Commuters using road (partly) instead of rail

[Sprottenham 6]

So, the situation is this. I have a city with approx. 14 000 sims that sits inbetween two other cities that sims want to commute inbetween. Let's call this 'City M' (for middle). I learnt this when I connected the roads that enter City M on it's north side (from City A) to the road network of City M that was already connected to City B on it's eastern side. So it looks like this:

A

|

M  <=> B


None of these cities are very big, city A has a population of some 20 000 sims, and city B is somewhere inbetween A and M (I think).

Nonetheless, the roads became heavily congested... first step was to upgrade everything to avenues, but it was still heavily congested. So I built a railway connecting the cities A, M and B, with passenger and freight stations in all three cities. This worked somewhat... except for between cities A and M. For whatever reason, the commuters from city A do not use the railway stations in their own city, but prefer to drive along the avenue to the nearest station in city M before travelling on by train to city B... which still causes congestion on the road from city A and to that station.

I have NAM installed, but still.. I suppose they do think this is the fastest route, even though the rail would be more efficient, though not necessarily shorter, as it would get rid of the congestion..

I'm not expecting the game to take into account placement of stations in city A when I'm playing in city M (though it actually does kind of seem like it). It should be enough to have a rail connection and passenger stations in city A, right...? And the station placement in city B is not that much better, but the problem does not exist on the border between M and B..

However, the final station in city M before entering city B is placed next to a street in a residential neighbourhood (further away from the avenue), whereas the first station in city M (when entering from city A) is, well, also placed next to a street in a small industrial area, however, it is close to the avenue, and also has a longer stretch of this avenue before getting to the station. Sorry I didn't get screenshots, but I can get them as soon as I return to the game.

Screenshot 1: One of the railway entry/exit points to the north. It's usage of four stems from people commuting from City M to city A. The road usage is mostlyl people commuting from City A to City B (through City M).

Screenshot 2: The railway station in the tiny industrial area. Railway usage jumps up from 4 to 2530 after passing the station.

Screenshot 3: The railway station on the eastern side closest to City B. Rail usage is now up to 3061.

Well, I don't know.. I suppose if I wanted to make them use the railway all the way from city A to B, I would need to make the closest railway station to city A harder to get to.. or just give up and build a highway connection between cities A and M (which I do not want at this stage)... not that building a highway between A and M would be to difficult. City M is not particularly developed on its northern side, though it would require a little bit of demoliton in City A.

Screenshot 4: Overview picture 1, southeastern corner.

Screenshot 5: Overview picture 2, northern border with City A. There are three railway entrances/exits on the border with City A along this edge... afterwards I added another entrance/exit to City A2, which is another city to the east of city A, and that railway did get used as intended...

Screenshot 6: Traffic along the avenue towards the railway station.

Anyway.. anyone else encountered something like this, and if so, (how)did you solve it?  

  Edited September 21, 2025 by Sprottenham  
Added screenshots.

[CorinaMarie 29,882]

5 hours ago, Sprottenham said:

the commuters from city A do not use the railway stations in their own city, but prefer to drive along the avenue to the nearest station in city M before travelling on by train to city B...

I suspect in City A, the Avenue looks like the best route into City M. The sims in A only know there are jobs in M (or beyond) and as such getting into M is their top priority. Once they are in M (and you are viewing their decisions with M loaded) they then (and only then) make new decisions about where they want to go. If that is on to City B, then they'll re-decide how to get there.

If you want them to all take the train out of A into M, then in City A you'll need to make that the most viable option.

Here's a before and after example. Ofc, I'm borking my layout to show how a suddenly available Avenue changes their routes. (This would be a similar situation to your city to the north.)

Before:

^ All are forced to use the rail line if they want to get out of town.

After:

^ Now they have an alternate route.

[Sprottenham 6]

Thanks for the quick reply. I think I get it. So figure out some way to make the road/avenues in City A less attractive than the railway stations. Supposedly by placing railway stations closer to the residential areas than the road exits. The problem then lies in City A and not in City M.

Though, I do also suspect that if I go in to city A and play it for a while, the sims there will eventually start using the railway stations there, because I did that as a test and they did start to use them. However, I did not save seeing as how there is a certain order in which I play through every city on the regional map, and it won't be City A's turn for a long time yet... I only went in there quickly and plopped down some railway and a few stations for them to use, without actually running the simulation, before returning to City M. So maybe it will partially solve itself come next round, and then with some more careful consideration of station placement, I might be onto something.

