Crash Course in Public Transportation | Cities: Skylines
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- čas přidán 31. 07. 2024
- Are you mystified by mass transit? Do you wish your cims would get on the bus? Learn what makes transit lines effective and where to put them so your cims will ride instead of drive!
In this video we use the same city from our Crash Course on Traffic: • Crash Course on Traffi...
This video will help you understand how likely cims are to use your public transportation, why some of your transit routes have low ridership, and how easy it is to help your cims transfer between transit lines to get around town.
See more about how I use buses and metros in my cities, as well as good financial management in my series, More Money, Less Traffic:
• Cities: Skylines - Mor...
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Well done Lee, you're a natural trainer, giving clear goals, examples and takeaways - great idea to use the dysfunctional model.
Laurie Brooker thanks! I know I’ve learned more from mistakes than successes...why something works well tends to stick better when you see why another way works poorly.
I was intimidated by transportation options, but after watching this, it doesn’t look that difficult. Thank you for making this video! = )
Glad to have helped! It takes a bit of trial and error at times, but things really work great once you get the knack of it and learn how to plan out your system.
I was screaming the whole video "make a secondary road! Make a secondary road!" because that poor roundabout was begging for an alternative lol
Lol but that’s the earlier video-Crash Course on Traffic 😁
czcams.com/video/luhm3UpULjE/video.html
for this one I wanted to have terrible traffic that forced the cims to drive to work so that they’d take transit once I made it available.
This is the best video I found demonstrating how transits actrually work in cities skylines.
It is important to note that cims WALK A LOT : so it is better to space stops more, use more junctions than crosses or roundabouts, and make some connections shorter on foot than with cars. Also transport hierarchy : walk < bus < metro < train. And with more people on foot : beware of the pedestrian crossings : make briges, tunnels, etc for pedestrians. No need for a bus to cros 4 blocks. While in real life I think people will walk less. Except heavy industry, in Cities Skylines you can make neighborhoods that contains everything in walking distance.
I look forward to each of your videos, Lee! You do a great job and I truly hope you get more subscribers so we can continue to learn from you!
Thank you! I appreciate your kind words!
I feel like I’m watching a Pluralsight video, really good quality guide, 10/10
Callum Maystone not sure I know what that is, but it sounds good lol 👍🏻 thank you! Glad it helped!
I love that your city's name is in Spanish "The Demonstrations" lol
Oscar Salas I think you’re the first person to actually notice this 😂
I thought it was an appropriate name 😁
Great video. It was a great idea to build this type of city to demonstrate the impact of public transport. "Crash course" - you 100% fulfilled the brief.
This is very instructive. Excellent content.
Glad to help! Thanks!
For me, I build my housing estates anchored by transport hubs... Metro-Bus-Monorail...
Sadly most of them don’t want to use the monorail as another alternative to travel in each estate
It keeps puzzling me why it's hard to get my monorails to be used more unless they're the only option. I had to make it so the buses and trams loop away from the monorail stations and back so they have to transfer to them to get to other areas and even then they still never seem to hit capacity.
thank u man!! i appreciate all your work
Awesome! Glad you enjoyed 👍🏻
I hope you'll do a more detailed follow-up to this video one day. It's very clear and informative, but there is so much about public transport that is unknown in the CS community.
People way cims only walk 128units max, but this has been debunked many times. People say cims always choose the fastest travel option, but individual cims seem to have different preverences sometimes taking the car when the metro is clearly faster or visa versa and walking and taking a bus when taking a car directly would be faster. Why do they sometimes prefer slower transit or slower lines over faster ones? What is going on at transfers? Do pocket cars sabotage clever transit systems or not? How does TM:PE effect their choices?
Indeed! I have more videos on this planned for sure. A lot of people struggle with transit, and just don’t seem to get how it works. I will definitely have videos on this 😁
Unfortunatly public transport is sometimes very complicated.....I had a bus line connecting to metro stops and the busline was sooo overcrowed... so I wrote down the number per week and replaced it with a tram.....and now less people used it which makes absolutely no sense ....and im sure the tram was faster than the bus and cost also cant be the issue as it was both free
Yes...I have observed the same. Sometimes I've found that it's useful to remove all traffic using TMPE, and then my public transport numbers suddenly go back up. It's weird.
Thank you, super helpful
Nice! Thanks!
I love that the city is named "Las Demonstraciones"
I love when people notice my Easter eggs 😁
you make the best videos
Thank you
Happy to help!
