Strange commuting problem

[Shadow86 0]

I'm having another problem with my suburb, and this time's the commuting. It seems that, for some reason, several houses in certain residential zones can't find a proper commuting route (the commute time's listed as 'Long') even though the house next door has medium times. Hell, I even built a whole subway system hoping it'd solve the problem. But no, only 2%-5% of the stations' capacity is being used.

A part of the population works in the industrial 'city' adjacent to the suburb, whereas others work in commercial areas along the avenues. I don't know where they're trying to go that the game (or NAM April '08) can't compute their routes. For example, one of My Sims recently 'evolved' to R$$$, and got a job as CEO in a commercial store in town, a job she keeps losing due to this problem. It should be pretty easy to reach her workplace, there's even three bus stops along the way!

She lives in the mansion indicated by the red circle, and she works at the building highlighted by the green circle.

I don't know what to do at this point. At first I thought it only happened to R$ citizens because there weren't enough jobs for them (but the ID demand is negative and the R$ one sky-high), but my sim's R$$$ and she's suffering all the same. Most of the city's free from this problem; it only happens around the screenshot's area, whose distinctive feature from the rest of the city are those diagonal roads. There were more commute problem ZOTs around, but now the houses are just abandoned.

I installed NAM (April 2008) before starting this region, and I suspect this might be related to it, but I need some sort of confirmation before taking drastic measures. I don't think I've used many of its additional buildings, just street roundabouts, but I don't know how firmly NAM's rooted into my game at this point. I used diagonal streets as well, but I'm not sure if those are a NAM feature or come with SimCity 4 Deluxe.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

[Albatross Domain 2]

From what I'm seeing, your Sim's Home and Workplace is not in direct line. case in point some of your intersections, are at such an angle causing traffic to divert away, or rather taking the long way to the work place... I also noticed near the top right of your picture the Briefcase Zots, upgrade that street to road status, as well as the strett in front of that work building as well. That one particular road going north-west from your house may work better is round-abouts were put in.  See if that helps some.

 Albatross

[Shadow86 0]

I'll try redoing the intersections in a different manner or eliminate them altogether. As for the briefcase ZOTs, they're over houses having presumably the same problem as my sim. There are more of those ZOTs scattered around the area.

I knew those diagonal roads had something to do with this. Thanks for your help, I'll post again after trying those solutions.

[juaquin 0]

I think if you move the bus stop that is directly acroos the street from the mansion down to the corner across from City Hall your sim will start riding the bus.  Also try building a street from the two jobless  houses on the upper right dirctly down to the road by the high school and place a bus stop on that corner.  I have no logical explanation for this but my experience with SimCity tells me this should work. 

[xxbydesign 1]

Often times this has nothing to do with commute times and may simply be a demand issue. Maybe there are just too many R$$$ for the city. If R$$$ demand is high, it means there are jobs for R$$$ to fill. If you'r ID demand is negative, there are too many jobs and not enough R$ workers. Also, don't bank on R$$$ to take the bus; they try to aviod it if possible.

[Shadow86 0]

I think it is a commuting problem, as my sim's constantly losing her job due to it, according to her complaints. I dispatched her to her work place, she took the bus and arrived just fine, so it doesn't make any sense. The R$$$ population in my suburb is minimal (They provide only $86 in taxes, at a 9.0% rate). In my adjacent industrial district, ID and IM are negative, and there's demand for all three residential, especially R$, and commercial zones.

It'd seem building more commercial alleviates the R$$ demand, but there's no way to bring down the R$ demand. ID is very negative in my industrial city, R$ demand is sky-high in my suburb, and zoning more residential doesn't make it budge. At this point, it'd seem nobody wants to employ R$ citizens: light commercial zones turn into $$ and $$$ buildings, and the only industry that will grow is high-tech (probably because I've very high education rates all over the suburb). My advisors are useless, as usual.

PS: I remade the intersections along the diagonal roads so they're perpendicular, but it didn't help. As for the two ZOT'd houses on the upper right corner, they're suffering this problem. There's no visible problem with the street: it connects with the road west of it in a straight line, passing behind the large high school.

[Dukat 2]

Sorry to say, but since the NAM included different traffic simulators it might be those. I tried the Simulator B, and my commute time went from 40 to 120 during 50 years. Now I returned to Perfect Pathfinding and my commute times have dropped to 80 within few years, might be still dropping. If it harrassed you that much, you might wanna test it.

[Shadow86 0]

I switched to the Perfect Pathfinding controller, as you suggested, but even though it reduced traffic in general, the commuting problem persists. The commuting time chart indicates the average figure is 45, which makes the problem make even less sense. I built two reasonably large high-tech industry areas and allowed a couple of years to pass, hoping the presence of more jobs would somehow alleviate the issue. But no, everything remains the same. Building more light commercial zones didn't help either.

Could it be due to the connections I have to empty city squares (SimNation) close to the affected homes? Perhaps the sims take that road and get lost in the wilderness or something. I really don't know.

I'll try building a medium-density-based, residential/commercial district ('city') adjacent to the suburb. Maybe the larger commercial buildings help, who knows.

[xxbydesign 1]

Just wondering if there has been any progress since the last post on this city? What has changed, what remains the same?

The reason ID is so negative in the industrial city is because there are so many avaliable jobs and not enough R$ to fill them. If R$ is sky-high in the suburb, its because so many want to move in to fill the avaliable jobs. My guess is the R$$ and R$$$ replace the R$ housing first chance they get, so R$ never develops or lasts for very long. Changing taxes to favor R$ would help with this. Also, try increasing your R$ density to medium near your neighbor connection to the industiral city; you already have water if you have R$$$, so try to compact your R$ near the border to keep commutes quick.

Could you upload an image of your intersections so we can see the changes? I'm just curious as to your solution. Id also be curious to know if your new adjacent commercial city tile helped the problem.

If your sim is still complaining, maybe you could just move her to another R$$$ house!

[Shadow86 0]

First of all, sorry for replying a year later.

I never found a solution to the problem, got frustrated and quit the game as nothing I tried seemed to work. Even if the sims' own cars and buses don't work for some bizarre reason, the extensive subway system was available, but it remained barely used despite the massive commuting issues. I gave up before building that commercial sector I had planned.

R$ people living in the residential sector should have been able to travel to the adjacent industrial zone (whether by car, bus or subway), as it's the essence of multi-tile cities, which I've seen work without these grievous commuting troubles. Perhaps NAM was botched on some fundamental level, or I somehow managed to hit an obscure, crippling bug inherent in SimCity 4 Deluxe itself.

I have since uninstalled SC4D, but I've kept the region, which I'll share to see if other people can come up with solutions, which would ideally motivate me to carry on building Stromburg. The only mod in use was NAM April '08, I believe. Here you go: www.sendspace.com/file/2iz0yn

[Albatross Domain 2]

Strange to see a reply of mine a year later... NAM July '09 is up an running.

[Shadow86 0]

Could you look into the region on your end, please? It's just two sectors: Altenwald (light residential with light commercial and high-tech industrial bits) and Brunswell (dirty industrial).

I'll try and check if the June (July?) 2009 version has done anything about it, once I find my SC4D disc. The savegame's a SimCity 4 Deluxe 1.1.638 one, and as I said I was using the April 2008 version back then, but I don't think that last detail would cause any problems.

[z1 566]

This sounds like a typical traffic simulator problem. Try Simulator Z; it will probably fix your problem.

[mayor_brando 8]

z1 is right. Simulator Z should solve most of your problems.