When you first start the TSCT, it tries to find your NAM folder. If it succeeds, it looks for an existing copy of the NAM Simulator; if it it finds one, it loads it the and displays its settings in the main window. If it doesn't find an existing copy of the NAM Simulator in your NAM folder, it displays a message to this effect and loads settings for a standard version of the NAM Simulator.

If the TSCT can't find your NAM folder when it starts up, it displays a message saying so, and gives you a choice to either look for your NAM folder via a file dialog box , or simply to start out with a standard version of the NAM Simulator, which you can modify and then save wherever you want. The relevant data views will automatically be saved in the same folder as the simulator.

Please note that although any changes made to your traffic simulator take effect immediately, the time it takes for these changes to show up in your traffic patterns will vary greatly, depending on the change.  Some changes will show up immediately in your traffic patterns, some changes will show up the next time the traffic simulator runs (about once every four months), and some changes may take up to eight years to fully manifest. For longer-term changes, you can tell when the change is complete by looking at the Traffic Volume Graph.  When it shows basically stable traffic patterns for at least two years, then you can be confident that the change has completely manifested in your city.

For the Costs and Scaling Factors section, the original value for each field is given to make it easy to restore these to their original values if you want. As mentioned above, first the Base Network Capacity and the Network Capacity Multiplier will be described, followed by the other fields starting from the top of the main window.

Base Network Capacity

If you want to change to one of the other standard capacity versions of the NAM Simulator, use the drop-down box labeled “Base Network Capacity” to choose the capacity you want. (This box is located near the left, about two-thirds of the way down the window in blue letters.) Capacities range from "Classic" (the lowest) to "Ultra" (the highest). Generally, you would use "Classic" for rural areas and towns, while "Ultra" is generally recommended only for cities of many millions of Sims.

The other levels ("Low", "Medium", and "High") provide intermediate capacities; which one of these you choose depends on the size of your city, how much mass transit you have, and how much congestion you’re prepared to deal with. Cities with a lot of mass transit need less network capacity than cities with little mass transit. Once you make your selection, the network capacities used for that level are displayed in the row of boxes directly above the drop-down box.

You can change you simulator’s capacity at any point in your city’s development without penalty. The game must not be running at the time, however. (This last point applies to all simulator and data view changes.) If you just want to build big cities and want a capacity that will handle that comfortably without ever having to change it, using the default "High" capacity should work fine.

Network Capacity Multiplier

If you want to use a capacity level that is in between the five main levels, or outside the range of these levels, you can use the Network Capacity Multiplier. This field multiplies the base capacity by the number in the spin box, which may range from 0.1 to 2.0. If you change the number in the spin box, you will immediately see the network capacity numbers in the row of boxes above this field change accordingly. For proper operation of the traffic simulator, the proportion of the various network capacities at a given base network capacity is fixed. However, this proportion varies slightly among the various base capacities, with rails having proportionately higher capacities as the base network capacity increases. You can use this information along with the Network Capacity Multiplier to create capacity spreads to your liking.

For most capacity levels, the background color in the row of boxes labeled "Capacities" will be green. However, at higher capacity levels, some boxes will turn yellow, and at even higher capacities, some boxes will turn red. There is nothing wrong with using these higher capacities, but the different colors are used to signify a warning about the display of the Traffic Volume Data View. Although the amount of traffic that can flow through a network is effectively unlimited, the Traffic Volume Data View (which shows the traffic for a single commute period) cannot display values higher than 64K - 1 (65,535). Normally, the Traffic Volume Data View will display up to 300% of the network capacity for a given commute period (which is half of the standard network capacity), at which point it displays solid red.

