Traveling between several cities

[KeanoManu 42]

Firstly, i've set the commute times/speeds to almost infinite so the sims we'll be able to travel several cities to their work.

If i have a few residental cities and then one industrial for work a couple of cities away, like this:

R1 R4 R6

R2 R5 R7

R3 R5 I1

If i have the highway from R1 to I1 going through R4, R6 & R7, do i have to open and run them for a while if i want my sims from R1 to find the path to I1 or do they find it anyway?

I build I1 first, R7 second and so on so all the other cities are already built when i build R1.

Hard to describe but i hope you'll understand how i mean.

EDIT: Oh, another scenario. Don't want to destroy my region if it's not working.

R1 E1 E2 E3 E4 E5 I1

(E = Empty city, simply just a highway running throu)

Will they travel to the indutry from that residental city? And must i open-run-save-close all the empty cities for the sims to find the path?

And btw, how what's the best way to start a big region? I doesn't seem to get demand for anything else than R$, and using superdemand mods have ruined all my other regions with no-job-zots.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Good luck.  I suggest you run each city for about 25 years, serially so that the traffic stuff gets properly passed.  may not work.

Oh, and I have never been able to get the empty city trick to work.  You need something at a cross-road or an interchange.  Doesn't have to be much, and doesn't have to run much.

[Skyfire 0]

For the Empty City thing, just a firestation or police station and a windmill will suffice. That way, the neighboring cities know there are jobs there. Make sure they're connected to the freeway via road.

[Sim_Air 2]

I would suggest a few farms and trees in the empty cities, so that it may look nice.

For the first scenario, i am pretty sure that you don't need to run the cities for many sim years. Basically, while you build the highway, you just run the simulator and just see sims running through it; as long as the highway is the shortest route.

By the way, make another highway going from R1 to R2 to R5(the lower centre) and ending in I1. Your life will be easier.

[Jazzmaster 716]

Well, actually this can occur. When I deleted my largest city to start fresh (keeping a backup copy incase that didn't turn out so well, and I did bring it back after a while), I noticed this happening. See, the city, called Bayview, was situated on a large tile with a massive downtown taking up most of the area, siuated on a peninsula with land to the north and south in the same tile. In this downtown there are hundreds upon thousands of jobs, mostly commercial. I kept a backup copy because I knew neighboring cities really basically built themselves around this city; at least, that's what I thought.

To the north was Becon Hills east and west, primarliy made up of residential areas, and to the south was Coal Harbors east and west, which were basically just two industrial parks. When I finally deleted the large city in the center of all this, my first step to making a fresher, nicer one was developing an elaborate transportation infastructure. When all the main avenues and railways, and interstates 27 and 7 were finally up and running, that's when I noticed it. The cities that I thought were so based around Bayview had there commuting Sims just passing through like the wind as if Bayview was never there, no thoughts of it now just being an empty field.

Basically, to sum it up, as Sim_Air said, yes, it will work, but you should definitely make a shortcut. It won't take 25 years to see the cars just passing through your empty cities (although they may want a rest-stop along the way lol).  And the best part?  Other than the roads and railways, nothing else was there!  Absolutley NO buildings! Good luck!

-Yoshiisland

[fern244 1]

good luck!

[KeanoManu 42]

Okay, so it works to have almost empty cities. Those are just temporarly, a way to separate r$ from r$$$ until i develop all the empty ones. But just having a highway doesn't work? There need to be a road-connection too? Because i want to force them to use the highway, it's so unrealistic that thousands of people are traveling on a small road when there's a big, empty highway next to it.

If i have R1 R2 I1

First i build I1 and then R2 and run them. When i then build R1, do i have to run R2 too for the sims to find the path to I1?

This with pathfinding in SC4 are hard to understand and when things fails to work, it's 500 possible errors.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

A through road connection is a rather poor idea.  Make them pick up the highway at each end.  In the empty cities, you only need something at an interchange like a couple of low density commercials, a wind power plant, and a farm or two.

For variety try varying what's at the nexial interchanges in the empty quarters.