transportation network speeds

[rummtata]

Hello my fellow SimCity enthusiasts =)

So far I have been a passive, but nonetheless grateful beneficiary of this community, so let me first express my sincere appreciation for your efforts and creativity to further improve and expand this already amazing simulation game. 

Now to my question. I'm not sure whether I could not find an answer myself because it is too obvious or too difficult, but I'm sure someone here will be able to help me out. I'm looking for a table detailing the relative speeds of all transportation networks included in the NAM.

I know of course that roads are faster than streets, highways are faster than roads and subways are faster than highways, but are avenues faster than roads? Is the RHW slower than the MHW? How do normal trains compare to highways? It would be good to know just how many tiles per second my sims travel, exactly, on each of the available network options. Comparing the automata animations is probably not a very reliable way to answer the question.

Also, while we're at it: Is it possible to mod these speeds resp. why can you only configure capacities with the TSCT, but not speeds?

Eager to hear your insights! 

[GDO29Anagram]

I believe all speeds are equalised throughout the five different traffic simulator versions, but here they are, in kilometres per hour:

- 30 Street
- 50 Road and Avenue
- 75 OWR
- 150 Maxis Highway, Maxis Elevated Highway, and RHW
- 140 Railroad
- 105 Subway
- 115 Elevated Rail (Includes Lightrail)
- 225 Monorail

This is all I know:

The capacities and speeds of both AVE and Road are equalised for the benefit of using the NWM; The vanilla simulator had the capacity of AVE at about four times that of Road, making it too overpowered, especially if you were to build an AVE-6 (a network made from three Roads side-by-side). In other words, under the NAM's traffic simulator, using AVE is no different than using Road in terms of speed, but using two Roads is equivalent to AVE in terms of capacity.

Of all the non-highway and non-rail networks, OWRs are the fastest, but don't see this as an exploit or an incentive to do any sort of manual equalisation; They're this way to reflect their real-life benefits, hence the increased speed and increased capacity.

RHW and MHW are equalised for obvious purposes: So they're treated equally. Yes, there are people still using MHWs, but we (the modders) need it as a bridge-building network. MHWs, however, have a greater capacity than RHW, but only to a certain point (6C, 8S, or if you're making what's called a Multi-RHW is when RHW will exceed MHW in capacity).

Rail is only slightly slower than all three highway networks. Additionally, the speed set for all highway networks (93 mph, for non-metric purposes) is to encourage more highway usage.

It's more or less the same with Subway and Elevated Rail; The capacity of Elevated Rail was recently boosted to encourage more usage.

Monorail... Quite obvious, as with Street.

It is not recommended (ill-advised, I should say) to even tamper with the speeds; It can potentially do harm to your city. It is also not recommended to modify the individual capacities, as the simulator was only meant to work properly at its specific ratio of capacities.

There is another NAM Team Member (Z) who has been doing the bulk of the traffic simulator work, so he knows more than I can ever imagine to comprehend; This thread should have a more in-depth explanation on how the simulator works: http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=10261.0

[rummtata]

Thank you, this information is very helpful indeed

I had already looked at Z's traffic simulator guide, but despite its scope and depth I couldn't find this particular information, which I actually find rather basic. Perhaps you guys could include the speed table in the NAM readme and/or FAQ?

Oh and don't worry, I'm not going to temper with the capacities, I'm still trying to figure out why my sims choose their commute routes the way they do ^^

cheers

[z]

Excellent job of explaining, Ganaram!     You got everything correct.

Oh and don't worry, I'm not going to temper with the capacities, I'm still trying to figure out why my sims choose their commute routes the way they do ^^

This is harder than it may appear to be at first, due to the Congestion vs Speed property documented in the Guide that Ganaram linked to.  In short, what this property means is that the nominal network speed applies only when the network is exactly at 100% of capacity.  As network usage drops, speed rises, to a maximum of 130% of the nominal speed when the network has essentially no traffic.  On the other end of the spectrum, when network usage rises over 100%, the speed of the network drops, reaching a minimum of 30% of nominal speed when the network is at 250% of capacity.  This 30% is hardwired in by Maxis; we can't make it lower.

When you take these variations in speed into account, the Sims' actions become much more understandable.