The Edge's city building discussion thread

[Naomi57 2,985]

Ferry Strategies

11 hours ago, The Edge said:

Reckon I should add some ferries in there? Do they do much for traffic congestion/moving people around, or are they mostly a "nice to have", and if the former, should I use passenger only, car only or both? Is one more effective than the other?

fairy ferry godmother here.       I so LOVE my ferries!  

Ferries are another under-rated piece in the game.  They are basically a ploppable neighbour connection, so they tend to draw lots of sim traffic, thereby creating C$, C$$ and C$$$ opportunities in the ferry terminal area.   My OWR-4 Ferry Loop and "Fly-swat Ferry Loop" roads are designed to handle that ferry traffic, providing an unbroken flow of traffic to and from the ferry plop, through a swathe of commercial zonings, and allowing just a single road link between the ferry traffic zone and the rest of the city.  Commercial growth being fuelled by traffic in a 2 tile radius of each commercial lot, it also provides a "virtuous cycle" (opposite of a vicious cycle), with the highly successful commercial lots attracting more local and inter-city ferry commuters.

It's good to have commercial zoned immediately around the high traffic avenue or OWR loop leading to the ferry, and residential just outside that commercial zone to make the ferry an attractive commuter destination for those residents.  Looking at @The Edge's screenshot above, there might be some bulldozing needed in order to make room for the road networks required.  

At a bare minimum a straight arterial avenue perpendicular to the sea shore, lined with commercial zonings and no intersections, with a NWM Highway Over Roundabout at one end, and the ferry plop at the other end, would work with the smallest amount of bulldozing ... but if you're building ferries in many cities, a proper ferry terminal zone works best.  I can't emphasise enough the no intersections rule.  The first intersection denotes the end of your ferry terminal commercial area.

Car ferries attract more traffic (and are therefore more exciting) than passenger ferries, so do make sure your roads are up to handling that.  I'm learning that the OWR-4 Ferry Loop is better for car ferries, and "Fly-swat Ferry Loop" road is better for passenger ferries.  The Car & Passenger Ferry Terminal and Passenger Ferry Terminal are on separate networks, so you'll need other city tiles in your region with matching plops in order to start seeing traffic.  Expect these areas to really bustle when you have 3 or 4 cities in your region with the same plops. They don't even need to be large cities.  Even a small township on another city tile, with a small local C$ ferry terminal area, and nearby residential zonings, will help generate more of this inter-city ferry traffic for you.

While ferries will transport people inside the same city tile sometimes, most of their traffic is inter-city.

When people think of ferries, they usually think of a small suburban ferry wharf, which is generally vacant aside from local residents catching a ferry.

In SimCity 4, it's actually far more profitable to think of each ferry plop as a ferry terminus hub, with local restaurants, tourist shops, gelato bar, and office blocks nearby.

... and here's the nearby restaurants and gelato bars, near Circular Quay in my home town.  

The Passenger Ferry Terminal needs a nearby Bus Stop, and as far as I've been able to figure out, the Bus Stop MUST NOT be on an orthogonal adjacent tile (though there might be ways around that).  I usually use a diagonally adjacent Bus Stop next to my passenger ferries.

The Car & Passenger Ferry Terminal works best with a nearby Bus Stop, too, but it's not as important.  I usually have a Bus Stop plopped inside a 1-3 tile walking distance of my car ferries.  Car & passenger loading times (transit switch cost) is identical for both car ferries and passenger ferries, as far as I can tell.  @CorinaMarie might know more on that subject.  The high transit switch cost is the big reason why ferries are mostly inter-city transport, with fewer sims taking the ferry to work in the same city.

The ferry routes are instantaneous, like Star Trek teleporters, so given the high transit switch cost, and the instantaneous ferry route, the most successful ferry routes for traffic inside your city are likely to be the ferry plops that are furthest apart, but I haven't investigated to confirm that, yet.

The passenger ferries are a simple plop for water transport.  The car ferries, on the other hand, have traffic routes carved into them.  Here's one of my city screenshots from my Neighbour Connection Strategy with a C$$$ Tourism Focus post, showing an early city of mine when I was still learning how this works.  On the car ferry pictured in the screenshot below:

1. Passenger ticket booth is in the left-most tile,
2. Outbound cars leaving your city, and the car ticket gate on the middle tile,
3. Inbound cars driving off the ferry on the right-most tile.

Note, however, that I most assuredly DO NOT recommend this kind of AVE-4 loop right next to the ferry.  What a waste of C$$ commercial opportunities, and traffic snarls, too!

