AprilDawn

Okay, so I feel I have something to add to this discussion as a lifelong mass transit (primarily bus) rider. I've lived in two cities/states, those being Fresno, California, where I lived for about 15 years until I moved to Everett, Washington. Now, neither of these cities are huge transit hubs, but I've had plenty of experience with both of their transit systems. While neither of these cities are LA or Seattle, or NYC, or any city considered to be BIG to the point of having tons of skyscrapers, I have had to live with their mass transit systems and can compare the two. Fresno is grid based, for the most part, with bus lines on most of the main streets. The busiest lines run mainly north to south, most lines ending/starting somewhere in the downtown area and the northern shopping hubs. The busiest east to west routes are often very close to schools/shopping. One problem Fresno has had during the years that I lived there was that during busy times (Before the start of school and just after School lets out)is that the buses in the Fresno Area Express fleet, simply don't have the capacity to deal with the large number of youth that use the buses to get to school, and Fresno Unified School District has something called a magnet program and just about each High School has some sort of specialty which attract students from outside each school boundary. Add to that, that the school boundaries for the high schools are quite large, and school buses are only used in some parts of town within a school boundary. So most students not near a School Bus stop, who are further than a major intersection away, either ride the bus or get a ride from their parents unless they have a bike or similar transport. Another issue, for a long time, was that the buses didn't run late enough. For a while most routes ran till about 10 pm but I hear that due to budget cuts the hours have been cut since the last time I was in Fresno. I also read that Fresno was planning on putting in some Rapid Bus Transit on the busier corridors. I haven't checked the status on the project in several months. Generally, though, most places worth getting to are on a busline or close enough to one that those who would prefer not to drive for whatever reason, could, in fact, manage without a car except in a middle of the night emergency. But most places there aren't open 24/7 anyway. Now as for Everett, WA. As you may or may not know Everett is a city north of Seattle and while it is quite smaller than Seattle, many people pass through from further north or east to get to work and we have Boeing in town as a major job location. There are transit companies that meet up at Everett Station not counting Amtrak trains and Greyhound buses. First would be Everett Transit, which mostly serves the residents of Everett. Secondly would be Community Transit which operates throughout Snohomish County connecting places further away like Arlington, Snohomish, Edmonds, Mill Creek, etc. Third there is Sound Transit, which is mostly for commuters as their services mostly connect major transfer hubs like Everett Station, to Seattle, and Seattle to jobs like Boeing. Then there is a connection to Camano Island's Island Transit, and a connection to Mount Vernon via Skagit Transit. Due to the economy, Community Transit does not run on Sunday. Also, where I live is connected by only a 1 way route which also does not run on Sunday, likely due to the fact that it connected to a Park and Ride served mostly by Community Transit. The

It's interesting, finding out what works and what doesn't work. I have found myself putting in the Large Elementary and High Schools and Libraries, and while having all residential areas covered by those three things, certain areas will stay in the red for the longest time. I think though, what my problem is, is that I really need to spend more time working out the quirks of the game and stuff.

I was playing quite a bit last night and only just stopped because I realized it was morning... Then again I'm running the game on some very old hardware (Pentium 4 3.0 GHz processor w HT, 3 GB DDR2 (I think, could be DDR1, I forget as I didn't build the machine) and just an onboard Intel 82945G graphics chipset) and had to have the settings on low for the most part and play in a medium size tile, but I got quite the city going. I'd estimate that I played for at least 6 hours with maybe one or two bathroom breaks...

I don't think I could live without the NAM... Without it I run into traffic problems very quickly.

Okay definitely going to have to save this one for when I build my new gaming computer... Which looks like it will take some time. I have had ATI cards for quite a while, and ever since upgrading from the 9250 card way back when, I have not been able to play SC4 with an ATI card. Thanks so much!

I've tried it. It's not nearly as fun as SC4 and the social bit is irritating.

Yeah, and then we'd be paying 30 bucks or more a pop for each expansion only to find out each time that our game is rendered unplayable by such and such bugs. EA has a very bad habit of breaking games with expansions. You might try asking someone who has played The Sims 2 or The Sims 3. I played TS2 and tried out TS3. The first ever expansion back for The Sims 2 had this bug where if you saved while a Sim was using a particular item (Remote Control Car) a file in the game became corrupt and cause blank icons in the game. The Expansion Pack that had this bug came out in Spring of 2005 and I know we didn't see an official patch until well after the Summer had passed. And TS3 has some major flaws that have come just from patching the game, which EA now puts out patches very regularly but they break things with each patch. It would be great to see those features in the game but EA would need to buckle down and figure out a way to put out expansions with a minimum of bugginess.