Park&Ride

[mopoona]

If you are playing on a large map with many cities in Simutrans Standard, two problems will occur: First, you will be exhausted after connecting every last building in a large cities to your network (by bus or tram...) which will result in less motivation. Second, after connecting many big cities, you will see overcrowded stops everywhere and later on even a overcrowded network. Only trains can carry all the long-distance travel, other transit systems are ineffective (like busses or airplanes).
The second issue can be resolved with some features already implemented in Simutrans Experimental (like travel ranges and overcrowded lines). But the first (more serious) problem has not been addressed properly. Since my last proposal was successful, i'll try to suggest a solution, that does not change too much of the gameplay:

My implementation of a Park&Ride system would be something like this:

• A certain part of all passengers are willing to use P&R, let's say 30-40 % (car ownership?).
• P&R will only be used if no other/normal connection is available.
• If the player builds a P&R-Station inside a city, every passenger in this city has the option to use P&R to enter the players network at the P&R-station (you could use some kind of time or distance measurement, but both would require more CPU time).
• The cost of a P&R station is closely related to the size of the city it's build in and its capacity. Additionally the player could pay a fee for every passenger that uses P&R. In fact this should be very expensive to make connecting cities by public transportation a worthy task.
  In relation to the cities size, a base journey time is added. So P&R would not only be more expensive, it would be much slower than a conventional transportation network.
• Routing could be done from a P&R-station. Connections ending in a cities with only P&R available would function the same way (car sharing or taxi).

I hope you find this interesting.

[jamespetts]

Thank you for the suggestion. Something similar to this I have considered (in effect, allowing combined journeys with public transport and private vehicles), but it is a very complicated thing to implement, especially for route-finding. Because of that complexity, it is not likely to be implemented in the short-term, but it remains on the "perhaps one day" list.

[mopoona]

However, there is a very easy way to implement P&R: Just enable variable station coverage. Together with the variable costs pak developers could make it a little bit easier to connect everything. I don't like this way, 'couse there are only a few disadvantages (possibly higher costs)...

[jamespetts]

One of the difficulties with this method is that it overly advantages the players' transport: the larger the station coverage, the longer the journey time to the station, which is not computed; journeys by car are more direct. However, this might be considered a tolerable inaccuracy, as long as the station coverage was only extended to, say, four or five tiles and no more, and this should be relatively straightforward technically. It is not the top priority (making Experimental work with online play is the priority at present, then pakset balancing), but I shall keep it in mind.

I should also be grateful for anyone else's views on the issue of variable station coverage (which would also allow, for example, small 'bus stops to have a coverage of 2 tiles, whereas railway stations would have a coverage of 3 tiles, etc.).

[Spike]

If you are playing on a large map with many cities in Simutrans Standard, two problems will occur: First, you will be exhausted after connecting every last building in a large cities to your network (by bus or tram...) which will result in less motivation.

Older Simutrans versions had a bigger station catchment area, so you didn't need so many stations to cover a cities area. I'd assume that reverting the setting to a catchment area of 4 would have the same effect as the park&ride idea, just less explicit.

I should also be grateful for anyone else's views on the issue of variable station coverage (which would also allow, for example, small 'bus stops to have a coverage of 2 tiles, whereas railway stations would have a coverage of 3 tiles, etc.).

I'd think it is confusing to players, particularly if there are stations of mixed type (bus stop+rail station). Overall I wonder a bit why the catchment area was made smaller over the past years. (My memory says it was 4 originally).

[jamespetts]

I know that the default these days for things like Pak128 and Pak64 is two tiles; Pak128.Britain-Ex has three tiles (to simulate a larger scale).

[VS]

Search time for passengers increases with x². (Need to check catchment area radius)

(2*4+1)²=9²=81
(2*2+1)²=5²=25
25/81=31%

[skreyola]

Personally, I'd like to see variable catchment areas. Either smaller for bus stops and larger for rail stations and airports, or size-optional for players (bigger catchment=more expensive station, more expensive maintenance (to cover advertising, P&R lots, etc.))... or even just an extension building that increases catchment to a set amount (keep 2-tile radius, but with a parking garage, it rises to 4).
But I know these are fairly complex things to program, so it's just an ideal for me.

[Isaac Eiland-Hall]

Overall I wonder a bit why the catchment area was made smaller over the past years. (My memory says it was 4 originally).

My personal opinion is that it might be related to the somewhat small size of smaller cities - on a default map, it's not many cities that could handle more than a couple of stations with a catchment size of 4; making it not very profitable to create intracity lines.

Personally, I'm for larger maps and larger cities that allow for a closer match of 1km per square vs. 10-15m per square graphically... I think this would help resolve things. But it's a constant battle for resources, I know. :-)