How to make a Realistic/Good Looking Bus Network

Overview

Are your bus lines constantly ending up as a complete mess? Are you unhappy with that and want them to look nicer/more realistic? Then this guide is here to help!

Introduction

So, your bus network is a mess of lines going everywhere without a clear idea of what it’s meant to achieve. Well not to worrry this guide will help you transform that mess of lines into something like this:

Image made with CSL Map View

This guide is intended for bus lines, and works best with gridded cities but in theory it can also apply to tram routes and European/non-gridded style cities!

Step One: The Route

Naturally the most important part of any bus line is the route that it takes. In order to make a nice looking/realistic one, three points should be considered:

The line termini
The path between them
Other considerations

Line Termini
The first thing you should think about when creating a new bus line are the two points that it will operate between. Generally speaking these should be key locations within your city; major landmarks, transit interchanges, airports, universities, etc. Take for example the Lines 207 and 207X in the above map the north-eastern terminus of these lines is at one of the airport terminals as shown:

and the south-western terminus is near a University and train station.

Or bus routes 104, 104X, 140, and 140X which begin and end at metro stations:

By ensuring that your bus lines start/end at key areas of your city, you give them a sense of purpose and have a clearer idea of where they should go.

The Path Between Termini
Once you’ve decided on the end points of your line it’s time to decide how the bus line will connect them. The best way to do this is to identify key roads in your city and run the majority of the bus line down them. If you look at the map in the introduction section again you’ll see that the main parts of my bus lines run down a single road with few/no deviations from this. The image below also indicates this:

For the most part the roads you identify to run buses down are likely going to be your city’s major arteries and should ideally be a few blocks apart if running parallel to each other.

Deviations
Sometimes you may wish to make a deviation from the major road, usually this would be to serve another key location that exists close to your intended route. For example as shown below my 140 and 140X routes deviate off from the main road that they run along to serve a bus terminal that if this were a real city would serve long-distance coach services.

Other Considerations
Your bus network should ideally compliment other transit networks employed in your city, rather than compete against it. Keep this in mind when considering the route for your new line, a bus line that spends its entire route duplicating that of a train/metro/tram line is unlikely to add much value to your transit network. Small overlaps are okay, but constant duplication should be avoided.
Naturally there are exceptions, and as you may have noticed in my city I have several bus lines that appear to duplicate existing lines (104X, 140X, 205X, 207X) these are my “express” routes that follow their local counterparts (104, 140, 205, 207) but stop less frequently.

Step Two: Making your line.

Now that you have planned out the route of your line, it’s time to make it, which leads to the question of how many stops and where do I put them?

How Many Stops?
In real life, stop spacing can be a very complicated issue and several articles have been written on it (example[humantransit.org]). Put your stops too far apart and your bus line is basically useless, but put them too close together and the entire system grinds to a halt.

Thankfully as the linked to article provides, we can simplify this by assuming that every stop has a “walk radius” around it that indicates the distance from the stop that people are comfortable walking to in order to catch your bus/transit service. Drawing a circle with this radius around each stop like the image below provides both the coverage gaps and the duplicate coverage areas, the key to optimization is to minimise both of these.

Image Source[humantransit.org]

In real life this “walk radius” will naturally vary with how pedestrian friendly the area is, the type of service at the stop (i.e people will generally be willing to walk further for a more frequent and faster service) and just in general as different people are comfortable with walking different distances. However for the sake of this guide and Cities Skylines we’re going to go with a single distance and the one most commonly used by transit planners 400m.

So does this mean I should put my bus stops 400m apart? Well not necessarily, as mentioned stop spacing is a complicated thing, especially seeing as it’s not entirely clear how far Cims are willing to walk to take a bus. But it’s a good guide to start off with, you may find it works well for you and provides the optimal balance between the gap/duplication of coverage for your city. Or you may need to place the stops closer together/further apart to get more passengers/prevent the line from being too slow. In the end it depends on your city’s design and the needs of your bus network.

In case you’re wondering how to tell how far apart your bus lines are, well the Transport Lines Manager mod has a nifty feature that shows you the distance between stops on the line that you can use for this purpose as the example below shows

Where to put the stops?
You effectively have three options when it comes to deciding where to put your stops. All have advantages and disadvantages so play around a bit to find out what suits your city best.

1. Before an intersection (Near-side)
Assuming the intersection has traffic lights, the advantage of near-side stops is that the boarding/alighting dwell time can sync with the red light time of the traffic signals.
The disadvantage however is that stopped buses can cause traffic conflicts with vehicles attempting to right/left turn (depending on driving side) on red if such as a move is permitted.

Example of near-side stops

After an intersection (Far-side)
Advantages: Traffic signals allow for gaps in traffic flows that permit buses to re-enter the stream
Disadvantages: Buses could block the intersection while queing for the stop

Example of far-side stop

Mid-block
Advantages: Reduced pedestrian congestion, increased coverage
Disadvantages: Encourage dangerous road crossings/increased walking distance to intersections to cross safely.

Example of a mid-block stop

I personally predominately use the near-side location because 1) I’m used to that setup and 2) It allows better interchanging when dealing with branching lines as it means there is a stop immediately before the two lines diverge from each other.

Step Three: Customisation (Totally Optional – Mod/DLC Dependent)

So now you’ve made your bus line, but you really want to make it your bus line by customising things. Either by changing what/how many buses run on your line or by improving the flow of the line through bus lanes.

What/how many buses
So you want to change what buses are on your line, well firstly then you’re probably gonna want some custom busses from the workshop. I’d recommend either ninjanoobslayer’s or DanDeKalb’s buses but it’s really up to you!

Once you’ve gotten your custom buses it’s time to assign them to lines for this you’ll either need Improved Public Transport 2 or Transport Lines Manager Reborn both of these mods function in different ways so make sure you read their descriptions and documentation. Additionally both of these mods allow you to determine the number of vehicles on a line.

Some points to consider:
Remember, your transit agency is a company! Reducing costs is a key and the biggest way to do this is via fleet rationalisation, keep the number of different bus types to a minimum.
Busier/major bus lines will tend to have more frequent buses with higher capacities than quiet local routes, so keep this in mind when assigning vehicles.
Want to increase the capacity of your buses? IPT2 has an inbuilt vehicle capacity editor or you can use Advanced Vehicle Options to modify the capacity.

Improving flow with bus lanes
One of the primary ways to improve the flow of your bus lines is through the use of bus lanes. There’s several different ways to get these in your city.

The bus lane version of roads that came with After Dark
The wide avenue with bus lanes from Mass Transit
The Network Extensions 2 mod which has several bus lanes
Using the Traffic Manager President Edition mod to create custom bus lanes on any road (read the mod’s documentation as to how to do this!)
Custom roads from the workshop, make sure to check if they require any of the DLCs!

Bus lane road added by Network Extensions 2 Mod