CAM/NAM Traffic Simulator

[jplumbley]

Hello everyone using the CAM.  I hope your enjoying it.

There is something that I need some feedback on from those members who are using the CAM/NAM Traffic Simulator.  I unfortunately have not been able to grow a city recently to more than 65,000 sims, so I dont have a metropolis testbed for extensive testing.  There has been ALOT of discussion going on about the Traffic Simulator and giving it a work over, from Tarkus and I to now Mott and I working together on figuring out better way for the simulator to work.

My question for those of you out there who have a large city with a highly dense area of population (doesnt have to be the whole city tile), I would like to hear some feedback on how the Congestion is in your cities.

Now, we understand that CAM has made it possible for buildings of 10000, 15000 and even 20000 sims or jobs can be grown at higher stages of the game.  Now imagine a tightly packed high density area of a bunch of these towers, you will have easily over 200,000 and commuters in a downtown core.

1.  How is the congestion?

2.  What can you do to avoid it?

3.  Do you use alot of bus traffic?

4.  What is your mass-transit system like?  Is it over congested?

5.  Do you use alot of Subways?

6.  Do you mix the R and C in your downtown core?

Please if you are responding it would be highly appreciated if you can post pictures of your Congestion Data View and a Transit System Overview.  Thanks for your time and patience, we will get you into an even better Traffic Simulator someday, the more information we have the easier our work becomes.

[Kitsune]

I have a large tile with 2.3 million R and 2.8 million C (no I, and the tile is 45% filled, the rest is either ocean, river or area set aside for my Simlympic bid). The entire region is 7.6m, and about 8.5 to 9m C, and only 50K I......) (Demand mods obviously )

1.  How is the congestion?
The entire tile uses high density zoning. Some roads are red, but not many, and those that are one way roads/boulevards (four tile divider). All subway lines those are red. I would say about 10% are red, 30% are yellow, and the rest is green. All subway lines are more red then Tokyos! Amazingly my two highways are avoided like the plague (despite going through some of the highest tower areas in the city......)

2.  What can you do to avoid it?
I havnt really tried to avoid it, I kinda like the realistic congestion (Tokyo anyone?) I think my mass transit system uses people pushers....

3.  Do you use alot of bus traffic?
I use NO bus traffic at all. I use money cheats, so buses are useless to me.

4.  What is your mass-transit system like?  Is it over congested?
In this tile, its all subway, and all subway lines are red red and red. I have one area where I use NOB's sunken GLR, but use it as a subway (It looks like I'm getting double capacity too) I think subways could really use a capacity boost. I have a subway line going this way <--> every twenty tiles, which equates to 3 lines, and two going the other way situated on each side of the river, and they are very congested. All subways get traffic from that tile, and traffic from other tiles, which is further compounding things I''m sure. (the neigherbouring tiles are 1.3, 1.3 and .9)

5.  Do you use alot of Subways?
In this tile, I only use subways, a few others I use GLR or AVE/GLR (Streetcars with there own R-o-W as I call them - just like Toronto). In total, its about 5 subway lines.

6.  Do you mix the R and C in your downtown core?
Yes, I found this was really the only way to get the core built up (Seems R outstrips C in terms of capacity, creating a few issues....)

[RippleJet]

I want to add one more question to those Jplumbley asked:

7. Which traffic plugin are you using? (Promote nothing/Promote walking/Promote biking/None of them)

[JoeST]

1. Usually fine, my OCD stops me from being able to develop more than yellow, but thats usually on the roads and/or subway.

2. Lay more mass transit... demolish some buildings to make more roads

3. Yes, as much as humanly possible...

4. Its usually fine, possibly goes red on the Subway lines once in a while especially at neighbour connectors.

5. I usually end up using subway with both rail and elrail in parts. unfortunately i just dont have the patience for GLR even tho  I think its a great idea and would love to use it...

