NAM Traffic Simulator and Data View Help

[lorenz4]

Yes, those are packed streets in high density areas that have a lot of traffic, so I am not surprised by the pollution. Again, it looks weird to me that rail lines with usage close or over max 10000 capacity (show as yellow-orange in Simulator Z low traffic display) don't show any air pollution over them. I just have the NAM, RHW and some extra lots (mostly rail stations), so I don't think there is any examplar overwritting things there.

Good to know the info about the supposed "automobile" act.

Thanks!

[Silverwarp]

I'm rather curious about the effect the simulator had on my city.  Before I updated the NAM, I was using Traffic Simulator A Hard (I'm not 100% sure, but I was using CAM and I heard CAM was using that).  The effect on the intersections were understandable, that definitely changed.  However, there was big change in the way people have been traveling to work.  My public transportation, both subway and buses, was widely used before Z, but after Z, most people either drove or used the subway.  No one bothers using the bus anymore.  Could anyone tell me information about why this is happening?  I want to use my buses to augment my subway system to reduce car traffic, so I had bus stops at every other intersection (similar to San Francisco's system).  In fact, how do you make it so that people use the bus systems more in simulator Z?

[z]

In all traffic simulators before Simulator Z, buses did not contribute to traffic congestion.  So in certain situations, it was advantageous for previous simulators to put lots of people on the bus, because it didn't increase traffic congestion at all.  This would have been especially true in the Hard simulators, as things could get congested very fast without this trick.  But using this trick was very unrealistic.

Simulator Z treats the bus like all other forms of transportation - no better, no worse.  Buses now contribute to traffic congestion like everything else.  So Simulator Z can't use the "stuff the Sims on the bus" trick.  But in general, the combined effects of Simulator Z are to make the Sims much smarter about how they get to work.  They like to spend as little time commuting as possible, and subways are much faster than buses.  If you are having almost no bus traffic, this probably means that almost all your bus routes are duplicated by subway routes.  To get more bus traffic, make your buses go where no other mass transit goes.  Or tear down some subways - they're four times as expensive to maintain in Simulator Z than anywhere else.

I think that if you realize that the Sims are smarter in Simulator Z, you'll see that what they're doing makes sense.

[marcika]

Simulator Z treats the bus like all other forms of transportation - no better, no worse.  Buses now contribute to traffic congestion like everything else.  So Simulator Z can't use the "stuff the Sims on the bus" trick.

Does that mean that Simulator Z assumes that a bus with 50 people contributes the same amount to congestion as 50 individual cars? If yes, then that's not very realistic - the biggest benefit of buses in a crowded real-world city is to "stuff" lots of people into one vehicle, reducing road congestion...

[z]

Does that mean that Simulator Z assumes that a bus with 50 people contributes the same amount to congestion as 50 individual cars?

Unfortunately, yes - this is an unavoidable consequence of the fact that vehicles are just an abstraction in SC4, and all travel is by individual Sims.  However, Simulator Z's pathfinding algorithm is tuned so that there is less congestion on streets in a city running Simulator Z than there is in that same city running any other simulator of a similar capacity.  This is despite the fact that Simulator Z is tuned to provide a greater proportion of car traffic, and also counts buses toward congestion.  Simulator Z's traffic distribution algorithms also make sure that buses are used in appropriate volumes, where what is appropriate is described in more detail in my previous post.  Also, buses in the real world add somewhat to congestion by making many stops; buses in SC4 never stop.  (No vehicle ever does, except at its trip end point.)   This means that their speed, while comparable to real world buses, is greater due to the lack of stops.  So the traffic distribution and congestion is as realistic as possible; it is certainly not perfect, as the underlying traffic simulator code is nowhere nearly sophisticated enough to make anything near perfection possible.  But the final results end up being quite reasonable, nevertheless.  The alternative is buses that hold an infinite numbers of Sims (run by the notorious Simgularity Bus Company), which makes the whole traffic simulation less accurate.

It's useful to note that this vehicle effect applies to all vehicles, not just buses.  For example, a train carrying 500 Sims puts out as much pollution as 500 cars.  The same thing applies to trams - and it doesn't even matter whether or not they're electric.  There are many inescapable limitations in this simulation.

[SimFox]

I think this is a bit tricky situation ...
and citing pollution output, although I totally agree with it's ridiculous arithmetics, doesn't really prove any point.
Public transport in SimCity is not a tool to reduce pollution, but to reduce congestion. Wouldn't making buses to congest effectively eliminates their usefulness as a such?

[Silverwarp]

In all traffic simulators before Simulator Z, buses did not contribute to traffic congestion.  So in certain situations, it was advantageous for previous simulators to put lots of people on the bus, because it didn't increase traffic congestion at all.  This would have been especially true in the Hard simulators, as things could get congested very fast without this trick.  But using this trick was very unrealistic.

Simulator Z treats the bus like all other forms of transportation - no better, no worse.  Buses now contribute to traffic congestion like everything else.  So Simulator Z can't use the "stuff the Sims on the bus" trick.  But in general, the combined effects of Simulator Z are to make the Sims much smarter about how they get to work.  They like to spend as little time commuting as possible, and subways are much faster than buses.  If you are having almost no bus traffic, this probably means that almost all your bus routes are duplicated by subway routes.  To get more bus traffic, make your buses go where no other mass transit goes.  Or tear down some subways - they're four times as expensive to maintain in Simulator Z than anywhere else.

