Nobody uses Jenx Gare Du Nord Station, but do use other stations

[cookies]

I'm not much of a poster, and I hope I'm not imposing, but I have a rather odd issue....

I used JENX Gare Du Nord Station as a central station in a city to connect it to other cities with I-HT and I-MF along with a connection to an industrial area in the city, but every single Sim traveling to those areas drove or used the bus instead of using it.

However, using any other station, Sims pour onto the train. Is this an issue with the station, or me? 

For the record, I'm using Simulator Z Ultra 2.1.
A station that works is:
http://www.simtropolis.com/stex/details.cfm?id=16436

And Gare du Nord, the one that doesn't, is:
http://sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=1420

[paeng]

I had no problems with it -





Do you provide good access to the station - parking, bus- and subwaystops etc?

[cookies]

Thanks for your reply.

I've surrounded it with parking lots, avenues, and a subway line.

(I'll get a pic uploaded soon.)

I also cannot currently find the files for it in my plugins. I used the DatPacker, so I know it's not in plugins_compressed, and I searched my backup files for the station, but I can't find it....

So, I'm thinking of trying my non-packed files temporarily to test if that's the problem. Could that be it?

[cogeo]

Well, I did take a look and it actually has some few problems:

• The Transit Switch Entry Cost property is set to a high value (0.30). Generally, for medium-to-large stations I recommend a value of up to 0.05, however given the size of this lot I would consider a higher value, like 0.10. The station will feature some through "shortcutting", but this is preferable to facing reduced (or no) usage (as a result of setting the switch entry cost to a high value). Unfortunately I do not currently have any developed region (no proper testbed), so someone else should experiment with these.
• There are some few bugs with the transit switchings:
  
  
  
  • Sims can only enter the station with the bus, but not exit (paeng pls verify or falsify this, testing both morning and evening commute).
  • There are two unneeded switchings, enabling through rail traffic. These should not cause any apparent problem, but they are unnecessary, as this is not a station with through tracks.
  • The rail<->pedestrian switchings could be limited to the North+South lot sides only, instead of All Sides (as it is now).

However these are not the cause of your problem, instead it is the high Transit Switch Entry Cost. Although the total commute time (incl the switching cost) would be well below the limit set by the Z simulator, your sims find road commute faster. Maybe the layout of your city doesn't help (your sims don't have a good reason to use the station). Lowering the cost could help though,

[cookies]

Thanks again,
This is the setup for the area (it's to get people off and on a central island, and to get the  business district on the island. The CBD is about a block south from this perspective)


Currently, the puny, under-capacity station there is used at 26,000, 1000 over it's 25,000 capacity. EDIT: That mess of tracks there is space for future expansion, like Gare Du Nord that I was using, which is the reason for the unused tracks.

I do agree this city isn't very well laid out. Basically a large grid of avenues, but Sims have to loop around on the highways to use them to get to the industrial areas, which seems less efficient than using the train to go straight there.

There's a lot of building repetition there! :O

[paeng]

Sims can only enter the station with the bus, but not exit (paeng pls verify or falsify this, testing both morning and evening commute).

Hmmm... sorry, I'm not really good with this type of analysis, I usually trust the 'used capacity' query - however, traffic-query shows access of ped, sub, car and bus, morning and evening. Assuming that morning means entering the Gare and evening means leaving it.

[Diggis]

Hmmm... sorry, I'm not really good with this type of analysis, I usually trust the 'used capacity' query - however, traffic-query shows access of ped, sub, car and bus, morning and evening. Assuming that morning means entering the Gare and evening means leaving it.

No, when you do a route query on a road you get the option of seeing the evening commute or the morning commute paths.

[paeng]

No, when you do a route query on a road you get the option of seeing the evening commute or the morning commute paths.

Yes, that's clear (and what I meant with 'traffic query', 'morning' and 'evening' in my previous post). But I don't really understand how to interpret the numbers - like the Gare shows a usage of 100.000+, but the numbers off the traffic/road-query tool add up only to sth. like 40.000 (20k in the morning and 20k in the evening)...

[cogeo]

I meant there is no pedestrian->bus switch exiting the station. This should result in no outgoing bus traffic, ie no blue (bus) traffic arrows (pointing outwards). This should be the same in both morning and evening commute; ideally sims should take an exactly "reverse" itinerary (both the route and the transit forms) - you can test individual buildings (served by the station) for this; however if some transit switchings are not modded correctly, you won't get these "symmetrical" routes.