SimCity Guide Essentials Mass Transit
Mass Transit Management
Creating an efficient mass transit system can be challenging and expensive. To avoid costly modifications to your city later on, plan for mass transit at the outset. While buses can use existing roads, streetcars require avenues—it’s easier to build all the avenues your city will need early on than to add them later.
Make note of access to rail and waterways and determine the best way to incorporate a Passenger Train Station and Ferry Terminal into your master plan. If you feel air travel is important, set aside land for a Municipal Airport far from residential and commercial areas. Here’s a few more pointers to take under consideration while establishing your mass transit network.
Gradual Expansion
Gridlock has taken hold along this avenue. Upgrade it to a High Density Streetcar Avenue and build a Streetcar Depot nearby to alleviate congestion along this thoroughfare.
None of the mass transit solutions are cheap, so it’s wise to take a gradual approach, meeting demand as it arises. It’s wise to begin with buses—they’re relatively cheap and you can adjust their service areas with the addition of Bus Stops.
But even your bus network will eventually become overburdened, requiring you to either fill your streets with more buses or turn to other forms of transportation. Choose streetcars next and upgrade your existing avenues to High Density Streetcar Avenues. Streetcars carry many more Sims than buses, but they’re limited to traveling along avenues.
As a result, it may be time to replace some of those old, congested streets with avenues so they can support streetcars. This means bulldozing the streets, along with any adjoining buildings, before laying down a new avenue.
If your city is seeing a large number of commuters and tourists flowing in and out of your city, rely on trains, boats, and planes to encourage mass transit throughout the region. But neighboring cities must buy into mass transit too for this to work effectively.
Communicate with other mayors in the region to ensure they have the proper infrastructure in place to accept or send commuters traveling by train, boat, or plane. If not, your Passenger Train Station, Ferry Terminal, and Municipal Airport will be little more than tourist hubs while commuters continue to enter and exit the city via car or municipal bus, doing little to address traffic jams in your city.
Overlapping Networks
Give Sims as many transportation options as your city can afford. The University is a high-traffic destination, so place both Bus and Streetcar Stops next to it.
Put some thought into how each Sim gets around your city and construct a network of overlapping mass transit options to help all Sims reach their desired destination, whether it’s in the city or region. To better understand the flow of commuters, it’s helpful to click on a Sim and follow that Sim throughout a daily commute.
Did the Sim drive to work? If so, why? Sims usually only drive to places they can’t reach on foot or by mass transit. If any low or medium wealth Sim is driving a car, view it as a potential failure of your mass transit system and work to correct the problem. Is there a Bus or Streetcar Stop near their residence and job? Or maybe the buses and streetcars servicing nearby stops were full?
If this is the case, expand service with additional stops, buses, and streetcars. In the case of regional commuters or tourists, you need to plan for local transportation options at regional hubs like the Bus Terminal, Passenger Train Station, Ferry Terminal, and Municipal Airport.
Once commuters and tourists are in your city, how will they get around? Place Bus and Streetcar Stops near each of these hubs to give commuters and tourists a way to transfer from one form of mass transit to another. Overall, mass transit is all about providing Sims with multiple options to reach their destination. Each layer of mass transit you apply gives them a more compelling reason to leave their car at home.
Wealth and Mass Transit
The high wealth Sims living in these mansions won’t use mass transit. To save money, don’t bother placing Bus or Streetcar Stops here.
Unfortunately, you can’t get everyone to utilize your clean, efficient mass transit system. High wealth Sims turn their noses up at buses, streetcars, trains, and ferries—but they will travel by private jet and cruise ships when arriving in your city as tourists.
When it comes to getting around your city, high wealth Sims drive almost everywhere—they’ll walk too, but only if their destination is within 400 meters of their current location. Keep this in mind when zoning residential in areas with high land value. There’s no need to extend bus or streetcar services to such exclusive neighborhoods because the residents won’t use them.
Even when it comes to commuting, high wealth Sims would rather drive to a neighboring city than mix with lower wealth Sims on municipal buses, trains, or ferries. Fortunately, high wealth Sims usually only make up a fraction of your city’s total population. As long as your low and medium wealth Sims use mass transit, your road network should be able to handle the minimal traffic generated by high wealth Sims driving around in their fancy cars.
Tourism
Use a Passenger Train Station as the regional transportation hub for tourist districts like this one. This will cut down on the number of taxis clogging your city’s road network and highway connection.
Think twice before building a casino or landmark. Tourism is the ultimate test of your mass transit network. If you draw tourists into your city before a robust network is established, you run the risk of crippling your road system as entertainment-hungry and shop-starved tourists clog streets and avenues, arriving by car and taxi from the highway.
To minimize tourists arriving from the highway, center tourist districts around a regional transportation hub such as a Bus Terminal, Passenger Train Station, Ferry Terminal, or Municipal Airport. All of these buildings are capable of bringing in large numbers of low and medium wealth tourists, supplying nearby shops, hotels, casinos, and landmarks with plenty of customers.
The Municipal Airport’s Passenger Terminal and the Cruise Ship Dock at the Ferry Terminal attract high wealth tourists, ideal for filling glitzy high-end casinos and luxury shops. By keeping all tourist activity centered around a regional transportation hub, you can minimize the need for additional mass transit as tourists can easily walk to nearby attractions.
This also cuts down on cars and taxis arriving from the highway, allowing the self-contained tourist district to thrive on its own without impacting traffic in other areas of the city. Still, extend bus and streetcar service to your tourist district so local Sims can get to work at the attractions serving the tourists.
Mass Transit Achievements
| Icon | Name | Criteria |
|---|---|---|
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A Streetcar Named SimCity | Have 1,000 Sims travel by streetcar in a day. |
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All Aboard! | Have 1,000 Sims take the train in a day. |
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Cruisin’ Along | Have 2,000 Sims take a cruise in a day. |
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Llamahound | Have a municipal bus from a neighbor make 100 trips into your city within a year. |
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What Goes Up Must Come Down (Secret) | Have 200 tourists arrive on flights at the Municipal Airport in a day to gain access to the Meteor Strike disaster. |