[pierreh]

Here is a continuation of the discussion about commuting and the use of subways in the Talaran cluster of cities. A goo example is provided by the city of Marlande. This is a global view of the city:



The corresponding zone view is as follows:



The very large commercial area occupies the center of the city are and extends to the south. The largest residential area is on the northeastern side, separated from the commercial zone by a relatively narrow river.

This disposition imposes crossings of the river to link the northeastern residential area to the commercial area. This is achieved by 3 avenue bridges, 1 road bridge, 1 railway bridge and 8 subway tunnels.

The car load on the avenue and road bridges is quite light; the use of buses is extremely low and restricted to the road bridge:



The railway line is used for local commuting: it links a train station in the middle of the residential area, to the main train station in the center of the commercial area:



The bulk of the commuting between the residential and commercial areas is done by the GLR/subway network. The GLR is predominant in the residential area, there are are GLR-to-subway transitions close to the river, and the river is crossed by 8 subway tunnels that continue into the commercial area:



The respective usage figures in those tunnels (all figures are for the morning commute) are as follows:



The very large usage of the subways, relatively to the very limited usage of the avenue and road bridges, is caused by the use of the 'Ultra' variant of the traffic simulator, that variant favorises the use of public transportation - probably to an extreme degree as shown by the above pictures and figures. Since the northeastern residential area is entirely built, the number of commuters crossing the river is expected to remain quite stable. There remains a limited amount of space for residential housing in the southwestern part of the city.

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In general I am not too happy with the implementation of airports in the game, so that I tend to place one airport in each city and then more or less forget about it. Out of curiosity I checked the airport in Marlande and found out that it isn't used at all:



I can't explain why this is so; if someone has an idea or a tip I'll be quite obliged.