When you plop the car ferry beside an existing road, it links the inbound and outbound tiles of the car ferry to the road.  You can keep that if you like, but I usually bulldoze those road connections and rebuild a clean road that doesn't have them.  That's just cosmetic.

I usually terraform an orthogonal piece of coastline for my ferry plops.  Their precise location is too strategic to leave it to chance of where the coastline just happens to be appropriately orthogonal.  Ctrl+Alt+Shift God-mode Broad Level Brush (at small radius Shift+1 or Shift+2 level), is usually the best tool for that job, though occasionally the God-mode Plains tool does a better job at producing appropriate orthogonal coastlines.  Save frequently!

Yea, I LOVE ferries!  They also liven up your water ways with some really lovely automata.  

WORD OF WARNING: Car ferries, even more than passenger ferries, are deadly attractors of the Eternal Commuter Bug, making the no intersections rule and separate high capacity ferry roads even more important.  I've literally watched sims (many times) ride in on a car ferry, perform the shortest possible road trip back to the same ferry plop, and sail right out again!  I call that sort of behaviour "tourist traffic", and some of my cities are deliberately designed to maximise commercial benefits off that tourist traffic.  

[CorinaMarie 29,894]

26 minutes ago, Naomi57 said:

Car & passenger loading times (transit switch cost) is identical for both car ferries and passenger ferries, as far as I can tell.

This should've been an easy job for me to look up. However, I don't see that property for either type of ferry like it is for a bus stop and others. Next I peeked in the Traffic Simulator itself (where it shouldn't really be) and didn't find it there either.

We'll need the experts to chime in on this one.

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

21 hours ago, The Edge said:

Reckon I should add some ferries in there?

Given your water connections to neighboring city-sectors, yes. A centered ferry could give traffic a new route in and/or out of the city (as well as creating cap relief).

[The Edge 215]

Thanks for all the tips and pointers, I'll add a few ferry terminals and report back. Cheers for your help - and @Naomi57 greetings from across the ditch

 

[mattb325 28,891]

18 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

I don't see that property for either type of ferry like it is for a bus stop and others. Next I peeked in the Traffic Simulator itself (where it shouldn't really be) and didn't find it there either

I'm no expert, but I have made a ferry or two, and can confirm that there is no TSEC for either car/passenger ferries or passenger ferries that I know of. Such values could possibly be hidden somewhere else in the game (I haven't checked that deep), but it isn't in the Lot/building configs.

Ferries behave in game almost like a magic portal that just instantly transports sims from location to location. In that regard they are incredibly efficient. I guess being placed on both land and water, there is a more limited likelihood of sims using the ferry as a transit shortcut between networks, and even if they do use the ferry building to hop across networks it wouldn't cause the same issues as say, a bus or train station, which is the only reason I can see no TSEC being needed.

The extra values are 'misc type 1' which relates to the nominal catalogue capacity of the ferry and the 'ferry terminal type' which is either car+pax or pax alone. Those two values, plus the placement of the ferry tag 'gnomes' in the lot editor get it all to work.

 

P.S.: Naomi57, greetings from another Sydney-sider 

[The Edge 215]

Thanks for all the tips and help so far. Staying with the water theme - I just realised this city doesn't have a seaport. Does that one make any difference to industrial demand or is it the same thing as the ferries?

[CorinaMarie 29,894]

29 minutes ago, The Edge said:

Does that one make any difference to industrial demand or is it the same thing as the ferries?

The two are completely different animals.

• The Seaport acts as a Freight End Point for trucks.
• The Ferries are transportation for Sims.

As long as your trucks can get out of the city or all freight gets to a railroad and then out of the city, you won't need a Seaport at all.

[The Edge 215]

Sweet, I was panicking because I thought they needed the seaport. I have good railway links so I think I'm sorted there. Thanks

[The Edge 215]

Here are the stats for the only two (so far) that seem to be used - I have 5 car terminals and 2 passenger only ones. Both these car ones are showing 28 usage for each terminal.

[The Edge 215]

Anyone got any comments on the design of my city? Any suggestions welcome

[Naomi57 2,985]

44 minutes ago, The Edge said:

Anyone got any comments on the design of my city? Any suggestions welcome

I'm enjoying the way you mix a graceful and charming aesthetic with highly effective road transport, @The Edge.  Sims LOVE a short road commute, and you're delivering that with ready access to the MHW highway loop and MHW x AVE-4 interchanges.  The residential lots that are at least two tiles away from the MHW also benefit from reduced traffic noise, which your white towers look perfectly positioned to enjoy.

