Better integration with vanilla city/district policies

[originalfoo]

The TM:PE info overlays help with reasoning when making traffic customisation changes. However, there's no visualisation of relevant city/district policies which should also play a part in comprehension of the transit system, transport choices and decision making.

There is also a usability and support aspect to this; users often don't comprehend how their choices are impacting traffic, often resulting in annoying and time consuming "vehicles not spawning" or "services not working" type issues. While incorporating vanilla policies in to our overlays won't eradicate those issues, it will help users make more informed decisions.

Vehicle restrictions overlay:

They are processed by pathfinder as flags on the segments IIRC. We could allow override at segment level?

• Bike ban on sidewalks
  • New vehicle restriction icon strip on sidewalks
  • See also: #18 , #144
• Combustion engine ban
  • Users think it's just about reducing noise pollution...
  • But, if memory serves, it will actually block non-electric vehicles from using roads
  • I think it's only for passenger cars, but could be wrong
  • Somehow integrate in to our existing passenger car icon? like a sub-button or something?
• Heavy traffic ban
  • Cargo trucks cannot use the area
  • Should set the default state for our existing cargo vehicle restriction
  • User could enable on some roads to create cargo routes through the district
  • Or they could disable on other roads to prevent cargo getting in to residential zones
  • See also: #337
• Old town
  • Only residents can use the area for motor vehicles
  • I assume this also causes heavy traffic ban, but haven't checked
  • Somehow integrate in to our existing icons?
  • See also: #371 (we should allow public transport vehicles by default IMO)

Transport preferences

These determine what kinds of transport cims prefer to use or must use (and thus what mayor must accommodate). Maybe a new info view that adds a (draggable) panel in bottom-left corner of map? Or temporarily declutter vanilla district icon display to only show relevant icons? Or show icons on relevant buildings? In addition, the cims themselves have personal preferences (which can be overridden by mods) - could we show that on cim info panels?

• Encourage biking
• Electric cars
  • Residents must ditch their fossil cars and use Tesslamobiles instead
• Prefer ferries
• Free public transport
  • Could show icons on PT stations/stops?
• Come one, come all
  • Stadium policy
  • Could we display if there's a stadium within certain range of camera?
  • Show in similar location to whatever we choose for "Free public transport" vis
• Helicopter priority
  • Police, fire and ambulance services will dispatch helicopters instead of road vehicles
  • You could have local fire station and a helicopter will still be sent (it seems that way)

Transport volumes

These affect volume or flow of traffic, thus affect congestion.

• Boost connections
  • 20% more outside traffic
  • Show on (draggable) panel in bottom-left corner of map?
• Automated toll
  • Faster passage through toll booths
  • Show as icon on toll booth?
• Night tours
  • Park gets 30% more custom at night
  • Icon over park?
• NIMBY
  • Leisure shuts down at night
• High ticket prices
  • Fewer passengers
  • Icon on stations/stops?

Other

Just mentioning, not sure if there's anywhere we could viably visualise...

• Studded tires
  • Snow doesn't impact traffic speed so much
  • Doubt users would notice any difference
  • We should probably check TM:PE acts upon it just in case

But districts already show the icons...

Usually buried amongst numerous other icons for that district. Bad vanilla UI - when everything has focus, nothing does.

[originalfoo]

Scope creep v1:

Why don't we put the TM:PE policies in to the policies panel? That way users could set them city wide and also per district.

[originalfoo]

Scope creep v2:

The vanilla policies panel is grim as toast, the categorisation is all wrong and difficult to find stuff.

Why don't we refactor it to be a long list that can be filtered (via drop down) to various categories - one of which would be "Traffic" - and also add a search box to filter to matching strings (note: nightmare if localised)?

Also, the policies can be toggled on or off, but that gives no clue as to what default (citywide setting for the policy) is. Would be nice to have trinary button (off, default, on), or if keeping binary at least find a way to indicate what the city default currently is.

[originalfoo]

Scope creep v3:

Traffic management districts.

People mostly use city districts to depict towns, yet towns are often split in to smaller areas such as residential, CBD, shopping complex, etc.

So I could paint a traffic district over my residential area and use it to override traffic policies for that area.