I think that if you realize that the Sims are smarter in Simulator Z, you'll see that what they're doing makes sense.

Thanks for the information!  I was also wondering my budget surplus went down by a lot too (I had a $5000 surplus drop to around $1000).

Hmm...if that's the case, I was wondering if you could add some kind of cost for Sims to drive their cars, similar to how we have to pay gas in the real world.  Does the programming in the game allow it?  I was thinking more along the lines of how buses take longer to get there, but are cheaper than car travel and in general, the longer the travel distance, the more likely a Sim is to use his or her car and the opposite is true for buses.

[z]

I think this is a bit tricky situation ...

Most definitely - the game doesn't allow a perfect solution.

Public transport in SimCity is not a tool to reduce pollution, but to reduce congestion. Wouldn't making buses to congest effectively eliminates their usefulness as a such?

Yes, but in SC4, that's really not their main function.  Riding the bus is cheaper than owning a car, and in the game, the lower the wealth level of the Sims, the more bus riders there are.  This corresponds to real world motivations for using the bus.  Meanwhile, in Simulator Z, there is a lot of effort put into reducing congestion.  Interestingly enough, when I changed the alpha version of Simulator Z to make buses contribute to congestion, total congestion did not increase significantly.  In fact, as I mentioned earlier, total congestion is still much less than in traffic simulators that don't count buses toward congestion.  Effectively, the growth of congestion is less than linear when plotted against the growth of traffic; this seems to be due to the simulator's making more use of underutilized routes as traffic increases.  Views of traffic maps bear this out.  So in SC4, the real purpose of buses is to provide a cheap form of mass transit, and that they do very well.  And with Simulator Z, they're able to do that without increasing congestion significantly due to the simulator's pathfinding algorithms.

I was wondering if you could add some kind of cost for Sims to drive their cars, similar to how we have to pay gas in the real world.  Does the programming in the game allow it?  I was thinking more along the lines of how buses take longer to get there, but are cheaper than car travel and in general, the longer the travel distance, the more likely a Sim is to use his or her car and the opposite is true for buses.

The game allows charges for network usage per square, which was how I was able to increase the monthly cost for subways.  It also allows for income per square for each travel type, which allows fares for mass transit.  Theoretically, you could add a number here for cars, which would add a cost proportional to the driving distance.  But this "cost" is only income that the city receives; it isn't something that the Sims actually pay, and it would have no effect on their driving habits.

[aaaling]

How do I install simulator Z? I always install simulator C.

[z]

You have to choose your traffic simulator during the NAM installation.  Just rerun the installation; there's no harm in doing so.  The "Click + to select Traffic Controller Files" option is near the bottom of the scrollbox in the screen directly after the license agreement.  Click on the plus sign and select the version of Simulator Z that you want.

This question seems to get asked frequently, so I'll put the answer in the main post.

[aaaling]

Witch button do I select to install simulator Z? ()lurker()javascript:void(0);

[z]

Following the directions above, find the version of Simulator Z that you want and check its box.  The different versions are explained in the first post.

[ramseyazad]

Does traffic simulator z normally work with the "my sim" mode?  I don't really ever like to follow the little people around, but I tried it last night, and none of the sims could ever find their way out of their houses.  I started to panic about my simple road, street, and rhw network, but I figured it was probably something more to do with the silly "my sim" mode than the simulator, since everyone else was mostly finding their way.  I did, however, have a drink in honor of several generations of one sim, who never found their way out of their house, moved, couldn't find their way out of their new house, tried it again, and always died early, grumbling from a lack of health care and unable to get to work. 

[aaaling]

Can you post a pic of the traffic plugin file area of the NAM setup?

[z]

[aaaling]

Thank you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[z]

This thread has been renamed "NAM Traffic Simulator Z and Data View Help" to indicate that it now includes support for the new data views introduced in the June, 2009 version of the NAM, along with the previously existing Traffic Volume View.  Any questions on these data views, as well as on Simulator Z, should be posted to this thread.  The post that appears first on every page of this thread has been updated to include complete information on the current version of Simulator Z, as well as on the new data views.  Release notes for the current version of Simulator Z have also been included, so that current users of this traffic simulator can see what has changed since the last release.  Documentation for the new Subway View, Subway Building View, and Zones View has now been included in the section "Traffic Volume View and Other New Data Views."  The first two of these, along with the Traffic Volume View, are now automatically included for all traffic simulators, while the Zones data view is optional (though highly recommended), and must be specifically selected during the NAM installation process.

[z]

For those people who find RippleJet's Census Repository Facility quite useful in managing their cities, for the first time he has just released a complete set of these files for all levels of the NAM Simulator Z.  The files can be found in this post.

[TWAK]

I had a problem with sims still using the old park and ride simulator A or B, when I updated the nam to simulator Z (with no park and ride).  I'm about to restart my city, see if that makes it revert to Z.

[CaptCity]

TWAK...

Whenever I've changed simulators in established cities (especially large ones), it has taken several game years to 'balance' out and get the paths correct. Might try to let it run to see if it helps...

CaptCity