Maximizing trips saved?

[WhiteWeasel]

I'm starting to really get into buses and how to manage bus lines. And I'd like to know how to improve trips saved, as most of them hover around 12-18%. For instance, on one of my better lines, I have 37% trips saved. That means 37% of the trips the cims would have done via car are used on the bus right?

So anyways, the larger the percentage, the less cars on the road right? So far I'm making localized bus routes for each district and connecting different zones and monuments via the bus lines. And the buslines have a spot where the intersect so you can transfer to a different line.

 

[28rommel]

The Wiki page may have some pointers.
Here is the link if you want to give it a read : http://www.skylineswiki.com/Transportation
Somewhere I remember reading that the majority of citizens will commute/walk from residential zones to commercial (shopping) zones. So concentrate on your bus lines doing this.
Also, I remember reading that your bus lines are best utilized when going from point A to point B, and back to point A. So a loop to an area, then maybe coming back on a different parallel road is OK. Just don't go too crazy when creating your bus routes, as in zig-zaging this way and that way, up, down, east west, etc, etc.

 

[WhiteWeasel]

I tried making an example bus line that ferry cims to and from local zones, and gave it some time to settle in, and yet the trips saved are really low.

 

[Spec. Tater]

Trips saved is the fraction of trips along the path of the bus that are carried by the bus. If your buses run on major roads that serve other destinations, then you will not lower your trips saved by much.

 

[WhiteWeasel]

Trips saved is the fraction of trips along the path of the bus that are carried by the bus. If your buses run on major roads that serve other destinations, then you will not lower your trips saved by much.

So *That's* how that works. The game should be a lot more clear about that.

 

[Sherhi]

I tried making an example bus line that ferry cims to and from local zones, and gave it some time to settle in, and yet the trips saved are really low.

what I see is that you use bus lines to link something that does not need to be linked, take into account walking distance, which is like 120 of those small squares...basically a lot.

You can try to use that analytical tool to analyze traffic on the street (added in one of the latest patches), really cool feature...I once had a serious issue with road traffic, I analyzed it and I found out that 80% of people either walked or used a bike. So I basically overstuffed my city in that particular area.

Just by looking at that picture your citizens can probably walk to those offices and commercial zones.

 

[Spec. Tater]

Sherhi has a good point.

Also, that light green detour on the waterline is BAD. It adds lots of travel time and makes the bus much less attractive compared to a car. Ask yourself, would you want to sit on that bus everyday for that detour? Any Cims coming or going from that waterfront street will walk the two small blocks to a bus stop on the main avenue.

 

[Tomnoddy]

My city gets 60%-75% car journey saved on its mass transit.

The Metro stations are located in high density residential zones near the city centre. There's one loop taking passengers from residential to commercial zone stations, with one service running clockwise and the other anticlockwise, and a second loop going from residential to industrial stations.

To keep the size of the system affordable, the Metro stations are in the parts of the zone they serve closest to the centre. So, I also have a feeder bus network running in loops, to get passengers who live or work further out to their Metro stops. So, for each residential Metro station there's a bus loop visiting the outer suburbs. I find i'm only using about 4 stops on these feeder lines, when i add more than that i find there's a lot of stops with little or no passengers that just slow the bus down. It seems best to just have the loop run straight outward from the station to the most distant residential block and then back again, like the spokes on a wheel, rather than detouring to visit many blocks with one loop. Instead, add extra "spokes" or loops, this keeps journey times quick and keeps the number of passengers per loop manageable.

The trouble with larger loops is that buses stop at every bus stop whether it needs to or not, and the embark/disembark time is the same whether transferring 1 passenger or 30.

You can add more buses to a route but they tend to get stuck behind each other on stops.

At the destination end, I my commercial/industrial zones are pretty compact but a logging specialisation takes up a lot of space for the number of people it employs. So, I added one metro station at the near end, with a loop collecting workers from the residential stations, then a bus loop from the logging metro station out to the far end and back. It appears most folks just prefer to cycle, however.

 

[Chieron]

Sherhi has a good point.

Also, that light green detour on the waterline is BAD. It adds lots of travel time and makes the bus much less attractive compared to a car. Ask yourself, would you want to sit on that bus everyday for that detour? Any Cims coming or going from that waterfront street will walk the two small blocks to a bus stop on the main avenue.

That raises the question, how far are cims going to walk to / between bus stops? The happiness boost radius of bus stops is pretty small after all. But 120 tiles would be enormous, too.

 

[Fox_NS_CAN]

That raises the question, how far are cims going to walk to / between bus stops? The happiness boost radius of bus stops is pretty small after all. But 120 tiles would be enormous, too.

If you go to the ROUTES info view, and click on a road or walkway, you can see that pedestrians will walk a considerable distance. How far exactly, I don't know, but it is a fair bit.

 

[Steve B.]

Cims will walk 12 blocks without using their car. A block being 10 units in length.

This test was done shortly after the game was released:

 

[Promethian]

When designing mass transit keep in mind where cims want to go from any given location. If they are leaving residential they are not going to a different residential. They are going to just about anywhere else, usually commercial or industrial. So running a bus in a circle through your residential zone alone isn't going to get much use. But if you have one of the stops at a train station that runs to the industrial zone people will pick up the bus then ride the train (or metro, or monorail) to work. This is how I use buses for the most part as buses aren't as good at long distance transport.

 

[Sherhi]

When designing mass transit keep in mind where cims want to go from any given location. If they are leaving residential they are not going to a different residential. They are going to just about anywhere else, usually commercial or industrial. So running a bus in a circle through your residential zone alone isn't going to get much use. But if you have one of the stops at a train station that runs to the industrial zone people will pick up the bus then ride the train (or metro, or monorail) to work. This is how I use buses for the most part as buses aren't as good at long distance transport.

yep, there are some nice guides on YouTube how to make catchment areas and transport hubs...its easy to practice it on urban-only neighbourhood on the other side of the river. Construct a subway station, or just one tram stop (because trams are awesome, love the sound when they stop ) and then make several buslines in that neighbourhood all going in and out of that one station. It works nicely most of the time