Need help with transportation layout!

[King Daily 0]

Hi, first off I am sorry if this is in the wrong area.

Okay, I just recently purchased Sim City 4 and I'm loving it but I am having a problem with my commute time / transportation. There are massive areas in my hoods that are abandoned due to commute time. I have set up bus stations but it still happens. I know that I have to use other methods but I don't know how to lay them out. Also if anyone has any tip as to how to layout all of this stuff just let me know or direct me to another thread.

So, if anyone could help me out that would be great!

[hawkpride147 1]

can we see some pics? also i might suggest getting the NAM

[Spiritus Sanctus 0]

I think, because you just purchased the game, that you don't use any mods nor that you use cheats. If you play the game, with no mods ( and other things like that ) I would advice you to build a subway system. I know it's expensive, but is a great solution. Subway is the best investment you can make, to create better traffic.

[King Daily 0]

How do you post pics?

[JakeMD 107]

take a picture. goto image shack.com or photobucket.com, create an account there and upload your pictures. then, when in reply mode for a post, go to the insert a picture button, put the URL in the url spot and resize image to 800X600, or less, then reply or type more text or pictures and thats how you do it.

[King Daily 0]

Thanks!

[King Daily 0]

[King Daily 0]

Are those good enough? Oh and there are about 24-25,000 ppl in that city.

[quert 10]

Take a look at your Congestion tool. Where ever you see red on your streets, upgrade them to a road to relieve congestion.

[King Daily 0]

Okay I changed the streets to roads and it helped the commute time...a lot.

Can someone post some pics of how you have set up your cities transportation system?

[Mulefisk 15]

My guess is that you need more dirty and manufacturing industry until your educational levels are high enough to let everyone have $$$ jobs.

Build more schools and more industry in an adjacent city, and I think you'll see that the no-job zots will go away.

Good luck!

[ssfsx17 0]

I'm guessing that you used the auto-zone tools. A good first step is to put paved Roads on top of the gray Streets.

[opbravo 0]

a tip for bus stops and other mass transit stops. sims only walk 6-8 tiles MAX to get to a mass transit stop. keep this in mind when placing your bus stops.

as for pictures, i would suggest checking out other people's city journals. also, there is tutorial in the omnibus section about mass transit that has some pictures and other info regarding transportation issues.

[King Daily 0]

Wow, thanks for all the replies!

@Mulefisk- But I have schools everywhere and the demand for dirty/manufacturing is really low.

@ssfsx17- Over all the gray streets?

@opbravo- Is that the same for subway stations?

[opbravo 0]

Is that the same for subway stations?  yes

furthermore, you can link mass transit stops.  what i mean is that sims can walk between bus stops and subway stations (and vice versa of course).  so a sim could take a bus to the stop which is next to your subway station, get off and walk to the subway station, and then take the subway.  this of course works in the other direction as well (sim gets off at a subway station and walks to bus stop).

also, different types of sims prefer different types of transit.  low wealth sims are more than willing to use bus stops, whereas high wealth sims rarely use mass transit and prefer to drive.  middle wealth sims can go any way (will use bus stops, subway, car, etc...) depending on commute time.

finally, enacting the commuter shuttle ordinance can encourage mass transit use.  good luck with your city.  post again if you have other questions.

[crazyyaya 4]

ugrade strrets to raods, increse tarportation funding, introduce oridances, built more netwroks likes subways. aslo i don't know why you have so many large hospitals in a lowdensty ares.

[King Daily 0]

Originally posted by: crazyyaya ugrade strrets to raods, increse tarportation funding, introduce oridances, built more netwroks likes subways. aslo i don't know why you have so many large hospitals in a lowdensty ares.quote>

Because I plan to make that med density when I fill up the rest of the city.

