Your Alternative Transportation Systems

[JeffSalisbury 59]

I've recently been playing around with creating cities that either have minimal dependence on roadways with a heavy focus on busses and rail, or avoid using roadways as a way for sims to get to and from places altogether. My latest city has zero roadway connections between R zones and C/I zones, forcing all sims to have to use the subway only.

I'd be curious to hear other players' alternative transportation systems they've tried. What's worked and what hasn't? Any unexpected outcomes resulting from your transportation system?

[CorinaMarie 29,577]

I did one as part of a test:

^ That's in an old thread called Subway Strategies.

My conclusion there was that Sims would use whatever transportation was offered if there was no alternative.

[JeffSalisbury 59]

Yes I recall seeing this as I took a deep dive searching the forums to see if a similar topic had already been created. That is pretty well the same idea I'm employing in my subways-only city. This is the same city that's been having the bizarre "no road connection" zots causing dilapidation even at the lowest density and building stage. Not to derail my own topic or anything.

[CorinaMarie 29,577]

5 minutes ago, JeffSalisbury said:

That is pretty well the same idea I'm employing in my subways-only city.

Feel free to post pics of your city if you like.

[JeffSalisbury 59]

Will try to this weekend 

Also, looks like this topic only has an audience of two 

[catty-cb 4,383]

6 hours ago, JeffSalisbury said:

Also, looks like this topic only has an audience of two 

More than two, but its been years since I tried to persuade all my SC4 residents to only use railways, subways and ferries as their only form of transport .... these days I play banished (or at least did .… real life has pretty much knocked that on the head) and everyone walks in that

[JeffSalisbury 59]

On 10/4/2024 at 8:12 PM, catty-cb said:

More than two, but its been years since I tried to persuade all my SC4 residents to only use railways, subways and ferries as their only form of transport .... these days I play banished (or at least did .… real life has pretty much knocked that on the head) and everyone walks in that

Banished?

[catty-cb 4,383]

3 hours ago, JeffSalisbury said:

Banished?

There is a Banished club on simtropolis, plus some additional information in one of my clubs ... you basically start off in the middle of nowhere with a few people and depending on the starting condition some supplies, the original aim of the game was to build a village with happy health people, then the banished creator added in the ability to not only mod the game, but add mods to it, so now it's pretty much anything you want it to be these days, but everyone still walks ... there is a supply boat that uses the waterways, but despite a number of attempts the banished modders have never worked out how to expand or alter the boat

[JeffSalisbury 59]

22 hours ago, catty-cb said:

There is a Banished club on simtropolis, plus some additional information in one of my clubs ... you basically start off in the middle of nowhere with a few people and depending on the starting condition some supplies, the original aim of the game was to build a village with happy health people, then the banished creator added in the ability to not only mod the game, but add mods to it, so now it's pretty much anything you want it to be these days, but everyone still walks ... there is a supply boat that uses the waterways, but despite a number of attempts the banished modders have never worked out how to expand or alter the boat

Ohhhhhh the game Banished. Sorry I was quite confused as to what you were referring to. Yeah, I came across it on Steam, and actually might have bought it during one of the major sales. Typical "Buy this now cheap and totally play it, but actually never do and forget I even own it" situation.

 

Also sorry for not grabbing any pics of my cities for you yet Cori. Will try to in the next week or so, depends if the kids let it happen or not lol.

[archon_wing 16]

Making meme transportation systems is a good reason to make a new city. In one city I put all my residents in the middle and surrounded them with toll booths. The only way out is to use the highways. I also blockaded every neighbor connection with one too. There are no other transportation systems.

Was it actually good for traffic? I don't actually know, but it made a lot of money and therefore I could build other things to help traffic. Tolls were 1/6 the entire city's income. Though it did seem like a lot of people were taking the bus instead. (That seems to benefit from highways quite a bit).

 

 

 

I do notice when you separate zones like this, (this was on a medium map)  it does tend to break down on larger maps as there seems to be some limit they don't want to go. Sims seem very iffy around ferries, for example and you generally have to force the issue. (aka just tear down all the bridges). And finally, here's a junk city made just to supply power to neighbors. It's a simple forced rail city where the residential block in the middle is completely cut off so they have to use the rail line that rotates around the city. Occasionally, sims were able to sneak over to the corners by walking through transit stations so I had to put an end to that by destroying them.

 

In retrospect, I should have made it elevated rail which would have taken up less space and it's not like industry at the edges needs rail help anyways, but as it's a throwaway city that just needs to generate power I just left it like thjat.

