Why to people prefer metro over train?

[Horoai]

^

I'm playing with the mass transit DLC and I was super glad to see new types of train stations that can handle those insane amounts of intercity trains. However, ever since I started using them there has been no traffic to speak of.

- The commuting train routes I set up between train stations haven't transported a single passenger in over a year.
- Intercity passengers arrive rarely and only at one of my stations.

I also noticed all these new stations have inbuilt metro stations so I hooked them up to my metro network. All of a sudden people vising my stations but only to enter the metro. Are ticket prices too high? Is a metro train faster than a regular train? Why don't tourists come by train when I'm actually at a deficit of customers in my tourism area?

What am I doing wrong?

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Edit:
Save game in case you need it.

[kristofburger]

There are two reasons I can think of that affect your multiplatform stations.

1) Every outside connection has their own platform designated for them. You need to connect ALL platforms to outside connections to see who pathfinds to what platform.
2) Someone upgraded a two-lane road with trees to an avenue next to a multiplatform end station, and trains started coming in again.

[Horoai]

Originally posted by ristosal:

1) Every outside connection has their own platform designated for them. You need to connect ALL platforms to outside connections to see who pathfinds to what platform.

This is against what I've learned on these forums before, but I did it anyway to see how much traffic they can handle. Nothing happened.

Originally posted by ristosal:

2) Someone upgraded a two-lane road with trees to an avenue next to a multiplatform end station, and trains started coming in again.

What?

[Ëvïlnïck8 ゴゴゴ]

Originally posted by Yggdrasil:

Originally posted by ristosal:

2) Someone upgraded a two-lane road with trees to an avenue next to a multiplatform end station, and trains started coming in again.

What?

He means higher land value increases trains?
But i dont know if land value has something to do with train traffic and such...

[Metacritical]

roads with cyclepaths block cargo trains from working (CO are aware and hopefully it'll be fixed in the next patch), it's possible there's a glitch on the new passenger stations with certain road types, though this is just a summation as i've not tested this myself

[kristofburger]

Originally posted by ëvïlnïck8:

He means higher land value increases trains?

No, there's a chance some types of road cause a glitch that prevents these stations from working correctly.

[Horoai]

I have stations on 3 or 4 differnt types of roads.

[Horoai]

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1105677858

I don't get it. In this picture you can see houndreds upon houndres of people waiting for DAYS to get on the bus when there is a train station just a few meter further down the road service lines to the exact same locations.

I think I broke trains...

[J Kula]

I'm having a nightmare with trains. I thought I had it sussed; give them no other option to get between districts (i.e, don't connect a large residential area to the nearby, also large, downtown area). This worked for a while - loads of packed trains.

Then I built an airport area near to my downtown, connected this to downtown with a metro line and also connected it to the residential zone by rail. My cims are now taking the train to the airport and waiting for taxis or taking the metro into downtown. The airport is 3x further away from their homes than down town, but they'll go via the airport just so they can do a leg on metro.

To make matters worse, more of them are opting to do this than were previously just catching the train straight into town - I have a good 1,000 people waiting to catch the train to the airport so they can catch the metro into town (which terminates at the same station they can get to in one short train journey).

I can only assume their path-finding logic is really illogical - like it doesn't actually evaluate all options and instead just settles on the first one to be evaluated that seems acceptable - maybe journeys that *include* metro take precedence over journeys that don't, even if a journey that doesn't is much shorter.

I'm about to bin most of my rail network and replace it with metro loops. It costs a fortune, but I was getting close to turning a profit - soooo disappointing! Maybe I'll try the metro overground mod.

[MarkJohnson]

Originally posted by Yggdrasil:

I don't get it. In this picture you can see hundreds upon hundreds of people waiting for DAYS to get on the bus when there is a train station just a few meter further down the road service lines to the exact same locations.

That's probably your problem. If you are covering the same lines multiple times. None of them probably want to go along that line, so adding a second line on the same route isn't helping them.

I try to run bus routes perpendicular to subways. It seems to do very well and send people in different directions much more effectively. i.e subway East and West with buses North and South. I have little issues with this in my tourist districts.

[AoD_lexandro]

Originally posted by -DI- rmjohnson144:

Originally posted by Yggdrasil:

I don't get it. In this picture you can see hundreds upon hundreds of people waiting for DAYS to get on the bus when there is a train station just a few meter further down the road service lines to the exact same locations.

That's probably your problem. If you are covering the same lines multiple times. None of them probably want to go along that line, so adding a second line on the same route isn't helping them.

I try to run bus routes perpendicular to subways. It seems to do very well and send people in different directions much more effectively. i.e subway East and West with buses North and South. I have little issues with this in my tourist districts.