[PhantomOwl 3]

It's the avenues. I've had this problem before. What happens is unlike with roads, sims can't cross over to the other side when driving on avenues. So when you hook up avenues to the end of you city and make a neighbor connection, sims can't get to their jobs along the side of the avenue coming into the city untill the next intersection. They also can't get home from their jobs on the side of the avenue leaving the city. To solve this, drag a road across your avenue on the tiles right next to the city limits, so your sims will be able to get to the other side of the road. This will solve the no job zot/long commute time problem, because what's happening now is the game is lining up jobs for your sims that are inaccessable, so when the sims don't show up the game pulls more sims to work there, causing massive abandoment/dillapidation.

[King Daily 0]

Well, I did all the stuff that you guys told me to do and it helped a little but I still have mass areas of abandonment.  Another problem is that I don't know where to place highways or if I need them at all.  Here are a few more images.

And when should I start using med. density R?

[opbravo 0]

the abandonment can be caused by a lot of things. i have some questions for you:

- what are the demands for commercial and industrial zones?

- do you have any neighbor connections? interconnected cities can share jobs and demand.

- what does your commute time graph look like? this can be found under the graphs menu.

you don't really need highways, especially if you plan and use your mass transit well. however, people use highways because it's realistic and can give you city some "personality". in my opinion, placing highways is a personal preference. pause your game, zoom out, and take a look at the "big picture" of your city. where do you plan on expanding? where are you gonna put your residential, commercial, and industrial zones? are you gonna do region play? you can always use real world cities (even your own) as inspirations. sorry i can't give you more concrete info on highways. perhaps others will chime in on that one.

you can start using medium density now if you want to (your city population is high enough). but plan accordingly because with higher density comes increased traffic...

[Teddah 1]

I see that many of your abandoned/dilapidated zones appear to be R$$$.  High wealth residential has a tendency to over-develop.  I usually raise the R$$$ tax rate to around 10.6 - 11.2 to fix this.  Initially, the demand for R$$$ will drop through the floor, but eventually it will increase.  I rarely see any distressed buildings in my cities because of this.

Hope this helps.

[King Daily 0]

How can I get this, the color part. Because I know how to get that box to pop up but that's it.

[Vandraad 0]

Another tip to help with traffic issues is to funnel your sims into specific routes. Many people here liken it to branches on a tree. Main arteries that are high capacity fork into smaller and smaller roads until you're down to the street level. i.e. Avenues to Roads to Streets, etc. Don't give your commuters too many choices to get from A to B..because sometimes their choice is not the best choice.

Your residential neighborhoods are actually too interconnected for effective traffic funneling. Although you have the avenues heading right to your C and I sections, there exist road connections running the full length parallel to those that commuters can use. That will significantly increase traffic congestion, increase traffic noise (limiting R$$$) and increase commute times.

[Spinmaster 75]

How can I get this, the color part....quote>

When you open that box, your cursor also changes. Hover it over a network and you'll see the tool-tip as you see in that picture (route type and statistics re: what type of traffic is using it). Click on the network and you'll see the color-coded routes, showing where everyone is coming from and going to, and how, that uses that route.

As for your abandonment...

Your sims can't find jobs they can do. "Abandoned due to commute time" could mean you have a horrible network, but in most cases - especially with a new city and no neighbors - it simply means there are no jobs for those sims. Think "infinite commute time" - this is what the game is really saying. It doesn't directly pair sims with jobs. It makes the poor bastards find jobs the really hard way - by commuting on every route they can as far as they're willing to go until a) they find a job they can do or b) they give up. And they will travel far i.e. even across multiple large cities, if the network is up-to-par. The briefcase atop many of your houses indicates b - those sims gave up, meaning probably there aren't enough jobs. If you don't satisfy their job need soon, you'll watch those houses abandon, then probably dilapidate to R$.

Teddah hit on why, in your case. The sims need jobs in their wealth and education level. And R$$$ are notorious for developing too much, too soon, particularly if you like to make all your cities a paradise. They come in droves because you made a perfect little heaven ... but there aren't enough jobs for them.

