NAM and a Roadless city. . .

[+Guest]

Date: 12/22/2005 4:46:13 PM
Author:adume
Now that we have GLR and Pedestrian malls, is it possible to make a city using only mass transit and ped malls? I know that many/most buildings need to be fronted by roads, and I'm thinking that the pedestrial mall might be a good substitue. I'd love to try this myself but i'm stuck at my office right now (stupid NYC transit strike).

quote>
It sounds clever, but I don't think I would want to live in such a city... too much like living at Disneyland.

[adume 0]

Date: 12/27/2005 5:56:26 PM
Author: soldyne

this is an astounding idea and one which I will explore further. the only problem is that the idea is just not realistic. no real city would ever have the authority to make personal vehicles useless. although one idea I can think of is that the city is taking place in the future when global warming has gone too far and fossil fuels are totaly used up. then a city with walking and mass transit only makes a lot more sense...

quote>

Believe it or not, it's nearly happened before. For example. Chicago implimented a street parking ban for all of Downtown in the early 20th Century. For a while, this greatly reduced the number of personal vehicles on the streets.

During the depression, real estate values went down everywhere, and suddenly parking garages appeared in vacant lots Downtown. From that point on, the movement toward personal vehicles was unstopable.

Of course, there was much more to it than that, but I thought I'd just add in a nugget of trivia.

[adume 0]

Date: 1/3/2006 3:32:53 PM
Author: SilentRob

Date: 12/22/2005 4:46:13 PM

Author:adume

Now that we have GLR and Pedestrian malls, is it possible to make a city using only mass transit and ped malls? I know that many/most buildings need to be fronted by roads, and I'm thinking that the pedestrial mall might be a good substitue. I'd love to try this myself but i'm stuck at my office right now (stupid NYC transit strike).

quote>

It sounds clever, but I don't think I would want to live in such a city... too much like living at Disneyland.

quote>

Good point. I didn't think of that one. . . Maybe I won't put in that monorail after all.

[Elegnaim 0]

I wouldn't mind living in a carless city. Less pollution and car noise.

Also, er, what's a HOV?

[adume 0]

Sorry, HOV lanes are roads that allow buses only.

[Elegnaim 0]

Huh. How do you build them?

[obliq 0]

https://www.simtropolis.com/idealbb/files//Iteun.jpg align=baseline>

 

Excellent topic. I tried my own experiments based on the proposals put forth by carfree.com. I platted pods with centralized monorail access.

 

The project pictured is only a day old. Other than a few lazy residents, no one uses a car. I caught a couple of sims driving across the street for groceries (or used cars!) After a while they finally seem to get it and start walking.

 

The drawback so far is the monorail sends the city over budget. Especially if loops are built to make it possible to play the U-Drive It mission.

[soldyne 111]

nice pic and good post

 

now the question is what are commute times like? 

 

I am certain that if your city starts to grow more and you have medium or high density zoning you will see your mass transit system start to make a profit.  In my 250k carless city my transit system was making 4k profit every month.

[obliq 0]

Date: 1/6/2006 2:34:21 PM Author: soldyne

nice pic and good post

now the question is what are commute times like? 

I am certain that if your city starts to grow more and you have medium or high density zoning you will see your mass transit system start to make a profit.  In my 250k carless city my transit system was making 4k profit every month.

quote>

 

I tried another experiment with a different pod configuration. Learned some interesting things. Residential won't grow very well if the lots don't have street access to the MT station. The landfill had to be connected to at least one zone by street. Used car dealers still set up shop even if they have no street access  CEOs don't like to walk and they don't like to take mass transit. I set up a Sim in one of the weathly housing that appeared. She switched jobs eight times and every single time she whined and moaned about not being able to get to work.

[mrbarham 4]

The one thing I wonder is will these cities get much if any R$$$ residents. I seem to remember reading that R$$$ residents hate to use public transport, and from what I have seen on the screen shots most of the res is $ or $$. I think that without a decent number of $$$ you wouldn't be able to afford all the mass transit. I'm curious to see though.

