How to use adjacent NAM stations in SimCity 4?

[Propfam 2,295]

Hello,

I have 2 two cities next to other one: the poor one with 450K R$ and the rich one with 150K R$$$, 600K CO$$$, and 40K CS$$$. I connect 2 cities with 4 monorail. I have 2 Elevated Modern Design HSR station that serve as the station of the first 2 rails and HSR Transit Hub for the next 2 in both cities. However, the people of the poor city only uses the Transit Hub, to even 300% of the capacity! That's a lot of traffic.

How do I get such people to the stations? Well, my city uses tree branch structure. Each branch represents a long zone of 2x2, 3x2, 4x3, and/or 4x4. Each branch has its own bus station. I don't place bus station next to the stations because the stations have their own bus station.

Back to the Transit Hub. Due to its 300% capacity, the rails that go on to the station is capped at 65,536. Yes, the 16-bit integer limit. And as you might guess, only 100K of traffic that goes on into the rich one. I want to have more traffic go to the rich city since only the rich city has offices and services. The question is, how should I do to convince people to use the adjacent station? I know in C:S, you can just add another route to the adjacent stations but you can't do it in SimCity 4.

Thanks.

[rsc204 21,857]

6 hours ago, chfzdn said:

The question is, how should I do to convince people to use the adjacent station? I know in C:S, you can just add another route to the adjacent stations but you can't do it in SimCity 4.

If two transit stops (or TE lots) are placed together without a gap, sims will not be able to switch between them. The best solution is to have at least a one-tile gap with a transit network between the two (or more) stations. Often Pedmalls are very useful for this in situation if you don't want an actual functioning network.

[Propfam 2,295]

8 hours ago, rsc204 said:

If two transit stops (or TE lots) are placed together without a gap, sims will not be able to switch between them. The best solution is to have at least a one-tile gap with a transit network between the two (or more) stations. Often Pedmalls are very useful for this in situation if you don't want an actual functioning network.

There's a 2 tile gap actually and I do it because the stations cause unintended subway transfer, which I want to avoid. But, I don't place bus station and pedmall between the gaps.

[rsc204 21,857]

19 minutes ago, chfzdn said:

But, I don't place bus station and pedmall between the gaps.

OK, but the question then is, what is between the two stations? Because if no valid transit network connects the two, passengers will not be able to transfer between them. Of course there are situations where you might want to do just that. But personally, I very much like to utilise multi-modal transport setups. Large terminus or main stations, with multiple transport types are great, but sometimes using multiple separate stations that are close together but connected is also a good way to go. In such scenarios, Pedmalls are perfect if you want a pedestrianised area, but of course any you can use road networks too. But if the connection is less direct, say passengers had to travel by bus between stations, each additional tile the sims might need to travel will potentially influence their decision on which route to take. There is also a time-cost for switching transit types, which can again make sims less inclined to take certain routes that involve more such switches.

[Propfam 2,295]

7 hours ago, rsc204 said:

OK, but the question then is, what is between the two stations? Because if no valid transit network connects the two, passengers will not be able to transfer between them. Of course there are situations where you might want to do just that. But personally, I very much like to utilise multi-modal transport setups. Large terminus or main stations, with multiple transport types are great, but sometimes using multiple separate stations that are close together but connected is also a good way to go. In such scenarios, Pedmalls are perfect if you want a pedestrianised area, but of course any you can use road networks too. But if the connection is less direct, say passengers had to travel by bus between stations, each additional tile the sims might need to travel will potentially influence their decision on which route to take. There is also a time-cost for switching transit types, which can again make sims less inclined to take certain routes that involve more such switches.

I haven't placed pedmalls yet. If you have been using Sudden Valley, you should be familiar with the grass.

Side question: should I activate the pedmall? If so, how?

Thanks.

Edit: I placed pedmalls and it worked even up to 60,000 people one-trip (not documented), but only in the second station from the left in the picture above.  The first station is still 0% usage.

[rsc204 21,857]

7 hours ago, chfzdn said:

If you have been using Sudden Valley, you should be familiar with the grass.

LOL, well if you know of my mods, I think you can safely say I am... although if I wasn't, I doubt your screenshots would help. Given the idea is show people how you've laid out your transit, might I suggest in future you probably don't want to take such pictures in night mode. It looks like you've one of the darker night mods and frankly it just makes everything you are trying to show us much less clear.

7 hours ago, chfzdn said:

Side question: should I activate the pedmall? If so, how?

Pedmalls are modded such that they work as roads, but where only pedestrian paths exist on them. As such, there is no need to activate them, they are a proper transit network not a lot. This distinction is very important, TE Lots, Transit Switches or Stations are not functioning transit networks.

