How Do You "Plan Out" Bus Routes Effectively

[Cahos Rahne Veloza]

I managed to grow my city's population to 42k without using Transportation services as of yet. But I can already feel the after effects on my city's roadway traffic, so I finally decided to start laying in some transport services starting with buses.

I kind of need some assistance with this regard because I don't know how to effectively make Bus routes.

In case you're wondering why I'm finding this difficult, the answer is because I grew up in a country were the transportation system is a bit chaotic but efficient at the same time.

We do have buses here but we do not have Bus stops in the same sense as in game (and perhaps as in with the rest of the western world for that matter) where buses have fixed stop locations.

Here Bus stops are meant for all bus lines and not just for one particular bus company. Technically speaking, buses here are owned by private companies AND ARE NOT RUN by the local government (city), heck the government (the country's legislative body) even wants to get rid of buses here altogether :P

The people in power would rather support Privately owned vehicle use rather than support public mass transportation here :(

Anyhoo, here public transport works in this fashion:

Buses and Jeepneys (our country's main form of public transportation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeepney) ply fixed routes except you the passenger can get on and/or get off anywhere you want along the route. This doesn't have to be a fixed stop altogether, you could get off at your exact destination (say your school or office) as long as it is along the route, you can even get off at an intersection if you preferred if traffic is heavy enough and your intended destination is within walking distance. Which now brings me with my dilemma in game. Because I am not used to the western world's more orderly bus route system I am having some difficulty planning out my bus routes.

Back in SIMCity 4 as long as you plopped enough bus stops your bus networks will function normally but here in Cities Skylines it doesn't seem to be so.

Anyhoo, how many stops should I make to have an effective bus network? And should I make several bus lines to make them be more efficient?

[BlackAlpha]

Look at it this way. Imagine you are one of the sims and you want to get from your home to work/shops all the way with public transport. This means there must be a fairly efficient public transport route from where they live to where they work and go shopping, and back again. The sims can transfer from one line to another (from bus to metro, etc).

I've always assumed that the area the stops cover is shown by the smiley faces when you built it.

You cannot only have bus routes and expect a lot of sims to use your public transport. Buses are not enough after a certain point because they can't transport large quantities of people. You then have to use metros. But once you grow to 70 or so thousand, the metro alone is not enough and you have to use trains. Of course, each of these is more and more expensive, so you can't cover your entire city with metros and trains.

What you can do is use trains for long distance travel (long distances between stops), then have metros next to it for intermediate distance travel (medium distances between stops), and finally have buses starting at all the metro stations to cover all the areas around each metro station (short distances between stops, you probably want as short distance as possible, as shown by the smiley faces radius).

So, imagine you have a sim who wants to travel from one end of your city to the other. He will first take the train to go from one end to the other but then he's still not at his destination. So, he will then hop into the metro to travel a few blocks but then he's still not exactly at his destination. So finally he can take the bus to take him almost exactly where he needs to go.

[Jonas]

You should look the traffic map and see where the traffic is heavier and try to put your bus stops close to this locations. Let's say that we have only 3 districts in the town, industrial, comercial and residential. I put a line connection between the residential area and the commercial (downtown) area and also a line connecting commercial with industrial area. I think that's better than put one single line all over the town. I guess that concept could be applied to a big city. It works fine for me. I don't know if that answer your question but a hope that it helps.

[gordon.r.horne]

Observing the transit system in my C:S city I've noticed the following.

Cims need to get there and back. Two basic designs fill this need.
1) Two separate loop routes on the same route but going the opposite direction (i.e. stops on opposite sides of the street).
2) A line back and forth along one route. (Again, stops on opposite sides of the street.) The counter flow directions of routes can be separated by one block without effecting usage. I don't know how far apart they can get before cims start driving instead.

Cims will transfer from bus to bus, from bus to metro, from metro to bus, from metro to metro, even from bus to metro to bus.

The number of buses assigned to a route is a function of the length of the route, not the number of stops nor the number of passengers.

Multiple routes can be assigned to each stop. The bus stops get bigger.

Each new route must begin with a unique stop, but once you have completed the route you can delete that unique stop from the route.
According to BlackAlpha you can move your mouse around an existing stop and at a certain angle the start new route option will appear.

In my city, with my population density, the most efficient number of buses per route seems to be around 6 or 7. You can't set this, but you can check your routes in the transit info panel and see how many buses the game is assigning to the routes based on their length.

You can use the budget panel to increase the number of buses available on a city wide basis only, not route by route. However, if you have an over capacity route, you can lay down a new route identical to the over capacity route by making one unique stop to start, adding all the stops of the over capacity route, then deleting the unique stop.

I have lots of routes that overlap for 2 to 4 stops in my densest areas but serve different low density areas.

My low density to low density routes are my least used, but are necessary to provide some service within increasing congestion in the high density areas.

Here are a couple of screenshots showing the general layout of my city and the transit lines:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=409993409
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=409993429

[BlackAlpha]

Originally posted by gordon.r.horne:

Each new route must begin with a unique stop, but once you have completed the route you can delete that unique stop from the route.

That's false. Simply move your mouse around an existing stop and at a certain angle you'll get the option to start a new route.

