"Teleporter" entrance placement

[Cartographer29]

We all know them. Some love them, some hate them. Entrances to Metro Stations or Waterbus Terminals. Those little "teleporter booths".

But one things that's been infuriating is that there placements are sometimes less than ideal. One example that I cannot avoid is when building a metro line in the median of an expressway, and wish to place a station under an overpass, thinking "the entrances will be placed on the bridge". Nope. They get placed on the expressway shoulders. Or some entrances get placed too close to each other, and sometimes overlap.

Two things I would like out of this ...

1. Any roadway that does NOT have sidewalks (expressways, etc.) should not permit the placement of entrances on them. No sidewalks SHOULD mean no pedestrians at all.

2. When placing a metro station or waterbus terminal, the placement of the entrance should not be automatic. After the station/terminal is placed, the user should then have control of the entrance, and a 2nd click is then required to place it where the user wishes. This could mean that entrances are placed more convenient to nearby bus stops or for easier access for transfering. The catch is that the distance away from the station/terminal should be limited, to prevent "excessively ridiculous placements".

Thoughts?

 

[GE90-115B]

1. Agreed.

2. I have thought the same thing myself. Would be a nice feature.

 

[eis_os]

1. If a entrance needs to be done it should simply prefer streets with sidewalks.

2/Generally

I would be happy with a button to relocate the entrance, keeps the easy mode for new players and a fallback if the entrance goes lost when rebuilding streets, on the other hand we get better control.

 

[XanosEU]

I agree with eis_os.

 

[slornie]

Agree to both #1 and #2, but on #2 I would also like to be able to place additional teleporters.

I actually described my thoughts on this subject (#2) in more detail a few months back:

+1! This is also true for waterbus piers where having the catchment area centred on the actual pier means most of the time at least half of the catchment area is only useful for fish. While retaining the teleporter system I would like to see manual placement (or at least manual relocation) for the roadside transporters. I have (currently) two proposals for how this might work:

1) When building metro or waterbus stops you place the transporter pod first at the location you want, and then place the actual stop (on the track or at the waterside) - which must be within the catchment area of the transporter pod. OR Build the stop at whichever location and then place the transporter at the desired location while ensuring the actual stop remains within the catchment area.

2) Separate the construction of stops and transporter pods, allowing them to be built and connected separately (they would also need different lists in the main GUI so you can keep track of them). Example: Build a metro station, and then separately build a transporter. Before passengers can enter or exit the station you need to connect it to one or more transporters. The station/pod's information panel would have a new button at the top (e.g. a pin) which would act similar to the route creation tool - have a "string" running from the starting station/pod to the cursor and when the user clicks on another stop/pod create a connection. Connect station platforms with others directly (interchange) or have a station connected to lots of transporters (multiple entrances). When a stop/pod is selected you would have a tab listing all the connected stops/pods and see all of the connections displayed over the map like those string diagrams that cop shows have:

 

[eis_os]

There is only one teleporter place. I guess adding more then one will screw pathfinding badly.

 

[Inge Jones]

But if you ask for a no sidewalk no pedestrian rule, then the pedestian paths without sidewalks will be useless. I thought we wanted ttthem to be fixed so they don't spawn buildings, not so they don't support pedestrians In real life pedestrians do walk alongside roads without sidewalks, but I guess it is reasonable not to have the city place structures there *intended* to be reached on foot.

 

[slornie]

But if you ask for a no sidewalk no pedestrian rule, then the pedestian paths without sidewalks will be useless.

They won't be useless! They'll still be exceptionally useful for building off-road tram lines (completely segregated from other vehicle traffic).

 

[XanosEU]

They won't be useless! They'll still be exceptionally useful for building off-road tram lines (completely segregated from other vehicle traffic).

If you want tram lines where no pedestrians can walk, you can use metro tracks
"Pedestrian paths" without pedestrians who can walk on them are indeed completely useless.

 

[Murph9000]

Quoting myself from the big all suggestions thread, before we had this sub-forum:

I think the best solution would be to (optionally, perhaps) do away with automatic entrance placement completely. Add a new option to the metro build menu for entrances, enabling manual placement of as many or few entrances as are appropriate for a group of nearby platforms. Entrances could serve all platforms within an appropriate distance. Build and maintenance costs would be split appropriately between platforms and entrances. There would be no direct relationship between platforms and entrances, just a maximum distance between them, and a minimum of 1 entrance within range of each platform. Catchment areas would be based on entrances, not platforms.

So, a quiet suburban station might have 1 entrance serving 2 platforms. A busy, central exchange station might have 8 entrances serving 4 platforms. I.e. pretty much just like real life.

 

[Murph9000]

But if you ask for a no sidewalk no pedestrian rule, then the pedestian paths without sidewalks will be useless. I thought we wanted ttthem to be fixed so they don't spawn buildings, not so they don't support pedestrians In real life pedestrians do walk alongside roads without sidewalks, but I guess it is reasonable not to have the city place structures there *intended* to be reached on foot.

I think it would be a significant improvement to prevent pedestrians walking on roads which have no pavements (and also block placement of teleporter booths on them). It shouldn't really be terribly difficult to make the no-pavement path be an exception to that. The other bug which should be fixed for pedestrian paths is to allow pedestrians to cross them anywhere, rather than the current absurd situation where they have to walk to the nearest junction in situations such as arriving at a stop on one side and wanting to depart from a stop directly opposite it.

 

[iomex]

Not really. It would get silly with old people blocking traffic constantly. Making a crossing point is really easy, and is rather like having a normal pedestrian crossing as in real life. You just need to cut the road and make a join where you want the crossing point to be.