Delivering Cargo around Cities.

[Ric]

Hey guys and gals.

I'm at a stage in my current game where the coverage area of my train stations is not nearly big enough to deliver goods/tools etc. to all the areas of my city. Now obviously the next step is too use trucks to transport my goods around the city but the way I see there is multiple options to do that. I was wondering if anyone had any fancy ideas on how they get the goods in the most efficient way to their end location. So I came up with a bunch of options all involving trucks.

My options: (Point A will always be the train station for reference).

1. Circular route going clockwise/countercolckwise past the station and around the entire city dropping off at truck/bus stations where necessary. eg: A>B>C>D>E etc...

2. A setup where my trucks go to one stop and then back to the train station, rinse and repeat. eg: A>B>A>C>A>D>A>E etc...

3. multiple lines heading straight for the centre of residential/commercial/industrial regions to take goods directly there and expand later when more growth occurs. : Line1: A>Res, Line2: A>Com, Line3: A>Ind.

Not tried option 1 to date, may work ok but has defficiencies for sure.
I tried option 2 in my last save and it was ok but I needed a crap tonne of trucks to keep the goods flowing.
Options 3 seems like it would be the most efficient but is also going to be the most work to setup due to how many lines i would nedd over my world. 13 cities x 3Min lines per city = 39lines min lines for trucks!


Anyone have any thoughts/incite/other options?

[_THEpodge]

Remember you can use plain bus stops as the drop off points for the cargo. You can also use them as makeshift "waypoints" that directs the trucks around a ring road say, to help stop congesting your cities.

What I have been doing as of late, its creating a train freight station between two cities. From this a large freight truck station with two lines. One going to city A and the other going to city B. Having the trucks set to auto. By using the bus stops, you can place a single stop that in most cases will cover both industry and commercial.

Seems to be working alright for me currently.

[pat]

A couple of things to keep in mind. As thepodge said, you can use bus stops to deliver cargo. I've completely stopped putting cargo train stations in cities. I simply put a cargo truck stop next to the passenger train station, and when cargo trains stop there, all the cargo that isn't delivered within that catchment area gets transferred immediately to the truck stop. Then I typically have two truck lines. One delivers to a bus stop in the middle of the industrial area and one to the commercial area.

[Ric]

Thanks Guys, yeh I realise you can drop off at bus stops. Thats what I meant when saying truck/bus stations but should've been clearer. :)

Originally posted by _THEpodge:

What I have been doing as of late, its creating a train freight station between two cities. From this a large freight truck station with two lines. One going to city A and the other going to city B. Having the trucks set to auto. By using the bus stops, you can place a single stop that in most cases will cover both industry and commercial.

Pretty nice idea there. I may keep that I mind for a future build however in my curent world I have 2 big multi track loops with a very large hub the centre of the world that everything connects into. It's working really nicely so far but with all the goods that will be flowing in soon I need to consider my truck options.

Do you guys know if the truck cargo stations have a limit to their storage capacity? I'm really not sure.

[_THEpodge]

Originally posted by Ric666:

Thanks Guys, yeh I realise you can drop off at bus stops. Thats what I meant when saying truck/bus stations but should've been clearer. :)

Originally posted by _THEpodge:

What I have been doing as of late, its creating a train freight station between two cities. From this a large freight truck station with two lines. One going to city A and the other going to city B. Having the trucks set to auto. By using the bus stops, you can place a single stop that in most cases will cover both industry and commercial.

Pretty nice idea there. I may keep that I mind for a future build however in my curent world I have 2 big multi track loops with a very large hub the centre of the world that everything connects into. It's working really nicely so far but with all the goods that will be flowing in soon I need to consider my truck options.

Do you guys know if the truck cargo stations have a limit to their storage capacity? I'm really not sure.

The only downside to this method I've found, is the amount of trucks required to ship the freight to the cities. Especially early game, the example here i must have about 30ish trucks per line. I've just got to 1900 in my current game, so quite sometime left to go. I think once the bigger trucks become available, I can start reducing the numbers as;

A. they are faster
B. the capacity is higher

Regarding trains, I always aim for trains to be around 320M ;)
One of my other games.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=833836920

[clixor]

Tread with caution guys. Today i had to abandon my 100+ hour game and hugely developed map (and 30b+ in the bank) because of this issue.

Initially, delivering cargo outside a city seems like a good idea, especially when you get the late-game trucks for a period it seems a well designed city street layout can handle this easily. However, my problems started when i decided to focus cargo on a few 'super'- cities (with about 2k+ demand for each end-use cargo type).

It turned out that, even with trucks driving on 6 lane roads, it was practically impossible to move such an amount of cargo inside a city (by trucks). I had over 10 carefully setup truck lines, with dedicated roads etc., and still i was getting traffic jams. Worse, the cargo kept on piling up in the train delivery truck stations in such a way that just throwing more trucks on the line wouldn't solve the issue anymore.

For the same reason late game using bus-stops for delivery isn't really feasable. When starting out you can use them, but the advantages they have, especially the larger catchment radius, are counter-producive later as more buildings to supply just means moving more stuff (for that line). Also the have to use another street to 'get back' which means they only will be slowed down by other traffic or pedestrians.

So my take on this is that if you want to get max supply in your cities is to cultivate multiple 'districts' in your cities and create several train line to those districs in such a way that MOST of the cargo is unloaded directly to the buildings, the remainder can be done by trucks, but certainly not the bulk of it.