Could you please do 1 for trains & other transport... but mostly trains plz i struggle with them they cost me so much
I have some more stuff coming soon...both on the livestream and in MMLT 😉
Way i see it, Bus/Tram and Metro’s are the main way to go for fast and dense public transport for the average city: Buses/Trams being used to funnel Cims from your suburbs and peripheral settlements to the Nearest urban centre, and then use the Metro to connect those centres.
Monorails and rail are better for connecting really distant centres or to bring in tourism, and ferries only really work on water based maps, but Blimps, Cable Cars and Helicopters can really serve to complement the main options, but i really wouldn’t recommend using them as your primary transportation.
I haven't dealt much with monorails, but in general I agree...the buses and trams are the local workhorses, with metros for express service, and trains for long distance inter-city and commuter service. I have never thought of blimps or helicopters...or taxis for that matter...as great means of transportation, although on a map with incredibly steep grades, I can definitely see where cable cars could be very useful. I built a city on a such a map and that was my plan...I just have worked on other cities and haven't gotten back to that one. I'll have to work on it someday and show that off sometime!
Oh...and ferries can be extremely practical too depending on the map and traffic patterns!
@@LeeHawkinsPhoto Ferries are definitely a massively useful asset on the island and more complex coastal maps! I never build a port or river town without them
Cable cars can be fun too, and what i tend to do is place them in massive park areas that are mostly remote and mountainous - but they can work well in the midst of a very vertical city too
Blimps are a surprisingly great option, because they not only carry a decent number of passengers (slightly more than a base bus iirc) they can boost education if you enable the relevant policy, which is great
I’ve tried helicopters, and i honestly they don’t seem too great, but that could be my fault and due to poor placement, but taxis are great for leisure and tourism centres from what I’ve seen in my games
All in all, they’ve all got ups and downs (helicopters, blimps and cable cars legitimately!) but i think all of them add flavour and options for any large and busy city!
@@Pintroll300 very cool to hear this! I have to play with these things more...I'm sure at some point a good use case will arise...or at least a fun one :-) thanks for sharing your thoughts!
@@LeeHawkinsPhoto Definitely could be worth an episode or two - maybe an “unorthodox traffic” miniseries?
Either way, it’s great to see series’ and creators covering the important factors and features of Cities Skylines, and i love how your content is structured and presented - hope to see your channel prosper in this uncertain future we’re living in!
@@Pintroll300 yes! Thank you! Me too!
As for your idea on "unorthodox traffic", I feel like I'm already doing that with the way I lay out my cities hahaha! I get soooo many comments (probably from people outside the US) telling me I should use roundabouts and avoid grids lol.
I do think that it would be cool...not to mention lend to a catchy thumbnail...to do a couple of "unorthodox traffic" episodes in the current city I'm building, way down the line. I think it's going to end up fairly sprawly, so maybe a blimp line would be a fun way to get people across town...
Thanks so much for commenting!
I noted you have different metro stations. What are ones you use? Any good multi platform stations?
Mark Knudsen yes and yes 😁 I have another video series I’m working on that will hopefully release next week-it uses custom assets and mods, and one part will spend a lot of time building a metro system. I will have a set of custom assets for this that I will share. I’ll pop it up under your comment once I put it together.
The simplest form of public transportation is sidewalks! How about bike lanes?..????
Thanks for the informative videos
Thank you!
It's true though...because you don't need a bicycle or a DLC to walk 😉
Waiting for your newest videos wich you the best
Awesome! Hopefully we'll have a few over the coming weeks!
pls how you change the bus assets. concrete vehicle. My bus lines totaly crashed no vehicles although bus lines work normaly but no vehicles "ZERO" transporting how to fix it in settings ?
Are you running any mods? If you have TMPE, I would clear all the vehicles and see if that helps. I find that sometimes it's necessary to do that for whatever reason.
I have a very hard time getting more then 10% of my cims onto public trans.
connecting track underground is a real pain in the ass. they just wont align to the right height. any suggestions for metro?
Bottom line-it takes patience and moving the camera around to make sure things are actually connected right. If you check out the video I did in City Planner Plays' Verde Beach (it has Bob Ross on the thumbnail) you can get a feel for a few terrain hacks I use to get grades to look better. They would work just the same for metro as they do for ground & elevated rail, just a whole lot trickier.