However, if this 300% number is greater than 64K, the full range of volumes cannot be displayed, and the color range of the Traffic Volume Data View is adjusted so that its maximum is just under 64K. (This limitation affects the Route Query Tool as well when it is positioned over a network.) For these situations, the background color of the capacity box in the TSCT program will be shown as yellow. If the capacities are set so high that even 200% of the network capacity for a commute period (in other words, the full network capacity for a single day) is greater than 64K, then the background color of the capacity box in the TSCT program will be shown as red. Again, the operation of the game is not affected, as SC4 keeps track of volumes greater than 64K, and even uses them to correctly display the Traffic Congestion Data View; this is simply a limitation on the display in the Traffic Volume Data View and the Route Query Tool.

Mass Transit Usage

This drop-down box controls the preference of Sims for mass transit over cars. There are six selections here, including five fixed options that range from Low to Very High. The "Medium" selection corresponds to what is typically found in large American cities with fairly comprehensive mass transit systems, while the "High" selection corresponds to many large European cities with even more comprehensive mass transit systems. The actual preference of each type of Sim (R$, R$$, and R$$$) for mass transit in each of these five levels is reflected in the grayed-out array of nine boxes to the right of the drop-down box, which changes whenever the selection in the drop-down box is changed.

The first column in this array represents the percentage of Sims who prefer to use mass transit, the second column represents the percentage of Sims who prefer to use cars, and the third column represents the percentage of Sims who prefer to use whichever travel method is fastest. Note that these are only preferences, and do not specify which travel method the Sims will actually use. If the travel times for the two methods are close, then the Sims will use the preferred method. But if one travel method is significantly faster than the other, then the Sims will use that one.

It is also possible to modify the travel method percentages directly by choosing the "Custom" entry in the drop-down box. If this is done, then the array is no longer grayed out, and it is possible to change the individual entries in the spin boxes. Since the entries represent percentages, each row must add up to 100.

Highway Bus Lanes

This field increases the speed of buses on highways slightly, with the corresponding result that the number of Sims taking buses that travel on highways will also increase. This is similar to what happens with real-world highway bus lanes. The automata aren't changed, however, in that cars will still be present in all lanes, although the number of buses should be somewhat greater. From a visual point of view, you can consider that the bus lanes also allow high occupancy traffic of other types as well.

Park & Ride

This field changes the way the game works so that cars cannot take the Sims directly to their workplace. Instead, they are useful only for taking them to parking facilities where they can either walk the rest of the way to work, or (most usefully) parking facilities where they can take mass transit to work. In the second case, you need to build such parking facilities near mass transit stations; putting them at the edge of residential zones can be especially useful. If this option is checked and sufficient parking facilities are not built, the Sims will end up driving all the way to work and then discover that they have no place to leave their car. As a result, they don't make it to work, they get fired, and they leave town, leaving behind an abandoned residence.

Parking facilities that are included in the models of various buildings generally don't count for the purposes of Park & Ride, because these parking facilities are generally just eye candy. However, parking facilities that are part of mass transit stations (such as the standard Maxis train station) almost always are functional, and therefore work well in Park & Ride systems.

Buses contribute to traffic

In the original Maxis traffic simulator, buses did not contribute to traffic congestion; the pathfinder was not tuned tightly enough to make this workable even if it had been desired.  Experiments showed that turning this field on in the original simulator would have simply increased the existing traffic congestion without having any significant benefit.

However, in the NAM traffic simulator, the pathfinder has been tuned so that it is much more intelligent than in the original Maxis traffic simulator, and it is now possible to allow buses to contribute to traffic (just like every other vehicle travel type) without creating any problems.  In fact, the traffic simulation as a whole runs much better this way.  The reason for this is that in the original Maxis traffic simulator, buses became the travel type of last resort; if congestion on the roads or most rails became too great, the traffic simulator could always cram more Sims into buses and thereby reduce congestion arbitrarily, since all the road networks had an infinite capacity for buses. This was highly unrealistic, and had the Sims at times abandoning faster forms of transport for buses simply to avoid congestion.

