Why does traffic always grow along (new) built lines?

[Uranus35]

Hi, i really wonder about that why the car traffic always increases along new built lines. When you first choose a line (Amsterdam for example), you look around the more outside areas and see quite a lot of green (low traffic) roads. You build up your line, but you can be sure, that a few months later the traffic will increase very much, mostly so much, that the line is not operating cost-effective anymore, since the busses or trams need much too long, even for short lines.

Whats the reason for that?

 

[speedking34]

I believe your answer is in your question. If you add traffic to low-traffic areas, surely enough after a while, the traffic that you, yourself, added will put a strain on those roads, generating more jams and locks. Putting it clearly, the cars on those roads that used to move about without any problems are now slowed down by your trams and buses. Because of this, the whole traffics slows down.

 

[City Builder]

It's a flawed game mechanic in my opinion. I've seen it time and time again. I place a route that I carefully chose for little to no traffic and almost as soon as I open the route, it's jam packed with traffic that was NOT using it before hand. The game adds a tremendous amount of traffic to the roads that my routes are travelling and I think of it as the game is trying to simulate some difficulty for the player. It doesn't work well in my opinion.

 

[Uranus35]

@ speedking
Well, i doubt that a single bus with only 2 stations A+B, which is going along the very outside of the city, can push that effect so much. The bus only stops in side-streets, and rides along a highway, even or especially the highway then, increases a lot of traffic. So thats not logical to me....

 

[Uranus35]

It's a flawed game mechanic in my opinion. I've seen it time and time again. I place a route that I carefully chose for little to no traffic and almost as soon as I open the route, it's jam packed with traffic that was NOT using it before hand. The game adds a tremendous amount of traffic to the roads that my routes are travelling and I think of it as the game is trying to simulate some difficulty for the player. It doesn't work well in my opinion.

Yes, 100% agree, well ment, but not very good solved. I like if the difficulty is challenging, but somehow id also like to understand that, or see any reason for it, which i cant...

 

[JCFast]

Your concern is valid. I had a very large metro-network in place in Berlin. There was no traffic what-so-ever to be seen anywhere, no gridlocks no nothing. Then 5 years into the game I decided to build a single tram-line. I put just a few trams to run on it and bang, the whole city became one big gridlock.

 

[douglasrac]

If you look at the Private motoring graphs, at the beginning of the game you will see that is very low. So it's like people are waiting for you, to make a good public transport. After a while, if you don't they all buy cars and the city get crowed. I never manage to avoid this huge increase of the graph after a few months, but maybe it's possible.
I think it should be like Traffic Giant, where you see the traffic right at the beginning when there is no public transport.

@JCFast: well in your case is really strange. If this happens is definitely annoying and should be fixed.

 

[unmerged(272700)]

Seems I read somewhere online, or in a tutorial, or somewhere... that adding stops to an area will make an area more popular and more desirable. You build a "market" for some buildings. As a result more people will want to drive there as well.

That seemed to be the theory. And its probably set up that way in the game, the problem is that we see it from a birdseye view and relationship seems to "contrived".
It should probably be more subtle.

They need to find ways to keep the cities dynamic and changing. And this is one way to do it. But maybe it needs to be toned down a little.

If traffic patterns stayed constant and never-changing, the game would be too predictable. Having the traffic react to your actions adds a really nice dynamic to the game. But yeah, maybe they need to tune it so its not so obvious that placing a line generates so much traffic right on that line.

For comparison, there are obviously other things that fluctuate and change. If they didn't, then things would be too predictable and it would be too easy to always find the "optimal" combination of things. The dynamic-ism is what keeps the game interesting. For example, the economy changes up and down. This affects how much you pay workers and how much you charge ticket prices. When the economy is doing well, you have to pay your workers more... if you don't, then your satisfaction will go down. Raising your wages instantly makes satisfaction go up. So you can control what the game has dynamically thrown at you. Failure to do so will have effects.

Also, the city grows. Buildings spring up in different areas and create new places to go to. And if you don't figure out who wants to go there or leave there... and build transportation systems to take care of that... then people will start driving instead and clog up new roads.

These factors make the game actually enjoyable. If it were not for these factors, then you'd probably only play through the cities one time and then get bored.

 

[nessin]

Best I've been able to figure out is that the game doesn't generate a lot of movement for people who aren't going to be using your transportation network (they're going to or coming from areas you don't service). When you do plop down a stop, everyone that might use that stop starts being generated in the game and its a downhill slide from there where they stack up on your stops and if/when you don't clear them out fast enough, they start taking cars, causing traffic backups which makes it take even longer to clear out the stops meaning even more people show up in their own vehicles causing a bigger buildup until you reach critical mass.

 

[Zarine]

Start the game, put full speed ahead without building anything... you'll see traffic jam.
With this information of where the traffic jam is, build somewhere that shouldn't be affected. It's easy.

And btw, the problem is the bus/tram stopping that create high traffic jam.

For instance, reduicing the number of bus/tram (even minus 1) can clean the jam.