7 hours ago, chfzdn said:

Edit: I placed pedmalls and it worked even up to 60,000 people one-trip (not documented), but only in the second station from the left in the picture above.  The first station is still 0% usage.

You have to ask yourself, why would sims want to use the further station. Assuming they are coming from the right of the three stations, the quickest route is always going to be the first station they arrive at that takes them where they want to go. So sims will not travel through the station (as pedestrians) to get to the next one, unless it offers a quicker or preferred route.

Even if both stations go to different places in the next (connected) city, the simulator is only looking for the quickest path into the next one. It doesn't know anything about where the neighbour connections go from there, just that there is one and demand for jobs on the other side. Honestly, with your three-station setup here, the only way sims would use the left-most one, would be if the number of tiles from it to the neighbour connection were less than from the station in the middle. This all assumes both leave the same border of your city and enter the same city in the larger region.

If you want to take advantage of having multiple lines, you are much better off using a 4 track (2 lines) HSR station instead of two 2 track ones, especially if both lines are eventually going to the same destination.

[Propfam 2,295]

10 hours ago, rsc204 said:

LOL, well if you know of my mods, I think you can safely say I am... although if I wasn't, I doubt your screenshots would help. Given the idea is show people how you've laid out your transit, might I suggest in future you probably don't want to take such pictures in night mode. It looks like you've one of the darker night mods and frankly it just makes everything you are trying to show us much less clear.

Pedmalls are modded such that they work as roads, but where only pedestrian paths exist on them. As such, there is no need to activate them, they are a proper transit network not a lot. This distinction is very important, TE Lots, Transit Switches or Stations are not functioning transit networks.

You have to ask yourself, why would sims want to use the further station. Assuming they are coming from the right of the three stations, the quickest route is always going to be the first station they arrive at that takes them where they want to go. So sims will not travel through the station (as pedestrians) to get to the next one, unless it offers a quicker or preferred route.

Even if both stations go to different places in the next (connected) city, the simulator is only looking for the quickest path into the next one. It doesn't know anything about where the neighbour connections go from there, just that there is one and demand for jobs on the other side. Honestly, with your three-station setup here, the only way sims would use the left-most one, would be if the number of tiles from it to the neighbour connection were less than from the station in the middle. This all assumes both leave the same border of your city and enter the same city in the larger region.

If you want to take advantage of having multiple lines, you are much better off using a 4 track (2 lines) HSR station instead of two 2 track ones, especially if both lines are eventually going to the same destination.

I thought when the second station full, it directs the pedestrian to the leftmost station. Thanks for the input.

Speaking of stations, I do find 

However, it looks like it only has 3 instead of 4. Or even, the rail split may actually from the lot, decreasing the rail to 1. There are also creations by @APTX, one is 

However, it only has 2 monorail.

Finally, I found this:

But, I don't find any dependencies info anywhere from the lots' description to even comments and reviews. Also, the capacity is too small for my usage and NAM setting (Ultra). So, I have to mod it. I also miss the bus station. How to mod the station to have bus station?

Thanks.

[rsc204 21,857]

17 hours ago, chfzdn said:

I thought when the second station full, it directs the pedestrian to the leftmost station. Thanks for the input.

It's actually much more complicated than that, ultimately the simulator is looking for the quickest route anywhere. The only time it would be quicker to use a station further away was if there were problems with the closer one. That won't relate to the capacity of the station, nor the capacity of the line. In real life, beyond a certain point a station would struggle to deal with a given number of passengers, likewise a train can only carry so many people. But in SC4 we don't have trains, each passenger is their own train, the total number using the line has nothing to do with trains. Similarly, the line can become very congested, but still continue functioning, there is some adjustment to the trip time when lines are very congested. In such a scenario an unused station/line may indeed prove faster. However, if a station goes something around 4x over capacity, for that day all the transport types it serves will be shut down for the entire city. This is why the NAM and RTMT stations have what may sometimes seem like very high capacities, to avoid precisely that scenario. Some of the custom content stations out there used figures that are closer to the original game, some people for example think a high capacity station is somehow a cheat. But the reality is, a high capacity offers no additional incentive for sims to use them, but a low capacity station has the potential to break Mass Transit entirely.

The SLURP (Station Locator, Updater, and Reconstruction Project), a collaboration between NAM and RTMT teams, has updated a lot of the most popular stations, so they work better with how people play the game today. Low capacities weren't such a problem when computers didn't really allow for millions of sims in cities like we can have today. Until NAM 36, this process was handled automatically during the installation of NAM. Sadly, one of the casualties of the need for a different installer for NAM 37 has been this add on. It will be released as a stand-alone package at some point, but I highly recommend using it if you have lots of custom stations, especially those made in the earlier years before these problems came up. Likewise, if you download a station that isn't included as part of SLURP or modded more recently, it's a good idea to alter the Capacity and TSEC (Transit Switch Entry Cost) manually, full details here.

