Transit Enabling for Pedestrians

[evarburg]

I already explored this last year and the technical answer made me prudently desist. This year, I feel (imprudently) a bit more ready to tackle it and want to try it for my new set of modular Parks Addons (1x1s & 1x2s). So I took GRY 1x1 DiagonalPedestrian plazas as a template, since the accompanying picts in the download seem to indicate they do work for pedestrian transit. I changed the texture, I changed the lotting, and I changed my building for the GRY one, as it has the relevant properties (transit switch etc.). I did not change the exemplar TGI. (Should I have ?)

My would-be TE lots show up in the Alternate Transport Menu --O...K... I guess ; and they plop without a hitch.  But either the TEing does not work or I don't know how to test for ped T.enabling [very likely ; I just put some IND and COM on one side of a road, RES on a street 6 tiles down, with the relevant utilities, no other mean of communication between the two but the theoretically TE'd parks,, and let it rip].

Could someone (1) tell me what I did wrong ? Or, in the highly unlikely possibility that I did not, (2) test at least the attached 1x1 Empty Lot I made to link the various addons just to be sure ? (they are also theoretically TE'D, as I copied GRY building onto them.)

[mgb204]

The basic problem you are going to come up against is an absolute game limitation regarding TE Lots.

First, it is impossible to place two TE lots next to each other such that pedestrians (or other transit), can travel between them. This is absolute, there is no work-around whatsoever and without SC4Fix.dll, you can't even place two such lots in the first place. Which kind of tells us Maxis never intended for that to be possible.

So what can you do? Well you can TE a single lot and Pedestrians could in theory use the lot as a shortcut, provided it's only one lot between two supported networks. That's not hugely advantageous though.

Regarding the test lot you attached, it does work, but it highlights another issue. I placed it between two streets, with Res on one side and some Farms on the other. Even then, it only worked as a shortcut when another potential route (street connection) was also in place. Otherwise it got used briefly before no-job zots started appearing, probably just the simulator working things out.

But this also highlights a more realistic scenario, where this is just another optional route. Since these lots have only Pedestrian transit switches, any sim not already walking will never use them. Of course you wouldn't want to add such extra switches, because then it'll soon become a bizarre transit hub. So even in optimal conditions, sims don't really want to use them, coupled with the restriction of using only one, rather a big issue with a modular set. In essence they aren't really hugely useful.

To really make parks transit enabled, they'd need to be networked pieces similar to Pedmalls. But that is anything but simple, since it require RUL coding to achieve.