Busses getting stuck at bus stops

[James Blonde]

I have a problem with busses getting stuck at bus stops, and the busses on the route then piling up on each other. They end up blocking the road at the bus stop and causing huge tailbacks. The only way I can find to resolve is by deleting the bus(es), but it keeps happening. There aren't any stuck or ghost nodes, or broken lines. Any ideas??

[athlitias]

it happens to me too a couple of days ago (i m using some mods)..
i reduce the number of buses at the specific line.. for example from 10 buses to 9..

if the problematic bus did not disappear .. then I continued to reduce the number of buses which working on the line

[athlitias]

otherwise.. force the slider of the lne to 0 buses;;; let time pass... set the number of buses again

[James Blonde]

OK thanks, will give that a try! :)

[James Blonde]

Hmm. Partly works.

What seems to happen - and it's not on every bus or every line at the same time, but seems to affect all lines to some extend - is that a bus will sit at a stop and fill with passengers, but go beyond 100%. It seems to get to around 2200%, and then either leave, or reset and start filling from 0 again (and again, it may leave at the end of that, or reset again...).

I've removed all busses from lines, left it a while, and re-added them. I've removed all busses and added 1, I've turned off debunching, I've used just the default bus - nothing seems to fix the problem.

and yep, I've modded too.

[athlitias]

I continued to develop the city by adding some more options to public transport .. so that not many buses are needed.
Generally I constantly review during the game (as the population grows, the area of the city increases)
i readjust the lines, I add additional lines of public transport.

[db48x]

What you’re seeing is debunching. I don’t know precisely how the game calculates how long to wait, but in an ideal system a bus would arrive at a stop at regular intervals. If the next bus comes along early, it is wasted; there won’t be any people to board it. So busses wait at bus stops so that they don’t arrive at the next stop too early.

Unfortunately the implementation certainly isn’t perfect. For example, if a rider arrives while the bus is debunching, then the bus driver ought to open the bus doors and let them board (assuming there is room). Sadly bus drivers are a little too rigid in their programming, so the arriving riders must wait for the next bus to arrive.

Also, it would be nice if the bus drivers could debunch less if there are lots of people waiting at the current stop. I suspect that this would improve the bus service, even if the busses took longer to get evenly spread out along the route.

Another thing to remember is that when you add a vehicle to a route, it is initially assigned to a specific stop on the route. It must then drive from the depot to that station. Once it arrives at that stop it begins picking up passengers, even if it passes other stops along the way. I don’t know if that stop is choosen at random, or if the game tries to stick the bus into the largest gap between vehicles. Either way, when the bus arrives at that first stop it may end up too close to the bus in front of it, and have to debunch.

I suspect that if you leave the busses alone and just watch them, that the debunching will happen less and less often as they gradually get spread out along the route. Either that, or you will identify a specific traffic or road problem that causes them to get bunched up, necessitating more debunching.

There are also some mods that can give you more visibility into and control over the system. I use Improved Public Transport 2, which specifically shows exactly when the bus is unbunching, as well as giving you control over the overall agressiveness of unbunching, and the ability to tweak the amount of unbunching for specific routes and at specific stops.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=928128676

[James Blonde]

Yep, I'm using that mod at the moment.

I did wonder if it was debunching, though the way it seems to work, I'd call it bunching, with 6 busses sitting on top of each other at a bus stop, and 1 out on the route! but it's still happening when I have it switched off.

I've got other public transport options in the city, so traffic itself currently isn't a problem, I just want busses to work and not block roads at bus stops. I had to remove all traffic from the city at one point, it had become that gridlocked from 1 bus stop!

[kristofburger]

Originally posted by James Blonde:

What seems to happen - and it's not on every bus or every line at the same time, but seems to affect all lines to some extend - is that a bus will sit at a stop and fill with passengers, but go beyond 100%. It seems to get to around 2200%, and then either leave, or reset and start filling from 0 again (and again, it may leave at the end of that, or reset again...).

Going beyond 100% is normal, but it should never reset at the same stop and start from 0 again. You should post your full mod list, something's broken in there.

[James Blonde]

How do I get a full mod list that I can paste in here? (there are a few (1500?) mods and assets....)

[kristofburger]

Originally posted by James Blonde:

How do I get a full mod list that I can paste in here? (there are a few (1500?) mods and assets....)

Assets probably aren't relevant, except for any custom buses you may have. Mods are what have more potential to cause gameplay bugs.

The best way is to upload your output log and post a link here. It shows all mod files the game loads, even those that aren't enabled. This guide has all the information you need.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=463645931

[James Blonde]

Wow, didn't realise the log files were so big!

Anyway, here's a link:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kjGgmkq0bs6fzmDoNtSpqt0ppFGhDrrZ/view?usp=sharing

[Cahos Rahne Veloza]

This game phenomenon is called bunching and as "active city game time" elapses the game attempts to unbunch buses. Two mods that do their best to address this are IPT2 (Improved Public transport 2) and TM:PE (Traffic Manager President Edition) but they do things differently and can work hand in hand as well.

[James Blonde]

(I guess you can see) I'm using both.... is that likely to be a conflict? Didn't realise TM:PE did it as well!

[kristofburger]

Originally posted by James Blonde:

(I guess you can see) I'm using both.... is that likely to be a conflict? Didn't realise TM:PE did it as well!

No, these are fine. However, there's some garbage you need to take out:

Extended Road Upgrade (very old, unnecessary and incompatible with TMPE, unsubscribe)
Automatic Bulldoze v2 (outdated, use v3 instead)
City Statistics Easy Access (reported as broken, unsubscribe)

[James Blonde]

OK, will remove those and see how I get on! :)

A kind of side issue.....(maybe one for a different post...?) I upgraded my machine to 64Gb 2 weeks ago.... The game was being a bit of a memory hog at 32Gb (system was running at 28-29Gb when playing), but the upgrade helped for a week.... I suspect a mod or assets I installed in the last week has caused an "issue" - I now seem to be running at 62.9Gb (of 64) and 51Gb of that is Cities Skylines.... Errrrr....!!!!!