Transit Switch properties for custom lots

[jmelvin]

First, let me apologize for being so brash as to start a new topic. I am doing so because I'm not sure exactly where this would fit. If this is not an appropriate place, could one of the moderators move it to the appropriate place.

I got interested in this subject because of an interest in creating a park-and-ride type of lot (or lots) that could be used near a train station, glr station, bus station, etc. I searched the forums here and other sites for information about the transit switch related properties that can be found in building exemplars. I also used the ilive reader to look at the maxis passenger train station and parking garage plus some of the custom lots that I have downloaded from SC4Devotion and Simtropolis.

I found the following threads to be very thought provoking:

http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=4354.0  (a short thread mostly from April 2008 with videosean and others discussing the tweaking of a few parking lots)

http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=4272.0 (jplumbley's Transit Switch Entry Cost Discussion Thread)

http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=4585.0 (a thread started by Onion Strider on the topic: Transit problems - Capacity, Inside <==> outside, Transit Switch Cost)

http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=2763.0 (mott's thread on the topic: TE Lots, Transit Switches, and You)

I decided to do a little experimenting. I started a new city (256 tiles x 256 tiles). (FYI - I have CAM loaded with the promote walking addon along with the latest NAM. My plugins folder has about 1.84GB of files from various sources so this isn't the best of test beds.) I zoned three separate areas (residential, commercial, and industrial) in my city with the areas interconnected with regular rail that made a circular loop around the areas. I used the 2x6 marrast train stations for the commercial and industrial areas. I also placed a freight station at the industrial area so the industry could ship its freight without a complaint (I made sure that the main track loop had an off-shoot spur that connected to the region on one side. This was the only inter-city connection.) Each of the areas had its own power and I didn't worry about education/health/police/fire. I started with the maxis train station at the residential area and let my city develop to a rough population of 5000. I made sure that the commercial and industrial areas had enough jobs so there was no unemployment. I then bulldozed the train station at the residential area and waited until all the homes showed a 'no job' zot and then saved the city. I was now ready to run my tests.

I had prepared two custom lots for use during my testing using Lot Editor, ilive reader, and SC4TOOL. One was a passenger rail station based on the maxis passenger rail station(3d x 2 w). I had set the transit switch capacity to 2000 with a cost of 0. I also had transit switches set for: out-to-in ped/ped, in-to-out ped/ped, out-to-in rail/ped, and in-to-out ped/rail. All four of these switches were set for north/east/south/west. The other lot was jeronij's 3x2 parking lot from his JRN Urban Parking Set that I had downloaded quite some time ago from Simtropolis. I had modified this lot so the transit switch entry cost was .3 with a capacity of 1500. I also had the transit switches set for out-to-in ped/ped, in-to-out ped/ped, out-to-in car/ped. But this lot had all the transit switches set for south only. With all residences showing a 'no-job' zot and 0 traffic on my rail line, I placed the custom rail station so a street from my residential area ran along the south side and my train tracks ran along the north side. I then turned on rhino speed and waited for my city to stabilize (it took a little over a calendar month for all the 'no-job' zots to disappear). I then used the traffic query tool to verify that all residences had pedestrians going to my train station and riding the train to the commercial and industrial areas. I did note that 4 pedestrians reached the station but didn't board the train. I checked my lot later with the ilive reader and found that it had a Demand Created property showing a count of 4 for Job-$ so that makes sense. Still on rhino speed, I placed my custom parking lot so the road ran along the south side. I made sure that the parking lot was close to but did not touch the train station and waited thru another calendar month for things to stabilize. When I now checked with the traffic query tool, I found that most residents that were more than 25 tiles from the train station were now driving to the parking lot, entering from the south as expected, then exiting to the south as pedestrians and walking to the train station. I checked the evening commute and saw that this group followed the reverse path. Most residents that lived closer than 25 tiles walked directly to and from the train station for the morning/evening commutes. I stopped everything and exited to the region without saving.