One issue could be though, that city A is on a small tile and it is already quite filled up, hence making a perfect station placement a little tricky.  I don't like to demolish already built up areas unless it is more or less absolutely necessary...and removing the road exits is not desirable. Moving them to a different spot on the map is also going to be tricky to do without some serious rearrangement of the town layout...  this is what happens when cities are being built without to much of a coherent plan for the future.  

Interesting insight also in how the sims think when looking for a job. Ideally I would like to keep the intercity commuting to a minimum, so from here on I might also need to work a little harder to give everyone a job within each city...

[Lucario Boricua 7,049]

The number one rule of transit design is convenience is king--you will absolutely need train stations within the urban area and a short route from the urban area to the city border if you want train travel to dominate your intercity commutes.

The number two rule of transit design is coverage--there's a very basic flaw I notice in your set-up, and it's the lack of bus stops. While train rides are very quick in SimCity 4, the game is doing a comparison of the full commutes: your transit commute is actually Walking + Passenger Train + Walking. If sims only reach the train station near the city border, it means their trip within the starting city is predominantly walking, which is slower than driving or riding the bus over that same distance. You need to speed up that 'first mile' of the trip with bus stops and with a more convenient placement of the train station closer to the residential areas. Only then will you see a major shift of commuters to using the train without clogging up the roads serving the same route.

Try adjusting those two variables first and let us know the results. For bus stop placement, you don't need to go super dense. Spacings of around 20 cells (tiles) along the roads and avenues can be more than enough to tip the scales in your favor.

[Sprottenham 6]

Some screenshots of station placement in city A:

View towards south (city M). The train station closest to the border ('upper left') was placed there after reading CorinaMaries post. There are two paralell railway lines here, partly tunnel, on each side of the main road... they temporarily end abruptly, waiting for me to return to this city when it becomes its turn later.

View towards south (city M), this would be the umm... the southeastern corner of city A. The four lane road exit next to the power plant is the entrance that becomes an avenue and ends up in the roundabout on Screenshot 6 in my first post. The railway extends a little bit more outside the picture in the bottom left to end at a station close to some commercial tiles, as well as the residential area that also extends downwards outside the picture.

About bus stops: I may have overlooked adding bus stops in some areas of City M, I will take note to look into that. I usually start every city without any kind of public transport, their initial most rural stage with some homes and farmland. Then as they grow and get more traffic I eventually add bus stops every alternate block in a chessboard like pattern. Yes, I do have a tendency to build very much on a grid... it kind of makes the most sense as long as the terrain is not to hilly... thanks for the input.

[Kel9509 1,477]

23 minutes ago, Lucario Boricua said:

While train rides are very quick in SimCity 4, the game is doing a comparison of the full commutes: your transit commute is actually Walking + Passenger Train + Walking. If sims only reach the train station near the city border, it means their trip within the starting city is predominantly walking, which is slower than driving or riding the bus over that same distance. You need to speed up that 'first mile' of the trip with bus stops and with a more convenient placement of the train station closer to the residential areas. 

I think this is the real answer here.  

The NAM documentation discusses the placement of stations this way: 

Quote

As the pathfinder improves, it is more sensitive to user actions in city construction. For example, if you want your Sims to use more mass transit, simply build more mass transit stations (and routes, if necessary). If you want your Sims to use your highways more, build more interchanges between your highways and other roadways. In these two cases, stations and interchanges may have to be placed closer together than in real life for maximum benefit, as the underlying mechanisms by which the game works are rather different from real life. For example, Sims try to take the fastest route in general, even if this means that they save only a few seconds in their commute. Normal real life constraints don’t apply to them, as they never have to wait for buses or trains to arrive, they never have to stop at intermediate stations, and they don’t even have to stop at stoplights. Sims are constantly on the move from the time they leave their homes until the time they arrive at their jobs. This results in a rather different commuting environment from what we are used to. Note that there is no “ideal” spacing of stations, bus stops, or highway interchanges; the best spacing depends on what usage patterns you want for your networks. Also, it’s important to know that Sims will walk arbitrarily far if necessary.

Allow me to plug my new Department of Transportation Building that tries to distill the documentation down in helpful tooltips.