My (non-existent) social life ...

An accurate reflection of my social life, at least ever since A Levels have ended ...

Forever Alone?

The original Forever Alone guy :(

From the creators of the Forever Alone meme, comes this:

After 4 movies, Kevin is Forever Home Alone :(

Haiz, looking at all the developments going on (in the relationships sector!) around me, I can (and do) feel a little bit down sometimes. And so I go to many different sites to find funny stuff to cheer myself up - it's not good to keep feeling sad about history. Here's a rage comic from one of the sites I frequent:

I can totally feel for the guy here ...

And somehow looking at these comics can allow me to feel a little bit better. Maybe it's because I know I'm not the only one that is in such a (bad, undesirable) situation ... And I certainly wouldn't want to be like this guy, whose proposal was rejected in front of hundreds (thousands if you consider the Internet audience) of people: (Would I even get to have a chance like that in the future? ...)

Hmm, maybe the female "lead" saw him as someone in the "Friend Zone"? (Poor guy ...) Heck, there's even a song for this!

Oh well, at least I'm not alone in being forever alone ;)

Expanding bus service coverage

Singapore has come a long long way since its independence in 1965. Thanks to modernization/urbanization, many old places have made way for the new, as seen by this article on Punggol:

Taken from Straits Times, 20 December 2009

Likewise, in my Simutrans world, the cities have also become more and more urbanised from when I first started my game. Here's an edited screenshot of one of my cities, Hillchester. In the screenshot below, the orange outline shows the boundaries of Hillchester city 200 years ago (when I first started this game), while the red outline shows the current boundaries of Hillchester city.

A recent screenshot of Hillchester city, before a new feeder bus network was implemented.

While previously the feeder buses could cover the whole area of Hillchester city 200 year ago, city growth meant that there were now new areas that were not covered by the feeder bus network. Therefore I had to (sit down and) plan a new feeder bus network that could cover the whole area of Hillchester city. Some considerations for planning include:

• Where shall I locate my bus stops? This (of course) is easy to do on its own; the challenge comes below:
• What route should the buses take? This may seem easy to do, eg. just have one bus route visit all the stops in the city, but to plan optimal routes takes more careful planning!

Here's a screenshot of Hillchester city, with more bus stops that enables more of the city to be served by the feeder bus network:

Hillchester city, now with more bus stops and a new feeder bus network!

Of course other cities also have such improvements. Here are 2 other cities with similar improvements, Pinemouth and Brentham, with before and after screenshots below:

Pinemouth city, before improvements.

Pinemouth city, after improvements.

Brentham city, before improvements.

Brentham city, after improvements.

Coming soon, a focus on some "special" bus services!

Documentary: The London Underground

Today, I thought I would like to share another series of videos from the Discovery Channel, and it's called Super Structures of the World - The London Underground. While this episode focuses on one of the newest lines (or extensions - to be precise!), the Jubilee Line extension, the episode provides a great depth of information regarding the history of the London Underground, the oldest metro system in the world!

Being so old, the London Underground is one heck of a complex system:

System map of the London Underground. I really want to tour this network of stations!

Compare this to Singapore's current MRT network:

Current system map, without the Circle Extension (as of now)

And according to some speculators, in the future, our MRT network could be this complicated:

How cool would this be if it is realised in the future?

All right, here's part 1 of 6 of the episode on the London Underground; the rest of the clips can be accessed from the related videos section. Enjoy!

Don't you hate bunching buses?

In this photo, 3 buses from service 240 have bunched up!

Bunching buses - a term used to describe buses that (somehow) end up traveling together, even though they may have left the bus terminal/interchange at regular intervals. Ideally, buses that leave the bus terminal/interchange at regular intervals should keep their "spacing", so that buses arrive regularly at the bus stops (and passengers don't complain about irregular buses!).

In my Simutrans world, I have found out that when I simply let the buses run, they will end up bunching. And so the first bus is constantly packed, and the buses behind sometimes run empty (and this is unprofitable!). Therefore I had to come up with possible solutions to get the buses to keep their "spacing" between each other.

Screenshot showing the bus route that is the focus of this post

The bus route in detail. Note the first stop is an interchange and provides connections to the MRT network, and the 8th stop, the terminal stop.

