Does anyone understand how bus/tram lines work?

[maats]

I have overcrowded bus/tram stations that affect the quality of life in my cities. I've added vehicles, changed and added routes but the stations are still overcrowded. Suggestions appreciated.

[derMeister47]

In order to get a good advice you need to be more specific. What year is it? How much overcrowding are we talking? Are those multiple points/lines or is there a single chokepoint?

Generally speaking the game does not favor passenger transit in the form we are accustomed to. Optimally each line should only have a beginning and an end, in certain cases a single stop might be justified. Check the passengers that wait on the stop, look where they're headed (most likely a train station or airport) and add a new bus line directly from that stop to their destination.

In the early game (before 1920) everything is better done with a train. Consider clearing some buildings and replacing the trams with a short train line (operated by trains with highest possible maintenance in order to limit emissions).

You could also replace regular stops with bus stations; they take a lot of space and also require to demolish a few buildings, but they can hold even hundreds of passengers.

[Metacritical]

for me in late game it is quite common for the bus stop closest to the train station to be overcrowded, as everyone waits to get on my bus rather than walk to the relatively nearby train station. i usually add another line on an adjacent road to reduce the overcrowding, or if it's really bad bulldoze a few buildings and add a large bus station. it's not something i spend a lot of time worrying about though.

[Zapp]

Originally posted by maats:

Does anyone understand how bus/tram lines work?

Yes

Originally posted by maats:

I have overcrowded bus/tram stations that affect the quality of life in my cities. I've added vehicles, changed and added routes but the stations are still overcrowded. Suggestions appreciated.

First off, try any experiments in a new city or on a new map. Don't try learning at the same time as you're working on your masterpiece. Just find a new city to experiment on.

Then realize where passengers want to go. They chiefly want to go from the city's residential areas to the station that takes them to other cities, and from the stations in those other cities to the commercial (shopping) and industrial (working) districts of those cities. And then back again. Sure there's also traffic inside a single city, and sometimes a passenger wants to go directly from point B to C, but that's not what you should worry about.

Second realize that circle routes are far more efficient than a route going from the center to the outskirts of town (and back again). Just with real life metro/tube lines, such radial lines see large crowds in the center and very few passengers on the outer stations. In this game, go with circle lines instead, because passengers don't act like real life humans - for one thing, this game doesn't track waiting times (=passengers don't mind waiting for years). The game does penalize overcrowding, but not in the realistic way (by having passengers choose other options).

Now apply both of these things and try this (for a reasonably sized town):

Set up an "inner" bus line from the station (which I assume is at one edge of the city) that drives in a semicircle through the city center. Then an "outer" circle line that drives through the outskirts of the city (and the station). For larger cities you might need a third or even a fourth such line.

For really big cities it's worthwhile to now add express lines that cut throw the concentric circles, ideally using high-capacity bus or tram lines. But these lines should not be the only ones, as already discussed. They're too favorable and so they get swamped.

But I'm assuming you're having trouble with smaller cities (less than 1000 people) and then the problem will be bus routes that's set up for realism rather than what this game needs you to do.

The most extreme example of the point I'm trying to get across is setting up air travel (especially before moderns wide jets) and then getting surprised when your airports get absolutely swamped. Because travel time (excluding waiting times) is the SOLE and ONLY parameter that decides usage.

With air travel just about the only solution is to throttle the road access. Put airports a fair bit away from cities and don't upgrade the roads there. If the only way to get to the airport is to ride a bus on a 25 mph gravel country road this means total travel time will be sufficiently slow and long that sufficiently few people will choose it so your small planes can handle the demand.

In the same way, the chief issue getting your stations swamped is setting up too good bus routes. If you instead use circle lines you force passengers to distribute the load much more evenly. There is no mechanism in this game where cities complain you're providing ♥♥♥♥♥♥ service, everyone is just super happy to commute.

[Zapp]

Originally posted by Metacritical:

for me in late game it is quite common for the bus stop closest to the train station to be overcrowded, as everyone waits to get on my bus rather than walk to the relatively nearby train station. i usually add another line on an adjacent road to reduce the overcrowding, or if it's really bad bulldoze a few buildings and add a large bus station. it's not something i spend a lot of time worrying about though.

Have a closer look at the white zones of coverage you seen when building bus stops. You should realize you don't actually need to put stations very close together.

In your case, you should probably just delete the bus stop that's overcrowding. It's very likely the main bus terminal and the next bus stop will still provide perfect coverage, but now the bus stop is so much farther away from the train station (than the main bus terminal) that sufficiently few rail passengers use it, and you have solved your overcrowding the simplest way possible.

[Metacritical]

i prefer good coverage of my cities rather than optimal coverage. that way i have very few private vehicles on my roads and everyone uses my transport network.

note that closest doesn't mean the same as one bus stop every two centimetres.

[Zapp]

Originally posted by Metacritical:

i prefer good coverage of my cities rather than optimal coverage. that way i have very few private vehicles on my roads and everyone uses my transport network.

I do to.

Please don't insinuate my solution is an inferior solution.

Instead read my advice and space your bus stops wider apart, especially close to a bus/train interchange, if you want to avoid those bus stops overcrowding.

[Metacritical]

well i was offering advice, i wasn't looking for advice myself. i didn't insinuate that yours was an inferior solution, just one that was not requested.

[numbat]

Originally posted by maats:

I have overcrowded bus/tram stations that affect the quality of life in my cities. I've added vehicles, changed and added routes but the stations are still overcrowded. Suggestions appreciated.

Sometimes there is not a lot you can do. However, the first step to fixing the problem is understanding the problem. Figure out where those cims are going, and how they're getting there. Then you can start to design your solution.

Generally, they will be either going to a train station, or from a train station. If they're headed TO a train station, you can probably add a few more routes from other areas nearby that go to the train station as well.

If they're going from a train station, there's not a lot you can do without expanding your bus terminal at the station and adding a few more lines. If you think about it, a train can dump say 200 pax all at the same time, and the majority of them are going to walk straight across to your bus/tram terminal. You will need to figure out how you can split them between multiple lines efficiently, and will either need multiple platforms or very long platforms at that train station terminal to house them all.

Cheers,
Chris.

P.S. Also note, any additional routes you add will take some time to take effect. Any cim that has started it's journey will continue to use the old stations (unless you delete them).

[Tsubame ⭐]

Overcrowded stations will have blue numbers on it.

The solution is to increase capacity in the line, or provide an alternative, such as an express line.

Impact of crowded stations in town growth is rather small, and I would not worry too much. It is preferrable to have lines always running at full capacity instead, especially long distance intercity lines.