The current NAM traffic simulator avoids this problem by letting buses contribute to traffic.  However, buses, like all vehicles in SC4, are really single-passenger vehicles, and so some of their usefulness is lost in that they are now no more efficient than cars at transporting Sims.  However, they are still very useful for those Sims who prefer to use mass transit, and even more importantly, they are extremely efficient at ferrying Sims to high speed rapid transit (i.e., the various rail networks) where no parking exists.  So although each setting of this property has certain drawbacks, the traffic simulator works better and provides a more accurate traffic simulation when this field is checked, which is its original state..

However, some people like the way the original Maxis traffic simulator worked, or they just like to have increased use of buses.  For these people, this field can be unchecked, and the behavior of the original Maxis traffic simulator will be restored with regard to buses. If this is done, though, the traffic simulation as a whole becomes slightly degraded as a result.  The amount of degradation is fairly minimal, though, so as long as it is understood that this happens, unchecking this field should not cause any major problems.

Monthly Fares per Sim per Tile

These boxes specify how many simoleons your city collects each time the named travel type passes over a single tile. These are called "fares" because by default, only mass transit travel types have these set to nonzero values. By raising or lowering these numbers, you can raise or lower the fares for any travel type. The Sims don't actually pay the fares; the city just collects them. This is a limitation of the simulation. Also, raising or lowering the fares has no effect on the Sims' travel habits. Instead, it can either be used as a device for generating more revenue for your city's treasury, making the game easier, or for subsidizing the Sims' mass transit use, which generates less revenue for the city and makes the game harder.

This feature works in an interesting way in that the fares for a given travel type are permanently attached to a network tile when it is built. This means that if you change all the fares and then start up your game, you will find no immediate change in your monthly income. However, any new network tiles you build will have the new fares attached to them. This property allows fares to be used in an interesting way. Suppose you want to build a toll road, but instead of clunky toll booths (they're so 20th century), you want sensors in the road to automatically detect vehicle travel and collect tolls automatically, according to the distance traveled.

Furthermore, you want different tolls for cars, buses, and trucks. Using this field, this is easy to do. You set the bus fare to the normal bus fare plus what you want the toll for buses to be, and you set the car and truck fares to what you want their tolls to be. Then you start the game, build your toll road, save the game, exit, and reset the fares for buses, cars and trucks to what they were before. Now you have a special toll road in your game that collects the tolls you specify whenever anyone drives over it. No slowing down of traffic, no traffic jams - just silent toll collection.

There are many other possibilities here. You can even charge pedestrians to walk on your toll roads. And you can create toll bridges, toll tunnels, and toll streets, among other things. You can even create municipal parking lots or garages where the Sims pay the city to park. Just set them one tile back from the road, and connect them with a street or road tile that has its fares set to be the parking costs you want. You collect both when the Sims enter and when they leave.

Monthly Costs per Network Tile

These boxes specify how much the city's treasury is charged each month for a single tile of each network type. Unlike Monthly Fares per Sim per Tile, changes to these costs take effect the next time you start the game. Normally, these costs are considered maintenance costs. But they can also be considered to incorporate construction costs as well, especially since construction costs aren't directly available to the traffic simulator. In reality, governments don't pay cash for large transportation projects; why should your city? Instead, governments will often issue bonds. So you can consider that the monthly costs also cover the cost of interest-only bonds that your city has issued to pay for the network. Since these bonds are interest-only, payments on them continue forever (or at least until the network is demolished). As with Monthly Fares per Sim per Tile, changes to this field provide a simple way to make the game either easier or more difficult.

You may notice that the monthly cost for the RHW network tiles is set to zero and that this setting cannot be changed.  The reason for this is that the RHW is based on an unused network that was incompletely implemented by Maxis in SC4.  One of the things that was not implemented in this network was the monthly cost per network tile, and although this value can be set internally in the traffic simulator, the game always acts as if it is zero.

