two lines (one for commuter and one for longer regional travel)?  I know that with this game you sometimes have to strike a balance between game mechanics and your own aesthetic vision.  What I hope is that I can create a real life look and have it function without having to fight game mechanics too much.

[Ltw 401]

Placing stations on spurs is better. Otherwise it could result into delays because those stations have a certain maximum capacity. I'm not always using spurs, this depends on how much space I have, the capacity of the stations and the usage of the rail itself. Even though, spurs aren't uncommon in real life as well. Many stations have spurs for freight-trains. Furthermore, another difference between the game and real-life is the fact that in Simcity 4 trains are going from point A to B. This is a bit different comparing to real-life. In real-life trains have a schedule. Which means that they stop at every station, regardless the fact that some stations aren't busy at all. Thus there are always some differences between the simulation and the real world.

 

Other things that you could consider is separating freight-traffic from passenger-traffic. If you have placed your industrial zones at the edge of the map this shouldn't be a problem. Also consider the fact that freight-traffic seeks the shortest route to the edge of the map. This should make it easier to separate passenger-traffic from freight-traffic. Furthermore it helps to place a large station near the center of your city. This station could function like a station for regional traffic. Other stations could be used for local traffic. If I'm building a large city I'm using this station as center of the rail-system. This way I'm making sure that this station gets used properly and not some smaller stations with a lower capacity. To illustrate this I've enclosed the following image:

 

 

In the image above you see a large station. This station has a quite high capacity. This is also needed. The passenger-traffic between the neighboring city at the right and this city is quite high. In order to avoid overcapacity at some stations the rail system doesn't provide direct access to other stations than this large station. This means that commuters will have to get on another train or the subway at my central station. This leads to a better commute-pattern. The simulation is searching for the shortest route, if your rail-network isn't set up properly this could mean that most traffic would be concentrated on smaller stations. You can avoid this by placing large stations at strategic places. Placing them close to large neighboring cities could be very helpful. If you are planning to build a large urban region with a high population you could consider several large stations as central hubs.

[johnnybnjp 11]

Thanks Ltw, this is great info.  So, just to clarify:  If I have a commuter rail that passes through three ctiy tiles and each tile has it's own station (we'll call them station A, B, and C all in a straight line) commuters will travel from station A to station B or from station B to station C but not from A to C?  Or, can I force them to travel from station A to C by having a bypass rail that doesn't stop at station B?  I perhaps should also clarify that I only plan to have a large city in the tile with station C.  The other two tiles are more suburban with smaller stations but my hope is that even in the further out suburban tiles commuters will travel all the way to the city to station C.  I hope this makes sense.

[T Wrecks 10,210]

Rail commuters may either exit at a station or merely pass through a station, depending on their destination. It doesn't matter whether they have crossed a city border before or not. The simulation doesn't care. However, no matter whether they exit at a station or merely pass through, they will occupy part of the capacity of that station.

 

In order to avoid this, you can indeed build a bypass line. However, your Sims will only use that bypass if it is faster than travelling through the station. What actually happens in railway stations is that commuters are converted from rail commuters to pedestrians, teleported to the other edge of the station, and converted to rail commuters again. The simulator imposes a fixed time penalty for this. Still, the resulting delay is typically much shorter than travelling around the station on a railway line.

 

Hence, if you have a line that runs past a station (and "touches" the station lot), Sims will tend to enter the station, get teleported to the other end, and switch to rail again even if they do not want to exit at this station. The only way to overcome this is by making the loop through the station take longer than the thoroughfare. This way, going through the station would take more time. Hence, only those Sims would take the station who want to exit there. The rest would take the faster route and go past the station. You'll see that this can be very hard to achieve in game, and you probably don't want to build totally ridiculous and unrealistic loops just to enforce it.

 

Whether your commuters will travel thus far at all is doubtful. They'll look for suitable jobs and pick the one they can reach with the shortest commute time. If you build a region such that they do not find suitable jobs in their own city tile on purpose, you're making commute times artificially longer. This may cause problems with unemployment and lower desirability due to - you guessed it - long commute times.

 

Second problem: SimCity knows how many commuters arrive in a city tile by rail, coming from another tile. However, it is not aware of the time the commuters already spent traveling. So the search for the quickest-to-reach suitable job begins from scratch again. Should it turn out that the edge of the map (where there's yet another city with potentially suitable jobs) is nearer than any suitable job within the current city tile, commuters will immediately travel to the next city connection. The whole affair repeats there again...

 

This can go on endlessly and give rise to what is known as the "Endless commute loop", where Sims will travel from city A to B to C to D to A and so forth:

 

 A -> B

 ^    |

 |    v

 D <- C

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

I am quite a stickler for spurs.  I believe that if you have the space, all stations should be on spurs except perhaps for freight stations.  If you separate freight and passengers by having the stations on different rail lines, you can have a lot of fun playing model railroading.  Do remember that freight is the day fly of the system and evaporate at any available data sink (port or edge of the city).

 

The main point about spurs is that they allow one to read individual station statistics not blurred by the traffic on the main line.