Hi,
I noticed on this video and on the More money less traffic series that you usually place your metro stations close to bus stops. Wouldn't it be better if we place metro stations a bit far from bus stops so both systems could work together? They could operate as if parallel systems as I've seen in some real cities. Therefore, Cims that live further west and / or east could also have a public transportation close to their homes.
My second question is if cycling lanes are a good alternative of transportation in this game?
Thank you and keep up the good work.
James Cardoso Good question, though I’m not 100% sure what you mean. I place metros where I need them, and try to place bus stops on both parallel and especially perpendicular lines close to the metro stations so cims can transfer between the two modes. People don’t usually use only one mode of public transport to get where they want to go over a long distance, so it’s important to think of everything as part of a huge system...cims will make several transfers to get around across multiple modes if they need to.
Oh, and I haven’t used bicycle lanes much...but I have built bicycle paths, and those work super well. Cims will definitely bicycle like crazy, so I’d think that bike lanes would get some pretty heavy use.
I drop down my metro stations but i cant connect them.. any idea?
Titomate I’m sorry? You can’t connect them how?
Try dropping down when you are in the subway track tool.
So it's not about "making alternatives" since the AI here will always pick the shortest and fastest method. But make sure "the mass transports reaches everywhere" becuse it means the mass transport actually helps the cims reach their destination?
If the fastest route doesn't depart in time, either because the vehicles are stuck in traffic, or all vehicles are too full to fit more passengers, a cim will choose an alternative route, so they do have some advantage. Ideally you wouldn't want your system getting to that stage though.
@@matthewparker9276 Then they could just walk/bike. I often enabled "encourage biking", use roads with bicycle paths, and even pedestrian highways in my cities for that reason.
Thanks for the feedback btw.
Is there another video with more transport Options?
Yes! I cover buses in the first More Money Less Traffic Series in Part 4: czcams.com/video/5X7kl490Dxk/video.html
And metros as well as cargo trains in Part 5.
On your bus lines I see you only have single stops and not a stop on other side of street for a return. This always confused me. Is it necessary when laying out bus lines to run a line from A to B and return line from B to A? I use the return route method but always question if it's necessary to do so. I see videos that use the single line method and some that say it's imperative to use the return line method.
I am not 100% sure I understand what you’re asking, but in this circumstance the transit lines are too simple to see much beyond very basic simple concepts. Each bus line runs in a circuit, so it’s not as if returns are impossible, they’re just long in some situations. I kept things intentionally simple just so everyone could see that connecting Residential to Industrial/Commercial is the main goal of transit, otherwise it won’t get used.
This is an older video though...I have more coming in the fitte that will explain things more thoroughly. For example, I mention a good zoning pattern to make transportation much more efficient-I get into this in MMLT Series 2 Part 6. In Part 10 or beyond I’ll get much more in-depth on setting up buses and other transit modes.
@@LeeHawkinsPhoto Sorry for the confusion. I meant that when laying out bus lines that at the end of route you loop it around a block and run that route with stops on the opposite side of the street and complete the line at the start point. This places a single bus route with a stop on both sides of the street.
@@mikeb359 the key is to make sure people can get on and off the bus in the same relative area. So you would have a stop on both sides of the street if the bus line passes through the neighborhood without turning around. If you’re where the bus does turn around, though, such as in this case, then it’s completely unnecessary to have a stop on both sides of the street.
@@LeeHawkinsPhoto Thank you! That makes perfect sense. It's so obvious yet I didn't see that. Thanks! Love your videos. Keep up the great work.
I mixed commercial and residential
I always mix them to some degree. Since the hubs can be so noisy I tend to put offices around them, then commercial to act as a noise buffer and have trams and buses loop out into the residential areas.
What about trams? You didn't talk about them at all.
I love trams, personally! But it's part of the SnowFall DLC, which not everyone has. I'll get into this eventually...so many great video ideas, so little time!
Why Not simple change to a Subway round the City?
Edit ok you did 😄
You can also connect the areas with alternativ Normal roads, Mark them and give them no Heavy traffic or and old Town and Set the busroute so that the Busses dont need the interchange /round about. The Busses will use the roads When you put a Stop next to the exit and the entry of These alternatives roads.
Make Sure you dont use Highways cause No Heavy traffic dont work on High Speed roads
“Sims want to really want to ride the bus. They don’t want to ride a car if they don’t want to”
Well, if they are late and still waiting for the bus then they should’ve walked.
It’s the case of time. Time is against you and you have to choose which transportation option saves time.