I re-entered my city back at the point with all residences showing the 'no-job' zot. I placed the customized rail station as before, started rhino speed and waited for my residents to all start walking to the train station. Once that was set, I placed my parking lot so the base was toward a street along the right (i.e., the lot was rotated 1/4 turn counterclockwise. The new south side of the lot did along its 3 tile length). I then waited over 3 calendar months and never saw the lot get any use. I bulldozed the lot and placed a new parking lot so the base was toward a street along the left (i.e., lot rotated 1/4 turn clockwise). This lot also didn't get any use over a period of a few months. I bulldozed this lot and placed a parking lot so the base was toward a street along the right again and the new south side also was along a street. The new lot never got used. I was trying these configurations to see what effect the south only setting for the transit switches would do. I stopped everything and exited SC4 without saving to do some reconfiguration of my parking lot.

It should be noted at this time that my parking lot worked with cars in/peds out for the morning commute and peds in/cars out for the evening commute. even though I did not have a transit switch for in-to-out peds/cars. I had used that set-up for this test because I had noted that configuration for the maxis parking garage. It seems that the internal game code does not need this transit switch to get the evening commute to work.

I reconfigured my parking lot by using SC4TOOL to add the in-to-out peds/cars transit switch. I also changed things so all four transit switches were set for N/E/S/W. I started SC4 again and opened my city. Yep, all residences were showing 'no-job' zots. I placed my custom passenger train station as before, turned on rhino speed and waited thru the calendar month to get all my residents back to work. Everybody seemed glad to get off of unemployment. I placed my modified parking lot again with a street along its base to the south and waited for the residents that didn't like a long walk to the train station to get settled in using the parking lot again. I bulldozed the parking lot and got every body back to walking to the train station. I tried several configurations with the parking lot using variations of streets on one side only to streets on two, three, or all four sides. It seemed that the same group of residents would  find the parking lot and drive to it and then walk to the train station. I was spot checking several homes during this experiment and sometimes found a home where some occupants drove to the parking lot while other residents of the same home walked to the train station for a given placement. With the N/E/S/W setting for the transit switches my parking lot is much more versatile than with S only settings. I stopped everything and exited SC4 without saving for another modification of my parking lot.

This time I decided to use SC4Tool to transit enable some tiles on my lot. I know that this is against mott's advice from his thread as referenced above but I was doing it as a matter of research. I transit enabled an inverted U within my lot (I think someone referred to this as network enabling where the lot is configured so a network actually enters the lot as opposed to transit enabling where a network doesn't enter the lot but the transit switch property is used in a building exemplar). I then rechecked the transit switch settings and saw that I needed to redo them to get back to the out-to-in ped/ped, in-to-out ped/ped, out-to-in car/ped, in-to-out ped/car setup I wanted with all switches set for N/E/S/W. I saved my lot closed SC4TOOL and restarted SC4. I opened my city to find all of my residents unemployed again. I placed my custom train station, went to rhino speed, and waited for everyone to start walking to the train station again over the next calendar month. I placed my parking lot again and didn't have to worry about the placement with the N/E/S/W settings of the transit switches. I did pick my placement though so I could test another option during this set-up. My parking lot was placed so the base was along a road on its south side and there were two empty tiles separating it from my train station. Sure enough most of the residents more than 25 tiles from the train station started driving to the lot and then walked out of the lot to the south and around to my train station. I was spot checking things with the traffic when I noticed something strange. I had placed my train station so its long side up against the track with the base of the lot to the right. I had a segment of road coming up to the track along that base and stopping without crossing the track. This gave me a short section of road that would only have traffic for the train station. All of the other times I had looked at this section of road had only had pedestrian traffic but on this spot check I found some car traffic. That was something that I would not have suspected since the transit switches for the train station were set for pedestrians and rail only. While I was looking to see where the car traffic was coming from, it disappeared. Then awhile later it was back again. It took a while but I finally found a home where some of the residents decided to walk to the parking lot and enter the lower left tile from the south. They "stole" or "borrowed" a car or cars and drove to the train station to work (i.e., they DID NOT board the train). I checked the evening commute and found they took the car or cars back to the parking lot and then walked home. This could be anywhere from 1 to 4 residents of that home.  I watched this phenomenon over a couple of game years. During that time I bulldozed my parking lot, waited for everyone to start walking back to the train station from all houses. and then placed my parking lot again. Every once in a while I would spot cars driving to the train station and always could attribute it to someone coming to work at the station via car. Sometimes residents drove directly from their home to the station to work and sometimes I would find residents walking to the parking lot to get a car to drive to the station to work there. It wasn't always the same home or lot position where some residents would walk to the parking lot to get a car to drive over to the train station. Sometimes this was from a Maxis residential, other times from a custom residential. Note that this is consistent with a transit switch for in-to-out peds/car.  (Note: I played with this one for quite a bit. It only seems to occur if the parking lot is configured so a network actually enters the lot. I have never seen this when my parking lot had the transit switch property without a network coming into the lot. I have noticed this 'stolen car' anomaly before with other lots that I have downloaded. I just never took the time to pin it down to a given loot and look at the lot settings with SC4TOOL or the ilive reader. This may give mott more ammunition for his recommendation that people use network enabling only if it is really needed. I think this may need some more testing by others to verify my report of this type of anomaly. This could just be something that will only show up with the configuration that I am using.)