Customers/Traffic Noise Coefficient

This field controls the effect of road noise both on business customers and on residences.  Road noise is generated by the pedestrian, car, bus, and truck travel types traveling on any of the road networks except highways.  Road noise is good for businesses; the number of customers that a particular business receives is directly proportional to the inverse of this coefficient; what this implies is that a given percentage increase or decrease in this number will have the same effect on noise levels throughout the coefficent's range. Specifically, the number of customers that a business receives is given by the formula

Customers = coefficient*(traffic volume)

where "traffic volume" is the maximum volume observed for the morning commute in nearby tiles.  The threshold for the medium customer level is 152, and the level for the high customer level is 215; the maximum number of customers is capped at 255.  (For more specifics, please see A Guide to the Operation of the Traffic Simulator.)  The following graph shows the threshold for medium and high customer levels plotted against the inverse of the coefficient.  (The graph is supplied courtesy of Trias.)

Road noise has the opposite effect on residences.  The higher the road noise, the less desirable the residence becomes.  (Customers translate directly into desirability for businesses.)  However, the desirability effect for residences is much less than for businesses, so in general, increasing the number in this field will have a positive effect on the city's economy.  Commercial services are affected more than commercial offices, and within each commercial type, higher wealth levels are affected more than lower wealth levels.  The last statement is true of the noise effect on residences as well, although as mentioned earlier, it is much less than on commercial buildings.

Overall, this number can have a very powerful effect on a city's economy.  At its maximum, which is 3.000, you can cause a major economic expansion, although all that activity and noise can make busy residential areas less desirable for Sims, especially high-wealth ones.  When this number is at its minimum, which is 0.001, business activity drops significantly, and you can have a major recession on your hands.  Of course, the reduced activity makes your city a nice, quiet, desirable place for high-wealth Sims to live.  But they may no longer be able to find jobs, so they may leave town anyway.  (Original value: 0.250)

Intersection Effect Multiplier

SC4 simulates the speed reductions caused by stoplights, stop signs, and turning traffic by reducing network capacity at intersections and the two squares approaching them. This means that at intersections with heavy traffic, congestion will occur and slow down the traffic. Due to the way the simulator works, it can delay the traffic for no more than about six seconds, which is shorter than any standard stoplight cycle. However, even to do this much, network capacity has to be reduced to the point where the two squares approaching an intersection show up as red in the Traffic Congestion Data View. By default, the NAM Simulator has this effect set so that the maximum delay occurs only at very busy intersections. Wherever you see all green surrounding an intersection in the Traffic Congestion Data View, traffic is not slowing down at all; there is effectively no traffic control at that intersection.

This field allows you modify the strength of the intersection effect by changing the amount of capacity reduction. Making the number in this field larger reduces the capacity around intersections further, strengthening this effect; making the number smaller reduces the effect. The effect can be essentially turned off by reducing the number in this field to .2, which is as low as it will go. The reason it doesn't go all the way to zero is that there is always some effect in the intersection itself. It is necessary to keep at least that small effect in order to maintain compatibility with NWM, where many types roads appear to the game to be a continuous series of intersections. (Original value:  1.0)

Commute Time Graph Scaling Factor

Please note: The Commute Time Graph was not implemented properly in SC4, and as a result, it is impossible to configure it to give consistently correct readings. Nevertheless, many people like to use this graph, and on occasion, it can provide useful information.

The original Maxis traffic simulator (as well as all versions of Simulators C, D, and E) allowed the Sims a mere six minutes to get from their homes to their jobs. This obviously seemed awfully short even to Maxis, who multiplied this number by 25 in the original Commute Time Graph. This ratio of 25:1 is also reflected in places such as the Prima Guide, which claims that the Sims have 2.5 hours to reach their jobs - exactly 25 times six minutes. You can restore this original factor to the Commute Time Graph display by setting this field to 1. However, you will get some ridiculously high numbers on your graph, since the NAM Simulator does not limit commute times to six minutes.

You might expect that to see the actual commute time, you would simply set this scaling factor to 0.04, which is the decimal equivalent of 1/25. This actually works in small cities that have no neighbors. There are some anomalies in the way that commute times are computed, though, and these start to show up in larger cities. The whole picture changes if you have neighboring cities, though. The average commute time starts increasing in proportion to the amount of traffic you have between cities. This may sound reasonable in theory, but in practice you can end up with one-way commute times of twelve hours or more, even with a scaling factor of 0.04.

