I've got a question that's been bugging me for some time. How do freight rail and idustrial areas/ports work together, as in transferring freight from rail to industrial/ports? I've been working on a region for the past couple of months and haven't seen anything that acts like a transfer station, except the freight station which never seems to work in industrial or port areas, but works great in farming areas. Any ideas or lots/BATs, or perhaps even a mod that act as a transfer station in industrial areas?
Wasn't sure exactly where to post this question, but this seemed like the best place to do so. :)
Nope, freight will always use the shortest path to the city boundary (to any city, developed, undeveloped or even zero-pop, or to the SimNation); such paths are usually... the road network! Ports and freight stations are useful for providing demand caps relief though, and increase industrial desirability.
Ok thanks, I had a feeling that was case, but thought I'd ask anyways just to be sure. &mmm
Thanks for the awfully quick response. Now I can go back and continue developing my region. :thumbsup:
The Maxis Freight station doesn't allow trucks as an inside-outside transit switch. Found this file though, Freight Station Mod 1 (http://www.simtropolis.com/forum/files/file/1953-freight-station-mod/), which allows such a change. A nice little mod, one of the first I downloaded (my only searching at the time was "most downloaded" on the STEX)
Thanks, I'll give it a try and see what happens.
How is it with other freight stations? Do they suffer from the same bug, or do they work correctly?
I.O.W.: do I need this mod when I use other freight stations?
All the file is is the Maxis building exemplar with extra transit switches added to it. It won't have any effect on custom Buildings. You would have to open up the custom stations to see if they have an Inside to Outside for trucks, and if not, add it.
I don't think the "bug" is important at all though. Freight in SC4 is only outgoing, not incoming. That is retail (or even wholesale) is supposed to sell goods, but where do these goods come from? In a city with R amd C development one would expect to see incoming freight, but this is not the case in SC4. The Logistics Centres I had released in the past were supposed to mock this sort of business (incoming freight and retail distribution), but lacking such a function in SC4, I modded them as CS$ and CS$$ - there's a freight rail station lot too.
So the purpose of a freight rail station is to provide a means to provide a means for shipping export-only freight by rail. Consequently the (one-way) transit switches (Outside-to-Inside Truck-to-Rail and Inside-to-Outside Rail-to-Rail) are enough for most cases. Making a freight rail station working the other way too, would make a difference in one case only: having freight transshipped from rail to trucks (within the city boundaries) and sent to the city border or port from there. Rail should preferably be connected to other cities and/or ports instead.