Does bus route length matter? (+ Bus Depots)

[Imhotep]

Does it make any difference whether a bus route is short or long? Are long bus routes, going from one side of the city to the other, with many bus stops, bad?

Also, a single Bus Depot is capable of sending out more buses than a city could possibly handle. When a bus leaves the Bus Depot, it starts its journey collecting passengers from a random bus stop on the route.

I'm not sure what the point of multiple Bus Depots are then, unless the way it works is that a random bus stop is chosen, and the bus then spawns at the Bus Depot that is closest to this random stop.

[azuarc]

To answer your second question first, buses can be set to return during night if you have the day/night cycle. Plus, if you make changes to the routes that result in more buses, they'll dispense from wherever is closest. You're not wrong in that one depot can certainly handle the city's needs, but it's not completely useless.

As for short vs long, that depends on the intent. Typically buses get used as the short-range transportation option to reach something that travels farther, like a train, since buses can go literally anywhere but move at the speed of traffic. You can certainly use buses on longer routes, but keep in mind that people that get on the bus at stop A probably don't want to ride through B thru Y just to get to stop Z. In fact, you can see a climb in ridership if you run a route with a loop, and then you add a second route that runs the same loop in reverse. So if you're going for a long route, distance-wise, conventional wisdom is to not put very many stops on it. Just hit the most critical areas....or you can make one giant route that runs back and forth along your linear city, but that's not the norm. Also, be aware that the number of buses dispensed is directly proportional to the route length, so if you don't want to coat your city in buses, that might also be a consideration.

[Tsubame ⭐]

Route length does not matter, people will use it to cross all the way to the other side of the map if required, and if trains/metro are not available.

That being said, longer lines are a pain to manage and modify due to the bad line management tool.

Multi stop lines are prone to congestion, especially if serving large swathes of one zone - i.e. residential to commercial - as opposed to mixed neighborhoods, so you can supplement local bus lines with express bus lines or bus rapid transit, if you do not feel like building metros or trams.

[Boomer99]

Originally posted by ⭐ Tsubame:

That being said, longer lines are a pain to manage and modify due to the bad line management tool.

THIS! Theoretically you could set up one line for your entire city and limit the stops. However, the longer the line the more you'll see those stops where there's a massive buildup and by the time the buses make it to that stop they're already full or can only pick up a few people, so you add more and more buses.