Topic: Overcrowding query

[AP]

In the tips thread, it says

When vehicles on a particular line are overcrowded, the name of that line will appear in purple instead of black in the line management window... Overcrowding can indicate a problem, but it is not always a bad thing. Overcrowding reduces the comfort of passengers using the service (having to stand is not a comfortable experience), and passengers are willing to pay less for travelling in discomfort than they are for travelling in comfort, so overcrowding can affect your revenue. However, the extent to which it affects revenue varies greatly with distance - passengers will not mind so much if they are standing for a five minute 'bus ride, but will be very unhappy to have to stand for a three hour train journey. Check the effect of overcrowding on revenue in the list of all goods window. Sometimes, particularly with urban rail and modern 'buses, it can be much more profitable to run an overcrowded service than to make sure that everyone has a seat.

For a given route, how does one differentiate between overcrowding causing a problem and losing you money, and overcrowding not losing you (much) money?

Is there any way to get an indication of what the profiability would have been for that route if the overcrowding were solved?

Clearly solving overcrowding costs money, and whilst I understand how to solve it, I find it difficult judging whether doing so is worthwhile.

[jamespetts]

Overcrowding will affect comfort: this is the means by which it affects profitability. Average comfort over time is shown in the comfort graph for lines and convoys. You can work out what the comfort would be if the convoy was not overcrowded by looking at the base comfort values of the vehicles in the vehicle details window. You can then use the list of goods window to work out what the revenue per passenger for a given distance would be at each of the two comfort values.

[AP]

I see. That makes sense. :-)

To ask a broader question - is there scope to bring all that together somewhere, so that there's a quick instant at-a-glance place to see the potential each line has and how much (%) of it is being realised. Otherwise as a network grows, there's an aweful lot of management to do...

[jamespetts]

Hmm, I can't immediately think of a practical way of doing that. That sort of tool is not available to real life transport planners, after all...

[AP]

Indeed. But a real-life network has a team of management to run and optimise it. My network only has me, and I'm also the chief civil engineer, chief mechanical engineer as well as part-time urban planner.

Hence I am all for game features which simulate my team of minions that would help me run my empire. Or maybe that's an extension request (minions...)!

[jamespetts]

That is a fair point, I suppose, but I'm not really sure how one might actually achieve this in practice. The best that I can recommend, I think, is to follow real life: if overcrowding would be acceptable in reality, then it should be acceptable in Simutrans-Experimental; and vice versa.

[ӔO]

IRL, overcrowding is dealt with by running longer trains or packed diagrams at peaks. Usually these stats are taken by polling.
The packed diagram usually includes, something like 6~8 express service trains and 1~2 commuter service trains in an hour.

What experimental lacks is the ability to poll where a majority of passengers would like to go. Currently, the only way to figure this out, is to intentionally jam service so that passengers pile up. If these passenger destinations can be polled, then it would be easier to run express services, so that trains won't be severely overcrowded at certain sectors.

[greenling]

Overcrowding in an City its ok but by Longdistanctrain s it that no usefull.

[jamespetts]

AEO,

this feature does exist: go to the mini-map and select the "Pass. Dest." options. Select a city hall, and you will see in the mini-map window coloured dots representing the destinations of passengers from the city whose city hall that you most recently clicked.

Yellow means transported by player transport, orange means no route, red means could not find a route because the origin station was overcrowded, dark yellow means that they walked, pink means that they could get to where they are going but the quickest journey there is beyond their journey time tolerance and terquoise is where passengers get to their destination by private car.

[ӔO]

@james

Ah, yes, there is that, but it doesn't provide detailed information on serviced lines. The only thing you can deduce currently is amount of passengers using the station, and not where they want to go.

It would be nice, if in details of connected stops, it would give last month's total passengers heading to x stop, on top of time.

Something like...
A 10min, 10pax
B 20min, 10pax
C 30min, 80pax
D 40min, 20pax
E 50min, 20pax
F 60min, 80pax

Then I can see that running an express service from here to C and F would alleviate congestion on the local line serving A to F.

[jamespetts]

Hmm, an interesting idea...

[Carl]

I love seeing as much data as possible, so would enjoy seeing that kind of information.