Many SC4 questions (My first post)

[SimRayRay 13]

Hi this is my first post!  I have a million questions, I don't know where to start.  It's taken me a while to get going but here I am.  So far i have managed to:

1. Install SimCity Deluxe with discs
2. Patched to B638
3. Patched again to  640 night and day
4.  Downloaded and installed NAM36
5. Created a cmd target file to load secdrv before running SC4 and added in parameters to restrict CPUcount:1.

I can now play!!! Woohoo.  I've racked up a few hours messing around and have some initial questions:

So the Network Traffic Configuration tool that comes with NAM36.... I just run that once, save the default setting, close it, then run SC4?

Simtropolis and SC4Devotion are to the two main websites for downloading plugins?  Simtropolis's are called STEX, and SC4 Devotion are called LEX?

What sort of things do I have to worry about from compatibility perspective, before I start filling my cities with stuff that breaks other stuff, and cant be undone later?  With this in mind, what are, say, the top 10 things to download that will fill my choices of RCI buildings and utilities etc, that also come with accurate descriptions.... For example I don't want to download a new power plant if it doesn't tell me what it's running costs are and how much power it provides.

I like aesthetic cities, as well as organised transport networks, and structured zoning.  What are all main differences with all the new road networks that come with NAM?   Should I just choose the type with the largest capacity and speed?  

[Cyclone Boom 17,031]

Hi @SimRayRay and welcome to Simtropolis and SC4.

Sounds like you've made a great start with installing the patches and getting the game up and running. Do feel free to use this thread as a general catch-all place for asking anything you're unsure about, or would like some explaining. One such topic is this one which covers many subjects with gameplay and general tips.

I'm sure others will have some input too, but I'll do my best to answer a few of your initial questions:
 

3 hours ago, SimRayRay said:

So the Network Traffic Configuration tool that comes with NAM36.... I just run that once, save the default setting, close it, then run SC4?

The TSCT is an optional tool used to configure parameters of the NAM's traffic simulator. These can be adjusted which will change various network costs and capacities and other such settings, but it isn't an actual requirement for using the NAM since the defaults are in place whether editing or not.

For example, these are the standard values as per default:

Spoiler

 

It might be worth experimenting with these in a test region, but it's probably worth leaving them be until getting a feel for whether you may wish to adjust certain ones. Since they're balanced as they are and have been optimised for the traffic simulator. I'm not an expert at this, but there are certainly lots of possibilities here and it really depends on getting a feel for your own play style as to what might be worth raising or lowering.

 

3 hours ago, SimRayRay said:

Simtropolis and SC4Devotion are to the two main websites for downloading plugins?  Simtropolis's are called STEX, and SC4 Devotion are called LEX?

Indeed they are.

Combined both exchanges have 24,608 total files, and have received over 139 billion downloads over the years.

The LEX does require a registration of its own and that can be done here. At SC4Devotion they have forum accounts separate from their exchange, whereas here the STEX can be accessed using your member account (which bypasses guest download limits).

 

3 hours ago, SimRayRay said:

What sort of things do I have to worry about from compatibility perspective, before I start filling my cities with stuff that breaks other stuff, and cant be undone later?

There are cosmetic mods which override defaults like for terrain and water textures. These are nice because they can be swapped over whenever, without being attached to the current tile as played with such items. They simply replace the visuals, although some may require Hardware rendering to support HD textures. Mods to be wary of are those radically altering demands. Some majorly modify things away from the defaults in more ways that one, meaning such changes can be difficult (or possibly impossible) to revert. In a similar category is content that modifies gameplay aspects such as the NAM, CAM, or anything with the RCI simulation. Also any custom buildings plopped in a specific tile, it's worth being wary how they may have imbalanced properties if poorly modded.

In these cases it's an especially wise idea to test in a sandbox region before using content in a city you wish to keep, or even just for playing around with complex components like the NAM includes. Making regular Region folder backups is always a smart move too, along with a system of Plugins organisation to make it easy to know what's what. There's a few possible strategies documented in this thread. Although just like custom content itself, this very much depends on personal preference.

Speaking of the CAM, there's a useful article here explaining very well about what it is, and how it's commonly misunderstood for a pack of buildings.

 

3 hours ago, SimRayRay said:

With this in mind, what are, say, the top 10 things to download that will fill my choices of RCI buildings and utilities etc, that also come with accurate descriptions.

