Traffic problem

[NubeBuster 2]

Every time I play SimCity 4 I get into traffic problems. Last time I installed NAM which should 'fix' it. The problems still persist.

I tried placing bus stops but somehow a bus counts as a whole lot of traffic so the problem continues.

I have also tried; avenues, targeting traffic by trying to use their 'shortest route' algorithm.

Can someone explain to me how I should handle traffic? Maybe from where to where traffic likes to go. Which public transport I should use. (I prefer to stick to vanilla instead of NAM addons, but if I have to I am willing to use NAM items)

 

Thanks! Mark

 

[Edit] I have made 5 cities to learn how to handle traffic over and over and I have found that elevated rails really help. Also I have greatly increased the efficiency of buses etc.

Therefore this problem has been solved.

 

[APSMS 1,892]

Hi NubeBuster,

NAM rewrites the game's pathfinding to utilize the fastest route. Avenues help, but highways are significantly more intuitive to use, as are One-way-roads (OWR), which move Sims faster than normal roads (just like in real life). You are no longer forced to have Sims use the shortest route, because they are more willing to go a roundabout way if they perceive it to be faster (like take the highway instead of use the side street)

In installing the NAM, you should have installed the TSCT. If having buses contribute to traffic really irks you, you can always disable it, but the disadvantage of this is that the game uses traffic noise to also simulate business customers, so extremely dense cities with buses not contributing to traffic will experience a drop in commercial desirability (due to less "customers").

 

I'm glad you have figured out your problem. Hopefully these few additional pointers help.

[fredinno 54]

6 hours ago, APSMS said:

Hi NubeBuster,

NAM rewrites the game's pathfinding to utilize the fastest route. Avenues help, but highways are significantly more intuitive to use, as are One-way-roads (OWR), which move Sims faster than normal roads (just like in real life). You are no longer forced to have Sims use the shortest route, because they are more willing to go a roundabout way if they perceive it to be faster (like take the highway instead of use the side street)

In installing the NAM, you should have installed the TSCT. If having buses contribute to traffic really irks you, you can always disable it, but the disadvantage of this is that the game uses traffic noise to also simulate business customers, so extremely dense cities with buses not contributing to traffic will experience a drop in commercial desirability (due to less "customers").

 

I'm glad you have figured out your problem. Hopefully these few additional pointers help.

Subways don't contribute to traffic, right?

But yeah, if you don't want to use too much space, use the NWM pieces to make 4-lane narrow roads... and make monorails.

[rsc204 21,805]

Managing traffic is about a lot more than simply network capacities and having public transport.

The simulator is quite a complex thing, but in essence it tries to find each sim the nearest job to their residence to work at. As cities and regions grow, this becomes more and more complicated to manage and keep everything flowing.

The core of managing traffic is to predict where sims will need to go and provide suitable infrastructure for them to do so. So for example, if you build with a US-Style grid system, where every road connects to every other road around it, congestion can occur very easily. But, what you often want is to design systems that funnel traffic. So streets/roads that only connect with main throughways, but will not be used unless a sim really needs to be there. That way, you can have high-capacity roads that handle the bulk of traffic. Adding sufficient public transport into this mix is a great idea, but again you must focus on where it makes the most sense to place them. So if you have a large industrial zone, sticking a station right in the middle of it, which connects to areas where sims that work there can commute from works best. Then you can add bus/tram/subway routes to get sims from the station to their homes or jobs, creating a complex transport system that is both flexible and efficient.

Here is a great example of all this in practice:

I detailed in that post (with illustrations) how to use a system of ring-roads with high capacity/speed and mate it with transport infrastructure. This setup works really well as sims have many different options for getting about, with minimal usage of minor routes to avoid congestion overall.

[NubeBuster 2]

You guys seem to know what you're talking about so I will ask for your opinion on my latest design which I am still working on;

The idea is that people can go to the high rail, which I found is efficient, or to a bus with a supposedly short route.

I have assigned high density residence area and I hope my design will be able to handle that.