One idea for you to consider, is placing a bus stop between the suburban road and the decorative roundabouts.  Bus stops are transit-enabled on all four sides, so just one bus stop adjacent to both road and roundabout will provide a bus interchange point, facilitating bus routes from suburb to highway ... turning the roundabout into a dedicated bus-bay.  That sort of position makes the bus route more attractive for more sims ... if that's something you like to do ... but maybe that would disturb the aesthetic you're aiming for?

I notice you already have one bus stop adjacent to both MHW and AVE-4, sandwiched between them.  Have you checked it out with the Route Query tool?  I get a little kick out of doing highway interfacing bus stops, as I talk about on this other post of mine, The mysterious powers of the SC4 Bus Stop.  Perhaps you've already noticed that the one bus stop will serve both ground level Avenue and L2 Elevated MHW, when it's adjacent to both.  

Your high tech industry looks ideally situated, close to premium residential locations, which is usually the place they prefer to grow.  

Your ferry traffic will heat up as you build more city tiles with ferries.  You might need to turn those ferry avenues into cul-de-sacs when the traffic heats up, so that those over-heated avenues are only handling ferry traffic, and not overburdened with through traffic as well.

It's really interesting to me to see those sims taking a short ferry route.  Adjacent residential on one ferry, and adjacent commercial on the other the other ferry, would be a big part of the reason why, but it's unusual to see in my experience, especially given fairly direct avenue road access between the two neighbourhoods.

Are you enjoying the seaborne automata that comes with the ferries?   

[The Edge 215]

Seaborne automata? Sorry I'm not 100% sure what that means

Thanks for the other comments, some good tips in there! I use a subusway station as opposed to the standard one that comes with the game. This one has a much higher capacity, and eliminates the need for a separate bus stop/subway station, the one I use can do both in one thing I'll take a look at the placement of the stops, see if I can do more with it...

[Naomi57 2,985]

This post on Show us Your Oddities! shows one of the automata additions that come when you plop your first ferry.  With a perennial love of SimCity 4 seaside landscapes, these seaborne automata are one of the little side benefits of ferries that I really enjoy.

The subusway station should work just the same as a Maxis vanilla Bus Stop.  Most stations are transit enabled on all four sides, so those stations with integrated bus capabilities deliver the same highway interfacing bus stop and roundabout bus bay capabilities as the Maxis vanilla Bus Stop.

In another post, First Time with NAM Railway features – Am I doing this right?, I show the same transit enabled feature on adjacent diagonals, which works, too, as long as the adjacency is close.  In that post, it's adjacent heavy rail, but it works the same for diagonal roads and bus stops.  Some of the NAM curve pieces, which only barely touch the adjacent tile, don't work, but simple diagonals do.

[The Edge 215]

That oddities pic is cool, "the trapped boat" I thought the yachts came with the marina tho, not the ferry terminal?

[Naomi57 2,985]

19 minutes ago, The Edge said:

I thought the yachts came with the marina tho, not the ferry terminal?

Weirdly, the marina brings hang gliders.  I haven't figured out why, but I love those, too.  There's something very peaceful, calm and serene, about watching both the yachts and hang gliders.

[Naomi57 2,985]

8 hours ago, The Edge said:

Anyone got any comments on the design of my city? Any suggestions welcome

I just noticed, @The Edge, you've got the Ferry bus stops on an orthogonal adjacent tile.  I'm pretty sure that sim commuters won't make the transit switch from bus stop to ferry from that position.  I think it might be a bug in the game.  Moving the bus stop 1 tile further away, or else diagonally adjacent to the ferry, will improve ferry usage by opening it up to bus commuters, too.

[The Edge 215]

Sorry I'm trying to get my head around how you've explained it - are you able to post an example screenshot please (if possible)? That would be a great help, thank you

 

[Naomi57 2,985]

Sure, no trouble at all.  Click on the screenshots if they are not big enough in your browser.  These are a couple screenshots I already had uploaded on Simtropolis, which show what I'm talking about.

Diagonal Bus Stop & Ferry Layout

Here's a diagonally adjacent bus stop and ferry layout from one of my recent cities, which works well.  Ignore the red arrows, it's the bus stop next to the ferry which is of interest.  Notice the bus stop is on the closest diagonal tile, and shares no edge with the ferry.  That's my typical layout with a Passenger Ferry ... being the closest bus stop that works ... diagonally adjacent.

Orthogonal Bus Stop & Ferry Layout

Here's an older screenshot from my second city using the NAM.  The two bus stops right next to the ferry are not quite adjacent, having a 1 tile Pedmall between them.  This is the closest bus stop that works in an orthogonal layout, rather than diagonal.  If I moved the bus stops 1 tile closer, so that they are completely adjacent, orthogonally adjacent, they won't work!