Even the richest jobs, for the max education, take only 15% R$$$ (CO$$$ with EQ 200). The rest of the jobs are middle- and lower-class R. You need A LOT of well-educated and healthy middle and lower-class sims before demand is high enough to build jobs that are rich enough to employ even a small R$$$ population. And since the lowest jobs, ID, IA, and CS$ are almost exclusively filled with R$, even the middle-class can be a problem in a young city; some are ok, but too many and they'll also have unemployment problems.

PhantonOwl was correct to point out avenues though. Not likely the problem in this case, but it may become one later as your city grows. Make sure sims can turn around on those things, stick some U-Turn crossings in them if you have long stretches without intersections (you can use streets to avoid getting extra traffic lights, just watch you don't get too many people doing U-Turns on them or you'll have congestion).

Also, check out the NAM (Network Addon Mod; new one just came out) if you don't already have it. It's an essential as far as most are concerned, if for nothing else at least the pathfinding fixes (it has a LOT of other nice goodies in it too). Without it, your sims take the shortest paths by raw # of tiles, even if it means super-slow seriously-congested streets the whole way. With NAM, actual travel time is computed for the routes instead, based on speed, capacity, and congestion - the sims will go a little out of the way to take faster routes, use mass transit if it's efficient, etc....

[King Daily 0]

@ Vandraad- Thanks for the advice, I've looked into it and found some good tutorials.

@ Spinmaster - Wow, that's a lot of stuff and I sorta understand what you are saying. And btw I did install NAM and it is helping.

But I think that I might just destroy the whole city and start over. Or, should I try to fix this city?

Also i might as well ask if the same rules apply for commercial areas?

[opbravo 0]

Or, should I try to fix this city?  well that's up to you.  i believe that any city can be save.  but the question is do you want to spend the time to fix it.  i've save some cities myself, but i've also started cities over, too.  it just depended on how much time i wanted to put into saving the city.

commercial areas are a little different than residential.  they of course need to be connected to your transportation network (or else your sims can't get to work), but commercial zones love areas of high traffic VOLUME.  the logic probably is the more traffic volume, the more customers a business will get.  the areas i get the tallest commercial buildings are along the main avenue through my downtown or CBD (central business district).  plazas and other park lots also help to increase desirability, and in my experience pollution doesn't have as great an effect as it does on residential (however, don't expect towering office buildings to pop up right next to your dirty industry).

edit:  oh and also you'll eventually need an airport if you want to realize your maximum commercial potential

[King Daily 0]

Originally posted by: opbravo Or, should I try to fix this city?  well that's up to you.  i believe that any city can be save.  but the question is do you want to spend the time to fix it.  i've save some cities myself, but i've also started cities over, too.  it just depended on how much time i wanted to put into saving the city.

commercial areas are a little different than residential.  they of course need to be connected to your transportation network (or else your sims can't get to work), but commercial zones love areas of high traffic VOLUME.  the logic probably is the more traffic volume, the more customers a business will get.  the areas i get the tallest commercial buildings are along the main avenue through my downtown or CBD (central business district).  plazas and other park lots also help to increase desirability, and in my experience pollution doesn't have as great an effect as it does on residential (however, don't expect towering office buildings to pop up right next to your dirty industry).

edit:  oh and also you'll eventually need an airport if you want to realize your maximum commercial potentialquote>

Thanks for all of your help! I think that I will restart the city and I will follow the 6 tile thing and hopefully it will work out this time.

Also, do I want to place the airport near the CBD or farther away?

[quert 10]

Well it depends.... If you realism, place it far away. If you want high desirablility, i find it better to place it near your commercial district.

[King Daily 0]

Here is my new city. Tell me what you think so far.  I have put taxes hig on R$$ and $$$.

[Vandraad 0]

Your passenger terminal on the railroad will need a parking garage next to it, yes? This way, the sims will drive to the parking garage, park, then ride the train to their destination. Without a place to park, they will just drive. At least, that is my assumption.