Maybe I can place one-way roads in a certain way. Perhaps the southern two horizontal lanes?

And another two questions;

Where should I place my commercial and industry?

What do I do if 4 buildings with 2k residents appear next to eachother and the road in front can't even handle them?

 

Also I'd like to show what I've reached. At this point the few traffic problems that do occur are quite hard to fix. I have so many commuters to the surrounding cities that the highway can't handle it. However the rail and the elevated highway are also loaded heavily by those long distance workers. What I think is the cause is that the commercial zones are completely separate from the residential area. Should I put the commercial next to the residences? 

[rsc204 21,805]

When you build large areas of high density residential, you will naturally end up with huge numbers of commuters needing to move around in a compressed space. This is a recipe for congestion, but with some planning and thought, it's by no means disastrous.

23 hours ago, NubeBuster said:

What do I do if 4 buildings with 2k residents appear next to eachother and the road in front can't even handle them?

Two buildings with 2k residents will produce about 2k commuters combined. That's because half your sims will never be gainfully employed. Maxis based this on the 2+2 family unit, where 2 adults would have 2 children. Housewives (or fathers) stay at home, as do the kids and people who have retired. Of course not every sim is married with kids though. The net result of this is that approx. 50% of your sims will be workers looking for jobs. Of course the simulator doesn't simulate any of this, Maxis simply picked a percentage of sims that would look for jobs.

But I get the problem, some of the largest buildings have so many sims, even one can equal guaranteed congestion. But there is another important point that's related here. The advisors/news messages may complain about traffic and congestion, but that doesn't mean you have a serious problem. What city in the world doesn't have it's fair share of congestion at rush hour? So it's fine if junctions get busy, even over-capacity, you need to look deeper to see if it's really something that needs fixing.

The layout in your first picture seems pretty sensible. Are the roads that run between the avenues roads or OWRs? Hint: It makes no sense to have two bi-directional roads here, you should use OWR. I like the median in the middle , even if it's only cosmetic, it allows placement of bus/subway stops without messing with the grids, which is a good idea. Are you using the NAM? If so, maybe it's time to try a few of the new higher-capacity networks. In this case, you could replace the OWR with OWR-3, adding an extra lane in each direction. Or, by expanding each side to 2x tiles in width, you can increase the lane count to OWR-4 or OWR-5 for up to 10 lanes (both directions). Of course that might be overkill, but at the most central point of your high-density developments, such high-capacity networks really make a difference. But because of the extra tiles needed, it's best planned in advance or major re-working is required to retro-fit them. Similarly, you can increase the avenues from 4 to 6 lanes using RD-6 in the same space. TLA-6/TLA-7 networks are better though, because they support something called TuLEPs, another NAM feature. TuLEPs can also be used with Avenues and Roads too. In essence, they add additional turning lanes, which help to avoid bottlenecks at junctions with high-traffic flow. The downside, you'll need to return to Avenue where intersections with Highway are needed, TLA 6/7 also needs three tiles width too. One last tip, whilst the El-Rail is an effective network, if it runs parallel to the highway, sims will pick one of the other arbitrarily. This is because both come to/go from the same places. But, if you made the EL-Rail a few blocks away from the Highway, sims usage between the two would be more spread out. Since depending on their destination, one would now be more desirable or faster than the other.

23 hours ago, NubeBuster said:

Where should I place my commercial and industry?

It's subjective, but it looks like you are trying to emulate a very US-Style city layout. You should consider lining heavily used routes with Commercial Development, especially those which have a large volume of Sims travelling between Res and Ind jobs. This is because Traffic is a key factor to the number of shoppers that will visit Commercial Services (Shops). Therefore CS on busy roads will be more successful. I like to have a central area which I target my CO buildings to be located in. Spreading out from there is a mixture of Res and CS, with pockets of Industrial on the outskirts of the main city. By mixing it up a bit, not all your sims will be commuting the entire length between Res and Com/Ind, this should help.