For these reasons, the scaling factor in the NAM Simulator has been set to 0.015. This results in commute times that are too short if you have just a small, single city, but it gives commute times that are too long if you have a big city with a large amount of intercity traffic. For average size cities with an average amount of intercity traffic, it gives commute times that are approximately correct. You may still see commute times vary greatly from one city to the next, though, even though the two cities may be very similar in everything except the amount of traffic going in and out of them.

In any case, the scaling factor is now available for you to adjust to whatever value seems to make sense to you. You may still want to adjust it from one city to the next, though, even in the same region. In general, to get reliable information about the commuting habits of your Sims, the Route Query Tool, Traffic Data Views, and Traffic Volume Graph will be much more helpful than the Commute Time Graph. (Note that the Traffic Volume Graph shows the number of trips, and not commute times. Also, Sims who take multiple forms of transportation to get to work will show up in multiple places on this graph.)  (Original value: 0.015)

Commute Trip Max Time

This field specifies the maximum time in minutes that Sims are allowed to take to reach their jobs in the morning commute.  (The evening commute never has any time limit.)  This is the only field of its type that is grayed out in the Traffic Simulator Configuration Tool, and the reason for this is that setting the value in this field too low can have extreme negative consequences for your game.  The field can be enabled by checking the box next to it.  The default value of 600, which translates into ten hours, may seem quite excessive, and in fact may seem to imply an impossibly long work day for the Sims.  However, time does not flow quite as you would expect in this game when there is traffic to other cities; this effect was discussed in the previous section, Commute Time Graph Scaling Factor. Before the current  value for perfect pathfinding was discovered, a value this high was required for effective intercity commuting. Although this is no longer the case, higher values, at least up to 600, do seem to provide a slightly positive effect on a city's health, without providing any negative effects.  Raising this value beyond 600 does not seem to have any effect at all.

What are the effects of lowering this value?  Once it becomes substantially lower than 600, there is often a small decline in the general wealth levels of  the city.  This decline tends to be rather small, though, and is often noticeable only by examining the Pop & Jobs graph over many years.

Reducing this value down into the double digits starts to have more of an effect.  Normally, all commutes within a given city are Short, and all commutes to neighboring cities are Long.  Short commutes give a slight increase to the desirability of a Sim's residence, while Long commutes result in a slight decrease in desirability.  Medium commutes have no effect on desirability.

As the value of Commute Trip Max Time continues to drop, some of the longest commutes within the city will become Medium, making their originating residences less desirable compared to the residences of Sims who have Short commutes.  As Commute Trip Max Time drops even further, some Long commutes will start appearing in the city, and the residences from which those commutes originate will have even lower desirability.  Jobs with a Long commute in the current city have lost their built-in advantage over jobs in a neighboring city, so that paradoxically, there is a certain lower range of Commute Trip Max Time where it becomes more attractive to many Sims to look for jobs in adjacent cities than in their own.  This may also aggravate any eternal commuter loops that may be present in the region.

Once Commute Trip Max Time starts falling into the single digits (and sometimes slightly before), the probability that Sims will find jobs for which they are qualified starts to decline, because there is just no longer time to reach them.  When this happens, the dreaded No-Job Zot appears over the Sims' homes, and if they can't find a job within about six months, the Sims leave town, and their residence is abandoned due to commute time.  At these levels of Commute Trip Max Time, traffic routes and congestion levels become much more important, because every second counts in determining whether Sims will keep their jobs.  This whole situation can become quite challenging, but it is because many people like this type of challenge that this option has been included in the Traffic Simulator Configuration Tool.

For reference, the original game had a Commute Trip Max Time of six minutes.  In the Traffic Simulator Configuration Tool, this field can be set as low as one minute.