[Ric]

Originally posted by _THEpodge:

Regarding trains, I always aim for trains to be around 320M ;)
One of my other games.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=833836920

Link doesn't work unfortunately.

Originally posted by clixor:

So my take on this is that if you want to get max supply in your cities is to cultivate multiple 'districts' in your cities and create several train line to those districs in such a way that MOST of the cargo is unloaded directly to the buildings, the remainder can be done by trucks, but certainly not the bulk of it.

Thanks Clixor. I had a similar problem on my first map so wanted to see how others have coped and this may be the way to go. I'll defnitely considering some "discrete town replanning" AKA getting my friendly bulldozer out!

I'll at least try it with a couple of cities but I'm unsure how I'm going to get my delivery trains of my megaloops. Might be a bit of a nightmare :\

[canophone]

Lots of redundancy on my latest map: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=843890479

Yes, this truck station is one line with truck returns for my main city: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=843890621

[chrisasnyder]

One method I experimented with, was using a subway system to get cargo to the city zones. The system works like this: Large cargo station outside the city that receives everything. A double track line that runs underground to 2 stations in the city. Each city station is on the edge of the expasion side of the blue and yellow zones. Dig holes and place the small station in the hole, use raise land around station so tracks go underground right away. Connect train station to truck station, to city road grid.

Run trains in opposite directions stop at both stations, all box car train his blue zone first, fuel and stake train hits yellow zone first.

Why this way? You can get very large amounts of goods deep into city. Don't need as many trucks navagting traffic to complete coverage. Underground tracks don't mess up city.

Have not tried this with the underground station mod, but that would probably work better than the dig hole method.

Downsides:
- loop trains not very profitable, if at all, but easily made up for with the goods being brought in.
- Working with underground tracks a pain.
- trains move slow, its a pretty small loop

[Ric]

Thats an interesting idea chris! If you could post screenshots of your system that would be nice to see :)

Due to the current build of my mega loeps and not wanting to ruin all that I've decided to go for trucks penetrating the core of my Res/Com/Ind Zones, 3 main truck lines per city from the station.

I've encouraged the growth so they grow fairly segregated and seems to be working pretty well so far. Although I've a feeling if I roll it out to all my cities it may cause some serious lag and traffic congestion with all the trucks/lines..lol...May need a replan down the line!

Here's a pic of my main hub just for fun. Lots of room for expansion if I need it!

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=844092698

And a very busy crossing between the loop stations :P

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=844092653

[chrisasnyder]

Here's some captures of the subway cargo system.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=844113730

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=844113909

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=844114035


Not sure if it's better than trucking in from outside, but it's fun trying to setup and get working.

[Ric]

Nice, looks good. Fairly similar to my system but I have everything at ground level. Thats some resolution you have there :P

[_THEpodge]

Originally posted by chrisasnyder:

Have not tried this with the underground station mod, but that would probably work better than the dig hole method.

Like your idea about moving it underground.

I have used both underground stations (only good for dropping off cargo) for passengers and can say they are very effective.
One of them includes a bus and tram stop. The other, has a small road piece on the top which can be placed right in the heart of a city with minimal demolition, has two stairs either side to allow passengers to the platform...

They are great.

[OldGamer]

I have done all three. The one that works best is option 2 in my opinion for a big city. And option 3 for a small city. It also gets convoluted/disorganised in the line manager in late game so option 2 is best for anyone with OCD like me!
The circular route rarely works as the trucks do not split their loads to each stops. But it does work if you set the trucks with their resource (aka foods, goods, tools etc), and they actually drop them at the right areas. However, then they waste time by stopping at stops they don't need to. So you rather to separate lines (opt 3). I personally like option 3, as that makes the biggest sense.
Canophone (don't know how to tag you) but it looks like you need more vehicles on your lines and to have multiple destinations (as in cities) as this increases the demand. It's about dmand and supply with cargo and increasing the areas you deliver to the potential/demand goes up and therefore supply will need to go up. It is also a vicious circle, if you supply the commercial section, the sector will grow more. So the little numbers you see, say 70 and you get that to 70/70 it will then increase the sectors demand. (but it will never get 70/70 it always increases when you get above 80 percent, which is tghe magic number it seems in this game).

[Ric]

Originally posted by OldGamer:

I have done all three. The one that works best is option 2 in my opinion for a big city. And option 3 for a small city. It also gets convoluted/disorganised in the line manager in late game so option 2 is best for anyone with OCD like me!
The circular route rarely works as the trucks do not split their loads to each stops. But it does work if you set the trucks with their resource (aka foods, goods, tools etc), and they actually drop them at the right areas. However, then they waste time by stopping at stops they don't need to. So you rather to separate lines (opt 3). I personally like option 3, as that makes the biggest sense.

Thanks mate. I went for option 3 in the end. As you say, it makes the most efficient sense but does take a lot more work to set everything up. I'm thinking of largely demolishing a few cities to see if I can design a super efficient city myself given my past experience in city builders.

[pat]

I love the idea of using the underground train station mod to deliver goods to specific locations in the city, but the problem is that these zones get so haphazardly strewn throughout the city, I'd have to place a dozen underground stations to cover it all.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=844362694

What I'd *really* like, and I hope this is something that will happen at some point in the future, is to have an alternative local transit method that is fairly compact and doesn't involve public roads. Either a subway or a monorail. I like the monorail idea better, because it's difficult to see what's going on underground with all the street-level buildings in the way.