However, if a large volume of sims need to move between cities, you should consider adding some Monorail into the mix. Monorail is high capacity, don't be afraid to run two lines together in really congested situations either. Those could branch off at one point so they serve different destinations too. But Monorail is different to Rail/Elevated Rail/Subway, it is designed to be more utilised by long-distance commuters, rather than shorter local services. As such, unlike the El-Rail where you've placed stations closely together. Monorail works best when the stations are much further apart. Taking your second image as an example, placing a monorail station on the edge of the industrial district (the one where the highway runs below it) and connecting the line to a station in the middle of your city would work well. As with the El-Rail, try to ensure that these stations connect to the local transit network too. Again the NAM helps, if you select the option NAM Standard Station Features during a custom NAM installation (found under Additional Features and Customizations), it will add Subway and Bus services to the default stations. So you could make a link by subway between the Monorail and El-Rail, rather than run the lines next to each other. Such systems where sims can change between transport types, increase the potential options for commuters. Making their journeys by transport much more efficient, alleviating the strain on roads and congestion. When you tie all this together, you should see quite and improvement in the efficiency of your cities overall transport infrastructure.

Lastly, if you really are going for large cities, it really makes sense to utilise subways, every 2-3 blocks at most. It's the quickest and most direct way for most sims and beyond a certain threshold is really a necessity. You might want to consider also downloading the RTMT mod, the key benefit is that you can place Bus, Subway and Combined Bus/Subway Stations directly onto Road, Street, OWR/Avenue networks, avoiding the need for additional space for them. You may also want the AddOn 3.60 pack too.

For step-by-step tutorials on how to use the NWM and TuLEP features (must be installed as part of NAM), see the link in my sig for my YouTube tutorials. TuLEPs are covered in Turorial 3b and NWM is covered in Tutorial 4.

[NubeBuster 2]

How do I make sure the commercial services are on the way to the sims' work if the commercial services *are* their work?

[rsc204 21,805]

Well it's hard to predict absolutely where each sim will go. Let me put it another way, if you see a route with a lot of road traffic, that's an ideal spot for CS. Of course you zone commercial, but can't fully control if CS or CO will grow there. Generally speaking though, it works thusly:

• If traffic is high - CS will grow. As traffic gets higher, CS will thrive, increasing the likelihood that location will upgrade to CS$$ / CS $$$ and higher growth stages.
• If pollution is low and the area is generally more desirable - CO will grow. Lots of traffic here would not be so ideal, because of the pollution/noise it creates affects desirability.

For the most part, you don't need to think too much about it though, it's a lot more complex than I've described here. But if you zone Com, the game will work it out based on demand / desirability and all the other factors.

To get back to the actual question though, whilst some sims will stop at the first CS building they come to, once all the jobs are full, the sims after them will go to the next. In this way, the traffic will still build up around them. Ideally, CS should be between Res and Ind, because that way a healthy amount of traffic will always be passing the CS area, even after taking into account those sims that stop and take the CS jobs along the way.

Bear in mind also, the first sim to pass a CS building, may not find a suitable job there. Sims have varying levels of education and wealth, which are factors as to which jobs they will take. So it's not truly the first sim to arrive there that will take the jobs at the first shop.

[CorinaMarie 29,565]

3 hours ago, rsc204 said:

As traffic gets higher, CS will thrive...

Time for my dumb question: Does freight traffic contribute to the noise and CS's desirability?

[rsc204 21,805]

Good question... honestly I'm not really sure, I don't see a whole load of trucks. But I guess in theory it would, since it's based on traffic volume. That said, the game can distinguish between freight and sims, so perhaps not. Maybe someone else knows for sure, otherwise it warrants some testing to find out.

[CorinaMarie 29,565]

On 10/8/2016 at 8:35 PM, rsc204 said:

... otherwise it warrants some testing to find out.

I did a limited test.

I'm not sure what conclusions we can draw from this with regard to traffic noise. I am, however, convinced that low wealth CS prefers to be on a road with Car traffic.