It's a bug, I presume, because it REALLY doesn't make any kind of real-world sense.  That road allows pedestrians on it.  They should be able to exit the bus stop onto the road, then walk along the road to the ferry, but they can't if the bus stop is plopped one tile closer.  A bus stop that shares one side with a ferry, prevents commuters from using both the bus stop and the ferry.  Weird, huh!  

In fact, the Pedmall isn't even necessary.  You could put a small shop there instead, as long as there is a one-tile gap between ferry and bus stop, commuters can use both.

Orthogonal is the opposite of diagonal, so:

1. Orthogonally adjacent is sharing one side of the tile between bus stop and ferry ... which doesn't work, because of this bug.
2. Diagonally adjacent, is sharing one corner of the tile between bus stop and ferry ... which works like a dream; the shortest possible pedestrian route for lazy sims.  

Walking distance is much less of an issue with the NAM installed ... NAM sims are fit, and happy to walk great distances!  I learned the diagonally adjacent technique with SimCity 4 vanilla, before I downloaded the NAM, because that diagonal adjacency literally made a big difference to how many of those lazy vanilla sims would walk from bus stop to ferry!  

[The Edge 215]

Awesome, I'll give that a crack. Thanks!

[infamousjbe 593]

Ya got me thinking I needs to check and make sure I don't have any of my bus stops like this. Do you know if it's just the SC4 default bus stop that acts like this, or even custom ones? 

[CorinaMarie 29,894]

6 minutes ago, infamousjbe said:

Do you know if it's just the SC4 default bus stop that acts like this, or even custom ones? 

I believe it's all of them. Including subway stations and other places where Sims can transfer from one form of transportation to another. It seems to be that they can go from one mode to another like walk to bus or bus to walk, but they can't go from one station type to another cause the other will only have incoming walk and that needs to be from a transit network rather than a transit station.

[Naomi57 2,985]

3 hours ago, infamousjbe said:

Ya got me thinking I needs to check and make sure I don't have any of my bus stops like this. Do you know if it's just the SC4 default bus stop that acts like this, or even custom ones? 

I agree with @CorinaMarie on this, with the one possible (and peculiar) exception of Monorail Stations, which seem to have very slightly different rules, that I haven't quite figured out, yet.  I think there are some circumstances in which a Monorail Station will support orthogonal adjacent transit switch, and then most other cases where it won't, but I could be quite mistaken.

The other curiosity, which is very prevalent across transit lots, is that sims will use the lot to take a pedestrian shortcut, but only if there are Pedmalls, Streets or Roads.on both sides.  i.e. Sims will walk right through this configuration:

|           |
| B • S • B |
|           |

... but they won't walk through if any two of the transit lots are adjacent, such as:

|           |
| B S • • B |
|           |

Similar to Ferries, I'm almost certain that neither Bus Stop will allow any access to the Subway in this configuration, which is typical of transit lots in general.

| • • • |
| B S B |
| • • • |

... but the transit switches will work perfectly on the diagonal adjacent tiles, with just one Pedmall in the centre.

| C S C |
| B • B |
| C S C |

KEY:

| = Street, Road, One Way Road or Avenue
• = Pedmall
B = Bus Stop
S = Subway Station
C = Commercial lot

This fussiness is more noticeable with Ferries, but it seems to be inherent behaviour in all transit lots, with the possible exception of the Monorail Station.  I'm going to deliberately experiment with this in my Brownsville large city tile, to try to confirm exactly what the Monorail Station rules are.  I could very easily be mistaken.

With RCI lots, Residential, Commercial and Industrial, and civic plops like Schools and Hospitals that need RCI access, a transit enabled lot can be adjacent, but won't allow access through that adjacent side.  e.g.  This will work, with Residential and Industrial lots getting transit access via the Street, and the 1x1 Commercial lot getting access via the Pedmall.

| R C I |
| B • B |
| • S • |

... but in this configuration, the 1x2 Commercial lot won't have any RCI pedestrian access at all.

| R C I |
| B C B |
| • S • |

[The Edge 215]

Hello again

I've started another city (it was great during lockdown!) but I find this time I'm getting a similar problem - except this time there's no demand for hi-tech industrial, despite the IQ number being quite high. The pollution from the dirty industry sites is horrible, and the water pollution is only slightly better (for some reason the Water Treatment Plant just didn't seem to work?)