6. R+C?? Yes, but still in a square block pattern...

7. Promote biking

[Kitsune]

I want to add one more question to those Jplumbley asked:

7. Which traffic plugin are you using? (Promote nothing/Promote walking/Promote biking/None of them)

None of them, I use one of the NAM's (I believe the special one.......)

[jplumbley]

I want to add one more question to those Jplumbley asked:

7. Which traffic plugin are you using? (Promote nothing/Promote walking/Promote biking/None of them)

Heh... heh.. thats kinda the most important one.. I was tired!    Still am...

EDIT:
Karma Points for Kitsune and star.torturer for giving feedback on the CAM/NAM Traffic Simulator.

[Shadow_prophet]

1) Basically the traffic and congestion rate is fine.

2) To avoid it I use certain mass transit lots which are like 2 in 1, subway/monorai, subway/bus stop Basically to save space and improve traffic, subway is the way to go for me.

3) Barely

4)Just the mass transit systems are cogested but its not in the red.

5) As stated in question 2 Yes, in fact the main system of transport in my region is subway, followed by monorail.

6) Yes

7) Promote biking.

[xxdita]

1. Traffic is high where I want it to be, otherwise under control.
2. I also use plenty of 2in1 subway/bus stops. At least every 5 city blocks.
3. Yup.
4. At the moment only subways & buses, but that seems to be working. (Plus I'm not that great with any of the rest of it.)
5. Yup, I have as much subway rail as I do water pipes.
6. The center of my city is divided between C & Civic buildings, with just enough R to make it a lively downtown.
7. Promote biking.

[jplumbley]

Thank you guys...  Karma points for all who have given feedback.  I hope this is not all of the feedback, it would definately rock to get some congestion data views in picture form!!!

Keep it up guys the more info the better we can work on upgrading the Pathfinder.

[ScottFTL]

I recently started building a new region specifically for CAM.  I currently have 2 cities with about 100k and 50k respectively.

1.  How is the congestion?

I have not experienced significant congestion problems yet.  I am starting to see a few streets and some transit stations reach capacity.  I have also notices that several TE lots are yellow in the traffic congestion view now, but the effect is limited to these lots.  I have modified the Traffic Switching Capacity on some lots to prevent this.

2.  What can you do to avoid it?

For the streets, I have simply upgraded to roads.  I have not seen anything other than streets reach capacity yet.

For the bus and GLR stations, I have replaced them with higher-capacity versions.  I have maxed out bus stops with a capacity of 1,000 and GLR stations with a capacity of 5,000.

3.  Do you use a lot of bus traffic?

I am trying to use buses to collect and distribute traffic for the GLR and rail only.  I have found that I cannot place bus stops close to residential areas where sims begin their trips.  I would think they would choose GLR or rail because of the higher speed, but perhaps the bus trips were more direct.

4.  What is your mass-transit system like?  Is it over congested?

All is well aside from the capacity problems with some GLR stations.  I have low car usage - which was my goal for this region - but pedestrians are by far number one.

5.  Do you use alot of Subways?

I have not built subways in this region yet.  My goal is to start with GLR and rail saving subways for later stages.

6.  Do you mix the R and C in your downtown core?

I have just started mixing some R and C in my downtown and some R and I in my industrial port city.  I have found that this increases transit usage - and increases pedestrians even more.  I have had some industrials without workers - and the best solution to this problem has been to move the workers closer.

7. Which traffic plugin are you using?

CAM Promote Biking.  I was hesitant to switch from the NAM, but I read that the network capacities were tuned for the CAM so I made the leap.  I am very happy with these settings.  Promote Biking does create some long walks in SC4 terms, but allows me to space transit stations in a more realistic manner.  I may switch to the Promote Walking plugin, but I found the Promote Nothing plugin generated too much car traffic for my taste.

[LoneRanger]

I was reading the topic about the traffic simulator and allthough it's way above my league it is/was an interesting read.
So if I can contribute by answering your questions I gladly wil.

My city only has 200K of inhabbitants but quite a few cam-buildings.