Vehicle Air Pollution

This field specifies the fraction of normal air pollution that vehicles emit when the Clean Air Act is enabled. Normally, the unmodified Clean Air Act doesn't affect vehicle air pollution at all; even stranger, neither does the Automobile Emission Reduction Act. Instead, both of these ordinances affect all types of air pollution except vehicle air pollution. Each of these ordinances reduces all other air pollution by 10%; the effect of these two ordinances is additive.

Some people may have noticed that even in the unmodified Sim City 4, vehicle air pollution can get so bad that you can actually use the air pollution data view to see a street map of your city. With the addition of custom content that provides the possibility of much denser cities, along with greater traffic higher-capacity traffic simulators to support such cities, this problem only becomes worse. This is why in the NAM Simulator, enabling the Clean Air Act reduces vehicle pollution by 60%.

However, you may think that's too much of a reduction. Or, you may want to get rid of vehicle air pollution completely as part of an effort to run a "green" city. This field allows you to adjust the amount of vehicle air pollution to your liking. You can drop it all the way down to zero, or you can raise it all the way up to two, giving you twice the vehicle air pollution of the standard game. This last option can be useful when building cities where pollution controls are unheard of.  (Original value: 0.4)

Use new Subway View

Starting with the June 2009 NAM, the Subway View (where you build subways) automatically shows the traffic volume for the subways, using the same colors as the Traffic Volume Data View. It also shows essentially all subway stations. This can be helpful in deciding where to build new subway lines. However, some people may not like this feature. Unchecking the box in this field turns it off.

Use new Subway Building View

Starting with the June 2009 NAM, the Subway Building View (where you build subway stations) has been drastically changed. The biggest change is that in the new Subway Building View, buildings are not displayed, making it easier to place subway stations in high-density sections of your cities. To return the the original Maxis Subway Building View, uncheck the box in this field.

Display Subway / El Rail / GLR Volume

This field is available only when Use new Subway Building View is checked; otherwise, it is grayed out. When this option is checked, the subway, el rail, and GLR volume is shown for those networks, just as it is in the Traffic Volume Data View.

Use new Zones View

Starting with the June 2009 NAM, the Zones View has been modified to display much more than just the zones. It now displays what the new Subway Building View displays, except without the rail volume. To use the original Maxis Zones view, uncheck the box in this field.

Show Subway Lines

This field modifies the new Zones View; when the Use new Zones View field is unchecked, this field is grayed out. Normally, subway lines are part of what is shown in the new Zones View. When the box in this field is unchecked, they are no longer shown.

Show Props

This field also modifies the new Zones View; when the Use new Zones View field is unchecked, this field is grayed out. Normally, props are part of what is shown in the new Zones View. When the box in this field is unchecked, they are no longer shown.

Backups

If backups are currently turned on, a backup is made of any changed files.  (See the section named Backups in the "Configuration" section below for details on managing this option.)  Only those files that have been modified from the default are changed, since standard files can easily be created by using the TSCT and this Guide.  Backups are stored in the backup subfolder of the main TSCT installation directory. The name most recent  backup consists of the main file name followed by a .sav extension instead of the normal .dat extension.  If more than one backup has been specified (the default is five), the first saved file will be renamed to have a .sav1 extension when the next backup is saved.  As further backups are made, the most recent one will be renamed to have a .sav extension followed by the next available number.  The total number of backups is pruned as necessary so that it doesn't exceed the specified number.  You can easily tell if backups are turned on or not by looking at the space at the bottom of the screen directly to the left of the Save button.  If backups are turned on, the phrase "Backups On" will be displayed.  If backups are turned off, the phrase "Backups Off" will be displayed.

The TSCT can be used to create a traffic simulator that closely emulates any of the simulators from recent NAM releases - specifically, simulators A through E and their variations. (As the TSCT uses the core of Simulator Z as a base, no emulation of that simulator is necessary.) This section describes what is necessary to create such emulations. If you try certain settings for an emulation and they aren't quite what you want, simply change them; no lasting harm will come to your city from using settings that are somewhat different from what you used before.