 

I ran it from my save point multiple times. In every case the commercial first starts growing closest to the smelly industrial then continues along the car route until all those zones are used up. Only then does it start growing on the freight truck route. Running at the slowest speed produces the least amount of growth along the truck route and the fastest speed grew more. I suspect that's cause at cheetah speed it starts filling them in before it realizes the demand isn't really there for all of them.

I'm uncertain if we can conclude anything about traffic noise for cars vs trucks, but if that is the primary criterion then I'd say trucks do not contribute to locational desirability.

Also, for @NubeBuster, that last pic is showing how only 7 Sims decided to change jobs from industrial to commercial even tho it's much closer and faster for them. (Prolly cause the average EQ is zero in this town.)

[CorinaMarie 29,565]

So, I've been waiting for someone to reply to bump this and I've been cogitating on it in the mean time. I wonder if those 423 cars count double cause of morning and evening commutes and the 423 trucks only count once since they go one way to another tile. Would that make a difference? See, originally I felt I was eliminating variables by making them the same traffic count and that both routes had water. Now I'm wondering if the same isn't really the same.

Thoughts?

[rsc204 21,805]

I did run some tests myself, I thought briefly I had come to some conclusions, but quickly realised the simulator was in a state of change that had placed doubt in the integrity of my results.

This needs a specific setup to test, where only trucks are allowed to use the road/street with the CS buildings. I simply haven't had the time in recent days to go through this more thoroughly, but I haven't forgotten it. When I get some data I can trust, I'll report back here with my findings.

[rsc204 21,805]

Quick Update:

After some more thorough testing today, I'm pretty certain the answer is that Freight does not contribute to the customer effect of CS buildings.

I set up a big industrial area (north) with a road running from that to a Rail Freight Station (south). The only traffic using this connection would be freight trucks, to ensure this, this whole district was isolated from my cities. With just three subway stations all In the north, being fed from the other parts of my city.

After many years and high freight traffic, still the customer level remained low. Even though the CS buildings were healthy and even upgrading. With sims working in them, some traffic from pedestrians was also produced. But again, I'd say pedestrians also don't affect the "traffic" seen by CS either.

[CorinaMarie 29,565]

1 hour ago, rsc204 said:

After many years and high freight traffic, still the customer level remained low.

What was the freight count past those commercial lots? I noticed in my test with the 423 cars my customer count still remained low. I haven't Googled up any threads to see if there is a table showing how much traffic is needed for medium and high customer counts. Also, do you suppose there is any merit to my question about cars being perceived as double to the commercial lots because of morning and evening commutes vs freight traffic being only "morning"?

[rsc204 21,805]

37 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

What was the freight count past those commercial lots?

At least 800, which compared to some of the CS in other parts of the city, just 500 cars was enough to hit medium.

39 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

Also, do you suppose there is any merit to my question about cars being perceived as double to the commercial lots because of morning and evening commutes vs freight traffic being only "morning"?

I do see where you are coming from, but I'd imagine (or hope) Maxis accounted for that.

I guess the best source of information would be here:

http://www.wiki.sc4devotion.com/index.php?title=Understanding_the_Traffic_Simulator#Customers.2FTraffic_Noise_Coefficient

Which seems to suggest both Freight and Pedestrians do contribute here. Maybe I need to ramp up the test city.

[CorinaMarie 29,565]

This part from your linky:

Quote

According to the documentation for this property, "In an area around the lot in question, the traffic on the network tile with the highest morning traffic volume is added to the traffic on the network tile with the highest evening traffic volume, and then multiplied by this coefficient to generate a 0-255 value which is then used as a desirability factor for R and C zones, and shows up in the general query as low, medium, or high under Traffic Noise or Customers."

^ Bold added.

Seems to very much support my speculation that a freight truck route would need twice the volume to equal half as many cars. I'll set up a test city in a large tile so I can get the higher volume of traffic needed for at least medium customers.

