Traffic Congestion

[manu-fan 0]

Hi,

What effect does traffic congestion have on the game?

Now that my region is getting more fully developed etc., I regularly have bus stops that are overused, and my passenger rail stations (some of them) are way overused.

However, I can't tell what effect it's having on the game. Everything seems to be chugging along nicely.

Thanks.

[paperboy15 4]

Higher commute times which can lead to building abandonment. More air pollution (mass transit excluded, of course) and increased traffic noise also are negative effects.

[homefryes 9]

Hi, Manu --

I hope this will be helpful. It's likely that commute times could be affected, leading to abandonment if commuters have to pass through congested areas to get anywhere. Most definitely your air pollution levels will rise in congested areas.

One thing I've noticed with consistency, and it really bothers me, is that when I repeatedly open neighboring cities, the usage numbers increase (on roads, highways, rails, etc.) that connect to adjoining neighbors dramatically from one neighbor to another through the city I have open at that time. The more I open each neighbor, the higher the numbers go. I don't know if this is a bug with the game "out of the box," or if this is an issue that has occurred because of NAM.

[manu-fan 0]

Thanks.

I don't think that more and more traffic each time you open a neighbour is a bug. It's the game figuring out where all the jobs are and shifting population traffic around to get there.

So, If I have an over congested bus stop, or rail station, what's the solution?

I tried putting another bus stop right next to the overused one, but then one was still way overused, and the other one hardly used at all. That's a bug that needs fixing in the next version!

Cheers.

[paperboy15 4]

Download some higher capacity stations from the STEX. Also, if you are trying to relieve congestion at a rail, subway, or el station where the line itself is over-capacity, it is probably pointless to increase station capacity.

Forgot to mention earlier...I sure get a kick out of seeing my highways, avenues, and roads backed up! Haha! It's almost like some sort of payback for me.

[Bones1 96]

I used to use monorail, which has infinite capacity (hmmm... might be limited to 65535 but I'm not sure), between cities to handle the traffic. But as you say, it just causes more and more traffic flow. That's great for mass transit income, but I hate the fact the sims don't bother to work a jobs in their own city.

Now, I just build one road between cities, and let it congest until the sims are forced to find local jobs.

[DITRO 15]

Really? Cause I do the exact opposite, Bones1. I try to go for sprawling suburbs and a large commercial center. Right now i'm planning a suburban thruway so my sims can commute easily to their jobs in the city. I think your sims are commuting between cities either because there aren't enough jobs in the city they live in or because they can't find a job that matches their wealth level.

manu-fan: You might have to wait a little while until your sims start to use the other bus stop.

[JohnMK 0]

DITRO,

I'm inclined to think Bones1 is making a subjective move based upon a complete and objective understanding of the game system and all ramifications therein.

[Bones1 96]

The problem with too much intercity commuting isn't caused by lack of jobs in the local city. It's caused by a kludge in the Simcity commuting program.

Basically, sims will work at the closest job that matches their wealth level. That works great if you only have one city or no neighbour connections. However, the commute algorithm considers that the "edge of the city map" is also where a job is (assuming that extra jobs do exist somewhere outside the local city).

The algorithm doesn't take into account the extra travel distance to jobs once they leave the city!!!

The problem is that it's often faster for sims to travel to the edge of the map than it is for them to travel to a local job. So, you get sims going to jobs outside of your city, and leaving the jobs within your city.

Now the problem gets worse...

You've now got extra jobs in your city, because sims aren't taking them. When you play your neighbour city, it sees all those vacant jobs, and its sims start travelling to the edge of the map to get to them. Then its local jobs become vacant!

You can see where this is going, right? Local jobs don't get filled by local residents, and more and more intercity commuting starts to happen because there are unfilled jobs in those cities.

(The problem is made worse in that sims that travel outside the local city don't actually have to get to their jobs, but that's another issue I won't discuss here.)

You can help solve the problem in two ways:

1. Make it very difficult for sims to travel to the edge of the map, where the "free jobs" are. I do this by limiting it to a road, so that congestion kills the intercity commuting after a few thousand cars.

2. Make it more attractive for sims to work in the local city. You can do this by placing jobs close to the residents, and putting in longer travel paths for the intercity commuters (such as a highway that has on-ramps only in the centre of the city).

Of course, if you want a "bedroom community", then you actually want all the traffic to go between cities, so you don't really have a problem with it.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Holy cow!  If that's the way it works, how come the game doesn't crash?  It sounds like a positive feedback loop.  I don't doubt you are right, it is the kind of thing they'd have to do because they can only access one city at a time.

[Bones1 96]

It's a positive feedback loop, but only to a certain point. You can only have as many sims leaving a city, as the local population + sims arriving in that city, totals. Plus, any local sims that are closer to a local job, or that arrive in the city and find a local job that is closer than "the next edge of the map", won't be leaving the city. So, the game only increases intercity commuting up to a certain point.

But it is annoying. The "remote jobs" feature is kind of a stupid implementation, but I can see why Maxis did it. It's easier than doing it properly.

Luckily, with a bit of road design, you can work around the issue. (As mentioned in my previous post.) The real problem is mass transit, such as rails. They're so damn fast compared to roads, that sims will almost always find it's quicker to take a railway to the edge of the map than it is to drive to a local job. It's a huge problem with monorail: it is the fastest network in the game, and it also has infinite capacity. Double whammy!

[Jinxed. 0]

A problem I had last night, I had huge apartments and commercial shops, but they had roads. And this was like, the center of the region. So I changed them to roads, but within months, the sims had abandoned the skyscrapers and I was struggling to keep the population above 30,000. The city had become an urban eyesore, with polluted water systems and I had loans to pay off so i had to delete that region. I've only just got Simcity 4. Also, can sims have jobs in neighbouring regions if I make a road out of town? I see all these pretty suburbs, but every time I try to make one, I run out of cash.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Welcome to Simtropolis, jinxed.

The secret to starting out in Sc4 is to go slow.  Don't over zone, and keep it siimple.  Rome wasn't built in a day and neither is a city in the game.  Keep it to low density for a start.

Low density lots (Q, A, Z keys) only require power.  You can use this idea to create a farming village and go from there.  Don't try for a glamorous metropolis, but let it grow from your village.

Stay profitable.  Six default size farms with a few 2 x 1 lots on each with streets between should go into the black quite quickly.  Turn one of the steets into a road and run it off the edge as an export sink. 

After you are profitable (Don't run faster than Rhino) you can brench out.  Stay in the black.