Damn the noise!

[JohnL]

I love the new Mass Transit DLC, but WTF is up with the noise raidus on those monorails?? I can't seem to put them anywhere without ticking everyone off...it's like they need to be blocks away from any residential and even commercial gets happy when you delete them. Are monorails really this noisy? I know trains can be, but I thought monorails were supposed to be quieter! I'm not happy with the amount of noise a lot of CS leisure and city services create, it's kinda outrageous. I've lived near commercial districts, I had a loft above some shops once and I never had an issue with noise unless my windows were open...and even that wasn't really bad 90% of the time.

[grapplehoeker]

Well, let's examine how noisy they are. We can estimate how much of an influence that can be and how close to residential we can place them.
I bought the MT DLC yesterday and the first thing I did was experiment with monorails. This is a very small city that I have used for testing purposes in the past and it was suitable for this exercise. In order to help another player regarding placement of the monorail with and without roads, I set up this ring road system with 4 stations around the main residential area, one of which connecting to the nearest commercial district in the bottom of the images that follow.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=929308814
Note the date: 16th August 2019
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=929309229
Usage after just building it is minimal, but it is attracting passengers. You can clearly see here precisely how far away from the residential the stations are.
And the noise pollution radius of each station?
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=929309492
As expected, it is very much like the regular train stations in terms of noise radius. I would expect the northern station and the southern station to be the most threat to health due to noise as these are the closest.
So, let's look at the health...
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=929309741
As expected the northern station is having a clear detrimental effect, while the southern station much less so.
So I let the game run on for a few months to see the difference over time.
5 months later...
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=929314265
Usage has increased.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=929313934
The detrimental affect is still present as the amount of noise is unchanged, but it is interesting to note that the health services are coping and the number of sick Cims is reduced.
Also note that there is no detrimental effect to the commercial zone.

The conclusion is to treat the monorail stations as train stations and therefore take adequate precaution when building them with regards to safe distance from residential zones. In the above exrcise example, I would probably remove the northern station or at least relocate a little further away (about the same distance away as the other stations). I would also remove the western station as it is serving nobody and there is no purpose for it.
I hope this helps ;)

[Pops]

The noise radius and amounts of noise from a lot of buildings in CS are over the top imho. Just have to try to work around them, so far the monorails require a bus service taking cims to them as they do need to be placed a good distance from the residential. I have found, so far, monorails dont work as good as metro.

[JohnL]

Thanks grapplehoeker, you always give nice and detailed responses. :-) I was just complaining cuz I think they over-do some of these things, like noise pollution. But of course with this game and the scale of things one has to make allowences. I really like the new expansion...

Now if they would just expand more on bridge styles! Why no new bridge with 4 lane hwy or regular roads but the dirt road has one? (which is really cool btw) I'd like to see each type of road have a different style of bridge, fancier roads have nicer bridges. This is my next wish and it could be a small DLC like the Stadiums or Asian style.