17 hours ago, chfzdn said:

But, I don't find any dependencies info anywhere from the lots' description to even comments and reviews. Also, the capacity is too small for my usage and NAM setting (Ultra). So, I have to mod it. I also miss the bus station. How to mod the station to have bus station?

I don't think there are any dependencies, since there isn't much more than the very large station model and some base textures on the lot itself.

Modding the capacity isn't too hard, adding another transit type is best done using SC4Tool, which is the only application that can TE lots. In short, to add another transit type requires adding the correct transit switches. It's easier said than done, but I know of no actual tutorial that details it step by step. Frankly I don't have time to go into that right now, but the following replacement lot fixes the capacity/TSEC, along with adding Bus & Optional Subway service. You should remove both the original lot file and also the file HSRs-base-0x6534284a-0xd53af1d5-0xd5991a9c.SC4Desc from the original package if using my updated version.

:NOTE: The first four downloaders (the file will have the timestamp of 17:50), I had set the Monorail Switches in N/S (based of the copied template), but they should have been W/E as this lot is in a different rotation. This has been corrected in the following version:

tds11_HSR -LargeStation_d5991ba4.SC4Lot

[Propfam 2,295]

9 hours ago, rsc204 said:

It's actually much more complicated than that, ultimately the simulator is looking for the quickest route anywhere. The only time it would be quicker to use a station further away was if there were problems with the closer one. That won't relate to the capacity of the station, nor the capacity of the line. In real life, beyond a certain point a station would struggle to deal with a given number of passengers, likewise a train can only carry so many people. But in SC4 we don't have trains, each passenger is their own train, the total number using the line has nothing to do with trains. Similarly, the line can become very congested, but still continue functioning, there is some adjustment to the trip time when lines are very congested. In such a scenario an unused station/line may indeed prove faster. However, if a station goes something around 4x over capacity, for that day all the transport types it serves will be shut down for the entire city. This is why the NAM and RTMT stations have what may sometimes seem like very high capacities, to avoid precisely that scenario. Some of the custom content stations out there used figures that are closer to the original game, some people for example think a high capacity station is somehow a cheat. But the reality is, a high capacity offers no additional incentive for sims to use them, but a low capacity station has the potential to break Mass Transit entirely.

The SLURP (Station Locator, Updater, and Reconstruction Project), a collaboration between NAM and RTMT teams, has updated a lot of the most popular stations, so they work better with how people play the game today. Low capacities weren't such a problem when computers didn't really allow for millions of sims in cities like we can have today. Until NAM 36, this process was handled automatically during the installation of NAM. Sadly, one of the casualties of the need for a different installer for NAM 37 has been this add on. It will be released as a stand-alone package at some point, but I highly recommend using it if you have lots of custom stations, especially those made in the earlier years before these problems came up. Likewise, if you download a station that isn't included as part of SLURP or modded more recently, it's a good idea to alter the Capacity and TSEC (Transit Switch Entry Cost) manually, full details here.

I don't think there are any dependencies, since there isn't much more than the very large station model and some base textures on the lot itself.

Modding the capacity isn't too hard, adding another transit type is best done using SC4Tool, which is the only application that can TE lots. In short, to add another transit type requires adding the correct transit switches. It's easier said than done, but I know of no actual tutorial that details it step by step. Frankly I don't have time to go into that right now, but the following replacement lot fixes the capacity/TSEC, along with adding Bus & Optional Subway service. You should remove both the original lot file and also the file HSRs-base-0x6534284a-0xd53af1d5-0xd5991a9c.SC4Desc from the original package if using my updated version.

:NOTE: The first four downloaders (the file will have the timestamp of 17:50), I had set the Monorail Switches in N/S (based of the copied template), but they should have been W/E as this lot is in a different rotation. This has been corrected in the following version:

tds11_HSR -LargeStation_d5991ba4.SC4Lot

Thanks. To clarify, I did mod the capacity. In the original post, I did seek for help to mod the capacity but I can do it myself. But anyway, thanks for help especially for the bus station addition. Also, the original file that I've modded don't show the icon so it bugs the respective item menu (Rails). I don't know this problem comes from the mod or from my modding using the Reader. But, I can plop the plop as usually despite the bug.

[rsc204 21,857]

22 minutes ago, chfzdn said:

I don't know this problem comes from the mod or from my modding using the Reader.

The icon or it's index entry got corrupted upon saving, if you are using v1.5x of Reader, I believe this can happen, in which case v0.93 is generally considered the most stable one.