[johnnybnjp 11]

Okay, this is great stuff.  I will keep chugging along with my current plan and see how my sims make use of it.  Even if they are only travelling one city tile it sounds like I could have a continuous line through multiple tiles which is the real life look I am going for.  I do have a second question, however:  when does it make sense to use the Single Track Rail?  Is this more geared toward freight spurs (since freight only travels in one direction to the edge) or are there other situations (perhaps for commuters) where it would make sense to use it? It seems like if used incorrectly collisions could happen.

Thanks again,

Johnny B

[T Wrecks 10,210]

SimCity doesn't know collisions because there are no physical trains. Trains just get displayed occasionally to visualise commuter movement, but they are no physical objects. Hence railway lines don't have "directions" of any kind. Sims can just pass along these lines if they (the lines, not the Sims ) represent the best path to whatever destination, but you can get rid of the thought of actual objects travelling along lines, just like there are no such things as physically simulated buses or bus lines. There are just Sims that get converted from one traffic type to another (and vice versa), but no actual vehicles whatsoever.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

^ So, is this some new revelation?  All simulations work that way, and there is nothing but virtual visualization which is done mostly to make it a game.  A serious simulation just produces a print out when it finishes (if it ever does) or some kind of structured dump given the results (so far) on request. 

 

The neat thing about SimCity and all the other city builders is that there is some brilliant (or not so brilliant) simulation which is then abstracted into the screen display which is somewhat kept in sync with the program running behind it.  Whether you get a 3D or a 2.5D or a 2D image really depends on how much resource is available while the simulation runs.  A 3D image is not only a memory hog and needs a really hot GPU, but it is also a processor hog and should probably have one or two cores of its own.

[.anonyman 28]

Many people don't realize that SC4 works this way because most in simulation games on the market now, if you see a vehicle or a person on-screen, that object interacts with the simulation. People are en route to a destination and vehicles get stuck in traffic. Only in SC4 (in my experience) do the vehicles and Sims represent nothing at all.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

And the simulations are very much smaller, then, because the interaction requires I/O interrupts that actually halt the simulation waiting for input, eh?  Processes tend to be blocked when waiting for a human interface.  If not, things become rather jerky.

[APSMS 1,893]

Hello All,

I am working on my city and regional rail systems (heavy rail) and, before I get too invested, I am hoping to get some suggestions on how to plan for commuter, regional (three or more tiles in length?), and freight lines.  For example:  Should I have dedicated tracks for commuter rail, regional rail and freight lines or should they share rail in some places?  Could a regional rail just have a spur to collect freight and then recombine later to move the freight off the edge of the tile?  I guess what I am looking for is some advice of how this operates in the real world.  Any input is appreciated.  Or, if this has been covered in another string, feel free to direct me there (the search doesn't seem to be working so I couldn't easily browse the topic)

Thanks for your help,

Johnny B

I am glad you are interested in realism, however, which brand of realism is highly dependent on what region you are aiming to recreate. I have some experience in San Diego as well as Boston (school and such).

 

In my experience, having all stations on spurs is a wonderful way to play to the game simulation, but a lousy way to build railways in RL, because it means that trains continuing past that destination (but still having to stop there briefly for passengers), have to slow, switch over the tracks, and stop. Then they have to reverse, switch points, and then proceed forward. This wouldn't be much of an issue if trains handled like buses (though you'll notice bus terminals try to avoid reverse at all costs as well), but trains are actually far slower to accelerate (forwards or backwards), which means that these maneuvers would be extremely time consuming. In my experience, most station stops on the west coast lines tend to take roughly 1-2 minutes max, in some cases 45 seconds (stop, whistle, load, go). This would not be possible with all stops on spurs.

 

Additionally with spurs, if there are two or more tracks (often the case is busy/built-up areas), the trains may have to cross over the opposite direction; at any rate they'll have to cross the switch (points), which generally must be done at low speed (when you're switching off, anyways), further slowing things down, and any trains coming the opposite direction would be required to stop a ways down the line (think 2-4 miles) due to the stopping distance of fast trains (or slow heavy ones).

 

Also, while it may be ideal to separate your passenger and freight lines for traffic purposes, you may want to consider what your region's needs are. In San Diego, the trolleys (light rail) actually run on heavy freight lines (trolleys during the day, mile-long freight trains at night), as do many Amtrak trains across America. This situation is often different in Europe/Japan due to the high passenger rail usage there and high-speed trains, but in many other areas (Africa and certain parts of Asia), freight and commuters travel on the same track.

 

Other things to consider are where you want to send your commuters. Stations can be placed pretty far apart thanks to the NAM (I'm assuming you have it) if you're going for maximum realism (but I just do what looks reasonable and works well).

Grab a map of your region, digital or on paper, and sketch out where you want each rail line to take your Sims. this will also add to the realism as you won't have rail lines dotting the landscape*. Also keep in mind the slopes (railways can't handle steep slopes); I'd suggest a slope mod (Ennedi's will do) to keep you on track.

 

There's a lot to rails most people don't consider, and while it can look good even when you don't follow the rules, when you do it looks amazing.

 

*exception: when building old (or new) industrial sectors, you can run spurs everywhere if you want, though STR would look the most "in-place" here.