Railroad/monorail regional planning

[Marty22 0]

I'm starting my first region and i'm putting a lot of planning and thought into it, however, i guess experience is better that whole heap of planning, cos as i grow bigger, i encounter problems i never thought of :-) now to my question:

as far as regional planning of trains/monorails is concerend - is it better to have just one line going through a city, or would more interconnected lines and loops complicate the simulation? To clarify my question - i've seen trasport maps of regions in the CJs where say the monorail was onle line running through the whole region with a few turns of course.. but the way i'm looking at the future of my current city (and its smaller neighbours) it looks like it's heading toward having the monorail line more like a monorail circuit with more lines leading towards neighbours, where i'm thinking the pattern will continue - now is this gonna mess things up or is it gonna (just like with roads) just enable more routes? What is your experience with these things?

[NightlinerSGS 1]

Well, some people (specially in CJs) use Monorail only for "Eye-Candy" stuff, e.g. connecting the Downtown with the airport or things like that.

I use the Rails for Intercity-travel, so I place one big station in the city, some small stations on the way out and thats it. Others use the rail like roads and connect as much as possible with it. I think thats a matter of your style of playing, so i would suggest you try different things ingame and choose what you like =)

[pnorrell 4]

I have built one region using monorail successfully - it's a little tricky but it can work very well.

I have a sort of perimeter monorail line making a loop around the major urban area through the suburban cities (I play all large city squares). Then I have direct lines running from the perimeter loop into the center like spokes on a wagon wheel. The entire urban area is 9 large city squares - 1 central business district and all 8 squares that surround it. The perimeter line runs through the 8 surrounding squares with the direct lines running in a cross - N/S and E/W.

As for rail, mine looks like a spiderweb running everywhere. After bus, rail seems to get the most usage from a mixture of wealth-levels.

For both, I don't place too many stations - usually 1 in the center and 4 towards the edges, 1 at each of the 4 main points of the compass.

[Marty22 0]

Thanks nightliner and pnorrell for your posts. If i can elaborate on this topic - currently (i've just started my first region) i have a city on a large tile r+c only of abou 20k people and medium size industrial only, which provides 5000 jobs I have more rail tracks leading to the industrial city, but only one gets used heavily (4000) and the rest is mainly road. What happens when i grow to sizes like 500k or 800k or possibly 1 million - how many railroads will have to run from one to the other?

[SC4Noobie 5]

Well, it seems to me that it is more a style of planning. If you are to only have one line running through your region, then (depending on the destinations, it may be very busy or just the opposite. What i usually do is I have Several major lines leading to a downtown type area, and branch off into the suburbs, where a large loop usually forms (in segments with the expantion) Since the line leads to downtown and sububan CBDs (main employers) they get lots of useage.

[SC4Noobie 5]

You replied while i was typing. Well, when population gets big, the main choice is subway, connecting to rail and almost every other type of MT, except for monorail. This is why I VERY rarely use monorail. Try to have main emplouyers, like downtowns, CBDs, industry areas. From there, just start branching to the RES development, where bus transfers to rail, and then to the employers, to station, and station to bus to building.

[pnorrell 4]

As SC4Noobie said, it's an issue of planning. If you want your sims to use rail and monorail, then don't leave them many other options. In that case, you may need multiple lines and large stations to handle the capacity. 

Keep in mind, however, that monorail is not affected by congestion. Stations and track can function without a commute penalty, even if they are being used way over capacity. The same is not true for rail.

In the example I cited above, my region has a population of 2.3 million, including 1 city with over 800,000 and several others with populations in the hundreds of thousands. I use multiple forms of inter-city transportation - subway, monorail, rail, road, highway, ferry. None are too terribly congested, although my road connections are still the most heavily used, regardless of other options available.

[Marty22 0]

wow thanks guys, it's all very useful info. I guess it's best to try and learn, although i can avoid a lot of time consuming mistakes if i research before :-)

[Idleness75 0]

Effective use of mass transit is actually almost impossible to plan in advance I think. It depends on when your roads fail to meet the needs of the commuters. Find the spot it your city that is failing to develop because of commute time, and only THEN stick a monorail there...I find that if i try to lay mass transit before I get to this point, it can kinda be a waste of money because of unforseen redundancy.

[SC4Noobie 5]

Idleness75 - Not really, because of the fact that you dont want the roads to be the main transport type. You want to have the MT the main transit type. MT is not just to lower the congestion on the road (although that is what some people think the point is) but also to have the faster commute time. In one city, I constructed the (main parts)MT system WAY before most of the development. Due to the exremly short commute time (just 17 min) the city boomed, jobs appeared in the thousands, RES demand went sky high, and the city was VERY sucsessful. I constructed additional lines to ease the conjection on the subway + rail + GLR (all interconnected) system. It is very benificail to have a completly interconnected system, so the sims can go everywhere the transit goes much faster, without having to switch transit lines.

[Mantis747 1]

well, i would have a big loop of monorail, to connect with the inner city.

but it may be very difficult to plan though.

[zane900 1]

Your first region eh? Don't use monorail until you have a VERY steady income. There's nothing more to it. Use rail first. When your cities grow bigger and your making an extremely steady income replace the rail with monorail. You can also make rail the fastest form of transportation (because it is) with a bullet train mos that's on the stex. It is not realistic that monorail is the fastest form of transportation so you wouldn't be cheating by downloading this mod. It makes rail the fastest form of transportation because it replaces the trains used originally in sim city, with bullet trains.

[Marty22 0]

thanks again for more advice... i actually built a bit of monorail as a trial... and it's getting used, but only a little bit. it has four stops in my res/comm city and connects to the neighbour - industrial city. Now in the commercial/residential city a sort of an error message comes up - add at least one more station - but i have four! i thought it's disconnected somewhere, but i triple checked and made sure it's connected everywhere even through the stations. However, where it's not getting used - is the industrial city with only one stop, but there i dont get any error messages. Any idea what their problem is? ;-)