Given there are so many options with custom content, it really depends on each player on what might make a recommended list. Although there are plenty of suggestions and really the main piece of advice is to take it slowly, test each item, and try and think before downloading whether something will be potentially useful. Of course there's no knowing until finding out, so it might be where you'd have a "save for later" folder to come back to certain content another time.

Here's a few resources with some ideas:

• Cori's Shoppes  (Picture preview comparative index lists of known rock, water, beach, terrain, and tree mods.)
• Indiana Joe and the Quest for the Ultimate Plugins Folder
• SimCity 4 and the NAM - How to best enjoy this city-building masterpiece today
• Top Ten Modd Suggestions
• A few other possibilities

Hopefully this helps for starters.

[CorinaMarie 29,895]

Hiya, @SimRayRay. Welcome to Simtropolis.

Some of my own choices for must have mods are:

• Less Abandonment Mod : Fine tunes the desirability to build percentage such that when a building does grow it's much less likely to soon abandon.
• Paeng's Age Degradation Mod : Extends the life of all Maxis power plants so you don't have to rebuild them every few minutes. There is more than one file in the .zip you download and you need to choose which .dat file to use. I go with the Degrade_radical.dat such that the lifespan is extended to 4,902 years.
• Cori's_No_Kickout_Lower_Wealth_CAMpatible.dat : Greatly reduces frustration by preventing low and medium wealth buildings getting replaced by higher wealth when the desirability goes up in areas of your city.
• Census Repository Facility : Once plopped in your game you can click the building to see a slew of useful information.
• No Track Checker by Cori.dat : This prevents those little green track checkers from appearing on rail lines. One word of caution: If you save a city while this is installed in your plugins folder that particular tile will never, ever again show the track checkers even if removing the mod. (This is its intended behavior.)
• CAROL'S LIST - An index of SimCity 4 Tutorials and Resources : Is a good list of things to install first.
• There're also linkys in the above to other lists such as my reply in  Fixes and Mods to get After a Fresh SC4 Install. (The IHT fix mentioned in that post is considered one of the most important mods because otherwise no R$$$ will work at High Tech Industry.)
• There are also some linkys on my About Me page (scroll down a wee bit there) which you might find of interest.

One to stay away from (IMO) is: Abandonment Dilapidation Modd because it greatly extends the time before an abandoned building uses the darkened graphics. By masking the problem it actually makes it more difficult to figure out what is going on in your economy. (Ofc, it does have use for peeps who are using the game as an artistic canvas without regard to whether or not it functions in game terms.)

[RobertLM78 1,598]

8 hours ago, SimRayRay said:

I like aesthetic cities, as well as organised transport networks, and structured zoning.  What are all main differences with all the new road networks that come with NAM?   Should I just choose the type with the largest capacity and speed?  

It depends on needs: is the network going to have Commercial zoned alongside it?  If so, higher capacity networks are best.  If Residential, lower capacity is better.  

Forexample, I use 6 4x4 (+1 tile for street/road) "superblocks", bound by avenues with 2x commercial zones. 

But again, the type of zoning will help determine which kind of network to use.

[SimRayRay 13]

Thanks for all the advice!   I will take some time to explore these links.  Perhaps I should have given more information on my playstyle.

I want to deviate as little as possible from the original game, except for NAM (which seems universally approved).  But I do want/need to play around building cities and learning how the game works, without using stuff that changes the dynamics of the original game.

For this reason,

1. I have downloaded the extra cheats plugin dll, and simply stuck that file in my plugins folder.  This makes money not an issue for building...I can still try to balance my budget without the pressure of going bankrupt.
2. I have also edited the config file with MSPaint to setup my region to my liking.

I am wary of using CAM, at least until i have an understanding of how buildings develop and have reached the point where I want to extend that.

After trying a few ploppable buildings, I'm concerned about how to organise my plugins folder... its going to be a mess.  Also, I'm concerned about deleting the plugin and leaving a permanent effect on my region.   For example, I downloaded the Neutrino Power Plant thingy.  It came with some dependencies (some cars, fences and textures). 

• If I plop the power plant in, run the game a while, then bulldoze it, then also delete the plugin and the dependencies.... will this have a lasting effect on my city? my region? my game?  Will there be cars without visuals?
• What are the restrictions to moving plugin files around?  There seems to be .dat, .sc4lot, .dlls files.  Can they all be moved into subfolders?

