How do you solve Simcity 4 problems like commutes?

[Icoxo 0]

On my third attempt at making a city I seperated the industrial area and the rest go on their own region square, everything was fine until I got to 57,000 people. The population started dropping as low as 54,000 and sometimes over 55,000, I knew I was one to two thousand people short of what I wanted. I could zone more, but it wouldn't solve anything related to periodic empty buildings that the wealthy and sometimes the middle class leave behind, more commercial jobs wouldn't help either. 

I knew what the problem was, some of the sims (especially the wealthy) were taking jobs in distant commercial districts and not the ones nearby. Why, because almost all the new commercial buisnessess were medium wealh and the wealthy goes farther to search for jobs. Some going clear across town, I had highways and a monorail system, but the problem was I couldn't build those every half mile for it would take too much space. I needed something faster then busing, fast enough to shorten their commutes. So I started an agressive move towards a subway system, I had parts of the underground thick with tunnels, miles of tunnels with high numbers of subway stops. I ran the simulation for a year, sustained population was at 56,000, but I knew it could be better. I still noticed some mid rises still having long commutes, I queried the routes, traced them to a destination, placed a subway stop and connected it with the rest of the system. I did that to a route or two or placed stops near places known to have long commute times. I ran the simulation again, the population went above 57,000 and never went under for the whole year I ran it, in one month it passed 58,000. And yes they use the subway stops which I think is due to the perfect pathfinding option found in the NAM. I still have a few buildings that have no high wealth but are not abandoned but just taken over by the majority middle class.

LESSON: querying routes can be important when laying out high speed transport systems.

-subways, when placed right can be very valuable in keeping your city from becoming zotville when other transport methods won't work.