BlackJackal

I ran a little test just now, to see what kind of revenue one can get from various methods of transportation (both from tickets for mass-transit, and from road tolls). It's worth noting that I was using the GDV electronic tolls mod for this test and not the stock toll booths. I started a small town with some industry. With about 200 commuters, the tolls made about $40 or so, (well more than the maintenance cost for the toll gate). Rail and subway both made around $3 or $4 (nowhere close to the maintenance costs, but they weren't anywhere close to capacity either), but GLR was only bringing in like $1. It took quite a few passengers before I was even seeing any revenue from it. Now, I have a fully built city (before I got NAM and GLR) where the transportation department actually turns a profit. Tolls more than pay for road costs, and same for mass transit. Now that I've discovered all these cool new things, thanks to STEX, I'm planning out a really nice city/region and I'm wondering if GLR is actually an effective method of transportation when compared with subways, or is it really just eye-candy? I really like the look of it, mind you, but speaking practically, subways really seem to beat it.

As the two sides of a RHW are technically two different roads, I don't think they can be on the same bridge. Either they'd have to be seperate bridges, or you could consolidate the two sides into a regular highway for the bridge section.

Originally posted by: Resender if you take plopale pieces you're still going to need the converted monorail rail for the stations and to get from city to cityquote> Oh of course, I never disputed that. Though I imagine ground level stations are also possible, the same way GLR stations are made. I don't think you can do neighbour connections with puzzle pieces though, so all city to city connections will have to be elevated.

There were discussions earlier about how this is going to be draggable elevared (replacing the monorail) but that there would be ploppable puzzle pieces for on the ground, like GLR. If that's the case, then we can just have one track go under the other using a HSR-over-HSR puzzle piece, and use the elevated to ground transition pieces that will be made at some point. If we want to keep the slope realistic, we can just make longer transition pieces than the ones for elevated rail or regular rail. It's also my understanding that passenger trains, being relatively light, can handle grades steeper than that of heavier freight trains, which they would share regular rail lines with. But these lines are dedacated passenger-only lines. That's just my 2 cents.

Okay, three things to tackle here. 1. No. The airports only have the demand-cap relief on the city in which they are placed. Neighbour cities are not affected. 2. There's no real solution to this problem, I'm afraid. I mean, parks and trees and such will reduce pollution, sure, but that will take land area away from your downtown, and the effect is pretty minimal. 3. You need to provide more possible routes for MT, bypassing congested ones. Also, using multiple forms of MT (Subway, bus, rail) can help, as it gives sims more choice.

That's a pretty decent layout to start off with. I'd suggest getting some road-top mass transit stations from the STEX somewhere so you can place your stations directly on the streets.

You also need to have multiple stations, obviously. Some in residential areas where people can get on, and some in industrial/commercial areas where they can get off.

Quarter of a mile across? That's like 1320 feet!

The Katy Freeway (Interstate 10) in Houston is going to be the widest freeway in the world from what I remember about it. The 401 is 18 lanes wide at its widest point, but this stretch of I-10 is apparently going to be 24 lanes across.

The design standards for the 400 series highways are pretty consistent. Most interchanges with arterial roads are the Parclo A4 type (shown earlier), all ramps (with a few exceptions) are from the right. Basically, if you're driivng around Toronto, you stick to the collector lanes (3-4 lanes wide each side) and if you are passing right through Toronto you stick to the express lanes (similar in size). It's like two regular freeways, one inside the other, and you can think of them as seperate. That, combined with good sinage (exit signs at 2km, 1km, and 500m before the interchange) makes the freeways fairly easy to navigate. This is in opposition to some other areas (Los Angeles, for example) where ramps exit from the left, or the right, and there are all sorts of different interchange types, like the parclo, diamond, SPUI. What would be REALLY confusing is if there was no seperation between collector and express, and it was like 8-9 lanes in each direction. It's not excessive. It was built to handle the traffic needs of a city of five million people, which is a LOT bigger than Edmonton

Originally posted by: beebs That Toronto highway is sick. How are you supposed to navigate through that?!quote> Simple. The outer collector lanes handle all interchanges with local arterial roads, while the express lanes are for through traffic only, and generally to not have ramps at interchanges, unless it's with another freeway. Every so often there will be a "basketweave" where braided ramps will interchange between the collector and express sections. This is done because the 401 is both a major through freeway for traffic crossing southern Ontario, and a commuter freeway for people working and living in and around Toronto. The express lanes are for traffic that is mostly just passing through the city, seperating it from local commuting traffic.