[CorinaMarie 29,565]

Grrr:

 

Ok, so add more trucks:

 

There we go. Some of those truckers are shopping now:

^ So, for the in game story it's simply that truck drivers are half as likely to go shopping as car peeps either cause they only pass by one direction or just cause it's such a hassle to park that big rig and/or they are on a tighter schedule.

 

I also looked at car traffic again:

 

And this seems a bit bizarre:

 

So, I drew roads completely encircling those shops on the south and east sides of the road and they still had low customer count. Taking a wild guess, it will show the reverse high/low for LHD.

 

My conclusions:

• Freight trucks do count towards commercial traffic, but only at half volume.
• RHD commercial only gets high customers on the north and west sides of a road when the traffic is only cars.

This 2nd part would surely have been noticed by now. I wonder what's going on.

 

Edit: So, I re-routed my car traffic so they were going past those 4 commercial lots the other direction. This made the route longer and upset about 500 of them. They refused to go to work, however, even with 1200ish cars all 4 lots then said High Customer count. I switched the roads back to how I had them. Got the traffic back into the 1700s and the south and east then became taboo again.

Next I cranked up the freight trucks to 1800 and their 4 commercial lots all went to High Customer count.

[rsc204 21,805]

This is the thing, a lot of the documentation I linked to earlier isn't explaining completely what I'm seeing. But I think without running some seriously complex tests, I wouldn't like to dispute it's findings.

However, kudos on getting freight traffic to bump customers to medium, I couldn't and my city was expanding a lot. Whilst I'm semi-interested, I simply don't have the dedication to keep going here. After all, whilst it's nice to know how things work, I don't personally have a practical application for these findings.

[CorinaMarie 29,565]

1 hour ago, rsc204 said:

However, kudos on getting freight traffic to bump customers to medium ...

And in my edit it I got them to high customer count.

 

1 hour ago, rsc204 said:

Whilst I'm semi-interested, I simply don't have the dedication to keep going here.

It's all good. Your recent replies prompted me to do further tests and I feel we've answered the basic question of Does Freight Traffic Count for CS Noise. Yes. But only at half the rate of Cars.

[CorinaMarie 29,565]

In reference to empirical observation:

On 10/17/2016 at 9:10 AM, rsc204 said:

With sims working in them, some traffic from pedestrians was also produced. But again, I'd say pedestrians also don't affect the "traffic" seen by CS either.

In reference to the Devotion Wiki Traffic Coefficient article:

On 10/17/2016 at 10:51 AM, rsc204 said:

Which seems to suggest both Freight and Pedestrians do contribute here. Maybe I need to ramp up the test city.

^ (Bold added to both quotes)

 

Ok, so I set up this for a test and have 1391 pedestrians passing by the commercial:

 

Then I zoned in two small low density commercial in those empty spaces and let it run for a couple of years. All three commercial still show low customer count:

 

And then I checked the traffic congestion which shows they do not contribute to traffic (as we'd expect):

 

So, I'd say your initial observation is correct. Pedestrians do not create noise for CS and therefore do not increase the customer count.

Note: The above test was conducted in Vanilla. I'm guessing this would be the same in NAM as it seems unlikely pedestrians would be added to traffic. I know buses in NAM do contribute by default (tho they can be toggled off).

I wonder, but have not looked into it, if pedestrians could be modded to produce noise while still not being added to traffic. Are those separate things or one single variable?

[rsc204 21,805]

14 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

I wonder, but have not looked into it, if pedestrians could be modded to produce noise while still not being added to traffic. Are those separate things or one single variable?

To my knowledge, Noise/Traffic are one and the same thing.

14 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

Note: The above test was conducted in Vanilla. I'm guessing this would be the same in NAM as it seems unlikely pedestrians would be added to traffic. I know buses in NAM do contribute by default (tho they can be toggled off).

There is no setting in the TSCT for this, I can't think why you'd want to do this, since it would have the additional effect of pedestrians creating pollution as they walk around. Perhaps that could be fun, a whole stinky nation raised on brussel sprouts .

 

[CorinaMarie 29,565]

1 hour ago, rsc204 said:

I can't think why you'd want to do this, since it would have the additional effect of pedestrians creating pollution as they walk around.