[Elegnaim 0]

Assuming you have enough R$$ and R$, then

A) The fares generated from the mass transit should be pretty decent.

B) You can probably safely tax them up to about 10.5 percent, really. If you've enough people, that should cover it.

[japerson 0]

I wandered upon this thread looking for answers to my traffic problems. A roadless city is a very unique idea, but seems to be impossible so far, unless I missed something.

Like most others, I too set out to do my own experiments to create not a roadless city, but a vehicleless city. No cars, no buses, no trains, no subways. Foot power only. Of course, I still needed roads or nothing would build. But the trick was to keep cars off the roads. I almost succeeded...

A small city of 16,646 Sims.



6,000 Sims walking to work!



Only 48 or so who insisted on driving.



I tried bulldozing and de-zoning the lots where the cars were coming from, only to have Sims elsewhere decided they too liked driving rather than walking. If it wasn't for the bus stops which employeed 2 people each, this could be done.

I do not know how to build lots, but it seems to me if you start off with a bus stop, have in employee 0, make it flat looking and call it a pedestrian walkway, we'd have it made. Is this possible or perhaps already been done?

[obliq 0]

The best approach for a carfree or even vehicle-free city is not to start out that way. Develop a master plan that will eventually lead to a large carfree city but allow people to drive until the time that their cars can be taken away from them.

Otherwise, begin with small self-contained pods which provide all the industrial and commercial needs of the pod residents. Each pod would have to be small enough to encourage walking (jobs and services not more than 8 to 12 tiles away). I doubt much would develop beyond the $ or $$ wealth levels. I have found that $$$ residents almost refuse to take mass transit or even to walk. This is not always the case. One city I had the CEO of the hospital lived across the street and walked to work.

 

Pods can't be connected to each other by street, road, or avenue since sims would drive between pods to get to jobs (no buses). Mass transit stops have to be equidistant to all residences and must have street access (otherwise residential won't develop). But rail, el, monorail, and subway are expensive to build and maintain. Since roads can't be built between pods, freight has to be moved out of industrial areas by rail with neighbor connections.

[+Guest]

 oops, i didn't mean to post this, at first I asked a question but then i figured it out

[newyorkstate 6]

A roadless city, I'm sure it can be done! If someone makes a Mod that can multiply footpower or a Mod where houses need no streets...

[mayormot 4]

Well, actually, there *is* a way to force a carless city, by using the NAM and editing one exemplar.

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Here's the scoop: Car and bus traffic is handled the same way (as many here have noted). The only difference is that Sims can drive cars into buildings, but can't ride a bus into one. This can be changed so that cars work like buses, using parking garages as an analog of bus stops.

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Here's the procedure:

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1) Install the NAM, with one of the "perfect pathfinding" plugins. I recommend a "perfect" one since once Sims are on foot, you really need them to take the best possible path. 2) Use iLive's Reader to open the NAM's pathfinding file. 3) Find the exemplar called "Travel Type Can Reach Destination." (or is it "Transit Type Can Reach Destination?" One or the other, there will be nothing else close to that.)

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This exemplar is a string of boolean (True/False) values. Set the second one to zero (false). Apply and save changes.

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This tells the simulator that Sims cannot enter a destination by car. If they drive, they will have to park in a parking garage (or a functional parking lot from the STEX) and then walk to work from there. If you haven't provided any parking facilities, the Sims will be forced to use transit if it is available, or walk all the way to work if not, since the game won't be able to compute a path by car.

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I've done this, and it really does work. The only major issue I found is that the "Car and Passenger Ferry" does not allow cars to enter, since it is itself a "destination." So only passenger ferries work. (The car and passenger ferry still works also, but only pedestrians can enter). In a carless city, who cares?

