How to get more people using public transport

[Alexander O'Neal]

I have a city with 300k people but only 12k use transport a week. Any idea on how to increase this or are there any mods to increase that.

[Wolfsun]

Hmmmmm....

Raise residential taxes so high that the citizens leave town and move to Europe?

OH! Wait. You meant pubtrans in your City. Good question. I've got no idea which is why I'll be watching this thread to find out.

[BucketBrain]

What kind of city did you build ? Do you have tourists in there ? Did you build things like Campus Arenas , Concert stuff , Matchday Arena ? Do you have a lot of bikes and pedestrians .
The number of used citizen instances would be helpful too You can check this with mods like Watch lt or CSL show limits .

[Skyd]

One thing to be sure of is that you have stops near places of interest and routes for people to get too and from work such as industrial areas, shopping centers, etc. I'm still newish but find those areas to be hot spots as you would expect.

[BettyB]

You need to use the proper form of public transportation (metro) and you need to design it properly (so that every thing and every one in the city is with in an easy and acceptable walking distance of at least one metro station.)

[Seminole Wolf]

Originally posted by sueQ:

You need to use the proper form of public transportation (metro) and you need to design it properly (so that every thing and every one in the city is with in an easy and acceptable walking distance of at least one metro station.)

I've seen people walk all the way from one end of my city to the other, without driving their own car, riding their bike, or taking any public transit. One worked at a candy store and the other worked at the gym.

[Hairy Mclary]

If your trying to keep Transport realistic but also at reasonably high numbers, do this.
- City Loop (Metro)
- Add a Central Station
- Make train lines to the populated areas to get to the focal point of the city.
- Use buses for the in betweens
- Put cruise ships near the touristic part of town
- Use Monorail in touristic areas (if mass transit)
- USE TRAMS IN HIGH DESNITY + TOURISM AREAS (if snowfall)
DONT ALWAY USE THE HIGHEST CAPACITY OF VHEICLES
MAKE SURE YOU ALSO LIKE THE LIVERY YOU USE.

I do also suggest using realistic civil engineering strategies, it helps.

[caseyas435943]

Originally posted by Alexander O'Neal:

I have a city with 300k people but only 12k use transport a week. Any idea on how to increase this or are there any mods to increase that.

Transport needs to go where they want to go. Cims work, shop, and play. Cims don't visit other cims. Make you transport do to places where they work, shop and play and you should easily get 30K.

Remember it needs to be faster. If you have a bus that takes 3 days to get there they'll drive. Buses pick up cims or quick short routes drops cims off higher transport options.

Buses drop of Cims on a Tram. Tram takes them to a metro. Metro takes them to the train. Reverse it the other way.

All these options are going to where Cims want to go. Bus picks up a Cim at a Tram spot and takes them to a park or school.

Metro drops a Cim in an Industry area. A bus them takes them around that area.

If a cim get out his pocket car then you need some sort of transportation where they are doing it. If you have a great walk path network, it can eat into public transport.

I build my cities with walking path networks running through them. So, I get 85%+ traffic with less public transport that I might get if I took some paths away. If I see Cims walking along the side of a long road between areas, I build a path there. If they want to walk, I let them. It gets cars off the road.

I city I have now has 87% traffic and 57K and zero cargo stations they are trash. If your highways are good, you don't need traffic makers which are cargo stations. I'm making insane money. Taxes on houses are at 1% and I'm still making money, and I have over 28 million. How? All my public transportation makes money. I don't run trains because they lose money. They cost double what metro costs. I run my metro above ground everywhere I can. One it looks cool and two it's cheaper.

You want to lose 50K use trains.

[Challenger™]

Before you start, No I don't remember where or who I heard it from. And I'm not going to upload a shared save.

Like everyone else, when first starting out I tried using everything available to move citizens around town. I had trains bringing people into town, then swapped them over to the tram to quickly move them around town in both directions. From there I went to buses and taxi's for short hops between destinations. It all worked well enough I suppose, but I was spending all my time designing on and off ramps and bus stops that let people get on and off where they wanted to. Trying to keep one form of transportation from interfering with the others was an absolute nightmare. Finely, I started looking at the metro, and the lights came on.

It has been said that given a choice, CS citizens prefer to and actually will choose to walk distances of 1 - 1 1/2 CS1 tiles or up to 240u to 360u.or more. If that was true I should be able to drop in a metro station in a grid configuration every 240 u or so and give everybody easy access to every thing. Just to be on the safe side I went with a 120u grid, which meant that ideally everyone and or everything in the city should be within 60u of at least one metro station or more.

So, I lay out the grid, drop in the stations (tweaking them a few u one way or another to fit the roadways), and aha! No more taxi's, No more buses, (I do still bus kids to school and shuttle passengers at the airports) no more groups of citizens standing around waiting for a ride that either isn't coming or isn't going to their destination. Doesn't mean you can't still have buses or taxi's or tram's or anything else you want. Just means you don't need them. Citizens walk or ride the metro. City street traffic nearly non existent. Traffic flow never an issue. Metro, out of sight out of mind. No interference with road traffic.

Play your game your way. Just saying. :)


btw; I think the citizen pathways that caseyas435943 uses are a great asset. Best way I've found to clean up city sidewalks and crosswalks.

Unlike casey however, I don't give a damn about citizens. I constantly overproduce industrial and use the H E double L hell out of cargo stations, I'll trade the 3,000,000,000 + in the bank for the 50K citizens any day of the week and twice on Sunday. :)