I want to start with a general regional transportation plan.  I'm aware of the endless commuter phenomenon, and understand the tree/dendrite regional connections approach to prevent this.  However I'm not sure what roads/rails to use.  Dual One-Way Roads seem superior to avenues in almost all aspects, other than ease of connections at intersections and to other cities.  Real HighWays seem superior to highways in flexibility and capacity but not in simplicity of use. 

• Do RHW also allow zones to develop? 
• If i start with simple Highways, how much space will I need to later change this to RHW?  It seems that intersections need a vast amount of space for RHW
• Can OWRs join RHWs for intercity connections?

I understand that freight disappears between cities, but commuters don't. 

• If I build railways exclusively for freight and monorails exclusively for commuters, how easy would it be to keep the two networks separated, to avoid the endless commuter and still keep multiple freight city connections to allow short freight trips?
• How do I prevent freight from using monorails and subways?
• How do I prevent commuters from using railways

 

[CorinaMarie 29,895]

50 minutes ago, SimRayRay said:

I want to deviate as little as possible from the original game, except for NAM (which seems universally approved).  But I do want/need to play around building cities and learning how the game works, without using stuff that changes the dynamics of the original game.

With this in mind I will still recommend  Less Abandonment Mod and Cori's_No_Kickout_Lower_Wealth_CAMpatible.dat. The game was rushed out before it was truly completed and the settings in the game are geared toward explosive growth which does allow for pretty eye candy as areas redevelop, but makes the game less satisfying for long term play. At a minimum, get the Less Abandonment one. You can still use the Mark Historical for all the low wealth homes if you don't mind clicking hundreds upon hundreds of times. (To keep the economy balanced you'll need a bunch low wealth workers.)

 

55 minutes ago, SimRayRay said:

I am wary of using CAM, at least until i have an understanding of how buildings develop and have reached the point where I want to extend that.

That's a very good idea. When I was new here I had the honor of chatting with @InvisiChem before he disappeared from the community. Even tho it is his mod, we decided I'd be better off learning the basics before jumping in and using CAM.

 

57 minutes ago, SimRayRay said:

If I plop the power plant in, run the game a while, then bulldoze it, then also delete the plugin and the dependencies.... will this have a lasting effect on my city? my region? my game?  Will there be cars without visuals?

Providing you are not using one of the mods which includes an Auto City Save function, that'll be perfectly fine to do.  You can even go a step further and plop the item, save the game, and when you later decide you don't want it you can load any city tile which has it and bulldoze it while the power plant is still in your plugins.

The way things work in the game is when plopping (or growing) something it records most of the information from the item and that is part of the save file. Where things go screwy is if you remove it from plugins first, but then go in to delete it. The game tries to look up the info from the .dat file, but can't find it. It'll still get deleted, but there will be lingering unattached information in the save data.

For the dependencies they can stay either way. It's quite common for multiple mods from various peeps to reference the same texture or prop packs. Removing those won't cause any chaos (as in a permanent problem with the save file), but will either just show an invisible texture if that's not present or a brown box if it's the model for a prop or main building if that's what was removed.

 

1 hour ago, SimRayRay said:

I want to start with a general regional transportation plan.

I did that for one of my regions and it helps to not have to worry later about where the city tile connections need to be.

For the NAM related questions, I'll leave those for the experts. (I did a custom install when I got the NAM and I basically only added the SAM Streets, Rural Highways, and a few other things so I wouldn't be overwhelmed with a million options in the game while I learn about NAM.)

[SimRayRay 13]

Thank you @CorinaMarie.  Very interesting about the bug where: buildings set with any two values the same for R$, R$$, or R$$$ groups will create demand for such groups but not employment for the higher of the two wealth groups, which affects all I-HT, medical clinic, solar and nuclear power plants.

• So in order to get the Census Repository I need BSC Essentials and BSC Textures Vol 1?  In order to have BSC Essentials, I need BSC MEGA Props - Misc Vol 2 and BSC Textures Vol 3?  
• What exactly does the CrimeDoesntPay do to crime levels, apart from making them controllable?

For now I am making decision on overall transport strategy, and I have yet to actually forward time

• Do commuters look for nearby job based on straight line distance, and only then do they attempt to path out journey time?  If the journey to work is viable, they will get the job?  What happens if the journey BACK from work is very long - will they still work there? 
• Full clover leaf highway intersections allow cars to turn around 180.  However the highway intersection stack does not.  There are also variations I can customise using RHW.  Are these just visual things, or do they have a real effect in the game.

