Unclear on the best way to make Bus lines

[speedking34]

Hey,

So, been playing to games for a few days now, still trying to figure out the best way to do most of the stuff.

There is one thing I can't get my head around: bus lines.

In real life (or at least both my town in England, and the French town i lived in) bus lines are "straight", meaning the route the buses take is a line, with stops on both sides of the street. the bus starts its journey at the "origin stop", then makes its way to all the stops along the route and then reaches the "terminus". Once there, the bus will turn around and go back on its steps, again stopping at each stops but on the opposite side of the road. (if you don't understand, look at the illustration I made further down this post).

However, in the game, doing so would double the number of stops without expending the area covered by buses therefore doubling the maintenance cost.
This forces me to adopt a "round" route for my bus lines, as illustrated below:

Using this method, I do cover more ground, however people wanting to get from "stop 2" to "stop 1" have to go through ALL the other stops. This does not seem like something I would want to do in real life, however my question is do people in the game "care" about how long their journey takes? Should I use the first method even though it seems costly, or should I stick with the second one?

If I completely wrong, could you show me the way you design your bus lines?

Thanks guys

 

[giladteller]

It really depends on the situation I encounter. Usually, I have both round and straight lines. but when I make a round line, I create another round line that goes the over way (one clockwise and one anticlockwise).

 

[speedking34]

I think the point is if the people in the game cares about how much time they take to get where they want to... If they dont, the best is always round lines, but if they dont the straight line would be really good sometimes...

Yes that is precisely what i'd like to know. If people in game don't care whether their journey takes 1 min or 50 mins, then round lines make more sense, but I can't find a way to know for sure.

 

[unmerged(273151)]

I'm convinced that a round line without another line going the opposite direction will put unnecessary strain on the line as people wanting to go from stop 3 to stop 2 will take up space on the bus all the way around.
This should technically translate into lost profit too as you want people getting off as soon as possible to allow new fares to get on.

I tend to use a mixture of both bi-directional round lines and straight ones.

Would use a round one to send a bus through a housing area, then a straight one to take those people to the nearest tram/metro station.

 

[douglasrac]

Yes, that will be very nice to know.

On Traffic Giant I had a lot of success making straight lines. The whole town with straight lines. Doesn't matter where you want to go, you get maximum 2 buses.
But that depends on the layout of the town.

 

[immi]

However, in the game, doing so would double the number of stops without expending the area covered by buses therefore doubling the maintenance cost.

at least here in Germany you have actually a stop(i.e. sign&shelter) on each side of the road in the scenario you described first. So you have twice the cost.
The only difference in the game is that they don't share the same name which is rather confusing at times