I stopped and exiting without saving and modified my parking lot using SC4TOOL to remove the road network that I had set up within my lot. I then clicked on the transport switch tab to check my transit switch settings and found that they had all been deleted (that actually makes sense for SC4TOOL to do that when you delete the interior network items like that). I added the transit switches again and set entry cost and capacity again so I had things set for all switches set at N/E/S/W. I had my four switches of out-to-in ped/ped, in-to-out ped/ped, out-to-in car/ped, in-to-out ped/car. I saved my file, quit SC4TOOL and restarted SC4. I opened my city, placed my train station like the last setup, started rhino mode and then waited for all residents to come off of unemployment. Yep, everyone was back to walking to my train station. I watched this set-up for a while and did see someone decide to drive directly to the train station to go to work there. Please note that I had not placed my parking lot yet. (I found the home associated with the cars into the train station. When I used the traffic query on that specific house, I could see cars to the train station but no associated peds getting on the train so it was just someone driving to work at the train station itself.) I placed my parking lot again so the base was to the south with a road running along that side and there were a couple of blank tiles separating my parking lot and my train station. I waited for things to stabilize again and then placed Ped Mall tiles between my parking lot and my train station and then watched things for a while. It took several SIM calendar months for the pedestrian traffic to migrate from the road connections between the parking lot and the railroad station but eventually it all ended up via the Ped Mall tiles which had a shorter path. Now most of the residents more than 25 tiles away from the train station drove to the parking lot and then walked to the train station via the Ped Mall tiles with the evening commute over the reverse of this path.

I bulldozed the Ped Mall tiles and my parking lot and waited thru the calendar month to get everyone back to walking directly to the train station. This time I placed my parking lot several tiles to the west of my station and let things stabilize so the residents that wanted to use the parking lot were doing so. I now placed a 2nd parking lot between the first one and the train station so none of these lots touched each other. I watched for several calendar months and eventually the left-most parking lot was down to 0 usage with all residents that wanted to use a parking lot using the 2nd one that had been placed in closer proximity of the train station. This meant for a little farther driving distance with a shorter walk to the train station which would be consistent with a slightly quicker trip to work under best conditions.

This concludes this set of experiments. I will note a few of the things I learned here:

    - I did not need matching transit switches for out-to-in car/ped and in-to-out ped/car for my parking lot to function properly for morning and evening commutes.

    - having the in-to-out ped/car transit switch with a parking lot set-up to actually have a network enter the lot (road in my case) led to what I have called the "stolen car" anomaly as noted in my write-up. (EDIT: Further testing shows this to be wrong. You can get the "stolen car" anomaly on lots that have the in-to-out ped/car transit switch even on non-network enabled lots - see a post below on that follow-up testing.)

    - you can use Ped Malls for routing pedestrian traffic directly between transport related lots but it takes several SIM months to see the full effect of this set-up.

    - I had to remove the out-to-in car/ped transit switch from my passenger rail station to get my SIMs to use a close by parking lot. (I learned this while I was getting to a known starting point for these tests. With that transit switch on my passenger rail station the sims wanted to park there for their rail commutes to and from work instead of using a close by parking lot.)