 

Well no, I meant if they were separate things. Like have them add noise to help commercial, but not add to traffic and pollution. I surmised this wouldn't be an option, but it would be nice if it were.

[fredinno 54]

On 10/7/2016 at 4:45 PM, rsc204 said:

When you build large areas of high density residential, you will naturally end up with huge numbers of commuters needing to move around in a compressed space. This is a recipe for congestion, but with some planning and thought, it's by no means disastrous.

Two buildings with 2k residents will produce about 2k commuters combined. That's because half your sims will never be gainfully employed. Maxis based this on the 2+2 family unit, where 2 adults would have 2 children. Housewives (or fathers) stay at home, as do the kids and people who have retired. Of course not every sim is married with kids though. The net result of this is that approx. 50% of your sims will be workers looking for jobs. Of course the simulator doesn't simulate any of this, Maxis simply picked a percentage of sims that would look for jobs.

But I get the problem, some of the largest buildings have so many sims, even one can equal guaranteed congestion. But there is another important point that's related here. The advisors/news messages may complain about traffic and congestion, but that doesn't mean you have a serious problem. What city in the world doesn't have it's fair share of congestion at rush hour? So it's fine if junctions get busy, even over-capacity, you need to look deeper to see if it's really something that needs fixing.

The layout in your first picture seems pretty sensible. Are the roads that run between the avenues roads or OWRs? Hint: It makes no sense to have two bi-directional roads here, you should use OWR. I like the median in the middle , even if it's only cosmetic, it allows placement of bus/subway stops without messing with the grids, which is a good idea. Are you using the NAM? If so, maybe it's time to try a few of the new higher-capacity networks. In this case, you could replace the OWR with OWR-3, adding an extra lane in each direction. Or, by expanding each side to 2x tiles in width, you can increase the lane count to OWR-4 or OWR-5 for up to 10 lanes (both directions). Of course that might be overkill, but at the most central point of your high-density developments, such high-capacity networks really make a difference. But because of the extra tiles needed, it's best planned in advance or major re-working is required to retro-fit them. Similarly, you can increase the avenues from 4 to 6 lanes using RD-6 in the same space. TLA-6/TLA-7 networks are better though, because they support something called TuLEPs, another NAM feature. TuLEPs can also be used with Avenues and Roads too. In essence, they add additional turning lanes, which help to avoid bottlenecks at junctions with high-traffic flow. The downside, you'll need to return to Avenue where intersections with Highway are needed, TLA 6/7 also needs three tiles width too. One last tip, whilst the El-Rail is an effective network, if it runs parallel to the highway, sims will pick one of the other arbitrarily. This is because both come to/go from the same places. But, if you made the EL-Rail a few blocks away from the Highway, sims usage between the two would be more spread out. Since depending on their destination, one would now be more desirable or faster than the other.

It's subjective, but it looks like you are trying to emulate a very US-Style city layout. You should consider lining heavily used routes with Commercial Development, especially those which have a large volume of Sims travelling between Res and Ind jobs. This is because Traffic is a key factor to the number of shoppers that will visit Commercial Services (Shops). Therefore CS on busy roads will be more successful. I like to have a central area which I target my CO buildings to be located in. Spreading out from there is a mixture of Res and CS, with pockets of Industrial on the outskirts of the main city. By mixing it up a bit, not all your sims will be commuting the entire length between Res and Com/Ind, this should help.