This would allow me to design highways that force residents from another city to take a longer route before finding another city exit point, preferably a route that goes through job areas such as commercials, so to avoid the endless commuter.  However this would also create a big discrepancy between commuting to and from work for residents that live and work in the same city.   

• If journey time back from work is not that important, and I deliberately send them back through long winding routes through my commercial ares in the evening, does evening traffic increase desirability of commercial plots the same as morning traffic? 

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

While accumulating plugins and tuning settings, I recommend splashing around in an expendable region for a while. Once your installation stabilizes, (back it up) and start a "real" region in earnest. If you later learn about a mod that you might want, try it out back in your expendable region and decide that you like it before adding it to the region you care about.

Any time a city in your test region becomes a mess, you can reset it (the city file).

One more plugin that I highly advise you to add is a "slope mod". There are several, and it almost doesn't matter which one you get because you should experiment and customize it to fit your own style of play. The parameters in a slope mod control and limit the slopes of streets, roads, tunnel formation etc -- including all "smoothing", which can profoundly affect playability. There are several old threads about slope mods -- please read at least one.

[CorinaMarie 29,895]

2 hours ago, SimRayRay said:

So in order to get the Census Repository I need BSC Essentials and BSC Textures Vol 1?  In order to have BSC Essentials, I need BSC MEGA Props - Misc Vol 2 and BSC Textures Vol 3?

I personally skip the dependencies for that and just plop the first one which is immediately available. That prolly causes a few props or textures to not show up on it, but it looks fine to me sans whatever I might not be seeing.

 

2 hours ago, SimRayRay said:

What exactly does the CrimeDoesntPay do to crime levels, apart from making them controllable?

I'm curious about this too as I've never used it. (My regions are predominately rural settings with farms and then some occasional big cities of 60k population.) Crime has never become an issue for me so I've not investigated that mod. As I recall there is a certain default game setting where the police officers can only move up to a certain number of cells from a street or road and that means they cannot control crime inside larger lots like the Country Club reward. It seems that might be one of the things the mod is to fix, but I suspect it may also lower crime in other ways.

 

2 hours ago, SimRayRay said:

Do commuters look for nearby job based on straight line distance, and only then do they attempt to path out journey time?  If the journey to work is viable, they will get the job?  What happens if the journey BACK from work is very long - will they still work there? 

My understanding is they seek a job first looking for the closest as the crow flies without regard to whether or not they could get to it. Then the code hands that off to the traffic simulator and it then checks to see if they can get there within the time limit. The original Maxis limit is 6 minutes (but tweaked with a multiplier factor when shown on the commute graph). NAM sets this to 600 such that any job in a large tile is reachable even for a pedestrian. For the journey home there is no time limit at all.

 

2 hours ago, SimRayRay said:

If journey time back from work is not that important, and I deliberately send them back through long winding routes through my commercial ares in the evening, does evening traffic increase desirability of commercial plots the same as morning traffic? 

Yep. It does count for traffic noise (which is what commercial services like), but at only half the rate when they pass by in the morning and evening. The same is true for the freight trucks generated by industry. Their affect on noise counts at half too.

[SimRayRay 13]

So how do residents living right next to a neighbouring connection point ever find a job in the centre of the same city?  The distance to connection is far closer than the city centre.  Will residents along the outskirts of a city (and close to a connection point) always decide that the next city is closer?

What happens when I make the evening commute extremely long?

Say I had a city called R1, entirely of residential and no jobs.  I have only a single connection going out of R1 - a two-way avenue connection to a neighbouring city called J1, entirely of jobs and no residents.  I immediately split the connecting avenue in J1 into dual OneWayRoads.   I peel the incoming OWR directly into the nearby job district.  The only way out of the job district is another single OWR.  I send this exit OWR all the way around the circumference of J1 (and possibly into other neighbouring cities) , finally hooking back up to the connection avenue  in J1 leading back to R1.

Can I create workers that go to work quickly, but goes through several regions to artificially boost evening traffic and commercial traffic desirability, before coming home?

Can I trap the worker in an endless commute after going to work, and never going home?

I've been designing and changing the road networks for hours and keep on changing my mind about how best to structure it.  Maybe I should do less planning and more playing.