    - care must be used when trying to limit the directions associated with a transit switch, your lot will need some extensive testing to ensure that it can be placed in various configurations relative to nearby roads - my parking lot had very limited placement options when I used a south only option for the transit switches. (Note: one of the threads I referenced above had some comments about limiting the transit switch directions for really big lots such as Il Tonsko's (?) large railroad stations. My experiments may offer some ideas for other testing along those lines.)

    - I saw that SIMs DO care about the placement of groupings of transport related lots - my SIMs abandoned one parking lot to use a parking lot closer to the train station.

    - Sometime during my playing around I had a combination of parking lot and train station where some SIMs walked directly to the train station in the morning while others drove to the parking lot then walked to the train station but for the evening commute everyone walked home directly from the train station. I had this happen on more than just the one occasion. I didn't think to stop my game right then and look at the train station and parking lot that I was using at the time with the ilive reader and/or SC4TOOL. I'm not sure which parking lot and train station I was using at the time. That is what got me into looking at the pairing of an out-to-in car/ped transit switch with an in-to-out ped/car switch.

    - A couple of times while I was repositioning my railroad station, I noticed my rail traffic decided to travel counterclockwise around my closed loop instead of clockwise. One time I saw some traffic going clockwise and other traffic going counterclockwise. I didn't really research that at the time but looking back at my test city I see that the industrial station sits very close to halfway around my rail loop from my residential area. It wouldn't take much shifting east or west with my residential train station to make the counterclockwise trip shorter than the clockwise trip and the pathfinding would pick the shorter route for the rail trip between my residential station and the station at the industrial area. My residential area was near the north edge of my city with the commercial area along the easter side and the industrial area centered in the south. My closed loop rail line circled all of that. I can see a real need to actively look at all the possible routes/networks you set up within and between cities and working to control who goes where and what networks they use. That has probably been said before by many people in many different ways.

I also leave it to readers to draw some of their own conclusions from the observations I have noted in this write-up.

I am guessing from reading RippleJet's CAM Manual that the combination that I am using with the CAM and the promote-walking add-on possibly in conjunction with the latest NAM is the determining factor for which SIMS decide to walk directly to the train station versus drive to the parking lot. In my case I noticed that most residents more that 25 tiles away from the train station (counting the walking path shone with the traffic query tool) decided to drive to the parking lot. I am also guessing that removing the promote-walking add-on would change that 25 tile split.

I have not found a really good description of the use of the transport switch properties for the various types of transport lots (glr, passenger train, freight train, elevated rail, subway, parking lots/garages, bus stops, etc.) and my experiments were just a little scratch on the surface of that itch. I DO know that I will be taking a lot closer look at lots that I have downloaded in the past and those I will be downloading in the future.

I apologize if I have misused someone's username or misinterpreted someone's comments from another post. I'm also not sure if I referenced the links to other threads properly so people can just clink on the link rather than having to cut and paste if they want to see the referenced thread for themselves. (Note: I tried the preview button before posting this and it looks like I have at least referenced the links properly.)

If anyone has questions about my test and/or this write-up, feel free to ask. I do not check this site everyday but I will try to watch more closely during the next week so I don't leave someone hanging. I will try to answer or at least tell you if I don't the answer to your question. But let me say right now that I am no expert on the subject of transport switch properties or ANY aspect of SC4. I am a real novice.

[jplumbley]

Yay!! Another person with a long comprehensive post for me to read on this subject... Sorry though it is 4am here and I am not able to comprehend your post at this moment and i will have to read it later.

[RippleJet]

jmelvin, I've read this post of yours, as well as the one you posted in the thread about parking lots a couple of days ago, with great interest.
Since I'm on vacation I wasn't able to reply to your other post, but this time I just have to respond!

The most interesting thing for me is the fact that only morning commute needs to be enabled with the transit switches.
It would be interesting to have some further testing on that and whether that only applies to the ped/car switches.

However, I'm a little dubious about your finding about the lot having to be network enabled for the car stealing to work.
Considering the transit switches it's pretty clear that out-to-in ped/ped in combination with in-to-out ped/car will lead to "car stealing".