However, if a large volume of sims need to move between cities, you should consider adding some Monorail into the mix. Monorail is high capacity, don't be afraid to run two lines together in really congested situations either. Those could branch off at one point so they serve different destinations too. But Monorail is different to Rail/Elevated Rail/Subway, it is designed to be more utilised by long-distance commuters, rather than shorter local services. As such, unlike the El-Rail where you've placed stations closely together. Monorail works best when the stations are much further apart. Taking your second image as an example, placing a monorail station on the edge of the industrial district (the one where the highway runs below it) and connecting the line to a station in the middle of your city would work well. As with the El-Rail, try to ensure that these stations connect to the local transit network too. Again the NAM helps, if you select the option NAM Standard Station Features during a custom NAM installation (found under Additional Features and Customizations), it will add Subway and Bus services to the default stations. So you could make a link by subway between the Monorail and El-Rail, rather than run the lines next to each other. Such systems where sims can change between transport types, increase the potential options for commuters. Making their journeys by transport much more efficient, alleviating the strain on roads and congestion. When you tie all this together, you should see quite and improvement in the efficiency of your cities overall transport infrastructure.

Lastly, if you really are going for large cities, it really makes sense to utilise subways, every 2-3 blocks at most. It's the quickest and most direct way for most sims and beyond a certain threshold is really a necessity. You might want to consider also downloading the RTMT mod, the key benefit is that you can place Bus, Subway and Combined Bus/Subway Stations directly onto Road, Street, OWR/Avenue networks, avoiding the need for additional space for them. You may also want the AddOn 3.60 pack too.

For step-by-step tutorials on how to use the NWM and TuLEP features (must be installed as part of NAM), see the link in my sig for my YouTube tutorials. TuLEPs are covered in Turorial 3b and NWM is covered in Tutorial 4.

 

What happens with Monorail is congested? Is there an ultra high capacity monorail?

 

[rsc204 21,805]

Managing congestion is simply part of playing the game. So adding a ultra high capacity anything is nonsensical, not to mention probably impossible. So if your other networks are all working fine, but monorail isn't, you simply haven't achieved harmony with regards to your transit system overall. If you have the correct Traffic Simulator setting for the type of cities you are building, there isn't more you can tweak in terms of the settings. Your transit network must adapt. Of course you can have very highly used routes, a quick and dirty fix is to run two lines in parallel together for that stretch.

[APSMS 1,892]

7 hours ago, rsc204 said:

Of course you can have very highly used routes, a quick and dirty fix is to run two lines in parallel together for that stretch.

I think a key part of this is understanding how much the simulation will bear, as well. Not every problem need be fixed right away, and not every traffic problem is fixable (for those hung up on the red spots surrounding their intersections).

[fredinno 54]

On 10/25/2016 at 3:10 AM, rsc204 said:

Managing congestion is simply part of playing the game. So adding a ultra high capacity anything is nonsensical, not to mention probably impossible. So if your other networks are all working fine, but monorail isn't, you simply haven't achieved harmony with regards to your transit system overall. If you have the correct Traffic Simulator setting for the type of cities you are building, there isn't more you can tweak in terms of the settings. Your transit network must adapt. Of course you can have very highly used routes, a quick and dirty fix is to run two lines in parallel together for that stretch.

 

 

I wondered if there was a 3-track monorail... But you're right, in a sense. It's because monorail and subway networks were all 400% capacity, and since there probably isn't any concievable way to increase subway capacity (except maybe 3-track el rail? One can dream XD) I was hoping against hope for some way to fix that (you can't build monorail over monorail as a double height network either, nor road under highway (MHW, no idea about RHW)- as in-

 )

 

But we don't even have 3-track rail yet, so I guess I would have to wait a lot for something like that.

 I guess my options are limited. Maybe I need to build an entirely new parallel line.

On 10/25/2016 at 10:59 AM, APSMS said:

I think a key part of this is understanding how much the simulation will bear, as well. Not every problem need be fixed right away, and not every traffic problem is fixable (for those hung up on the red spots surrounding their intersections).

 

 

Roundabouts tend to fix those for the most part.

[APSMS 1,892]

16 minutes ago, fredinno said:

I wondered if there was a 3-track monorail

Again, you're mistake here is assuming that tracks=capacity. For reference, the STR in the NAM has exactly the same capacity as its DTR brethren. Capacity in SC4 is on a per-tile basis. If you have one network with 4 lanes all fit onto one tile, and another network with one very wide lane (like in European streets), if the base network is the same (e.g. Maxis Road), then they have the same capacity. It's only a trick of NAM coding that one NWM network has any higher capacity that any other one, and even then it's a set rate. If the override has this functionality, than the capacity is 125% of normal, regardless of how many lanes you see.

