Problem with a river

[ayres006 0]

Ok, the scenario is this:

I have a city map that is bisected by a river. On one side of the river I have high density residential that is developed to about 200k sims. It is connected to another tile in the region. On the other side of the river I have a high density commercial area that is also fairly well developed, however this half of the map is connected to no other tiles.

My problem is that while I have three bridges connecting the two halves of the map, there doesn't appear to be ANY traffic whatsoever on the commercial side of the river. When I examine the commercial side buildings with the query tool, they all say that they have employees, but when I use the commuter query on them, they say (none). Furthermore, commuter querying any of the roads on the commercial side also shows (none), as do all three of the bridges that I built crossing the river. For whatever reason, the commercial buildings have employees but they are not commuting or generating ANY traffic whatsoever. I also tried installing car ferries, but they also have shown no more than 2 cars utilizing them (on the residential side) and show (none) on the commercial side.

This is quite a quandary for me, but I feel like there needs to be traffic in the business area to provide customers and whatnot. Any suggestions would be helpful, or advice from other people who know more about this situation.

Thanks in advance

[Rochefort 13]

Hi ayres006 and welcome to ST.

Firstly, its fairly common to see such bugs in the game. It doesn't tend to affect gameplay, but all the same I understand how irritating it can be.

Just a thought, but do you have any industrial in this city..you don't mention any.

As an experiment, you might want to place some industrial on the commercial side of the river, but beyond it, so that your commuters (if they appear) are forced to drive through your commercial area to reach it. I'm not saying this will make any difference at all, but it would be interesting to see if iot had any effect.

[xxbydesign 1]

Buildings stay occupied in SimCity if there is enough demand, not if there are enough workers.  As long as demand stays high, the querey tool will show the building as being populated.  However, Im willing to place money on the fact taht your city is also demanding mroe residential, and taht is because the commerce still needs people to ACTUALLY work there.  I'd suggest setting up a nother neighbor connection in the next town over adjacent to the commercial center.  New residents to this area will most likely work in teh commercial hub.

Another thing: destroying the place of employment forces residents to find new jobs.  If it really bothers you that they dont work in the commercial center, try destorying a few choice destinatino jobs and try to disperse the workforce.

[ayres006 0]

Ok, my original intent was to keep the commercial side of the river purely commercial, but after some thought I decided to go ahead and put some more high density residential there as well. After zoning a rather large bit of residential on that side of the river and letting it develop, some traffic has been generated on the roads in the commercial area but it is still an irritatingly pithy amount. I'm sure sometime in the future I will look back and curse my own efforts to generate traffic here.

XXbydesign: interesting comments on the dynamics of employment and commuting, I will try to keep that in mind and will hopefully eventually get around to expanding to one of the neighbor tiles on that side of the river, although that is still only in the long range plan.

Rochefort: I appreciate the suggestion, and adding some development other than commercial seems to help although I have yet to generate much in the way of traffic going ACROSS the river, which I also aim to do at some point. I want all of my pretty bridges and highways well utilized!

Thanks for the suggestions guys.

[Sketchley 0]

It takes time, and a larger population. Currently it looks like your R are all employed with jobs close to home (their side of the river.) Removing those jobs, and any neighbour connections they may be using, *may* force them to cross those pretty bridges. HOWEVER, they may decide that the commute is too long, and simply abandon the city. I recommend making sure that you have plenty of mass transit (buses, trains, etc.). The bridges *may* not get used, but you'll most likely have more traffic from the R side of the river heading to the C side of the river.

[Goldfish4209 9]

Is there another city in the other tile? The sims might all work over there.

[Rochefort 13]

My suggestion was for industrial, not residential with the aim that the industrial might draw some traffic across the bridges for you.

[sq13610 0]

Just a point of clarification. There are TWO query tools.

Using the standard query tool you will get a reading of (for example) 58/64 for a particular workplace. This means that if conditions were perfect this workplace would offer 64 jobs but that currently there are only 58 jobs available because conditions are not perfect (too much pollution, lack of neighbour connections no water etc etc).

Using the traffic query tool tells us exactly how many of those 58 available jobs are filled and how each worker gets to the workplace.

[Articfox 0]

was just wondering...is ur commercial area mostly dominated by hi-rise skyscrapers? coz wel i duno if this applies 2 simcity, but tall skyscrapers tend 2 contain residential areas as well..like ppl living n working in da same building...so if ALL the employees in a particular building of urs also live in their skyscrapers that proly explains y theres hardly any traffic..

[2nerdy4u 1]

Originally posted by: Articfox was just wondering...is ur commercial area mostly dominated by hi-rise skyscrapers? coz wel i duno if this applies 2 simcity, but tall skyscrapers tend 2 contain residential areas as well..like ppl living n working in da same building...so if ALL the employees in a particular building of urs also live in their skyscrapers that proly explains y theres hardly any traffic..quote>

just wondering but have u ever played simcity? there are seperate buildings for residential and commercial... they dont mix

as for the river city... i dont know wats happening... i think they might be working on the same side of the river in a different town.

[Cob92 360]

There are no mixed use buildings in SimCity. Articfox, if you're going to be active on these forums, you might want to play the game a little so you can understand what people are talking about.

First of all, build only one or two bridges. Too many routes disperses traffic. Secondly, ensure that the city residents are actually working on the commercial side

[Silur 3,297]

Very interesting idea from Sq13610 !!!

I don't think about this before - excellent !

Thank you !!!

[Articfox 0]

right ok, silly me! lol its just that in one of my particular city, my commercial population is slightly higher than my residental population (duno if u guys have had this) which was a bit strange for me coz that city was only connected to only ONE neighbouring city by which the residental area is on the other end of that city map. so was just thinkin that it just mite not be possible for ppl in da neighbouring city to commute that far. ive been playin simcity4 for a while now but sumtimes facts from real life cities just get into me a bit too much! =P

[mistershnerples 0]

most of my cities have some form of water in them, because i like to either bisect them by a river or have them connected with a ferry. anyways, even in my most dense cities, ill have this patch of nothing and then add some commercial when demand skyrocketing. well, buildings will develop but not the high rises, but those dinky things with "no workers". what i've always done is to add some residential closeby, which seems to always fix the issue. otherwise, i put alot of mass transit closeby or a rewards building. parks and flower gardens help increase the land value and maybe demand and workers ...