Public transport lanes are useless

[Wanev]

Public transport lanes now use up one of the existing lanes, as opposed to adding an additional lane like in the first game. Usually, when people put in public transport lanes, it is because traffic is a problem. Losing a lane for normal traffic in exchange for a public transport lane to solve the traffic problem makes no sense. This reduces the viability of buses.

Maybe take out part of that enormous sidewalk for the bus lane.

[Cylun]

It's basically what London did though. They didn't just build new bridges to add an additional lane. Same in my own town. People adapt to that.

[Pure Hostility]

Originally posted by Cylun:

It's basically what London did though. They didn't just build new bridges to add an additional lane. Same in my own town. People adapt to that.

Same in Poland. Some of the roads were adjusted so one of the lane is now off limits to normal cars and is limited to Taxi, Buses and EVs instead.

[Rory]

Can confirm that is happening in more Metro areas. Baltimore has done that with major arterial thoroughfares in the city.

[Narf the Mouse]

You can expand the road and turn the outside lane(s) into public transport lanes. The problem I see is that you can't set additional lanes to public transport; only the outside lanes.

[ViraCorp]

I guess in theory, if you dedicate one lane to public transport, and then set up the lines properly, you won’t need as many regular lanes, since there should be less car traffic, and more people using public transit

[Quickie]

Can you trick the AI? So if you have a standard 2 lane road, upgrade just the area where you want the bust stop to be the asymmetrical 3 lane road. Same with avenue, use asymmetrical 5 just in the area of the stop. You basically creating a bus pull off area so they don't back up traffic. I know that doesn't solve all the bus lane issues, but it's a start.

[Izzy]

But in real life adding more lanes almost always causes additional car traffic. Part of the point of public transit is to get people to stop using individual cars. A fewer number of busses should replace a greater number of cars so you shouldn't actually need more lanes if people are using it.

[ViraCorp]

Maybe they should add a carpool lane, it would be interesting to see the police pulling over a car for only having one occupant

[Gentoo]

You can build a separate bus only road.... except..... it is bugged and often everyone will drive on it anyway. FIX THIS!

[Scaristotle]

I was disappointed when these didn't replace sidewalks. Was hoping to use them for an emergency lane, but oh well.

[com_2nd_mand]

For anyone still looking... A workaround does exist; Through a combination of concrete footpaths in the terraforming tab as well as using pedestrian streets as transit lines. This only works if the pedestrian streets are a closed circuit for busses and the concrete paths are used to make intersections between the main road and the pedestrian street.

[City Builder]

I've seen it in America where they take away a regular lane to put in a "carpool" lane thinking it will infuriate drivers enough to make them carpool which in California is not convenient so they eventually put hour restrictions on them and say 6-9 AM carpool only, and 4 to 7 PM carpool only, all other times anybody, because.... well, they can't admit they are wrong..

Originally posted by Rory:

Can confirm that is happening in more Metro areas. Baltimore has done that with major arterial thoroughfares in the city.

[Tsubame ⭐]

In general, in real life, new bus lanes in existing roads will just replace an existing road lane, rather than adding another one. It is much easier to paint a single lane, than to demolish a ton of sidewalk, if that is even available in the first place.

If the intention in game is to add a new lane, just convert the road the road to one with extra lanes before/while adding the new bus lanes.

Bus lanes may or may not be available for car poolers and taxis. Unfortunately in the game, taxis and other service vehicles can use any such marked lanes, and there is no option to toggle this off, which makes sense on a regular bus lane, but not in a bus lane intended to be a grade separated BRT.

[City Builder]

Originally posted by Tsubame ⭐:

In general, in real life, new bus lanes in existing roads will just replace an existing road lane, rather than adding another one. It is much easier to paint a single lane, than to demolish a ton of sidewalk, if that is even available in the first place.

they often have to buy out the home owners. They had talked about adding an additional lane to a highway where I used to live but it would have required eminent domain and having to buy the homes along the highway to do it, so it was squashed from what I remember.

As far as the game they could make it work the same and take the money from the treasury to buy out/delete the homes along the road to add a buslane but not sure if people would find that fun or not.