One solution that I came up is applied to one of my (many) bus routes, shown in the screenshot above (with highlights showing the bus route and stops). What I did was to add a minimum load criterion for the terminal stop (8th stop in the route details), as well as a maximum waiting time (after which the bus will leave for the next stop, regardless of its load); what this meant is that buses will leave the terminal stop at regular intervals.

This measure was used with great success, and buses now run at regular intervals along the entire route. I am currently working on using this approach on other routes, but there are some significant problems:

• Most of my bus routes loop somewhere, unlike this example where buses simply run back and fro along a fixed route. This means that there are problems in deciding where the "terminal" stop should be, since there really isn't a terminal stop to begin with! Nonetheless I am experimenting this approach with some routes that loop somewhere, and hopefully I can get buses to run more regularly along the routes with loops.
• There is a need to monitor and adjust the maximum waiting time so that crowds of passengers don't build up at the interchange stations!

Coming soon, another post on the design of bus routes in the cities!

Documentary: Building The Biggest Railway

Hi there! Recently I have been wasting my time on Youtube instead of doing other more productive stuff (eg. going to the gym), and I have come across a few series of interesting videos, which I thought I would like to share on this blog.

Here's the first one. It's from the Discovery Channel, and it's called Building the Biggest Railway. This episode focuses on the maintenance and replacement of the train tracks from London to Glasgow, one of the most busiest stretch of railway in the world. Which of course reminds me of the MRT breakdowns that occured last month. Here are some of the defining photos of the breakdowns:

The tunnel walk!

So much for emergency lighting ...

The single photo that spawned multiple spoofs. What a field day for SG's photoshoppers!

WP's Chen Shou Mao among those having to take the shuttles on the Sunday morning when trains started operation later than usual for thorough checks on the MRT system. Just got to like his trademark smile! ;)

Transport Minster Lui Tuck Yew observing maintenance work at the tracks near Marina Bay MRT. Got to commend him on his proactive presence on the ground, checking the transport system ever since he stepped into office. Keep up the good work!

Coming back to the main point of this point, the first part of the episode is below, and the rest of the clips can be found under the related videos. Enjoy ;)

Cities, cities, and more cities!

After the introduction to the MRT system in my Simutrans world, it's time to introduce the various cities, and I'll start off with the Western cities: Springby, Mallilock, Baringham and Heppville.

Springby city

Springby is one of the first few cities to be developed, and as such, it plays an important role (think capital city!). Many monuments can be found at Springby, and passenger volumes through Springby station is very high, because the city itself is very big. While only 3 bus services serve this city, a total of 40+ buses run around to ferry people around the city.

Mallilock city

Mallilock is one of the last few cities to be developed, as it was born primarily to fill up the empty space between Baringham and Springby cities. It is a small-sized city, and has about 20+ buses running around to shuttle people around the city.

Baringham city

Baringham is one of the first few cities to be linked up to the freight network through its freight yard, primarily because it has a steel mill that produces steel when coal and iron ore are supplied to it. It is a mid-sized town, with 3 bus services and about 20+ buses shuttling people around the city.

Heppville city

Heppville is another one of the cities to be developed first, and Heppville station also has high passenger flows, as it provides a direct link to a medieval castle (tourist attraction). Currently, it is a mid-sized city, with buses going around to transport people between various parts of the city and the MRT station.

And now for the Eastern cities: Ashlock, Hillchester, Pollingwick, Pinemouth and Brentham ;)

Ashlock city

Hillchester city

Pollingwick city

Pinemouth city

Brentham city

And finally, here are the cities on the MRT Middle line!

Baringlock city

Torwick city

Brentmouth city

Torton and Newbury cities

Malliville city

More updates on the bus services are coming soon!

How would you design a MRT system?

First of all, Merry Christmas to you, my valued readers!

I have always been interested in MRT networks. Specifically, how to design such a network. Through Simutrans, I could experiment, design and build (and even monitor and test!) my MRT network. So to start off a tour of my Simutrans transport network, I thought the best place to start would be by introducing the MRT network in my network:

An overview of my transport network, showing all the cities, but I'm sure nobody can figure out where are my MRT lines!