In my case: I missed my bus and my consequences is wait 20 minutes for another and be late or take 30+ minutes of walking and be late as well.
If I take a car, I’d cut both times in half. That’s just my case and I know everyone else’s case is different.
I’m sure anyone’s experience with public transportation is very different from our cims’...
For a crash course this was really drawn out and I feel like a lot could have been said in far less time. 😕
This is only constructive criticism...not hating on the video. Thank you for sharing.
What!?! 😨 j/k 🤪 It’s an older video...and it wasn’t really scripted, so I understand 😁 check out the newer ones...More Money Less Traffic Series 2 is more fun.
❤❤ 2024🎉
Metro and Walkways kinda feel like cheating. Sims will walk long distances on walkways and it will keep intersections clear. Metro takes away traffic from the streets.
Have you been able to make trains profitable? Especially with Cargo on rails as well.
Public transportation in this game is rarely profitable--as is the case in real life. And cities are made for people, not just cars...so it's not cheating when you make it easy for people to get around without cars.
Cities in North America (and a few other regions of the world) have been redesigned over the past 80+ years or so to cater to cars. If you're from North America, you probably think this is just the way it is, but there are way better ways for people to get around and save from building so many parking lots. Cities are so much more vibrant and efficient when they're not built for everyone to drive everywhere they go.
I feel like Cities: Skylines really allows one to model the real world accurately--people can and do walk when it's convenient, and when it's not, then the game accurately models the traffic jam that automobile-centric cities live with. I wish that more of the US took public transportation seriously enough to make it useful in more than just a handful of major cities. Because when you see how easy things can be with good transit and pedestrian/bicycle infrastructure, it feels like cars are the extremely expensive way to get around, because getting around without them can be so much simpler!
Lee Hawkins
Nah, I’m not riding the transit.
I am not paying for it when I have a car and pay cheap gas. Especially when you missed the bus and have to wait for another bus (bus B for like 20 minutes) or take the gamble and walk for 30 minutes and HOPE you’ve arrive to your destination before Bus B (that you should have waited) showed up to your destination before you do.
So I drive a car because it SAVES ME TIME. I arrive in just under 9 minutes. And that’s my everyday case.
Famously Quote: “Time is against you”
From LA to Las Vegas, LA to Miami, from Las Vegas to Henderson in Nevada, I’m all for train networks. From large to small.
It makes perfect sense than just hours of car drive.
Imagine a nationwide bullet train. The longest straightest rail track, from one end of the US to the other. Get rid of the planes (unless you’re flying to Hawaii or another country)
In the end, to say get rid of cars entirely, id disagree because whether I’m buying groceries from a local market, I’m not taking a bus. I’m not carrying home groceries by bike or even walking home. I’m putting the groceries in the car and drive home.
Again, Time is against you.
And which transport would save me precious time. That’s the whole point of transportation OPTIONS: From point A to B to home in the fastest time.
Again, that’s just my case
@@robert2690 if I might chip in, this is sort of a case where you've got time on your hands and traffic isn't gridlock every 5 minutes. if you were at Rush hour in, let's say, New York, would you prefer to attempt to get through the jam packed roads with your car, or would you prefer to walk?
I'm not saying you are wrong at all, this is a very valid argument you are making. if you're going shopping and need a big haul, sure, take a car. but if you're going to see a friend and the cost in time and money, of public transport is lower then travelling in your car, would you still take your car?
Though I will admit as well, one of the points you raise is how transport isn't free. this is one of the big things for me that turns people away from it. if I pay for a car, why would I take a bus I have to pay to ride anyway?
@@LeeHawkinsPhoto Sorry, but getting around with a personal car is the simplest option in most cases. If you're going to depend on public transportation to get around you're going to have to memorize the routes and schedules of each transportation system and then plan your route and your schedule to mesh with them, minimizing the amount of time you spend getting to and from your destinations. You have to do this for each trip, so you'd better make it worth your while and settle into a fairly invariant daily routine. If you need to carry packages or even larger items your problem gets even more complex because you also have to consider how much you can carry and how much you can bring with you aboard each type of transport. You may not be able to transport as much per trip as you would like and may need to break your purchases across multiple trips or give up on shared transport and hire a taxi.
In contrast, using a personal car is ever so much simpler. You only have to know the road map of your area, there are few time constraints (you may want to avoid certain paths during rush hour); mostly navigation reduces to a 2D problem, and the simpler and more grid-like your city the simpler the 2D problem becomes. Really the only thing that might make using a personal car more complicated is if parking spaces near your home or destinations are scarce, too expensive or already claimed. You can't just put your car in your pocket like the cims do.
