Tsunami disaster, recovery, cims refuse to use passenger train station any more

[charlie_savage]

Hi, I had a city with 200,000+ cims. Dedicated port area near the edge of the map, with passenger terminal, end-of-line train station, shops, small town, and cable car up the hill to industrial area. Cruise ships arrived, cims streamed out, crossed the road, most to the station and some to the cable car and other local touristy things. Each train had around 100-250 outbound and 150-200 inbound passengers. All working well.

Then came a small tsunami followed by a huge one, which pretty much wiped out all my coastal areas. Station, port and cable car were about the only things to survive. Population went down to 11,000. I have spent several days in recovery mode nursing things along while running at a massive loss, down to -$137 million. Lots of budget juggling and slowly increasing population finally got back into profit and currently I'm back to 100,000 population and -$40 million. Obviously I can't start to rebuild any of the destroyed items until back into positive $.

Problem is, nobody (except one) wants to use the train any more. Half the tourists off the ship cross the road to the station, and either pull cars out of their pocket or stand waiting for taxis to come from other parts of the map. The other half catch the cable car up the hill to the far side of the (large) industrial area, and walk three quarters of a tile to the nearest metro station in the next suburb, take a metro to the next train station and catch a train (checked by the path tool).

I figured this behaviour would change when the port town started rebuilding, but as the population grows and the houses are rebuilt it is exactly the same. Everyone drives away or takes the long way out.

The trains are not a problem; they carry hundreds of passengers to the next station up the line, where they all get off, and leave 0 passengers for the run to the port. 0 get back on, it runs back empty and picks up hundreds more at the next station.

The station is not a problem, I enabled long distance trains and got both passengers waiting and external trains dropping cims off. Still no traffic on the suburban line.

The line is not a problem, as every 20 or so suburban trains 1 passenger will come in, who works at the station.

I'm out of ideas, since the industries are starting to rebuild the cable car is reaching capacity.

Help my cims see sense!

 

[prismaticmarcus]

are you 300% sure there isn't a break or faulty connection in the rail network? sometimes if you build a rail junction it looks like it's connected but if you zoom right in you see the actual rails aren't connected. could it be something like that?

 

[charlie_savage]

No, the scheduled suburban trains run quite happily from the main city station, stop at a major interchange, and continue to the port. It worked well before the tsunamis.

Turned it off and back on again, of course.

I have tried creating a new line from the opposite platform to the interchange, with a different train, and it behaves the same.

Tried turning off the cable car and ALL the people jumping off the ship spawned cars. No residents and no tourists are using it.

They are still crossing the road to the station, using the carpark, and waiting for taxis.

I still have the one person who works at the station catching the train to work.

I think I'll wait until I have positive $ and try deleting and recreating it. Don't know how that will affect the line, I may have to delete and recreate that as well.

 

[prismaticmarcus]

is the budget where you want it to be?

 

[ASGeek2012]

The problem could be that the game thinks the station is no longer attached to the road, thus cims can't path into it. Normally this results in the big pulsating "T" icon on the affected building, but it may be glitched in some way that's not showing up in the game. There may be a break in the road itself (which would NOT give a "T" icon unless it was a one-way road). I had that happen once while laying down road and forgot I had my road anarchy mod turned on. It looked like I had joined the road to an intersection, but it only looked that way graphically. In your case it could be road damage from the tsunami caused a network segment to glitch out.

When you have money again, I would advise rebuilding both the station and the road leading to it.

 

[charlie_savage]

is the budget where you want it to be?

Yes thanks, all my train lines are running well. This particular line has 7 trains to cope with the numbers.

 

[charlie_savage]

In your case it could be road damage from the tsunami caused a network segment to glitch out.

This could be it. I inserted a pedestrian crossing directly opposite the station entrance when it was built, so cims could walk straight across between the passenger terminal and the station. Should be able to delete/recreate later today.

 

[charlie_savage]

OK, deleting/recreating the road did nothing, zapped and rebuilt the station and everything now works fine. Nice to have money again!