Anyway I've attached some screenshots with the census thing - any suggestions/feedback anyone can make (or if you need to see anything else) would be greatly appreciated, and thanks in advance

 

[The Edge 215]

And here's the demand graph. Note that taxes for Agricultural are 20% but I don't have any zoned (so none would move in anyway), Dirty is 10%, Manufacturing is 0% and High-tech is also 0%. Yet they just don't seem to want to move in.

(note that the IQ level has dropped but I couldn't figure out why - plenty of schools, museums, libraries etc etc).

[The Edge 215]

Update: I decided to try and make a city without industrial. No one was interested in building in the industrial zone, so when I got to 70 000, I just removed it and replaced it with a mix of residential/commercial. So let's see what happens.

[T Wrecks 10,210]

Yeah, the demand graphs you showed in your last screenshot makes it pretty clear that your city simply needs more residents at this point, with all three green residential demand bars standing this tall. It's a relatively foolproof technique to follow the demand bars, i.e. build what they suggest.

One things that's worth watching out for is what I like to call "empty jobs", i.e. commercial/industrial buildings that grow but aren't actually being used. This means that they take away from your city's demand without actually employing any Sims.

You can check this using the route query tool (the bottom one of the two-piece question mark tool): If it shows as many Sims travelling to a building as the building provides jobs, then it gets used to its fullest, which is good. If no Sims actually travel there, it provides these jobs and reduces your demand, but doesn't actually employ anyone.

The numbers in the query window (e.g. "46/50") don't mean that any Sim actually works in that building. It means that the building currently provides 46 job vacancies out of the potential maximum of 50 job vacancies that it could offer if the conditions were perfect. Only the route query will tell you how many jobs are actually taken.

The key to getting Sims to use the jobs provided is good transportation - the NAM goes a long way in making this possible while keeping a halfways realistic city. With the vanilla game, it's pretty hard because the maximum travel distances (actually: commute times) and network capacities are rather low and the pathfinder is very primitive (which was probably done to make the game less resource-hungry back in 2003 when people were playing it on cast-iron toasters.

CS$ and CS$$ demand are really hard to quench typically, but that's nothing to get overly nervous about. Unless residential gets built a lot so that residential demand decreases towards zero, but without industrial and CO$$/CO$$$ demand kicking in, I wouldn't worry too much about these two. Occasionally cater to them, yes. Try and get them down to zero, not worth it.

[The Edge 215]

Sweet I'll try building some industrial near the other zones and see what happens. I have the NAM installed and have for some time

And if I understand you right, you're saying I don't have enough houses? Is that right?

[The Edge 215]

Okay, I ended up doing something like this. Just a little trial area for now to see what happens...but nothing so far. I reckon this is close enough for most residential properties, but it's like industrial simply doesn't want to know - even with 0% tax

Edit: the last three blue/commercial bars looking like that (negative demand) is something I've never had on a city before either. Half tempted just to blow it all away and start all over again...

[Raymond7cn 6,776]

2 hours ago, The Edge said:

Okay, I ended up doing something like this. Just a little trial area for now to see what happens...but nothing so far. I reckon this is close enough for most residential properties, but it's like industrial simply doesn't want to know - even with 0% tax

Edit: the last three blue/commercial bars looking like that (negative demand) is something I've never had on a city before either. Half tempted just to blow it all away and start all over again...

Hiya @The Edge, I thought your issue is very strange, I mean your city is not functioning properly, IMO. Generally speaking, when the EQ is (194) high enough, and keep the tax to be a acceptable number, the work demand should be equally distributed with commercial and industrial, it seems like your industrial demand is totally absorbed by another city, Or it is restricted to 0 by some factors within, I can tell that you have checked out the pollution and radiation etc, so have you ever Installed some special plugins in this city, like industry 4X, I'm just basing my guess on this part, I'm a newbie, Sorry for couldn't be more helpful.

Sincerely,

-- Raymond

PS, I have a random thought, I carefully looked at the Census, I found that your R$$$ maybe too much, so may i suggest that set the tax of R$$$ to 12 and R$$R$ to 7.5, then make the houses of R$ and R$$ all to history, let the game run about 3 months, after that, plan a new residential area, and when the new labor(R$R$$) come in, i guess that your EQ will be reduced though, but the industrial demand probably get some improvement.

[The Edge 215]

Thanks Ray, I hadn't actually thought of that. When I take a closer look, it appears there's a significant number of commuters just transitting through my city to a neighbouring one (I can supply a screenshot if this helps?). Looks like they're taking the subway and the passenger rail service.

If this is true, is there anything I can do about it, or is this just something I have to live with?