Public transport/mass traffic, analyse and expand

Cities: Skylines170 views2 favorites3 min readby CreatorOfWorldsUpdated Jun 17, 2025View on Steam ↗

Intro

There are already a big amount of guides regarding this topic.

This is my contribution with a few examples of how I approach the topic.

These are examples of how I analyse, troubleshoot and expand on the public transport / mass traffic in the cities I build and in save games i download from the workshop to 'fix traffic' in.

I mainly use three mods that does things in combination that is not possible in vanilla.

Info

From the official wiki
"Citizens can use multiple modes of transport in order to get to their destination, so a common route can be split across more than one public transit line, either of the same or different types. Not all citizens will use public transportation, but more citizens will tend to use it the more efficient it is.
As an example, a citizen might walk to a bus stop, take the bus to a train station, take the train to get closer to their job, then take a bus the rest of the way there. A useful side-effect of this is that train stations can be placed in less densely populated areas as long as some other mode of transport can get your citizens there. A well-designed public transport system will make such transitions easy for your citizens."

Public transport need to support cims travel pattern that in general are:

residential > workplace
residential > commercial
residential > entertainment
workplace > commercial/entertainment

RCI colors:
Residential (green)
Commercial (blue)
Workplace (industry yellow, office turkis, commercial blue)

It is said that cims will walk for up to 128 tiles
reddit link

Remember also all the city/district policies that influence public transport usage.

Video

Video showcasing examples (not narrated).

This is meant to give an idea of what these mods are able to do for you.
It is not meant to extensively show how to develop the public transport or fix it in entirety.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3498347661

Examples

Transport tool mod:
This mod will help you get a great overview of your public transport routes and it will even warn you if the route is congested, vehicles despawn and a number of other bad things.

Line details > commuter destination mod
In line details, clicking on a stop will activate the commuter destination mod which visually will show you the destination of the cims. Do note that it only shows for this exact stop, so you need to keep the info from the various stops in mind when stepping through them.

Commuter destination > Toggle it mod
While having these mods active you can look at the existing routes and you get a good overview of various information while activating/deactivating the various layers.

Toggle it
Use the option deactivate automatic info view layer while setting up stations/stops of your transport network while showing the RCI colors to create routes meaningful for your cims.

The trick
The important thing for seeing the RCI colors together with your routes is to NOT activate the 'public transport' information view, but instead do as you would when creating stops (and/or placing stations) and together with this use Toggle it to activate the zoning colors (G) and deactivating the automatic info view for transport (A)

Mods

Mods 2

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