[pierreh]

This is a continuation of my observations and musings about subway inter-city connections, and more specifically about the triple connection between Arcens and Cherenne, passing thru Deramey.


The first picture in this post shows the zoning in Cherenne. As is the case in other cities, I didn't pay attention to the respective locations of the zones, in order to ensure that inter-city traffic would remain moderate. The Sims in the northern residential areas and in the central western area can find work in the commercial zone; those in the southwest residential area will prefer to look for work at the southern border (border to Deramey):



In Cherenne the 3 subway tunnels originate in the residential zone in the southwest corner of the city. Like other residential areas it is zoned with high density and features several high-rises:



The traffic volume view for mass transit (GLR and subway) in that area looks like this:



The next picture is rotated by 90 degrees to show a section of an avenue where GLR tracks branch off from the center of the avenue to move to the side and enter a subway tunnel - that tunnel becomes the second (middle) inter-city subway connector:



Circled in red is a GLR track layout intended to 'capture' some of the GLR traffic into the subway tunnel, before the traffic circle on the right of the picture where other GLR tracks arrive. So far it doesn't work as well as I would like, that is, it does not divert enough traffic, as can be seen here:



If we look at the paths leading to the busiest of the 3 subway links, we can see that their origins are nearly exclusively in residential buildings in the area. The traffic simulator is sending all those Sims 'on the other side of the border' to find work there:





Now we take a look at the other end of the link, in Arcens. Because of the already mentioned difficulty to get traffic figures to jive, especially in the 3-cities setup illustrated here, the numbers are different, and the first link is saturated. Here are the surface and the subway views of the area:





The second view shows the rather complex array of subway tunnels and GLR tracks with transitions. The middle link terminates at a train station. The rightmost link arrives into a GLR+subway combo station of which all 4 tiles are occupied by tunnels.

The leftmost link, the one that is saturated, ends with a subway-to-GLR transition that is immediately adjacent to a 'grand union' GLR intersection. The GLR tracks going toward the train station are very close to saturation:



This specific arrangement is not satisfying, and should be improved, even in the case where it is possible to reduce the congestion by a better balancing of the loads. Because the area is rather cramped with railway tracks, roads and buildings, making things better there is quite a challenge.