1.  How is the congestion?

It's all green some darkblue in volume.

2.  What can you do to avoid it?

Building better mass-transit, re-zone and re-route just to name a few but I chose not to to get commercial high-rise as they need many customers.

3.  Do you use alot of bus traffic?

Only bus and a lots of it.
It's the only kind of mass transit that brings customers to my comercial buildings as far as I know.

4.  What is your mass-transit system like?  Is it over congested?

It is over congested downtown especialy near cam-buildings.
I can spot the busstops on the transit maps by little red dots. 

5.  Do you use alot of Subways?

Nope, even removed it once from a previous city that had 1.5M of inhabitants with no bad effects at all.

6.  Do you mix the R and C in your downtown core?

Yes but the bigger the city gets the less R stays downtown, I sometimes rezone to C if the road gets to congested.

I promote Biking, allthough it might be a bit drastic it's more realistic then the original Maxis' system. [I think]
As a test I removed the file that promotes biking.
I did get quite a few red lines on the transit map.
Comute time doubled from 20 to 40 minutes, cars went up from 25K to 55K, busses went down from 96K to 46K and pedestrian went down from 86K to 52K.
Above is a bit strange since cars went up 30K where the other two went down 84K comuters together.
Sims probbably carpool by default but I hadn't selected it in ordinaces.

[jplumbley]

I promote Biking, allthough it might be a bit drastic it's more realistic then the original Maxis' system. [I think]
As a test I removed the file that promotes biking.
I did get quite a few red lines on the transit map.
Comute time doubled from 20 to 40 minutes, cars went up from 25K to 55K, busses went down from 96K to 46K and pedestrian went down from 86K to 52K.
Above is a bit strange since cars went up 30K where the other two went down 84K comuters together.
Sims probbably carpool by default but I hadn't selected it in ordinaces.

Very good description that is one of the best things we can get.  That change in commuter traffic from 96k to 46k in busses and the 34k drop in pedestrians if fairly accurate of what I would expect.  This is why:

1.  Pedestrians wont walk (or ride bike) as far to the busstop.  So the number of pedestrians and busses will get less usage due to a smaller service radius.

2.  The reason the # of sims walking didnt go down by 50k like the busses is because 20k of them decided to walk to work rather than drive.  And the other 30k took their cars.  And that is you 50k difference.

[LoneRanger]

Very good description that is one of the best things we can get.  That change in commuter traffic from 96k to 46k in busses and the 34k drop in pedestrians if fairly accurate of what I would expect.  This is why:

1.  Pedestrians wont walk (or ride bike) as far to the busstop.  So the number of pedestrians and busses will get less usage due to a smaller service radius.

2.  The reason the # of sims walking didnt go down by 50k like the busses is because 20k of them decided to walk to work rather than drive.  And the other 30k took their cars.  And that is you 50k difference.

Maybe I should add that a busstop is never futher as 10 [roughly] squares away.
Maybe I'm understanding it wrong but the promote biking gives pedestrians a bigger reach and maybe speed right?
So how come they rather walk instead of taking the bus or car after I removed the promoted biking file?
All three comuting types together after removing the file is 147K while before the total was 172K.
That's like 25K comuters less.
I am prolly missing something in your explaination.

In addition, it's the effect after 6 months gametime, nothing added nothing build.
I also didn't check if out of town comuters increased or vice versa.
If you want me to test it again I can do tomorrow just point me where to look.

Ah wait, I got it.
Walking doesn't mean walking to their job all together but walking and using another transportation. 
I should have looked at my workforce.

Thanks and glad I could help.
The offer stands though for doing more tests. 

[Shadow_prophet]

Thank you guys...  Karma points for all who have given feedback.  I hope this is not all of the feedback, it would definately rock to get some congestion data views in picture form!!!

Keep it up guys the more info the better we can work on upgrading the Pathfinder.

So you want the dataviews eh?
Here you go:

If you want the volume pics as well just ask for which mode of transportation and i'll be glad to oblige.