 

[JeffSalisbury 59]

On 10/8/2024 at 6:52 PM, archon_wing said:

Occasionally, sims were able to sneak over to the corners by walking through transit stations so I had to put an end to that by destroying them.

I'm going to assume when you say "had to put an end to that by destroying them" that you're a vengeful god smiting the sims who dared to walk through the transit stations. 

Here are images of my current city, Goodison, named after Everton's ground. All the cities in this region will be named after Premier League grounds.

[JeffSalisbury 59]

Not sure why the pics inserted in the order they did. I specifically chose them so the most zoomed-out one would be last, but whatever. Also sorry for the double-post, but I feel the need to explain that it's weirdness with the forum and not a lack of caring on my part.

[CorinaMarie 29,577]

9 hours ago, JeffSalisbury said:

Not sure why the pics inserted in the order they did.

The editor can be a bit weird sometimes.

The way I do mine is to upload them to the editor then click a place in the message body where I want one to go, then a single click on the thumbnail of the attached image. That then makes the preview show in the editor and the cursor will be hugging the middle of the right side of the image where you almost cannot see it. Press enter and then it'll be under the pic and on the left wall of the post area. Now you're ready to click the next image thumbnail and repeat the press enter routine.

Sometimes, too, I want to say things about my pics so I'll type that out first and end with a : then press enter, then click the uploaded image thumbnail, then press enter twice before typing some explanation of whatever screenshot I'll show next.

None of this is any sort of rule. Just how I do it myself.

 

9 hours ago, JeffSalisbury said:

I specifically chose them so the most zoomed-out one would be last, but whatever.

I've rearranged them in what I hope is the display order you intended. I also added a tiny white space gap between them as I feel that makes them more pleasing to the eye.

Should you want to move them around differently, feel free to edit your post. Single click each image in the upper message area and press delete. This only removes them from the display area. They are still attached at the bottom. From here you can do my method outlined above to insert them into the post in any order you like.

As long as you do not click the little trash can on the lower image thumbnails, they will still be attached to the post. (And if you submit the post without clicking any into place in the upper area, the post editor will panic and just toss them in pell-mell before saving.)

 

9 hours ago, JeffSalisbury said:

Also sorry for the double-post, but I feel the need to explain that it's weirdness with the forum and not a lack of caring on my part.

That's a good reason to double post. For peeps who'd already viewed the images, they would not get re-beeped for an edit so this is a good way to draw attention to something new to say. When used prudently like this we don't mind double posting.

[archon_wing 16]

On 10/10/2024 at 5:49 AM, JeffSalisbury said:

I'm going to assume when you say "had to put an end to that by destroying them" that you're a vengeful god smiting the sims who dared to walk through the transit stations

Oh I meant the train stations, but that could be true too.

Especially since in the meantime I learned that Sims will use rail stations as parking garages even if they don't want to take the train This could be an intresting solution for those with long avenues, as sims could walk through those stations (they cannot walk through the middle of a block except via transit station)   but I have no real use in practice for such an idea.

[Handyman 765]

@JeffSalisbury A few years ago I built several functional cities with no roads at all. This was before the Pedestrian Revolution Mod. I actually have not had a chance to use the PRM, maybe one day RL will allow me the time.

Anyway, thought I would link some pictures.

 https://community.simtropolis.com/forums/topic/758916-using-ped-mall-tiles/?do=findComment&comment=1726717

 

[JeffSalisbury 59]

On 10/13/2024 at 6:22 AM, Handyman said:

@JeffSalisbury A few years ago I built several functional cities with no roads at all. This was before the Pedestrian Revolution Mod. I actually have not had a chance to use the PRM, maybe one day RL will allow me the time.

Anyway, thought I would link some pictures.

 https://community.simtropolis.com/forums/topic/758916-using-ped-mall-tiles/?do=findComment&comment=1726717

 

Neat! I'm in the process of building a new city on a large tile that, again, will be subway access only. Still using the roads from the vanilla game, but I'm thinking I will have to look at a pedmall only build at some point to see if that would be worth trying out.

[archon_wing 16]

So any freight train enjoyers out there? (Man, they really need a color other than black for the routes.) I think the problem is typically there's little reason to build Industry in the middle of the map so there's little point for stuff like freight train stations. The other thing is I usually mix it with passenger rail which slows the thing down. Wonder how much traffic a dedicated freight train line

Until then, this is sadly my best freight stops.

If I had planned my cities better I would have built that northern rail  bridge a bit further south so it wouldn't get in the way of a n/s bridge but alas