 

 

[CorinaMarie 29,895]

2 minutes ago, SimRayRay said:

So how do residents living right next to a neighbouring connection point ever find a job in the centre of the same city?  The distance to connection is far closer than the city centre.  Will residents along the outskirts of a city (and close to a connection point) always decide that the next city is closer?

Every time you save the neighboring Job City tile the game calculates the average distance to all jobs in said tile and that is all it tells the neighboring tiles in that regard. So if the J city has jobs right at the border and none elsewhere they can even be seen as a short commute to the Rs in the adjacent tile. (I did a specific test disproving the old wisdom that neighboring jobs are always long.)

 

6 minutes ago, SimRayRay said:

The only way out of the job district is another single OWR.  I send this exit OWR all the way around the circumference of J1 (and possibly into other neighbouring cities) , finally hooking back up to the connection avenue  in J1 leading back to R1.

I'm 99% certain all the way around the edge in J1 for the return trip will be fine. I doubt it'll work for sending them thru city tiles they did not originally travel thru on their way to work. I believe if they find they cannot return home they quit that job and look for another.

 

One thing to keep in mind with regional play is you need to propagate the city info back and forth. Let's say you have city tiles all in a row called R1, E1, E2, and J1 with the Es being basically empty tiles in between.  The Es will need at least one accessible job in them to convince the Rs they can travel thru them and beyond. So, you would start in R1 and grow some residents, save then exit, open E1 run the road thru and add some place at least one Sim could work, save then exit, same in E2, then in J1 the residential demand from R1 has arrived and you can grow jobs there. However, once you've grown the jobs you need to go back thru tile by tile running a wee bit of time (like a year) and saving then exiting until you get back to R1. Now in R1 they see the jobs in J1 and your demand for more Sims goes up. You grow them. Now you need to propagate that info back to J1 via the tiles in between.

And this reminds me of the number one tip about saving a game. Never, ever use the Save and Exit or the Save and Quit choices. Always Save first then select Exit (or Quit) without saving afterwards. There is the potential to corrupt a city tile if using the and option.

[CorinaMarie 29,895]

I noticed I overlooked this:

On 3/9/2019 at 6:46 AM, SimRayRay said:

What are the restrictions to moving plugin files around?  There seems to be .dat, .sc4lot, .dlls files.  Can they all be moved into subfolders?

The only file type which is critical for placement is the .dll files such as SC4Fix.dll and SimCity 4 Extra Cheats Plugin.dll. Those need to be in the root of Plugins and cannot be in a sub folder. Many peeps (myself included) put the dlls in the install folder plugins rather than in the documents folder plugins. Otherwise for most everyone, no other mods, lots, bats, etc should go in the install folder's plugins. (Yes, there are modders who use it for a specific reason, but they are intimately familiar with why they do that.)

For general organization of your plugins folder there are multiple topics on that and as I know your Google-Fu is excellent I'm sure you've found said topics already.

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

21 hours ago, SimRayRay said:

For now I am making decision on overall transport strategy, and I have yet to actually forward time

• Do commuters look for nearby job based on straight line distance, and only then do they attempt to path out journey time?  If the journey to work is viable, they will get the job? 

I seem to recall that there's a special situation regarding jobs at civic buildings -- maybe sims preferentially try to fill these jobs, and if there are civic jobs open that they can't reach, then instead of looking further, they'll complain about "no jobs" (zots will appear) .

[SimRayRay 13]

OK questions about Pedestrians, Subways, Buses, and Pedmalls

Pedestrians:

• Will they cross streets, OWRs, roads, avenues, highways, RHW, railways
• Will they walk under elevated highways, elevated monorails, elevated roads, any sort of bridges?
• Will they walk to a subway in the middle of a NAM roundabout?
• Will they cross a road roundabout?
• Will they walk across two plazas diagonally opposite each other?

Subways:

• Can a station be linked to a subway in any of the four adjacent squares?  What about diagonals?
• Does the arrow on the station's plopper need to be facing a underground subway tile? Or does this not matter?
• How does a station link into a diagonal subway line?

Buses

• Does the arrow matter?

Pedmalls:

• Are there any Pedmalls that don't have underground connections to rail and subway?  They make a mess of my underground subway network
• Does the arrow matter?

 

 

[CorinaMarie 29,895]

2 hours ago, SimRayRay said:

Pedestrians:

• Will they cross streets, OWRs, roads, avenues, highways, RHW, railways
• Will they walk under elevated highways, elevated monorails, elevated roads, any sort of bridges?

