Is it possible to make a building that provides jobs and a functional subway?

[Urban Vibravant 825]

Hi everyone!

When I made 200 W. 40th Street, I also had the idea of including a lot with a functional subway along with CS$ jobs since this building actually does have a subway. The problem is, I'm only able to make the building function strictly as a one or the other, not both. I have a feeling a DLL could do the trick, but that's a whole other side of modding that I'm not ready to touch yet. (If someone knowledgeable on DLL's wants to make this happen, I could provide the model.)

This likely also means it would need a custom query window that shows both the jobs and subway stats. I know some basics on modifying query windows, but I welcome anyone more experienced to provide their input on this.

Since the building has a lot size of 1x2, the only other solution is to make it a 1x1 with half of the building overhanging onto a contiguous tile, for which then you could place a tile-only subway under the building. It's not the cleanest way to do it, but this is what I would go with if there isn't any other way.

 

[CorinaMarie 29,934]

7 hours ago, Urban Vibravant said:

The problem is, I'm only able to make the building function strictly as a one or the other, not both.

I decided to give it a whirl cause it reminded me of a sample growable parking garage I made for someone else eons ago.  

Here's my result as a growable:

 

So all I did for this was extract a 1 x 2 growable commercial lot. I picked the generic "Small Shops" and did a Group Add to Patch so I got the LText too. I then altered the LText name to be me so I'd know for sure we had the right one when it grew. I also made a copy of the Maxis Subway (with it's woefully low transit stats, but this is proof of concept only so we aren't flustered by that).

I then copied all of these from the Subway's Building Exemplar and Pasted them into the CS$'s Building Exemplar:

 

And here's the file if you want to play around with it: Cori's Comm Sub Text v0.02.dat

Edit: LOL, that should say "Test", but I think I still had the change to the "LText" in mind. It works tho.  

[Tyberius06 12,278]

6 hours ago, Urban Vibravant said:

Hi everyone!

When I made 200 W. 40th Street, I also had the idea of including a lot with a functional subway along with CS$ jobs since this building actually does have a subway. The problem is, I'm only able to make the building function strictly as a one or the other, not both. I have a feeling a DLL could do the trick, but that's a whole other side of modding that I'm not ready to touch yet. (If someone knowledgeable on DLL's wants to make this happen, I could provide the model.)

This likely also means it would need a custom query window that shows both the jobs and subway stats. I know some basics on modifying query windows, but I welcome anyone more experienced to provide their input on this.

Since the building has a lot size of 1x2, the only other solution is to make it a 1x1 with half of the building overhanging onto a contiguous tile, for which then you could place a tile-only subway under the building. It's not the cleanest way to do it, but this is what I would go with if there isn't any other way.

 

5 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

I decided to give it a whirl cause it reminded me of a sample growable parking garage I made for someone else eons ago.

Here's my result as a growable:

 

So all I did for this was extract a 1 x 2 growable commercial lot. I picked the generic "Small Shops" and did a Group Add to Patch so I got the LText too. I then altered the LText name to be me so I'd know for sure we had the right one when it grew. I also made a copy of the Maxis Subway (with it's woefully low transit stats, but this is proof of concept only so we aren't flustered by that).

I then copied all of these from the Subway's Building Exemplar and Pasted them into the CS$'s Building Exemplar:

 

And here's the file if you want to play around with it: Cori's Comm Sub Text v0.02.dat

Edit: LOL, that should say "Test", but I think I still had the change to the "LText" in mind. It still works tho.

Hi there,

Thanks Cori to reply to this topic, so I saw that there was a topic like this  

@Urban Vibravant

I did the same with one of Krio's building that he sent me to mod and lot a while ago. Check out the TG Krio Elanto HQ.

Ploppable Version:

Lot size:	4 x 2 tiles
Menu position:	Building: Landmark, Building: CO$$$, Building: Subway, Building: Strikeable Transit, Building: MiscTransit
Jobs:	CO-$$ : 445, CO-$$$ : 312
Demand Created:	Jobs $ : 36, Jobs $$ : 16, Jobs $$$ : 0, R-$ : 36, R-$$ : 16, R-$$$ : 0
Passenger Capacity:	38000
Plop cost:	§ 7474
Bulldoze cost:	§ 478
Monthly cost:	§ 50
Max. Fire Stage:	4
Power consumption:	13 MWh/month
Water consumption:	148 Gallons/month
Air pollution:	1 over 6 tiles
Water pollution:	1 over 7 tiles
Garbage pollution:	4 over 0 tiles

I made the more important part red. The problem is with the Plop with job+transportation lots (subway included), that the plop with jobs part can become abandoned which means the building will decay visually and during my tests I haven't seen it recover. And I saw negative effects on the transportation parts too, due to the building was abandoned. However the Demand Created line is to keep the transportation part alive. 

