People and traffic

Every little figure you see walking the floors and riding the elevators is a real person in the game, on a real trip. When they wait, the game counts how long, and the waits are what make or break your ratings.

Modern The one exception is the decorative passers-by: a few people who stroll the corridors of floors where tenants are in, to make the tower feel lived in. They aren’t tenants or visitors, they never stand in a lobby, on stairs, at an elevator or outside a shop, and they don’t affect anything. They are off unless you turn them on in Settings. Classic has none, as in 1994.

Who is in your tower

Office workers arrive in the morning, go out for lunch, and head home in the evening. On weekends the offices are empty.
Residents of condos and apartments go out in the morning and come home at night, and they’re around all weekend.
Hotel guests come in the evening, go out to eat, sleep, and check out at 8 the next morning.
Shoppers and diners come from all of the above, plus visitors from the city once you have a Metro.
Staff: housekeepers cleaning hotel rooms, and Security’s guards on a bomb search. While the guards search, everyone else stands still. See Events.

Modern The day is livelier. Children leave for school and come home, office workers run errands mid-day, and some hotel guests linger past checkout for one more lunch before they go.

What the people are doing

Everything a figure does on screen comes from the game. Nothing moves just to look busy, so you can read what is going on by watching.

What you see	What it means
Walking, legs moving	The person is on their way somewhere. They walk from where they were to where the game has them next, so at Play speed you can follow one across a floor. The legs move as far as the person walks. At Fast they cover more ground at each step, but the legs keep an even pace.
Facing left or right	The way they are walking. Shuffling up in a waiting line doesn’t turn them around.
Standing still	Waiting for an elevator, or just arrived. Someone headed for an elevator walks straight to the back of its line and waits there, facing the shaft.
Checking the time	They have been waiting a while.
Hands on hips, amber top	They are getting impatient.
Arms thrown up, red top	They have waited too long. Fix this landing first.
Walking behind a shaft	People on their way along a floor pass behind the elevator shafts and cars. The waiting line stays in front, so you can always see its colors.
In a car	Riding. The car shows one figure for each passenger, as many as fit in the cab, so a whole line that gets on fills it. Housekeepers stay visible while they ride.
Climbing	On the stairs or an escalator, between floors.
Leaning into a door	Modern Pushing through the revolving door between two lobby halls. The door turns only while someone walks through it.
Pushing a cart	A housekeeper going to the next hotel room. There are six to a crew, all in the same uniform. They come in through the lobby for their shift and leave the same way.
Vacuuming	A housekeeper cleaning a room.
Asleep under a blanket	A hotel guest in bed, or a condo resident on the sofa, at night.
Guards on the stairs and floors	Security’s search for a bomb, climbing the emergency stairs and walking each floor.
Someone running	A thief, until Security catches them.
Strolling, never changing color	Modern A passer-by, if you have them turned on.

When the game is paused, everyone stops mid-step and picks up where they left off.

Modern People are lit from the upper left, and the rooms are shaded to match. Classic People and rooms are drawn flat, as in 1994. The people at desks, tables and beds inside the rooms are the same cast as the ones in the halls, at the same size.

The rushes

When	What happens	What it tests
Morning	Workers arrive, residents leave	Elevators up from the lobby
11 AM to 2 PM	Everyone goes to lunch	Everything at once
Evening	Workers leave, residents and hotel guests arrive	Elevators down to the lobby, and restaurants

Lunch is the hardest. Build for lunch and the rest of the day takes care of itself.

How people get around

People always start and end their trips at a lobby. From there, they take whatever combination of elevators, stairs and escalators gets them to their floor, changing as often as they have to. They pick the route that will be quickest, counting the walk, the ride, and the wait for each car.

Every change is another wait, so a tower where people have to change three times on the way home is a slow tower. Express elevators to sky lobbies are the cure.

Classic Nobody climbs more than 4 flights of stairs or 7 of escalator in a row. See Stairs and escalators.

When people wait too long

A person who waits too long for a car gives up on that trip. More importantly, the game keeps track of how long the people of each floor wait on average. When a floor’s waits get too long, that floor counts as jammed, and the offices, homes and hotel rooms on it lose rating every hour. See Tenant ratings.

The Map’s Traffic view colors each floor:

Clear: people are getting where they’re going.
Busy: the elevators are working hard.
Jammed: tenants on this floor are starting to give up on the tower.