^This.

Most common mistake I make is trying to make my services "all joined up" and instead making duplicate routes on another service. If two things go the same way, the cims either take the cheap option (bus) or the fastest option. When you have two "fast" options like monorail & metro or rail & metro on the same route, one will always get ignored as its not the fastest available.

That means consolodating lines in to either sectors or specific high traffic routes. Basically if you have a metro there, put a bus line running across it to scoop up cims and drop them off back at the metro. Anything else will get ignored.

The idea of "alternative" options on the same route just doesnt work in this game.

So the best tends to be metro for High Density, bus for Low Density and rail (either train or mono) for long distance routes.

Anything else is just for flavour. Although I must say I am rather liking the 3 way monorail hubs. Having metro, monorail and rail tied together or just a bus and monorail is a really great addition that gives you a lot of options.

[Horoai]

Yeah that thought came to me as well. I removed the bus line yesterday and get a mass migration to the train station. They ignored the first 3-4 trains but after that they started maxing out available seats in a split second and it took another 3-4 trains until the station was empty.

Now I'm thinking of redisgning my entire mass transit network with this in mind.

In hindsight, my experience with the blimbs should have tipped me off. When I first set them up houndreds of people would pile up at their landing zones and ignore all other methods of transportation.
At first, I thought blimbs are just more popular because they're the awesome new addition. So then I built a second landing pad right next to the first and set up an entire seperate second blimb line which visits the same places. My hope was that people would split equally between the stations in order to reduce waiting time.
But they didn't. Same distance, same speed but cut waiting times by entire days and the AI doesn't care.

It's kinda disappointing to be honest. A single method of transportation can get overwhelmed and jammed just like regular traffic. I thought adding more and more options to the critical routes would encourage people to take alternatives in order to reduce wait time in traffic jams etc. Looks like that's not how it works.
Instead they pick the next best thing and jam it instead. Absolutely not what I had in mind.

[MarkJohnson]

Originally posted by Yggdrasil:

It's kinda disappointing to be honest. A single method of transportation can get overwhelmed and jammed just like regular traffic. I thought adding more and more options to the critical routes would encourage people to take alternatives in order to reduce wait time in traffic jams etc. Looks like that's not how it works.
Instead they pick the next best thing and jam it instead. Absolutely not what I had in mind.

I find you need to balance out your zones to reduce traffic. It works with pedestrian traffic as well.

Just try to make sure cims can walk to work (1km or less) and it will cut down on traffic tremendously. Zone your RCI ratios somewhat evenly so you don't have excess workers traveling across town to get to work.

[Horoai]

Originally posted by -DI- rmjohnson144:

I find you need to balance out your zones to reduce traffic. It works with pedestrian traffic as well.

Just try to make sure cims can walk to work (1km or less) and it will cut down on traffic tremendously. Zone your RCI ratios somewhat evenly so you don't have excess workers traveling across town to get to work.

But where is the fun in that? I bought mass transit DLC, so I want to see the masses.

[MarkJohnson]

Originally posted by Yggdrasil:

Originally posted by -DI- rmjohnson144:

I find you need to balance out your zones to reduce traffic. It works with pedestrian traffic as well.

Just try to make sure cims can walk to work (1km or less) and it will cut down on traffic tremendously. Zone your RCI ratios somewhat evenly so you don't have excess workers traveling across town to get to work.

But where is the fun in that? I bought mass transit DLC, so I want to see the masses.

Me too! But the masses can cause issues, so you need to build your city first. Once your city is the way you want it, then you can make it out of balance to create the excess traffic when and where you want it.

Otherwise, you end up with traffic issues the whole game and trying to fix things. Kind of like learning to run before you can walk.

The biggest issue I have is my growing city constantly throwing things out of balance. Your once balanced tile is now in chaos when you start growing your second tile. I have learned to ignore the first tile and let it be out of balance until I finish the second tile and then go back and balance the two tile together. It is a pita, but it is usually easier in the long run.

[Horoai]

Idk, I built it "unbalanced" right from the start. Had a seperate residential zone on one side of the intercity highway and tourism + shops on the other side. Then both grew into opposite directions. I can't speak of any real problems. Traffic could be better in some areas but there are no real jams I couldn't solve.
I have several millions to spend, needs are satisfied and land values maxed out. Just recently hit enough population to unlock the internationial airport so that's how far I got.

My current gripe is just that people won't spread out across several methods of public transportation even if they have to wait for days on their favourite one. I explicitly build them in parallel instead of increasing throughput of a single one because I wanted to watch a variety of transports in action.
Obviously, this has failed so I went back to one monstrous transport type for one direction and the waiting masses disappeared.