Here're a few of those tested in the game:

Street:

 

One Way Road:

 

Avenue:

 

Avenue with a Street making a crossing:

 

Street crossing Rail and Avenue:

 

Street under Elevated Highway:

 

Street under Monorail:

 

And, ofc, you can easily test the other scenarios in a sandbox city tile.

For the plopping of bus, subway, and other stations the direction of the arrow does not matter so long as one cell of the station touches the network the Sims need access to. It's the same for any of the buildings in the game. Like you can grow them facing a street and later draw a road touching them from the side or back and bulldoze the original street and they will still be happy.

For the NAM stuff like roundabouts, I'll leave that for the gurus to answer or you might find out by testing.

[SimRayRay 13]

Wow thank you! 

 So it seems, streets, OWR, and roads all allow pedestrians to cross.  Effectively they are not a barrier at all, infact they can be used as creating pedestrian access in the case of a junction with an avenue, or under a highway, or over rails.

I read the NAM documentation and it says Pedmalls need to be all linked together and need a mass transit adjacent to one of the linked tiles.  But if pedestrians can use roads and streets, then why cant pedestrians use a bus stop, cross the road, walk down a few cells, then enter a pedmall chain?  What is the point of a pedmall-over-road-bridge, if pedestrians can just cross the road?

Is there a difference between a Plaza plop and a Pedmall plop?  Can pedestrians cross a plaza?  Can a plaza be used a pedmall link?

Other than aesthetics, there seems very little advantage to Pedmalls over simple dead-end roads with plazas/parks. Apparently pedmall traffic is much lower than roads and therefore provide less commerical or industrial desirablity from traffic.  From YIMBY perspective, plazas and parks might do a similar job.

I didnt mean to make you test stuff for me, I was hoping people already knew and could just explain the differences.  I havent actually created a city yet, so I dont have a stable environment for testing, but I guess I should go do that.

[CorinaMarie 29,895]

No worries. Sometimes I feel the best answer can be represented with pics from the game.

For the pedmall stuff, I've not used them so I don't have any answers about them. I can imagine the ones going over roads is so the pedestrians don't get run over. I don't have proof of this, but the reason I say it in seriousness is I often have myself in the game as a MySim and my job can be right across the street yet sometimes I complain that my work is a no go. It makes me wonder if there is some coding in the game that takes into account the amount of vehicular traffic on the streets and roads with regard to whether or not a Sim can cross.

[SimRayRay 13]

Well if an admin with 9000 posts doesn't have the answer, I don't think my strategy of eliminating future problems by careful planning is ever going to be effective.  I think Ill just have to grow a city organically and see where that takes me.

A picture paints a thousand words.  The problem with Google-FU is a lot of old threads no longer link to images, the posts often assume the reader knows things already, and I'm not even sure some of the info is still relevant in the most recent NAM of fixes that I am using.

What I do know is you are here and helping me, and that is comforting 

[CorinaMarie 29,895]

2 minutes ago, SimRayRay said:

Well if an admin with 9000 posts doesn't have the answer,

Well, I figure Dirk offered me the admin slot cause I'm around a lot (and some peeps believe I'm friendly). For the number of posts that just means I talk a lot.

Honestly, there are several members who know a lot more about the techy side of the game than I do. I've gathered information from both my experiences in the game and from reading replies by others here. My own interests in the game are way more narrow than many other players so there are oodles of simple things they'll know that I don't.

For NAM specific things there are experts who hang out in the NAM & Transit Networks forum which might get a quicker response if you post those specific question in there. (You're welcome to discuss them here, but this forum tends to be more generalized.)

[RobertLM78 1,598]

2 hours ago, SimRayRay said:

I read the NAM documentation and it says Pedmalls need to be all linked together and need a mass transit adjacent to one of the linked tiles.  But if pedestrians can use roads and streets, then why cant pedestrians use a bus stop, cross the road, walk down a few cells, then enter a pedmall chain?  What is the point of a pedmall-over-road-bridge, if pedestrians can just cross the road?

You read correctly - but it isn't too big a deal.  Most of the time you'll want a mass transit near the pedmall, but if you don't there is a workaround:

Another thing to note about pedmalls, if I recall correctly, is they are used with **commercial zones**. 

The pedmall bridges are useful for railway and large volume network crossings.  And they look cool