 Since the map above is not so clear, I specially drew a system map:

And here the MRT lines are highlighted in the overview map: (the colours follow those in the system map)

And now it's time for some history behind the development of these lines:

Initially, when I first started playing the game, I had planned for a MRT line to link up all the cities (all 8 of them at the start), but then I realized that the positions of the initial 8 cities did not allow me to simply build a "Circle line" linking all the cities. Therefore I opted to build (or "found", as in Simutrans) more cities so that I could build such a "Circle line".

Hence, the first line to be completely built was the Circle line (currently the West and East lines). This line was built in stages (just like Singapore's Circle line) :

1. The section from Heppville to Pinemouth (clockwise direction) opens. All stations except Mallilock and Malliville are operational (those 2 cities were not founded yet). Trains went from Heppville to Pinemouth, and then back to Heppville.
2. The section from Pollingwick to Heppville opens, thus Baringlock station was opened (Brentham station was not opened as Brentham was not founded yet). Trains either went in the clockwise or anticlockwise direction around the line.
3. Mallilock and Brentham stations were opened as those 2 cities were founded, thus providing residents of those 2 cities a direct and quick link to the rest of the network (and residents of other cities more places to go to!).
4. Malliville was the last station to be opened on the Circle line. This station was opened in conjunction with its inauguration as the northern terminus for the Middle line (see next paragraph).

With the opening of the Circle line, Torwick was the only city not to have direct MRT service. Thus I started to plan for another MRT line to link up Torwick to the MRT system, and with this, the Middle line was born! 3 new cities of varying sizes were founded (Newbury, Torton, and Brentmouth) so that there would be sufficient ridership on the Middle line, and initially, the Middle line terminated at Springby and Baringlock stations. However, I decided to shift the northern terminus of the Middle line to Malliville station, where there is more space to build interchanges (and space to contain people - Springby station was getting too congested!).

After a while, I noticed that the trains tend to bunch up together, even though I deployed the trains at regular intervals. Therefore, to reduce the bunching, I decided to cleave the Circle line into 2 separate lines, the East and West lines, so that the trains have a terminal station that they can terminate at (and thus I can better space out the trains). Furthermore this allowed me to add more trains to the line segment that was experiencing higher ridership more easily.

With the overview of the MRT network complete, the next few posts would elaborate on the various cities in my Simutrans world :)

My Simutrans World

Hi there! Ever since the A Levels have ended (almost) a month ago, I have been playing this game (almost) every day; from when I wake up to when I sleep, which is about 12+ hours each day. While others are addicted to MMORPGs like DOTA or WoW, this is the game that I'm addicted to:

In a nutshell, the goal of the game is to transport passengers, goods and mail by a variety of modes of transport (rail, road, monorail). Seems easy? Consider the transport system that I'm working on, shown below in the screengrab:

This screenshot shows all the buildings. However it hides most of the road network!

This screenshot hides all the residential buildings, so that the road network is more visible!

Currently, my system comprises of 15 cities of varying sizes, 3 MRT lines linking up the cities, a railway network that is used to transport freight, as well as over 600+ convoys (buses, trains, monorails) running around in my Simutrans network!

In the coming few days, I will be posting more information on the following:

• Details, as well as the (feeder) bus network, of each of the cities in my Simutrans network
• Development of the MRT network as well as the freight network

So do check back to find out more about my cities in Simutrans!

Long time no post!

It's been a very long time (more than 1 year I think) since I have come over to Blogger to update my blog. Quite a lot of things have changed since then:

• Myself! I have since completed the A Levels (my last post was after the Promos!) and now I am waiting to get myself a boat ride into the resort island of Tekong. But more on that on another post (that is if I do decide not to procrastinate!) ...
• The Blogger interface has changed drastically! After changing to a brand new look, Blogger looks like it has totally shed its old look (like a caterpillar morphing into a butterfly?), and I'm still getting used to it. Upon exploring around, it seems that my blog still can get some pageviews which I don't know if it is due to friends coming to this blog or by bots. Hahaha :)

Later and in the next few days, I will be posting images of the things that I am involved in now that I've completed my A levels. So do check back for updates soon!