6 hours ago, Urban Vibravant said:

This likely also means it would need a custom query window that shows both the jobs and subway stats. I know some basics on modifying query windows, but I welcome anyone more experienced to provide their input on this.

I did not bother with a custom UI for this lot, but yeah, it's not that hard. 

For modding the subway part, you need to use either the new under development PIM-X 2026 (which has inbuilt transportation pre-sets), or use the above linked upload as a template for copying the relevant stuff. Corina marked it well, what you need, you will also need the Catalog Capacity property with a matching value as the transit capacity. For transportation stats modding you should always use/refer to the Transit Switch Entry Costs and Station Capacities guide, which helps you to calculate the correct Transit Switch Capacity (Maxis' 2000 passenger is not right, for a 1x2 subway it would be 26000 passengers) and Transit Switch Entry Cost (that's 0.0095 for Subway - Maxis' 0 is again not right). With the Subway stuff, you also need to add the Building: Subway, Bulding: Strikeable Transit and Building: MiscTransit Occupant Groups - though that might mean, that the lot will show up in two menus (landmark and MiscTransit). For the Demand Created  jobs @z1 and I were working out a system that I used then with the NAM stations and all the other stations that I modded since then:

$ - capacity/5 (round down) + each tile that the building occupies would give 4 $ on each floor
$$ - capacity/50 (round down) + each tile that the building occupies would give 2 $$ on each floor
$$$ - after every 125k capacity 1 + free assumption based on the model (quite uncommon)

However the subway in all cases adds +4 $ and +1 $$, but a single tile subway would have the same stats too. So subway is a bit of an exception.

With the Elanto HQ I used an other logic too, and that was the underground floor busineses. So there was the 4 $ + 1 $$ for the base subway, and then for the 8 tiles (4x2) I added another 32 $ + 15 $$ jobs. There is room for custom values, it's not an exact rule. In your cause the Demand created would be 12 $ + 5 $$ jobs, so the subway station don't get abandoned if the business dies above it.

I hope it helps!

- Tyberius06

[Urban Vibravant 825]

@CorinaMarie and @Tyberius06 Thank you guys. It's working! 

On 7/4/2026 at 4:29 AM, Tyberius06 said:

the plop with jobs part can become abandoned which means the building will decay visually and during my tests I haven't seen it recover.

During my tests, I just now discovered that any plop w/ jobs that goes abandoned never recovers either, no matter the reason. 

On 7/4/2026 at 4:29 AM, Tyberius06 said:

you also need to add the Building: Subway, Bulding: Strikeable Transit and Building: MiscTransit Occupant Groups - though that might mean, that the lot will show up in two menus (landmark and MiscTransit).

I decided to not include MiscTransit. I've got my reasons but you're welcome to argue why it should be in that menu.

 

So this is my first time doing a custom query window for an actual project. I feel like I have the aesthetic customization down, but I do have something I'd like to get an opinion on.

(Please ignore the inconsistent aesthetics, it's still a WIP and it won't take much to make corrections.)

I thought it'd be cool to add in some train line emblems. As you can see I added E Q R 1 2 lines.

My question is, do you guys have any ideas on what else the train lines could be used for other than purely for aesthetics? Right off the bat is the idea that the train lines could replace the train emblem for service quality. (Like poorer the service, the less train lines that are being serviced.) If we run with that idea, is there any ideas for why E Q R 1 2 is chosen? Like why these and not A C W 3 5 6, etc..

Edit: I apologize, my mind has been running wild with ideas so I was thinking there might be a way the train line numbers would change depending on, say, how many subway tiles are in the city. For ex: 1-32 tiles means only lines A ,1, 2 show up. 32-64 tiles means lines B, 3, 4 show up, but would choose randomly between A/B, 1/3, 2/4. Would go up to probably 5 lines. (Maybe larger buildings could have more.) As involved as this would be, I won't attempt to include something like that in this update. Just curious.

  Edited July 10 by Urban Vibravant