[jmelvin]

This is in regards to RippleJet's comment:

However, I'm a little dubious about your finding about the lot having to be network enabled for the car stealing to work.
Considering the transit switches it's pretty clear that out-to-in ped/ped in combination with in-to-out ped/car will lead to "car stealing".

That same thing surprised me too. I was just reporting my observations of what went on during my experiment. I did repeat that part multiple times with and without the network enabled lot letting the simulation run for over a calendar year each time. The only time I ever noticed the car stealing was when my parking lot was network enabled.

I should also clarify that I had only 3 lots with jobs (i.e., a Demand Created property) available by road connection at my residential area. These were my power transformer which was always in the northwest corner of my residential area, my custom parking lot which I was always placing between the farthest northern road of the residential area and the outer rail track loop, and my custom train station which I was always placing farther to the right of the parking lot. By that time I was placing the train station on its own dead end street that didn't cross the tracks. I needed that short section of street so I could easily watch for any SIMs that ending up at the train station in a car.

I will experiment some more, possibly adding a small commercial area available to the residential area by road but across the tracks. That should make more jobs available to my scenario for any SIMs that want to steal a car.

[jplumbley]

This definately is a very interesting find.  I always thought that you were required to have pairings for the Traffic Switching for morning and evening.  But, if indeed you are right, that means Ped/Car in-to-out should never be used.  It will create the possibility that someone will "car steal".

I have seen "car stealing" before in TE Lots.  I cannot tell you whether it was Network Enabled or not, but, it was during my personal testing of the simulators.  I had created a City with Industry on the north edge of a large city tile and the Residential on the south side, with approximately 450 tiles inbetween.  I was testing to see what happened when Sims hit the "virtual capacity limit" for a network with no other options of travel, then to see what happened when there was other options added.  Anyways, when I did this one of the "options" I added was a MAXIS Train Station with a rail.  I noticed that in the morning commute the Sims overloaded the rail line in the morning commute and the because it was "over congested" the Sims would walk to the Train Station and switch to a non-existent car and drive the rest of the way home.  I didnt have just one or two sims doing it, I had approximately 10% of my 50,000 sim population doing it.  It was interesting nonetheless.

Although I noticed this issue, I never did think to investigate.  Im wondering with your testing if there is ever any need what-so-ever to have a TE Lot have a ***/Car in-to-out Traffic Switch.  Because in any case that there is that possibility it creates the possibility that any MT type could create a "car stealing" situation.

[smoncrie]

I remember playing with transit lots years ago and making a similar discovery to jmelvin's, and I agree that having both Car out-to-in and Car in-to-out in the same lot is not realistic.

Car in-to-out does have a use:  it has been used in a taxi stand lot.   Instead of stealing a car, the interpretation was that they took a taxi!

It has been long enough for me to be vague about the details, but I remember a restriction that, at a given time of day, traffic could not both enter and leave the same side of the same tile in a transit enabled lot. (I assume that this prevents routing loops) I suspect that this is why jmelvin's parking lots did not work when restricted to south only and rotated ¼ turn.  It might be interesting to see if that parking lot works when rotated, if one uses one-way roads and/or ped malls to make to make the cars and the pedestrians access the parking lot through different tiles.

[jmelvin]

Here is an update with some further testing.

RippleJet was correct with his assumption that car stealing would occur with a transit enabled lot that was not configured to have a network enter the lot. I configured my parking lot so the following transit switches were set: out-to-in ped/ped, in-to-out ped/ped, out-to-in car/ped, and in-to-out ped/car. After getting all of my sims back to work and using the train station. I placed the parking lot and then drug a road a short distance across my tracks at my residential are and added a very small commercial zone to provide more job opportunities available by car. Very soon after the commercial zone got some buildings, several larcenous SIMs walked to the parking lot and stole a car to go to work at the new commercial area. After things stabilized, I noticed that most of the car traffic to that side of the tracks was associated with SIMs that were stealing cars.

I'll try to go back to edit my original post to note that the car stealing is NOT associated with a lot being network enabled. (I haven't tried to edit an earlier post so I'm not quite sure how that works.)

