Cims prefer bus to underground

[Rafa]

Hi. I think something is definitely wrong with the route decision system for the cims. I have a terribly congested bus line that goes through an avenue. There are hundres of people in several stations and the buses can't just keep up.
Now the funny thing is that I have a metro line between two of the most congested bus stops. Most people in stop 1 want to get off in stop 2 to go into the metro station. However the metro line between stop 1 and 2 is not used at all! If I remove the bus stop 1 then all people go happily to the undeground station and arrive to their destination in no time. However if I put the bus stop back, then everyone waits on in instead of going into the underground!
I have tried deactivating my mods and the behaviour is the same. Any ideas?

[Viss Valdyr]

"my home is better to reach from the bus stop than from the metro... I don't mind the wait"

[Finwickle]

Routing decisions are based on route length and speed, not on traffc congestion. So if the bus is theoretically faster, they will choose that. I'm not even sure if it calculates based on the bus line length or just the fastest possible road route between the bus stops. And I don't know if cims have any specific preferences for type of transportation.

[Link06Kenway]

subways are slower than bus to speed up so here you are

[Pototron]

Public transport congestion dont matter. People will teleport after they waited a while..........sigh.

[maestro]

I just skipped them damn busses in the current game. All they do is pile up people at the stops where as my sub system immediatly upgraded my downtown to hi rises.

[Rafa]

Thanks guys. I did a quick test and apparently the distance was the reason. I'd love a way to see this kind of things, some kind of in game tips pointing out those problems.

[Rafa]

Apparently that was NOT the issue. I ended up just removing the bus line :(

[Randox]

Avoid duplicating part of a route between the bus and metro. Because of how the game works, one option or the other will be considered better and used to exclusion, and the other option will just burn your maintenance dollars for no gain.

I like to use the metro as the backbone of my transit system, moving people long distances between a few spots in key areas, then I extend the reach of each station with bus routes, and sometimes pedways.

[Rafa]

Good tip Randox, thanks. Still it is a shame they are so dumb :P

[Randox]

Originally posted by Rafa:

Good tip Randox, thanks. Still it is a shame they are so dumb :P

It is, though it can work in your favour too. As infurating as the pathfinding can be, it is also extremly predicatable if you know how it works, and that makes it possible to force certain routes as well to make things run smoothly :)

[Viss Valdyr]

and never forget, CIMs walk a very long route before using a car. I think around... 12 Street-Blocks (1 Block=8 squares)... thin out your stops and use Metro to connect those bus-lines. (e.g. use a Busline to supply a housing-district only and use the metro to connect this district with an industry district)

[Asshat]

To back up the comment above, cims will walk up to 128units of distance, not including any public transport they may choose to add on top of this, so yes you can definitely exploit it :)

[Viss Valdyr]

Originally posted by Asshat:

To back up the comment above, cims will walk up to 128units of distance, not including any public transport they may choose to add on top of this, so yes you can definitely exploit it :)

as far as I remember correctly they will walk up to 256units including public-services (128u for: start->bus and another 128u for bus->destination)

[Rafa]

How do you guys learn that?

[Asshat]

Somebody did some research and posted it ages ago. I didn't realise they would double it to 256 though if there was public transport in the middle of it - cool!!