Bus routes in Housing area's?

[Barkydog]

I'm just wondering how others have planned their bus routes in cities that have large housing areas or estates etc.

With mine when I started after I build part of my town and had an area that was a copy of a rather large housing estate and I started off with route 1 running clockwise from the bus exchange to the estate and serving it's main roads and heading back to town again.

Now I'm wondering is it a good idea to try and run both clockwise and anti-clockwise bus routes through housing area's so they provide a choice and a frequent service so if a passenger misses the number 1 they can cross over the road and catch the number 2that goes in the opposite direction?

But do you find it's better to concentrate on just running one high frequency route rather than running two in opposite directions that serve the same area's and maybe introduce another route going the other way at a later date?

My plan was originally to have:

Route 1 as a clockwise service from town to Housing Estate and back again to town

Route 2 as an Anti-Clockwise of the number 1 route.

Then as a last route for the estate have route 3 leave the city centre and serve the roads out to the hospital then go into the estate and at a point turn around and head back to the city centre via the hospital again before going into the city to its originating stop.

Ok that might sound complex and a bit excessive to have 3 routes to serve one housing area but I'm basing that on real life.

I'm just wondering what others have done as I hope I can do a good job planning my routes and not get to the stage where I need to add a new route only to find there is a maximum number of bus lines allowed in the game.

As soon as I get a replacement graphics card I'm going to try out some idea when I put the game back on my pc as I started to enjoy the game only for my graphics card to die on me so as soon as I can replace it I will try and play the game again I hope I was ok doing this thread anyway as I was curious how everyone has planned their bus routes.

Have you based them on real routes or do you try and see how you could do them differently?

 

[unmerged(281457)]

haha, i was going to ask this exact same question.

I wouldn't think it would be all that beneficial running smaller lines in both directions. Most of my tram lines follow the same line to and from popular hot spots, but my bus routes tend to only go in one direction with maximum coverage in mind.

 

[Tapsa]

It depends on the demand on the line. If the bus line is feeding a metro station and is running a long loop, you should build a second line going the other way. With experience you can spot at least some of these in advance. Build your line, and if passengers start lining up on the stops and you can't really add more busses, build a "reverse" line.

 

[Barkydog]

Thanks for your replies guys, I really hope I can get a new graphics card soon and try out some more idea's and experiment on the different routes etc. The routes I've been running through the housing estate were pretty long but that probably means they were too long as I was getting complaints from my passengers plus with the size of the housing area there were some streets that were not served by a bus service so some people were probably just driving to town or calling a cab instead.

Maybe if I try again with route 1 running clockwise and if I need to have route 2 going the other way but with variations in the route so that most of the streets get a service at their stops and have route 3 running from bus exchange to hospital and back as a short circular route so I can have most of my routes terminating in the bus Exchange and allow people to swap between routes as appropriate for their journey.

Serving rail and metro stations is a good point as I had another route that I ran from the Train station to the centre of the city in a circular route based on our City Rail link service and that was a challenge keeping up with the crowds pouring off the mainline trains and wanting a bus to town and judging by the number of taxi's serving the station I needed to run a lot more buses and re-route the services so it was able to get to the station faster and not have to use a turning circle that I put in as I had buses going to the station and they couldn't get to the stop outside the station as there was either a private car or a couple of cabs sitting outside the station with another taxi or two blocking the turning circle as they were using that as a makeshift rank while they were waiting for fares it was only when they left that my buses could turn around and serve the stop and load fresh passengers before heading back to the city centre.

I'm also planning to have the city rail link bus as a limited stop service so it only serves the main stops in the city centre near the shops and businesses before it heads back to the station then I can have another route going from the station to the bus exchange via the blocks of flats and inner city housing so they get a service too.

At least that's what I'm planning when I get the game working again with a new graphics card.

Thanks for the advise I'm really looking forward to playing the game again as I did enjoy my first few goes on it and I need to explore the cities that came with the game as I was having plenty of fun with the editor so I know there is plenty of fun to be had on this.