[brian51]

a special thanks to  Darth for his help in getting this thread set up for Pierre
and myself and of course any others that are still playing the great game of Sim City 4
.. About to go into its 16th year soon !





this is my newest city which has just surpassed the population milestone of 600 K
I had to recently double track the glr because of traffic congestion on the previous single line..
and i put in a new station there also ( neal's glr to bus transfer station..)

[pierreh]

Congratulations, Brian, for opening this CJ. I'll monitor it as closely as possible (there doesn't seem to be a 'notify' option, or I don't see it...).

A first comment: the way the GLR-to-bus transfer station is placed, it 'cuts' one of the GLR pairs of tracks: can there still be thru GLR traffic on those tracks? Does the station service those tracks?

[Darth-Apple]

Thank you for posting, great looking city! Really miss all of the great features of NAM. It's been too long since I've fired the game up. I like the light rail station.

[SpookyZalost]

@ Brian51

Excellent work brian, looking forward to seeing more now that this has been resurrected from the ashes!

@ pierreh
at the bottom there's a subscribe option, you can subscribe by email or PM

[brian51]

First thanks for all your guys replies and posting in the thread  

Its great ( I agree with Spook..) , that the SC-4 CJ's are back active again in the community here !

Ok, so carrying on now with my second update , i have a few things to show you guys

First I do have a older pic of what the congestion had gotten to on the older single GLR line which was clearly seeing a lot of usage in the growing city -



So with the congestion view graph, than dark orange would indicate some fairly heavy traffic congestion on the GLR line , which falls just short of the heaviest indicator which is ( Red) ..
After constructing the second glr line than and changing GLR stations in the area . .. As well as running the game several years for the new traffic conditions to take effect, we can see the reduction in traffic  with the use now of 2 GLR lines in the area -

A first comment: the way the GLR-to-bus transfer station is placed, it 'cuts' one of the GLR pairs of tracks: can there still be thru GLR traffic on those tracks? Does the station service those tracks?

Yes, I was also quite curious about this aspect myself. And my recall as a transit modder was some stations will allow the thru traffic even on lines that visually look and really should only be terminus lines, but than other stations ( perhaps the way there modded), would not allow this. I actually did the transit modding for neal on this station, yet I really do not know the transit modding factors which determine this

So what i started doing was clicking on individual houses that i knew used this route to see what kinda behavior happens when passing thru the station. there were some sims which exhibit the type of behavior you see on this routing scheme here. Where its a more realistic ending of the line in a terminus fashion. Thus, forcing the sims to change trams and network lines at the station -




In any event though for other sims this station trick , did work here-

[Guardian]

Great CJ Brian! Love the screenshots so far.

Great detailed explanation.

[pierreh]

Quite interesting, especially the last picture. I assume that the pathing of the station allows for a continuous GLR path on the section of the station where there are no actual GLR tracks. Visually it is a bit odd, but functionally it is ok.

[brian51]

Pierre,

that is a great idea about having a look at the pathing for this station !

I did not think of that ...

The results were quite interesting too -

I also had a look at " zones view" to see if maybe the path would show up to the ( non - track) side of the station. But no path is visible.
So i think this is just the strange way in which TE lots behave in sc-4  that it allows something( thru traffic on both sides of the station) like this in our game.
I may also experiment with other stations in some different traffic settings to see if this result can be duplicated or not,,

[SpookyZalost]

interesting, so it's a pathing bug you can take advantage of.

[pierreh]

Actually there are no paths where there are no GLR tracks in the station, and I think that it makes sense. Then it is quite possibly the definition of the famous Transit Switch Point, which ensures the pass-thru GLR traffic across the station, regardless of where the tracks are actually.

[brian51]

For this Cj posting, I decided to run an instructive test on transit switches.
This concerns using either 2- way or 4- way switches to see if bus traffic will transfer to a station from a  crossing road -

So first I ran a test on a station that I modded for Neal which is a glr/ bus transfer station. here on the main lot the tracks run east - west..and so I was curious where this station has North - South bus switches ( 2 - way switches), if perhaps there might still be bus switching from a corner / diagonal.  However after running the test for several game years the result appears to be negative on this -






So in the second test I used one of Tibi's most recent stations.. whereas in this station it has 4 way bus switches . I than plopped this station in the same location / intersection.. And than again ran another test several years in the effort to see if bus would switch from the crossing road..
In this case the result does appear to be positive on this -




So it would appear if you want to get bus switching from peds from a crossing road, that 4- way switches would be required for this at a station

[brian51]

ESURE / U - Rail series ..


By request, you guys asked me for some U rail work done in my older cities, so i have been looking for some of that and found my first pics to make up this first posting which may turn into a series of postings on U _ rail, depending on interest and what you guys want to see ..

This first post demonstrates the use of the "little - known " Esure tunnel mod",   which was first uploaded in 2009 -

So read this posting first so you can find out what ESURE does exactly :

http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?...#msg233521

So my first pic than shows the start of U rail than into ESURE tunnel mode..
You see the U rail ramp, a couple of straight U- rail pieces are next ( the road pieces with the light poles on them ).. and than ESURE starts at the end where the 2 roads meet..and than takes you under the RHW-8.




The Esure special u- rail tunnel in this second pic shows up as a yellow subway arrow,  which you see crossing under the RHW-8 before emerging into another similar set up of a couple U rail straight pieces before moving back above ground thru the rail ramp ..




Than the final pic shows you a bit different angel of some of the traffic flows from this u rail system -
All esure pieces are now available ( as ESURE -2).. at the end of the MISC transit menu in game -

[brian51]

hey everyone

I am seriously thinking about discontinuing my Cj due to lack of any comments or replies..
It is going on 3 weeks now since there has been any activity here, other than my own last 2 postings..
I am somewhat surprised about this, since this has been the case even with people making specific request of me like my last posting showing some of my U - Rail in the city..

But I cant see taking up my time creating these updates, if noone is really interested in them ..
However , I will wait a day or so to see if anything changes here..

thanks, Brian

[SpookyZalost]

Oh cool urail can do crossovers? nam and it's extensions has come a long way since I last used it

[pierreh]

Brian, the reason why I didn't comment earlier on your latest posting about U-rail and ESURE, is that, in spite of my efforts, Gmail insists on placing the notifications from Makestation in Spam. So I don't see them in my Inbox and I am not aware that there was a posting in your CJ, or also, for that matter, in mine.

I'll look at your latest post about U-rail and I'll comment. I would be very disappointed if you discontinued your CJ: where could we then discuss further traffic, pathing, the simulator, etc? (I don't think that Discord would be the proper tool for that).

[SpookyZalost]

no... I agree with you Pierreh, I rather enjoy both of your City Journals, they're always so informative and it would be a shame if either of them ceased to be simply due to a lack of instant response... makestation isn't as active as it could be yet so some delay is expected, hell I really only check it a couple times a day between other stuff going on.

[brian51]

thanks for your postings guys !

I have decided i will continue my CJ here

I just wanted to be sure there was still some interest for it here after such a lull in replies as almost 3 weeks time..

I would do a longer posting but I am having some issues with my home a/c unit today..

so more later from me

[SpookyZalost]

It's not just your cj b rian, the sites been in a bit of a lull