3-Track monorail would not only be nonsensical (due to how monorail tracks work compared to normal rails), but have zero advantage capacity-wise over the existing monorail options.

Running two monorail lines next to each other occupies twice as many tiles as one monorail line, and therefore has 2 times the capacity.

Using El-Rail-over-Road/Avenue/RD-4 defaults to the highest capacity network, IIRC, so those roads would have El-Rail capacity, but this would be partially negated by the fact that this capacity has to be shared with any El-Rail traffic you may have on that line. If you just want to use it as a high capacity road, I suppose that would work, but it would look pretty ugly, and by design it's not very slope tolerant, not to mention it would take forever to build.

[fredinno 54]

29 minutes ago, APSMS said:

Again, you're mistake here is assuming that tracks=capacity. For reference, the STR in the NAM has exactly the same capacity as its DTR brethren. Capacity in SC4 is on a per-tile basis. If you have one network with 4 lanes all fit onto one tile, and another network with one very wide lane (like in European streets), if the base network is the same (e.g. Maxis Road), then they have the same capacity. It's only a trick of NAM coding that one NWM network has any higher capacity that any other one, and even then it's a set rate. If the override has this functionality, than the capacity is 125% of normal, regardless of how many lanes you see.

3-Track monorail would not only be nonsensical (due to how monorail tracks work compared to normal rails), but have zero advantage capacity-wise over the existing monorail options.

Running two monorail lines next to each other occupies twice as many tiles as one monorail line, and therefore has 2 times the capacity.

Using El-Rail-over-Road/Avenue/RD-4 defaults to the highest capacity network, IIRC, so those roads would have El-Rail capacity, but this would be partially negated by the fact that this capacity has to be shared with any El-Rail traffic you may have on that line. If you just want to use it as a high capacity road, I suppose that would work, but it would look pretty ugly, and by design it's not very slope tolerant, not to mention it would take forever to build.

 

so you mean STR is the same as DTR, except being only one lane? And NWM-RD-3/NRD-4 is the same capacity as RD-2? Then is it speed that makes RD-3 hold more than RD-2?

interesting. I mean, I know buses do a similar thing in SC4.

 

I wouldn't think HSR would have any higher speed than BTM monorail, so that doesn't leave me with much other choice other than to build a new parallel line. I don't have space for 2 monorail lines next to each other (I know that monorail development is going to be superceded by "RealHSR", so I guess a true 4 lane monorail/HSR and FLUPs monorail/HSR could happen eventually).

I need to service another area just parrallel but east of a congested north-south Monorail line, so, in a sense, it fixes itself.

It sucks, but I guess there is no real solution to this.

 

Plus, I would suppose a "maglev" or "hyperloop" train line would be an impossible addition due to the inability to having to build directly off the .exe?

[APSMS 1,892]

13 minutes ago, fredinno said:

so you mean STR is the same as DTR, except being only one lane? And NWM-RD-3/NRD-4 is the same capacity as RD-2? Then is it speed that makes RD-3 hold more than RD-2?

ARD-3/TLA-3 and NRD-4 have what's called Distilled Intersection Paths (DIPs) that make the game view them as a series of intersections. Combined with the NAM's use of the intersection capacity multiplier effect, these networks have 125% road capacity, but the important takeaway here is that lane count means nothing.

14 minutes ago, fredinno said:

Plus, I would suppose a "maglev" or "hyperloop" train line would be an impossible addition due to the inability to having to build directly off the .exe?

Even if you could add it, how would this be functionally different from what's already available? A reskin of the monorail network would achieve the same thing, and th only reason capacities and speeds are set as they are is to make sure that the Traffic simulator is balanced. Having too high speeds or capacities causes the TS to favor that travel type disproportionately, which ends up screwing up other things like your commercial traffic/customers.