An important point to note is that for many of these simulator emulations, the usage mix of mass transit types may be different from what you're used to. Specifically, if you have a lot of rapid transit (i.e., rails), bus usage may be lower. The reason for this difference is simple: The Sims are smarter now. They will almost invariably take the fastest route for the morning commute. So if you have bus lines that parallel rapid transit, the Sims will take the rapid transit instead of the buses. The easiest way to get more of the rapid transit mix that you're used to is to add more bus stops, and perhaps reduce the number of rapid transit stations. Note that the game treats trams as rapid transit. You may also want to turn on the Highway Bus Lanes option, although sometimes the Sims will be very clever and just use these speedier highway buses to get to the rapid transit faster.

Specific settings recommended for emulating the older simulators

For all of the older simulators, Buses contribute to traffic should be unchecked, Vehicle Air Pollution should be set to 0.90, and Commute Time Graph Scaling Factor should be set to 1.000.

For all of the older simulators except Simulator B, the Customers/Traffic Noise Coefficient should be set to 0.128.  For Simulator B, this coefficient should be set to 0.096.

For Simulators A and B, the base network capacity of "Low", "Medium", and "High" roughly corresponds to these simulators' "Hard", "Medium", and "Easy" levels. However, congestion at a given capacity level in the NAM Simulator is usually much less than congestion at the corresponding capacity level of Simulators A or B. Therefore, you may wish to use a lower capacity level for these simulators, or make a finer adjustment using the Network Capacity Multiplier. What is necessary here depends on lot on your cities, and specifically how much rapid transit you use. The more rapid transit you use, the less network capacity you will need. Conversely, a city with little or no rapid transit will tend to require capacity levels very similar to the ones used in Simulators A and B to provide similar congestion levels.

For Mass Transit Usage, a setting of either "Medium High" or "Medium" should work well for a Simulator A or B emulation. For cities with lots of rapid transit, a setting of "Medium" will generally provide a better emulation. For both of these simulators, the Intersection Effect Multiplier should be set to 0.2.

For Simulators C, D, and E, the capacity settings of "Classic", "Low", and "High" roughly correspond to the "Standard", "2x", and "5x" capacities of these simulators. For Simulator E, these capacities should be used as they are, possibly adjusting "High" downward slightly using the Network Capacity Multiplier. For Simulator D, lower capacities will be required to produce the same congestion effects as experienced in this simulator, and Simulator C will require still lower capacities. The exact capacities required depend on the cities in which these simulators are used.

For Mass Transit Usage, a setting of "Medium" to "Medium High" is recommended for Simulator C, "Medium High" to "High" is recommended for Simulator D, and "High" to "Very High" is recommended for Simulator E. For all three of these simulators, the Intersection Effect Multiplier should be set to 0.4.

For all versions of Simulators C, D, and E, the value of Commute Trip Max Time should be set to 6.  For Simulator A, this value should be set to 17, and for Simulator B, it should be set to 24.

This program has a number of configuration options that can be found in the Options selection under the Tools menu. The Options dialog allows you to set a number of configuration options within the program. They include the following:

Language

Here you can specify the language of the user interface and the User's Guide.  Currently, English and German are supported.

Backups

This setting specifies the number of backup versions of your traffic simulator and data view files that the TSCT will keep.  A value of zero means that no backups are made.  Backups are described in more detailed in the section named Backups under "Saving Changes," above.

GUI Style (Skin)

This setting specifies the style of the program's Graphical User Interface.

Debug Mode (Log to file)

When set, this option causes a debugging log file to be created in the temp subfolder of the TSCT installation folder.

Welcome Dialog

When set, this option causes the initial Welcome screen to be displayed the next time the program is run.  It is only displayed once, unless this option is checked again later.

Traffic Simulator Folder

This is a read-only field that specifies what folder the TSCT is currently using for reading and writing traffic simulators and data views.