Admittedly a personal car is a large expense, and handling that expense presents its own challenges, but the reason cars are as popular as they are is that they do simplify our lives with their convenience. They also simplify the life of the city planner. Planners only have to concern themselves with a single passenger transportation network. Yes, it's rather squanderous of land use, but once you've solved the problem of how to provide access to a place using one mode of transportation, that's it, the problem is solved. You don't have to then go on and re-solve the problem for other modes of transportation as well.
And the thing about other modes of transport in Cities Skylines is that roads are required. City services (police, fire, garbage, medical, hearse) all require roads; other forms of transport will not do. Commerce between industrial and commercial areas also require roads, there are no suitable alternatives. So public transportation always has to be in addition to roads, it can never replace roads. Roads are inherently primary and an unavoidable expense. Adding other forms of transport increases the expense, they can't substitute. The most you can hope to do is to charge high enough fares to recoup most of the added expense, and reduce road use enough to keep it functional after population growth. But you're definitely going to end up with a far more complex and costly transportation system than if you went exclusively with a road network.
dlwatib I recognize the value and utility of a car, believe me...I drive almost everywhere here in Greater Cleveland. But that’s not always because I want to drive-I actually rather wish transit was a more viable option than it is, because what if I want to go into Downtown Cleveland and have brews or cocktails with my friends? Then I either need to wait for the alcohol to work it’s way out, or I need a designated driver. If I have transit, I can drink safely with all of my friends and there are no issues with getting home. Also, if I get disabled or too old to drive, I can rely on transit to get me around rather than having to hire a car or rely on friends and relatives to drive me.
In Greater Cleveland, traffic is pretty easy to deal with everywhere you go. Rush hours are pretty easy here compared to pretty much any major US city. However, when there are baseball or basketball games Downtown, it turns into total gridlock, especially if it coincides with rush hour. The RTA Rapid (light and heavy rail) has its own dedicated right-of-way, so it never has problems moving all those sports fans and workers in and out of the city center. Also, for special events, parking is not widely available, and now costs $30 if you want to park anywhere close. I can buy a 1-day transit pass for my wife and I for less than half of that. We often take advantage of park and rides and use the Rapid to go Downtown-it’s so practical and it really doesn’t take long between trains.
And that’s my other point-transit frequency is a huge part of making a system work. You have it in places like NYC and SF, but you don’t have it on many lines in places like Cleveland or especially Houston. The issue of having dedicated right-of-way for transit is an important one, but to decide that everyone in a dense urban area like Los Angeles should all take advantage of cars and transit should be an afterthought misses the entire issue of how much space all those cars take up when they drive and when they park. Cities: Skylines in its vanilla state does not account for this, as high density isn’t all that densely populated. However, the Realistic Population & Consumption mod changes that up, so you get a much better feel for how cities work with all that density. I think I need to demonstrate that sometime...build a typical American city where many people work in the urban core, driving in from farflung areas of the metro. I can’t model that perfectly in CS, as the maps just are nowhere near large enough to hold a whole major American city, let alone its suburbs, but I can give it a good go. I’d love to take a densely populated place like Los Angeles and give it some respectable rapid transit and see how much the traffic flow improves.
Cars are total liabilities in dense urban areas-because there’s just where to park or drive. This makes solid public transportation absolutely critical to the sustainability and prosperity of such a city. You can only do much with cars. Europe has so many great examples of cities that function so much better when you experience them on foot instead of getting stuck in traffic inside a car.
Sim as in SIMulated person. Cim is not a word bro. Love your videos, but that just bugs me lol
Sim is from SimCity. Cim is from Cities: Skylines, and therefore is the correct spelling. If Colossal Order used “Sim” they would risk a lawsuit from evil Electronic Arts, who bought Maxis many years ago, destroyed SimCity, and made it possible for Cities: Skylines to take over the city builder genre.
Sims*
Captain Solo no, that’s a trademark owned by the makers of SimCity...since this is Cities: Skylines, created by a competing developer, Colossal Order, they are called “cims”...a nod to SimCity’s sims, but without all the inevitable licensing fees/trademark litigation. Electronic Arts deserves nothing for how rotten they’ve treated SimCity over the last 10 or so years.
Best reply ever by Lee.