Can HOT lanes work in SC4?

[locke14]

Perhaps someone more masterful in the ways of the traffic simulator can answer this for me. I was wondering if sims will take a tolled road as an alternative to an untolled road if the tolled road has much less traffic? Or is the simulator set to always prefer untolled roads? I would go experiment, but homework kind of crushes that dream at the moment. Is there anyone that can tell me through experience or theory?

[locke14]

I decided that homework is for free periods  . Here's what I found out. This is my first time image posting! I hope i did it right  ! (EDIT: I realize the images are too large! Hmm..how can I resize them. There's a tut on the ommnibus, but ST is down! fixed the images!)
At first I had a super long street connection as well as a short tolled avenue connection. The street got no users. Things get interesting as you change thing around however...

While some enjoyed using the shorter street connection...(~20 sims)


Most liked the tolled avenue connection! (~600 sims)


With the street upgraded to a road...( ~120-150 sims)


But most sill used the avenue (~400 sims)

[Ryan B.]

I'm not sure if HOT / "managed" lanes (such as what you see on the Katy FRWY in west Houston) would "functionally" work in SC4, but it'd be very easy to simulate it, using overhanging ETC apparatus.

[emgmod]

You can also simulate HOT by using RHW. I have a RHW-2 in one of my cities that acts as a HOT road. There are toll booths wherever cars enter/exit.

Are buses affected by toll booths? I always wanted to know that.

[locke14]

After more testing (different implementation), i have seen that while sims are more likely to take the split ground highway to get to work, after i replaced a strech of it with road, simulating congestion, many more took to the avenue. This required a lot of congestion though  . But i figured out some good news too. Like in real life, even small time usage can pay for itself. My "HOT" lanes took 1/5th of the total traffic into the industrial zone, but payed for the entire transportation budget in tolls.

SETUP:

>>>>>>>>>SplitHway
>>>>Tolled>>>>Avenue
<<<<Tolled<<<Avenue
<<<<<<<<<<SplitHway

There are small OWR intersections that serve as exits and transfers to and from HOT lanes.

[z]

The Sims don't actually pay any tolls.  The city merely collects tolls at toll booths. 

For the traffic simulator, the sole affect of toll booths is that they slow traffic down by about 11 seconds, or about the equivalent of going about 11 extra road tiles (or about 25 on a highway).  Depending on how accurate the pathfinding in your traffic simulator is and what your various alternate routes are, this may or may not make a difference in which routes the Sims use.

[locke14]

Hmm...well I suppose that defeats the purpose of HOT lanes if they ADD delay to your commute. Is there anyway that the simulator can be tweaked so that tolls are still undesirable, but do not add to the commute time?

[z]

Adding to the commute time is a feature of the toll booths themselves, and can be adjusted in their exemplars.  But they also have a lower capacity than their containing networks, which encourages congestion around them.  They also count as intersections, which makes traffic in the preceding two squares slow down for them.  And they put out a little bit of pollution, just for the heck of it.  All of this can be changed in the toll booth exemplars, and everything except the pollution will add to the commute time.  But none of this is controlled by the traffic simulator.

[locke14]

Thanks a lot for the information z. I'll see if I can increase my skills on the reader.

[z]

Missed this one...

Are buses affected by toll booths? I always wanted to know that.

Yes, buses are affected by toll booths, as are trucks.  Pedestrians are not, though.

[joelyboy911]

Can something be changed to stop busses being affected by them? I suppose one could build a bypass to the toll booth, using the bus-lane lots, but I don't think busses would be made to pay tolls on toll roads in real life, so we should see if there's a solution to this.

[z]

Can something be changed to stop busses being affected by them?

Not without affecting the whole rest of the way buses work.

I suppose one could build a bypass to the toll booth, using the bus-lane lots, but I don't think busses would be made to pay tolls on toll roads in real life, so we should see if there's a solution to this.

Making a bypass would be the only way around it.  Over here, though, buses pay tolls like everybody else.