Students and Bus Stops

[webbie33]

I have a small town and I want to bus students to a nearby city for university education. I configure the bus line to only take students with basic education. Problem is, there is no such distinction for bus stops, so the bus stop fills with any type of student even though there is a school with plenty of capacity in the small town. How does one resolve this?

I see there have been other posts relating to this subject, but I didn't see a solution.

[Pfirsich1966]

In the residential buildings, try assigning students first to the adjacent school and then to the bus stop.

[Silent_Shadow]

This shouldn't matter so long as the primary school is accessible from the bus stop; once the primary students finish their hour of waiting, they should walk to the school.

[webbie33]

@Silent_Shadow - Actually, there is a problem. Perhaps I wasn't clear. I ONLY want university students waiting at the bus stop. Other types of students should NOT go to the bus stop because they can go locally. So the problem is there a lot of unwanted students filling the bus stop. This creates two problems:
1. I also use the bus stop for some workers. If it fills with unwanted students, it prevents some workers from waiting.
2. The unwanted students are wasting time at the bus stop instead of getting educated.

[Silent_Shadow]

Ah. In that case your options are to either do as Pfirsich1966 suggested and assign students' residences to the primary schools within walking distance (also assign the station and set it to 0%, or the university students you want will not walk to the station at all), setup a school bus just for the basic education students to relieve the pressure on the station, or build more stations to handle the load.

[kyonkun]

Students, like all other citizens, won't queue at a bus stop if there's an appropriate facility within walking range of their home (or in the case of "passengers", within range of the last facility they were in). If you have primary school students queuing at the bus stop then the school isn't reachable directly from their home, and you'll find that some of the solutions above won't work because you can't set the school as a destination for various residential buildings (out of range), or you'll have students who just stop going to school because now they can't reach it (disallowing students to queue at the bus stop).
If you really want to "solve" this problem then you either need to make the school reachable from all residential buildings (e.g. give them more direct pathways via higher-speed infrastructure such as gravel path or streetlight road), or build another school in range of those residences. Alternatively you could make another bus stop and only let students queue on it, and disallow students at your other stop as was previously said.
As always, a screenshot would help us better understand the situation.

[webbie33]

Originally posted by kyonkun:

Students, like all other citizens, won't queue at a bus stop if there's an appropriate facility within walking range of their home (or in the case of "passengers", within range of the last facility they were in). If you have primary school students queuing at the bus stop then the school isn't reachable directly from their home,...

@kyonkun - I must disagree with you. I constantly see students go to a bus stop even when a school is right there. I have gotten in the habit of unchecking students from bus stops for this reason. However, in this instance, the town is small, so I didn't want a university there. But it does have a school and kindergarten with residential around them. The school is closer to the residential than the bus stop and the school has plenty of capacity.

[kyonkun]

That is how it works. Select your school and mouse over the "view buildings that can be reached on foot" button. You will find one or more residences that cannot reach the school but can reach the bus stop. A common mistake would be to treat buildings as through-ways for footpath traffic. People walking on a footpath will not pathfind "through" a building (such as a bus stop), only "to" the building.
Post a screenshot.

[frabac]

I am in a somewhat similar situation, where I have students going to the bus stop but not boarding the bus to the uni. I am pretty confident that they are not school students but uni students, because they have "basic education (1.00)", so they can't be searching for a school, can they? But then, why don't they board the bus to the uni?

[MrKrabs]

Both, the boarding station and the line need to accept students.
And the drop of station has to be in walking range of a school or university, or be the university ( or school ) itself.

[potski]

The buses/trains and stops/platforms refer to a single group:

Students

The buildings and republic/City Hall statistics refer to this group as:

Children 7-21 years

However, it is important to understand there are two distinct groups within this age group depending on their education level:

Education level less than 1.0 described as "No Education", these need to go to school

Education level 1.0 or greater. These can be described as "Basic Education" (1.0-1.99) or "University Education" (2.0 or greater). These all need to go to university

While very young children 0-6 years attend kindergarten, and there MUST be one with free places within walking distance of their homes or their parent cannot go to work. School students and university students can go on buses or trains to get educated.

The OP is describing a typical situation where the city has provided a school within walking distance, but has no university. The school students can walk to school, the university students need to go on a bus or train. Therefore, you cannot block all students from the bus stops, nor force all of the students to go to the bus stop. Personally, I wouldn't try to force them either way. If they are school students and there is a school in walking distance they will always walk to the school. While the university student will immediately recognise there are no universities and go and queue up at bus stops throughout your city hoping that a bus will take them to a university. They will queue up even if you have no buses whatsover to take them. And yes, after a while of providing good school places to your children many of them will reach Basic Education 1.0 and require universities and they can overwhelm your bus system.