I did some further testing regarding whether you need to have transit switch entries to reflect the directions of the evening commute. I decided to work with a passenger train station that network enabled with a road entering and exiting the lot in an inverted U. I set the transfer switches for out-to-in ped/ped, in-to-out ped/ped, and in-to-out ped/rail. All my SIMs were walking to and using the station a little over a calendar month after placing the train station. Both morning and evening commute looked as expected.

I stopped everything and quit SC4 to reconfigure my passenger station again. This time I set the transfer switches as: out-to-in car/ped and in-to-out ped/rail. (Note: this is for a lot the is network enabled for a road but sits adjacent to a railroad track for the rail traffic to work.) I started up my city and placed this lot so it was turned 1/4 turn clockwise with a short dead-end road along the new west side of the lot and the train track along the length of the new north side of my station. About a month after I went to Rhino mode everyone was back to work. Everyone drove to the station, walked across the station, and got on the train.The evening commute had everyone reverse there path. My short dead end street did get rather congested with 1750+ cars on each commute.

I stopped everything and quit SC4 to reconfigure my station again. I set the transit switches as: out-to-in ped/rail, out-to-in car/ped, and in-to-out ped/rail. I got a strange result with this configuration. After placing the station it took roughly a calendar month for all of the homes to loose the no-job zot. That I expected. But, as I monitored with the traffic query tool the only pedestrian traffic that headed to my station were SIMs that got jobs at the station. Over the next couple of calendar months, I noticed that most of the homes that were closer than 25 tiles to my station cycled back to 'no-job' zots. It seems that the SIMs that prefer to walk to the station would rather stay unemployed for this particular setup.

On the next reconfiguration, I changed the first transfer switch to out-to-in ped/ped and left the other two (out-to-in car/ped and in-to-out ped/rail) alone. This gave the same results as the last setup.

I did another reconfiguration and added the in-to-out ped/ped transfer switch to my station. This time everyone got rehired. Those who wanted to walk to the station could make it onto the train and those who preferred to drive were just as happy.

I don't have anything in my notes that I tried a rail station with out-to-in ped/ped with in-out ped/rail. I'll have to try that to see if that will work for a pedestrian use only station.

I see that smoncrie commented:

It has been long enough for me to be vague about the details, but I remember a restriction that, at a given time of day, traffic could not both enter and leave the same side of the same tile in a transit enabled lot. (I assume that this prevents routing loops) I suspect that this is why jmelvin's parking lots did not work when restricted to south only and rotated ¼ turn.  It might be interesting to see if that parking lot works when rotated, if one uses one-way roads and/or ped malls to make to make the cars and the pedestrians access the parking lot through different tiles.

Looking back at my notes I do see that I have something relative to that. I don't think I mentioned this in my original post. At one time I had my parking lot configured with the transit switches set for out-to-in car/ped, out-to-in ped/ped, and in-to-out ped/ped with all three set for S & E. I tried placing the lot so it was turned 1/4 turn counterclockwise with streets along the new south and east sides. The lot did function with entering from the south and pedestrians exiting to the east. I bulldozed the lot, let all of my traffic shift back directly to the train station, and then placed the lot so it was turned 1/4 turn clockwise with streets again along the new south and east sides. This time all the cars came in from the east and the peds left to the east. I think I was using a parking lot that was transit enabled but not network enabled (that wasn't in my notes). I do remember seeing that all of the traffic was near the lower right corner of my lot.

I also remember that when my out-to-in car/ped and in-to-out ped/ped transfer switches were set to S only and I had placed the lot with a street along its southern edge the cars were entering from the south with the peds exiting to the south. All of the peds actually crossed the street to walk along the south side of the street to get to the train station. The peds that left on the east side of the lot with the S & E configuration didn't have to cross the street on the south on the way to the train station. They just followed the sidewalk along the north edge of that street until they got to the street where I had placed my train station.

Please note that the tests with the S only transit switch and S & E switches were done at about 3 AM and my notes aren't really clear about what I was seeing. I was more concerned with getting my parking lot to work with the train station than the particulars about what the traffic query was really showing about the traffic for that lot. If I find some time I try to go back and play with that some more.

