Congestion Data View

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I am using the latest version of NAM with the medium capacity settings using the most current traffic controller.  I am assuming that this includes the latest traffic volume data plugin. I have been reading about congestion and how the traffic simulation works.  On two consecutive NRD-4 sections of road the traffic data view displays it red.  The query tool shows that the volume for those two stretches are pedestrian 17, car 1880, and bus 539 and car 1880 and bus 539.  The first tile shows the sims walking to their jobs in a neighboring city.

I had been under the impression that on the medium setting that the NRD-4 road would need to reach 5000 before it began to show congestion.  Is this assumption incorrect?  If it is not, then is the traffic data map incorrect in its color coding.  I have been using NAM for years and have always noticed this, but I have not decided to ask about it until today.

[APSMS]

Hi. Does your Traffic Volume Data View have the capacities (Road) in parentheses to the right of the color legend?

If this is not the case, then the traffic simulator settings are being overridden for some reason, like a conflicting plugin. I would recommend two things, since i recently had this problem (that is, the NAM custom data view wasn't working for me).

Reinstall the NAM. It's relatively painless.

if that doesn't work, go to the Network Addon Mod folder, and copy the file NetworkAddonMod_Volume_Data_View_Z_etc. (etc. is your current Simulator capacity settings) and put it in first your plugins folder sans folder (the My Documents one, and a copy because duplicates of this don't affect anything), and then perhaps make a separate folder that loads after z___NAM (the z___RVT Modds works fine, if perchance you already have Rivit's Railway Upgrade Mod).

Really anything with z followed by 3 underscores (or more) and is alphabetically after N.

A z___zLoadLast folder is always handy to keep around.

At any rate, copying the Data View into my root plugins seemed to do the trick. Not sure what plugin I have that's overriding it, but for now it works, and I can figure out the root cause later (Rivit's Datanode works really well, but I haven't gotten the hang of it, and until you do navigating it can be a little clunky).

[Tarkus]

If this is indeed a Congestion View issue and not a Volume View issue, out of curiosity, did you check both the Morning Commute and Evening Commute options on the Route Query Tool? 

That said, based on experience, I'd say it's quite likely they'd both give you a nearly identical volume reading, which would put the total volume for the congestion calculations at 4838, as the NAM Traffic Simulator does count Bus traffic.  Even still, 4838 is less than the 5000 volume at which the Congestion View should start to turn a little bit yellow with the Medium version of the simulator on an NRD-4.  Since the NRD-4 is a network with the capacity-boosting Distilled Intersection Paths (DIPs), which cause the simulator to treat the network as if it is an intersection for capacity calculation purposes, the slowdown that results on tiles leading up to intersections doesn't occur, so that can't be a viable explanation here, either.

Based on the way the Traffic Simulator Exemplar interacts with the Congestion View, the last color on the spectrum (bright red by default) always occurs when the congestion has knocked the network speed down to 30% of catalog, and the NAM Simulator is set to reach that point once 250% of capacity is reached.  In theory, the NRD-4 shouldn't turn red until the volume hits 12500 (assuming an even Morning/Evening split, 6250 each commute cycle) in this case.

I would check to ensure that you do indeed have NetworkAddonMod_Traffic_Plugin_Z_Medium.dat installed in your Documents\SimCity 4 Plugins\Network Addon Mod folder.  The only flavor of simulator that has a low enough capacity to give these readings would be the Classic simulator, which gives the NRD-4 a capacity of 1500 (750 split).  The other possibility is that you may have inadvertently installed a conflicting traffic simulator plugin with lower values.  The most likely possibilities there would be an outdated pre-NAM simulator, or something such as the PEG-SPAM Traffic Plugin or hailman's Variable Route Buses.  All of those use Maxis capacity settings and would put the NRD-4 capacity at 700, which would definitely peg the Congestion View all the way to the red.

Those conflicting plugins should be removed if you follow APSMS's advice and re-install the NAM.  I would make sure that you do a Custom Installation and check the option at the top to run BSC Cleanitol.

-Alex

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I took the advice and reinstalled NAM and made sure t run the Cleanatol.  When I ran the Cleanatol it actually reverted the data view to the original Maxis one.  I ran the installer again without the Cleanatol this time since it had already removed files when I ran it the first time.  This rerun restored the data view to where I had started.  I then tried placing copies of the files NetworkAddonMod_Traffic_Plugin_Z_Medium.dat, NetworkAddonMod_Volume_Data_View_Z_Medium.dat, and NetworkAddonMod_Zone_Data_View.dat in a folder in my plugins root.

I did not find any of the files mentioned that might cause a conflict.  I am attaching two screen captures.  One of the data view which shows that the maximum capacity for my roads is 2000.  I also am attaching a screen capture of my traffic simulator screen.  I was not sure what was met by custom data view.

[Tarkus]

With respect to the Traffic Volume DataView (the version the NAM includes is what APSMS meant by "custom data view"), the numbers that are shown there are purposely half of the catalog capacity of the Road, because they're only applying to one commute period.  The 2000 value for 100% is correct in this case, since 2000 for morning and 2000 for evening would add up to 4000.  What isn't correct, however, is the fact that your volume of 2419 (Car+Bus) for the commute period is showing up red, when it should be showing up somewhere in the yellow spectrum (around 120%).

I'm actually running the Medium Capacity simulator with its corresponding DataView at the moment on a clean install, and happen to have a One-Way Road intersection that's at right around 2400 for the morning commute period.  It is showing up yellow as intended.  Based on how disconnected your road layout looks on the DataView screenshot you provided (notice the pixel chunks that look like blank terrain), it looks as if there may be some communication lag between the simulator and the DataView, or there's something really weird with your DataView installation, such that you have the correct LTEXTs for Medium, but the rest of the DataView is somehow set up to a lower capacity.

One other question I have for you--I'm running it on Windows and notice that my font in the TSCT looks quite different from yours.  Are you by chance on a Mac?  There had at one point been some reports of some really strange things happening with the colors in the Traffic DataViews after people started running the Universal Binary versions more regularly.

-Alex

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I am running the Windows versions of SimCity on a Mac using Wineskin.  I switched over once they abandoned the PowerPC support.  I realize that they have since come out with another Mac version, but I heard it was problematic.  The blank pixels in the road are where there are RTMT stations.  I recently realized that the version I had installed of that was the low version, but I have been slowly replopping those stations.  I noticed a few years ago that the missing pixels are the RTMT stations.  I will have to examine whether replopping a station will make the data view solid.  I have been replopping the stations as I noticed congestion around those tiles.  I will also reexamine road traffic data views for further color coding errors.

The information regarding the morning and evening commute times needing to be combined was helpful to learn.

Thanks to both of you for responding with suggestions and additional information.

[z]

The reason that there are missing pixels where the RTMT stations are is that this is a network view, and the RTMT stations are lots and not part of the network.