If you are really planning to have central university education, then I suggest that you should use trains to get them to the university, rather than buses. However, you could compromise by having either a proper bus station that can cope with the numbers, or have two bus platforms/stops, one for students, one for everyone else.

But my feeling is the game is designed around having a university in every significant sized city. In the UK we had a three tier system of further/higher education:
Technical Colleges
Polytechnics
Universities

More recently Polytechnics disappeared and were renamed Universities. I think some countries might simply call all educational establishments for young adults as "universities". And that is how we should think of the situation in this game. Especially when you realise that this form of education takes children from 1.0 (Basic Education) to well over 2.0 (University Education). So it can cover people who completed basic schooling by about 16/17 and also people who went on to become professors, engineers, etc. A Diploma, degree, MA, Ph.D can all be provided by a university in a Soviet Republic, and the only factor in reaching 2.0 is how long a student goes to university.

If they wait for the bus to take them there and one does not come they will go home for eight hours rather than spending the day studying. This is like a worker being unemployed, but they don't appear to complain about it. Their education level remains the same. But if they go to university then their education level gets a little higher every day. Once they reach 2.0 then they still continue going to university until they become 21 years old and then they become adults and must find a job every day. There are no students over 21 studying to be doctors etc. If they have not reached the 2.0 by 21 then they can work in the hospital staff, but not as a doctor. And they cannot choose to continue doing education once they are 21, they must find a workplace rather than a university.

So, if you do not get enough students attending university each day, you will find they all enter the workforce at 21 with below 2.0 education. None of them will be able to work as doctors, judges etc. This is fine as long as you keep an eye on it. Your existing University Education citizens will grow older and die. You need to regularly recruit new "experts" from Soviet neighbours to fill these important jobs. Note particularly that kindergarten are staffed only by people with University Education. If there are not enough of them then up to 20% of your adults who have young children will not be able to send them to kindergarten and they then cannot work. Soon you find a death spiral, as not enough people are working in shops, cinemas, water treatment plants, heating plants etc. There are enough citizens but without kindergarten places they are stuck at home.

My guess is that you must get a university up and running within a new city within about five years. And only then when you deliberately recruited plenty of experts when you first moved into the city. Otherwise, it should just be part of the original set-up of the new city.

Still, if you have a really good transport system, then you might be able to transport enough students to a university in another city. But frankly, that university is likely to be full already from students who live within walking distance. And you will see lots of students who arrive at the university but are waiting to see professors. So just build another university where the university students need it.

[MrKrabs]

If you build a student home that has the opportunity to reach a university they will go study until they're done. No matter how old they will be.

[potski]

Originally posted by MrKrabs:

If you build a student home that has the opportunity to reach a university they will go study until they're done. No matter how old they will be.

Thanks. I think you mean University Halls of Residence. I never got anyone to move into one, so I am still a bit unclear of their purpose. But I think I saw something recently tha they would allow students originally living with their parents in other cities to move into the Halls of Residence in another city? And that would mean you wouldn't need to transport them every day from one city to another. So, if it works, that would be a useful option.

Do university students just move into the Halls of Residence, or do you need to direct them?

[Silent_Shadow]

Halls of residence allow students over 21 years old to get a university attraction. You can get them in two ways:

• Children who turn 21, but do not have a university education, will move into the dorm/hostel if they can walk to it from their original home.
  
• Citizens you manually relocate from their flats (citizens with children cannot be moved).

You should also know that students over 21 years old are adults who will need to go out and satisfy their own needs. On top of this, if you want them to take public transportation to the university, they need to have the worker type checked in addition to the student type. You can sort them from workers by only allowing students at a station.

[MrKrabs]

Now that was a nice tip.
I struggled there a while ago.
Thank you Comrade.

[potski]

Originally posted by Silent_Shadow:

Halls of residence allow students over 21 years old to get a university attraction. You can get them in two ways:

• Children who turn 21, but do not have a university education, will move into the dorm/hostel if they can walk to it from their original home.
  
• Citizens you manually relocate from their flats (citizens with children cannot be moved).

You should also know that students over 21 years old are adults who will need to go out and satisfy their own needs. On top of this, if you want them to take public transportation to the university, they need to have the worker type checked in addition to the student type. You can sort them from workers by only allowing students at a station.