There is a stretch of Highway 401 in Mississauga, Ontatio, Canada that is 18 lanes across. It's a collector/express setup.

Originally posted by: wgb24 i need help finding the RHW mod thank youquote> http://koti.mbnet.fi/heka33/RHW-public-v012.zip

This is really cool stuff. I have a couple questions and a couple suggestions. First, I don't think ANT is strictly one-way, is it? I mean, if you have a stretch of RHW and there are two ajacent non-grade-seperated intersections with two way roads, would it be possible for vehicles to turn the wrong way down the RHW and backtrack to the next road? The other thing is something I'd like to see. I've noticed in NAM that they have custom cloverleaf interchanges for elevated highways. IE: Cloverleafs with ramps in only 3 quadrants, 2 quadrants (ajacent and opposite) and 1 quadrant. These would be useful if they could be incorporated into the RHW project for when a RHW intersects another RHW or a regular highway. Unless the advice would be to just have the RHW merge into a regular highway for the interchange. Another good idea might be the single sided paralell ramps that a lot of people use for sunken highways to join with paralell one-way roads.This would make it possible to do a sunken RHW with something (like a railway) running between them. The existing road-over-rail (or GLR) and road-over-RHW puzzle pieces would make overpasses easy, since we can't do overpasses with two halves of a regular highway (if it was set up like a multi-highway for example, with a 1 tile gap between the roadbeds).

Originally posted by: jglei701 So will the regular monorail stations work for this...? I just found (and scanned through) the entire thread, but I missed that detail. Does this just modify the rail textures, speeds, and trains, yet, essentially, still BE the monorail?quote> You will still be able to use the monorail stations, sure. But because the textures and models for the HSR are so different, they will look very out of place.

I think this is a known and unsolveable issue. I know you can't demolish that, and it won't go away on it's own. Try raising or lowering the terrain or something and see if that works. This is one of the reasons I never use landfills.

I'm interested to see how you handle the inside lanes. This is fascinating stuff, especialy since I like the IDEA of collector/distributor highways, but their implementation in SC4 with occasional one-way road connector pieces is ugly.

Another option is to skip rails altogether and use a subway system. More expenisve, sure, but it can be placed under the city, and you'd only need to demolish tiles to place the stations. Of course, you could also download some road-top subway stations and not have to demolish anything. Note that most road-top stations will block road access to ajacent tiles, so only place them on roads where no buildings are facing them, or the buildings that are, are wider than 1 tile.

Generally no, that will not work. The idea behind a parking garage is that your commuters will drive to it, walk to mass transit, take mass transit into the city, and walk to work. If someone made the effort to drive all the way into the city where they work, they're going to park at work, and not at a parking garage nearby. Parking garages are essentially a suppliment to your mass transit system, and nothing more. Generally speaking, your mass transit stations can be more spaced out in residential areas with parking garages, but they need to be tightly packed in downtown areas to allow for sims to walk from the station to work.

Yes, it does apply. And the walking distance from the garage to the station is the biggest reason people might choose not to use it, especialy if there is a highway nearby. It's always a tricky balance between mass transit and highways. I think the commuter shuttle service ordinance helps mass transit though. And, like Bones said, mass transit doesn't work well in low density areas where there are lots of roads and not a lot of people.

Train stations at capacity mean that the trains are at capacity, not the parking lot. It's useless to use parking garages for mass transit stations that have their own parking. However, if you have a subway system, which does not include parking, placing a garage next to a subway station in a residential area will mean that not only can people walk to the station who live nearby, but people from further away can drive, park at the garage, and walk to the station. That's how they're meant to be used. It doesn't provide additional capacity for the station but allows more people to use it. This can also be used for elevated rail, monorail, or, if you want, busses.

I don't think they take the commute time into consideration when finding jobs, only the actual distance in tiles. This was one of the problems with pathfinding, because in reality if one route is congested, people will find clear routes. The sims do not.

That's because those booths have double the toll of the default ones, I think. Like $0.20 per sim. They do have a transit switch cost though, so that SHOULD replicate the same effect as the standard booths. I had issues with 500% capacity on the stock booths, so I was looking for something with a slightly higher capacity.

I'm not aware of a way to set the dilapidation occupancy in SC4Tool, unless THAT is what the CO$$ number is for in a CO$$$ building. I assumed it was for mixing the two types.

I use Goldvia's eletronic toll booths. They don't clog traffic at all, but you still get the cash.