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Oh yeah, and some Maxis transit buildings (like the train stations and the bus stops) also provide parking. You need to use STEX transit facilities, and edit their Transit Switch Point exemplars to not allow cars. Otherwise, they will function as parking lots and Sims will drive to them. Believe me, it'll be easy to tell which buildings need editing with the commute path query, since every Sim will be driving to them!

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If you do this, you'll also learn which "functional" parking lots on the STEX actually work (about half, in my experience). Remember that you need parking near home, too, for the evening commute. The game will still run without this, but it confuses the simulator something awful and the patfinding engine really bogs down.

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You'll also need a LOT of parking if you decide to let people drive cars. It's quite realistic, actually. You must start bulldozing blocks to install parking garages, thus destroying your downtown core ("Pensacola Parking Syndrome"). Every building will need adequate parking, even utilities. That's a lot of tiles given away to auto storage, and the result is some very realistic blight and sprawl. Just like life.

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Again, I've done this. It works.

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Incidentally, if you change the next (third) "Transit type can reach destination" exemplar to TRUE, it effectively turns every building in the game into an exit-only shuttle bus stop. Sims can get on the bus and ride directly to work (but they still have to walk to a bus stop to get home - on the return trip, the bus will take them straight to their door). This doesn't buy you much since you still need a bus stop on both ends of the commute, but it does reduce commute time a bit since it eliminates the walking at one end of the trip. OTOH, since buses don't count as "traffic" it makes commercial desirability go down. I wouldn't recommend doing this mod, except as an experiment or "concept city."

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Hope this helps somehow. Happy modding!

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How do I make carriage returns?

[Tidalpool 0]

Soldyne,

On your streests there is somtheing like a half cirlcle that is over it, just curious what is it?  This ped mall concept is a cool idea.

[RiverCocytus 0]

Well, I had an in-depth response, but the formatting is broken. Sorry...

[mjig_dudy 11]

its possible to download little lots to plop on the roads that only let pedestrians and busses through. this would look good but the city would still look the same so if someone made a streeet mod that made the streets look like pedastrian mall tiles you get a city without cars

[dandysim 0]

Ok, for all of you who are doing the "carless" cities, has any city experienced a fire in one of the areas unreachable by vehicle?  Or how about a riot or crime where you need to dispatch police?  These city services use vehicles and must have roadway access.

I built an experiment with the ped mall walks and subway stations.  Still had tremendous abandonment of res area.  Possibly did something else wrong although not sure what it may have been.

[Micah 16]

Wow, houses without streets still sounds awesome. Many homes out in the country are like that.

[DaMaster_architect 0]

One thing may be clear: It's possible to have a carless city. However, the monthly costs are so high that the budget gets unmanageable, and you won't make any money... ever!

... or at least, that's the problem I'm facing.

[RiverCocytus 0]

Well, I've never had problems paying for mass transit... its just a matter of managing your costs. In this case, you are going to have to do more finagling to handle the weirdness of no cars.

As a side note, there are plenty of reasons to have no cars other than greenhouse gas emissions...

What if we were colonizing a new planet? Think we'd have the materials and infrastructure to build cars for everyone?

Cool experiment, I hope that someone will find a good way to get'er done...

[DaMaster_architect 0]

I will continue my experiment, but there are a lot of non-realistic factors in simcity that are limiting the experiment.. maybe in real life it would be easier to have a carless city.

[RiverCocytus 0]

Well, In real life you could establish a road tax for car users, like britain... and then make that tax horribly opressive

I guess buses don't pay tolls? Maybe a toll booth could help?

I try not to complain too much about the realism problems in SC4... because every time they bug me I flash back to SC1 and the city with nothing but rails... and remember comparitively how realistic it actually is.

Side Note: I guess the 'viability' of a carless city depends heavily on the possibility of it being a usable planning unit for an entire region. I would consider the carless city a success if you could profitably and successfully make a region of 1,000,000 folks with it. Never had a region that big myself, but mostly its because I lose interest.