Best distance between stations

[Terring7]

Hello

I'm a big fan of public transportation system and i would like some advices for the stations from any kind of system (bus, subway, tram, train e.t.c.) to make them as effective as possible. Which is the best distance (in game tiles) between stations? I guess 2 tiles are too near and 200 tiles are too far, so which is the best distance of any kind of stations?

[cogeo]

Depending on your traffic simulator, every 8-15 tiles. Sims will walk forth and back (well, much more likely forth) up to 7 or even 8 tiles in many cases. As many (most) lots are more than 1 tile wide, sims will actually have to walk less than half of the distance between stations. For example, if you put your stops 16 tiles apart, a 2-tiles wide lot placed or grown exactly in the middle will be 7 tiles away, from both stations, which is quite acceptable.

Stations with parking facilities, like most rail stations, can be placed in a less dense arrangement, as sims can drive to these stations and then ride the train to continue their trip to their workplaces. Also if you set up a small local bus network around the station, this will tend to act as "feeder service" for the rail network. Monoral and El/GLR stations usually do not provide parking unless they are specially modded for this. For such stations you can plop external parking lots (very) close to the station. The ingame parking garage is tall and ugly, but there are many simple parking lots on the STEX and LEX, sized 1x1 or 1x2, and having just the parking texture and some parked car props (and maybe props like lampposts or planters), they look much better and don't disrupt your city visually.

So the answer is place your stops and stations in accordance your city blocks. Bus stops work best if they are placed on an intersection, as in such a case they can serve both (intersecting) roads. If you find that they are not dense enough, and this causes some (enough) sims to prefer their cars, you can try a more dense arrangement as you go, provided that the ones you plopped first enjoy a good usage. Roadtop busstops do not require bulldozing anything. With rails, things are a little different, you should rather build a station to serve a (sparse) settlement, or a dense, well developed area. And remember, parking works only on the residential end of the line, not the commercial or industrial one.

[Terring7]

I have the newer traffic simulator and i notice that Sims will walk much more than 10 tiles to get, for example, the bus. Because of this, i built the stations every 20 tiles. What's your opinion for the 20 tiles? I think that every 8 tiles are a bit too close, while every 15 tiles are better. Also my city blocks are usually 6 tiles, so i guess that it's better to build the bus and subway stations every 2-3 city blocks.

Thanks for the advices

[FrankU]

As a Dutchman I could not resist to use the "promote bicycling" simulator and my sims walk large distances. So probably that's why my railwaystations are often hopelessly overcrowded.

[Gaston]

As a Dutchman I could not resist to use the "promote bicycling" simulator and my sims walk large distances. So probably that's why my railwaystations are often hopelessly overcrowded.

"promote bicycling" - O'kay I know I have seen this but I don't remember where?


---Gaston

[Myself.or.?]

It's was (is) part of the NAM setup and its traffic simulator creator.

[WC_EEND]

hmm, I recall it being part of the CAM setup

[Indisguise]

how close you set the depends on a number of factors
A: how dence the area is or will be in the future

B: what type of zoning you are using

C: wealth type of sims in the areas (low wealth use the MT most often, med a little bit less, rich sims like to drive in their fancy cars)

I uusually use bus stops about 8-10 squares apart on average for med RES or COM or HD IND areas. Most often sims will travel 5-6 squares on foot in either direction without any impact to comute times. any farther and they start to will sometime skip using the MT services to aviod the walk, start getting closer than 8 squares the cost of the MT service will be greater than than the fare intake and actually cost you money not make you money

(( this is also dependant on if you use any sort of enhanced or edited traffic simulator of course, I personelly stick to low traffic simulator myself)).

Though I do suggest at least one bus stop be very close to a long haul type of MT, rail station or mono rail station GLR, something of that nature to help keep comute times down. The sims will take the faster rail service the majority of the way and take the bus from the  rail station as part of their comute to their jobs and back again.
For the most part as a city grows into dence to very dence  zoning bus stops don't ussually help in traffic congestion, but add to it, as the amount of bus use comes to head where the buses actually become a traffic problem as sims seem to treat a bus MT system more like a personel taxi servce where each individual sim takes their own personel bus ((slight exageration but in general princple true)) and not like a 15-30 min bus route like in real life Use the Taffic view to target areas where road traffic is high use by low and med wealth sims to taget good locations for stops, speciall if your plying in a fashion where cost is an important factor.

I personelly replace bus stops with  subway entrance later on when the area is switches to a HD RES or Com area, it's a good idea to leave space for them for later on as it can be come a problem when you have to dezone and lose the already build up areas to just to fit them in, as it can work but sometime is a bit counter productive.