Commuters not using on-ramps

[kyevos 0]

Here's the set up:
http://home.comcast.net/~maginnis/zones3.JPG
The highway leading to the northwest takes commuters to another city, a small map filled with industrial zones. The connection works perfectly fine: the industry in the small map has developed and the residential zones in the big map support 15,000 residents.

Here's the problem:
http://home.comcast.net/~maginnis/traffic3.JPG
The commuters aren't using the highway like they should be. They ignore the highway on-ramps located near their homes and decide to only use the avenues until they run out of avenue. The avenues that feed into the two red-dot on-ramps are completed congested, while the blue-dot on-ramps are completely ignored.

Residential zones are being abandoned due to commute time because of the red-dot bottleneck. I've tested this by laying out industrial zones inside the residential-only map, to the south-west of the portion in the pictures. Those industry zones get developed and do support nearby residential zones.

I'm using the latest NAM with the improved pathfinding option, but nothing else.

So, what's up? I don't mind if I have to scrap the whole city, but I'd like to know why those commuters refuse to use the other on-ramps. Really sorry if there's something completely obvious that I'm missing, I'm still pretty new to the game.

[JakeMD 107]

The path finding is horrible on maxis default. The NAM adds better path finding as a plugin. I highly suggest you install the NAM.

[Haljackey 17,241]

Yes, the NAM traffic simulators will help fix this problem immensely.

I'd also get rid of a lot of the ramps as well, which may be confusing to sims. Highways work best when ramps are properly positioned in cities, don't make them connect to roads at every junction.

Hope this helps!

Best,

-Haljackey

[writingliberty 0]

It looks like a pathfinding issue - the Maxis default pretty much ignores the speed differential between the avenues and highways and thus the sims want to take the shortest route, which is the avenue to the congested ramps.

I, personally, would go through the res. city and break a lot of the road connections that parallel the highway network, especially closer to the congested ramps. This will give you space for more houses, and make the sims that are further from the northwest corner use the other ramps.

You could also put in some mass transit to take cars off the roads, but unless the highway itself is also congested, that's not absolutely necessary at this stage.

The NAM traffic plugins, as mentioned, should also help.

[memedoug85 36]

I actually reckon its to do with having that many onramps in the one area... What about if you take away the ones they use... My guess is that they would then start using the other ones on the north west link... Definantly too many onramps in the one area though