[jmelvin]

Some more testing:

A train station with transit switches set as out-to-in ped/ped and in-to-out ped/rail would not function. I added the in-to-out ped/ped switch and the station would work for pedestrian traffic. I thought I had noticed that before but had to retest. I needed all 3 switches to get pedestrians to use my train station.

I had my parking lot configured with transit switches out-to-in car/ped, out-to-in ped/ped, and in-to-out ped/ped. All were set for N/E/S/W. I placed this lot after my train station was up and the whole residential area was walking to the station to use the train. I placed the lot with no rotation so there were roads along the south and and east sides. The road on the east was a dead end road that had nothing else zoned that could access it. Pretty soon I had sims driving to the parking lot and then walking from there to my train station. The cars all entered the SE tile of my parking lot from the south with the peds out that tile to the road on the east. They crossed the north side of the intersection of that road with the road along the south of my parking lot. They stayed on the north side of that street on their way to the train station. You may ask why all the detail about which side of the streets the SIMS walked but wait until you read what happened later after I reconfigured the parking lot.

Before I configured my parking lot I bulldozed the lot while the game was running and waited until all my SIMs were back to walking from home directly to my train station. I placed the lot again but this time had only the road running along the southern side. After things stabilized again I took another look. This time the cars all entered the SE tile from the south and all the peds headed south out of that tile. they immediately jay-walked to the south side of the street and proceeded along the south side of the street to get to the train station.

Now for some real esoteric xxxxx:

I played a little with a parking with limited directional transit switches. I used the same transit switches but limited the directions on all three to S & W only. I got back into the game and got my train station working. I placed my parking lot with no rotation with a street along the south just like above and got the same result. (Cars into the SE tile from the S, Peds out the SE tile to the S jaywalking then along the south side of the street to my train station.)

I bulldozed the parking lot and got all of the SIMS walking directly to the train station. This time when I placed my parking lot I had the street along the south side that would get my SIMs to the train. I made sure the the parking lot was rotated 1/4 turn CCW. I then placed a dead end street up the east side of the lot and then along the north side (i.e., the base of the lot towards the street to the east). This time all of the car traffic went up that street on the east and turned the corner to head west and then immediately into my parking lot from the N (i.e., into the new NE tile of my lot from the north). The peds then headed N out of that same tile, down the west side of the street that was east of my lot, across the next intersection then turned east to head to my train station along the south side of the street.

I bulldozed the lot again and waited until everyone was walking directly to the train station.I placed my parking lot again with the same orientation (1/4 turn CCW) but this time had only a street along the south and east sides. No one would use the lot. I made sure that I still had rhino speed running and waited through 3 calendar months. I bulldozed the street on the east and added a street along the west that turned the corner to run along the north side past my lot by one blank tile and back south to the street running along the south side of my lot. I don't know why I looped the street like that but I am glad I did. I now had no street along the true base of my lot but that didn't stop my SIMs. After everything stabilized I found that cars from homes situated west of my parking lot were now entering the new SW tile from the west with the associated peds W out of that same tile then along the north side of the street along the south side of my lot and over to the train station. Cars from homes to the east of my lot took that street that was one now one blank tile away from my parking lot. They ended up entering the new NE tile of my parking lot from the N. The associated peds headed N out of that NE tile then down the west side of the street that their cars had traversed they crossed the next intersection and turned east to head to the train station along the south side of the street. I also noted that the people who enter my parking lot to work there entered the new SW tile from the S. (note: the clients of the lot did not cross the lot and you could clearly see the two groupings.)

What I observed with that last test really made my head hurt. I think I better lay off any more testing for awhile. I stopped the run and exited without saving. I did go back and check the configuration of my parking lot. (3 transit switches all set  for S & W access only: out-to-in cars/peds, out-to-in peds/peds, in-to-out ped/ped.) I can't think of any way to explain away the pathfinding result that I observed.

I'm not sure how this would relate to the uses of limited directional transit switches with other transport related lots. But, I would recommend some very detailed testing with various configurations of the networks associated with the given lot.