[gordon.r.horne]

Originally posted by BlackAlpha:

Originally posted by gordon.r.horne:

Each new route must begin with a unique stop, but once you have completed the route you can delete that unique stop from the route.

That's false. Simply move your mouse around an existing stop and at a certain angle you'll get the option to start a new route.

Ah, good to know. I tried wiggling the mouse, but I'll try harder now that I know a magic spot does exist. Thanks.

[Cahos Rahne Veloza]

@BlackAlpha:

I get what you mean by efficient bus networks, problem is I don't know how to properly set the stops :/

@Jonas:

Thank you for the advice regarding placing the stops on roads where traffic is heaviest. Would placing stops just before an intersection with heavy traffic be advisable then?

Originally posted by gordon.r.horne:

Observing the transit system in my C:S city I've noticed the following.

Cims need to get there and back. Two basic designs fill this need.
1) Two separate loop routes on the same route but going the opposite direction (i.e. stops on opposite sides of the street).
2) A line back and forth along one route. (Again, stops on opposite sides of the street.) The counter flow directions of routes can be separated by one block without effecting usage. I don't know how far apart they can get before cims start driving instead.

Thanks, I'll try this approach :)

[BlackAlpha]

Here's an example from my city (the train is coming shortly, the rest is already there):

http://i.imgur.com/uBOzIFc.jpg

The metro only goes in straight lines back and forth, there are no circles. So, each line you see is its own metro line. It's similar to the bus lines which only go up and down, except that the metro also has lines that go left and right, to transport people left and right. So, if people need to go more left or right, they take the metro.

How much space should there be between bus stops? I try to cover as much area as possible using the smiley faces. That's how I know I've covered everything. The smiley faces are the ones you see when you place down a bus stop.

So, to summarize... The train and metro are "strategic" transport. They transport people over large distances but don't take the sims exactly where the sims need to go (in most cases). The buses are "tactical" transport that take the people to more precise locations.

Using this approach, I got the largest amount of public transport users that I've managed to get so far (100,000 pop total, each week 7k uses metro, 6k uses bus). The bus stops don't seem to be too crowded. The buses seem to be able to handle the large amounts of people. I don't get any traffic jams, but that is mostly because of the super efficient road network and quite efficient city layout in which the residential areas are quite close to the work and shop places. So, I'm not too sure how much the public transport helps there but it does seem to work quite well.

[Dr.Dino]

The most elegant solution you can use is by implementing a train network. Busses and metros simply do not have enough capacity to shuttle all those people. I posted a guide, have a read.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=408643569

Also, trains are fun.

[Jonas]

Originally posted by Cahos Rahne Veloza:

@BlackAlpha:

I get what you mean by efficient bus networks, problem is I don't know how to properly set the stops :/

@Jonas:

Thank you for the advice regarding placing the stops on roads where traffic is heaviest. Would placing stops just before an intersection with heavy traffic be advisable then?


Thanks, I'll try this approach :)

I guess you should try to put the stops in the middle of the blocks (in case of residential areas) if possible because in the corner it may create some traffic jam. But when we talk about commercial and industrial areas it's a little tricky because they receive deliveries and put a bus stop just in front can become a total chaos. I just don't know how to advise you in that specific case. I'm still trying to figure this out. Good Luck dude!

[TheTome56]

Another thing to remember about Bus stops and traffic

The sides of the road counts!

If you place a bus stop on the right side of the road, and you want it to continue straight for a few blocks before stopping, and you move your cursor to put the bus stop on the LEFT side of the road..... it creates some kind of freaky loop line.

The reason is because the route is automatically plotting the bus to stop on that side, so it has to plan a way up the street, then make a U-Turn, then down the street to your stop, which makes that freaky line. I've had that happen a bunch of times.

This game is really serious about roads. When planning your bus routes, make sure you know how you want them to loop and what sides of the roads you want them to stop on.

I honestly never seen a city builder that takes traffic and roads as seriously as this one. It's pretty neat

[Little Alien]

Basicly I have bus stops from their houses to work places. Covered my hole city with bus routes.

I struggled with bus routes at first because I couldn't tell which bus route was which. If you create one and then click on a bus leaving your depot, you can asign a colour to your bus and route. So when you create a new route, you can tell were it's going and it doesn't blend in with other bus routes. once I learned this, made creating bus routes so much more easy. I just love being able to change my buses colours, nice tuch.

[Cahos Rahne Veloza]

Off topic post for a bit:

One thing I noticed from the posts most of you made on my thread is saying that you guys often separate Commercial services and offices from residential zones. Industrial zones (factories) are understandably necessary to be zoned away from residential zones because of pollution factors. But haven't you guys ever tried making a city with mixed residential, commercial and office zones before?

I've been playing city builder games with this strategy as early as in SIMCity 4 and so far it has worked considerably well for me. Could this possibly explain why my city has grown steadily even without any form of public transport as of yet?

[kesat]

If you've mixed residentials & commercials you should take a look into noise pollution generated by commercials.

[H11]

how to interpret "car trips saved"?
does 30% mean "useless"?

[Cahos Rahne Veloza]

Originally posted by kesat:

If you've mixed residentials & commercials you should take a look into noise pollution generated by commercials.

I have noise pollution mitigated by having trees on roads.