Thanks @Silent_Hunter that's great information. I couldn't establish where the Students were coming from, but confirm that there is a third category of Student:

• Adults aged 21+ who are living in a University Hall of Residence

Once I built one then it started to slowly fill up, so I am not sure why I had problems in the past with them and had stopped bothering. But it could have been a broken mechanic that is now fixed. As you suggest, it got only citizens who were 21 years who had Basic Education (1.0-1.99). They had adult needs in their Free Time, but did not go to work, instead going to the nearby University. It's clear that this is a way to supplement the production of University Educated workers. Many students will get to 21 and become adults without reaching 2.0. This gives some of them the option to stay as Students and continue in education. Once their education level reaches 2.0 they become University Educated, and immediately stop being Students and move out of the Halls of Residence if there is free accommodation available to them.

In my test they even moved to another city and started working in the School and Secret Police there. So, the University Halls of Residence can provide a republic-wide resource to produce more Educated Workers and then feed them into working where-ever they are needed.

This worked quite well, except that the already busy University that I had (which was a mod with less capacity than the vanilla Technical University) soon had very high numbers of Students waiting for professors. I guess that will reduce the time when all Students actually receive some study time and means it takes longer to reach 2.0. I saw a few who were still there when they were 22 and they might go beyond this, depending on how low their education level was when they reached 21 and entered the Halls.

I was also able to go to a building (a small village residence) where there were six adults with no children. There were already 5 of the six who were University Educated, I probably recruited experts to live there to work in the nearby Hospital. The button to Relocate up to 10 citizens to a residential building you select then had the effect of moving this one person with Basic Education into the Halls of Residence, even though they were 65. And they then became a Student and continued their education.

So, I think we can better say there are actually a third and fourth category of Students:

• Adults aged 21+ who reached 21 with education level less than 2.0 and were able to move into a University Hall of Residence
  
• Adults aged 21+ with no children with education level less than 2.0 who the player relocates into a University Hall of Residence

So, the option is available not to bother trying to get children 7-21 to travel to your central university. Instead, regularly relocate some adult workers to Halls of Residence next to the University. That will have the effect of taking some adults out of the workforce for some time, but it can boost the numbers of citizens with University Education in your republic without having to recruit experts from abroad.

Since all of the people living in Halls Of Residence are adults over 21 years old, then they have needs that must be satisfied (for food, meat, clothes, sport, culture etc.). So the Halls must be located within walking distance of these, or you must provide the Students with good transport to them. This is not the case with Students under 21 as they live with their parent, and the parent gets food and meat for them. Students under 21 stay at home during their 16 hours Free Time. Students over 21 in the Halls must go to shops etc. during their 16 hours Free Time.

Lastly, adults who go to work have a "daily" routine in which they have 8 hours Working Time. Students have no Working Time, and instead usually have 5 hours of School Time (regardless of whether they go to school or university, and regardless of their age, though see below). But their travelling arrangements are exactly the same. Both workers and students are allowed five hours total travel time with one hour waiting at a stop/platform and four hours travelling on a bus/train. However, when a student over 21 leaves their home the game treats them as they are about to start 8 hours Working Time, then adjusts this to 5 hours School Time only when they reach the University. It's probably this which can have an odd effect on whether they are treated as students or workers when waiting at the bus stop.

Finally, I now identified a fifth category of Students:

• Children aged 7-21 who have had good access to schools and university and have reached education level 2.0 University Educated before they are aged 21

Students can enter this category as young as 16-17, they are now sufficiently educated to be your professors, kindergarten staff, judges, engineers of the future, but they are not old enough to go to work. They cannot become workers until they are 21, however "clever" they are. Instead of 5 hours School Time, they get 8 hours, but they do not actually go to school/university during this time, they stay at home. As they also stay at home during Free Time as their parent takes care of their needs, then these students can stay at home for a couple of years. They never walk to the shops, go to the cinema or wait at a bus stop. Because they don't turn up at the university any more their education level never goes above 2.0. As they have already reached 2.0 then when they are 21 they cannot enter the Halls of Residence. They become an adult worker, no longer have a parent looking after them and have to go to work each day. No more staying at home playing computer games every day :)

If most of your children reach 2.0 before they get to 21 then there might be no need to have Halls of Residence, none of them can stay on as students after 21 and enter the Halls. On reflection I think that is more likely the issue that I saw with Halls in a previous republic, as I had good university coverage. So the lack of uptake for Halls might be an indication that your education system is working effectively.