My sims can't find commutes!

[simulcra 0]

 So, I've been playing simcity 4 since it came out, so I'd like to think I know pretty much everything there is to know about the game, but this has me stumped.  Normally I play with only tiny and medium city tiles simply because I never had a decent enough computer to run any decent-sized city in a large tile, but recently I've set up a region with a large city tile in it.

Everything had been going just fine, and now the large city tile (which I've dubbed "Trier County") has 230,000 residents, 220,000 commerce jobs (mainly office), and 60,000 high-tech industry jobs.  I've started getting performance problems (new zones take a while to develop, scrolling is slow, etc) but mostly nothing crucial until I hit about 170,000 residents.  Ever since then, like 90% of the time a new residential building develops, it gets a "No Road Connection" badge until it eventually gets abandoned.  Sometimes I'll get lucky and shortly afterwards new residents will reinhabit the abandoned building, but most of the time I end up with a bunch of blackened buildings.

The reason I'm being given for abandonment is simply that the commute is too long.  Plus, recently I've started getting a couple of new developments that get "No Job" and then eventually get abandoned.

Here's the thing I don't understand - for all intents and purposes, Trier County (and alot of its surrounding tiles) are UNDEREMPLOYED.  That is, in Trier County alone I have way more jobs than residents, and a lot of surrounding tiles are just even more jobs.  I've made sure to check that virtually all my residents in this city tile and any residents in adjacent tiles are near-perfect education, so they should be using the plethora of CS$$$, CO$$, CO$$$ and I-HT jobs that are all around.  Plus, through the aggressive use of busses, highways, monorails, and avenues, the average commute time in Trier County is ~15 minutes.

I suspect that the game is running so slowly now that it takes so long for most new developments to find a job and a path that the game checks them off as abandoned before they even have a chance to finish their job hunt.  I further suspect this is the case because if I rezone a new residential area, watch alot of new buildings sprout up, watch all those "No Road Connection" badges appear, then immediately save and exit to region, if I re-enter the city tile, all those buildings will find jobs/commutes within the first second of loading the city - almost as if the game rechecks commutes/jobs before fully loading the map.  Whereas if I *don't* save and exit, chances are most of those buildings will get abandoned.

In fact, that's pretty much how I've fueled most of my residential growth sicne 170,000 or so residents - I upzone a bunch of low-dense residential into medium-dense, plant a park or something to trigger a bunch of redevelopment, wait for most of the buildings to finish, immediatley save and exit, then reload the map.

Does anyone else have this problem???  Is there a way to fix this???

Oh yeah - the only plugins I'm using are the "Crime Doesn't Pay" mod and the Network Addon Mod using Simulator Z (Low Capacity).  I'm wondering if NAM is breaking the time it takes to calculate commutes somehow...

I also don't think it's really my computer's fault, because I have a quad-core machine with a decent graphics card, which is way better than the 1 GHz single core Pentium laptop I had when I first started playing Simcity in 2003.

[Jeiman2008 21]

It's possible you may have the wrong version of NAM installed (Left vs Right drive). I've had a similar problem before when I installed a RHD version of NAM with LHD version of SC4.

[SC4BOY 21]

It wiil get down to your transportation I expect.. you can resolve it in a couple of ways.. significantly improve transportation.. (subways and etc) or integrate your I,C and R more closely together.. it's also possible that you have reached a bad mix of R$,$$ and $$$ ... if you have an abundance of $$$ they won't be able to find jobs even with a lot of work places (recall that even the ritziest CO$$$ only employes about 15% R$$$.. ).. so they may literally not be able to find jobs (which the game reports as commute problems btw)

[simulcra 0]

I'm almost certain I have the correct drive-handedness for NAM (and I don't know how that would effect the no commute zots). I'll check just to be sure.

"it's also possible that you have reached a bad mix of R$,$$ and $$$ ... if you have an abundance of $$$ they won't be able to find jobs even with a lot of work places (recall that even the ritziest CO$$$ only employes about 15% R$$$.. "

While this may be possible, I've had medium city tiles with far higher numbers (300k R$$/$$$ residents and co$$/$$$ jobs) and never had this no-commute zot problem.

Any other ideas?

 

EDIT:  keep in mind, if I immediately quit and exit to region after new developments occur and get the "no road connection" zot and then re-enter, the developments have jobs immediately upon load.  Whereas otherwise (if I hadn't left the city), they would have stayed with a "no road connection" until they became abandoned.

[edman2012 33]

this tends to happen to me, but just not as bad. the thing is that you usualy have to somehow manipulate the sims ause they are dumb. like if you place residentials near the edge of the map, they may go get a job outside the region even if 1. the neighbor doesnt have enough jobs and 2 you seem to have enough jobs in the region. what you need to do is to rezone and prevent sims from getting to other regions and check which areas are already filled to capacity. the game is obviously very complicated so it can get complicated, you just have to keep tinkering with the game.

one last tip, try downloading the bus stops that are right on the road and place several of them to shorten commutes!

on the stex search dedwd road top subway sto set

[errantry 0]

On top of what the other posters said, what are your commute times/traffic like? Specifically, is there any bottle necks (too much traffic, no direct roads) in your transportation systems that prevent people from getting to your jobs? Are there too many people leaving your region because your residential areas are too close to the edge?

[simulcra 0]

My commute time/traffic is pretty good. My average commute time graph trends around 12-15 minutes, and I have few traffic bottlenecks save for two parts of the map where commuters from a neighboring city tile enter Trier County and immediately take another route out to a different city tile.

[colonyan 0]

I had some similar experience as commuter comes in and get out from job abundant city where they are supposed to find job since their destination is just a dead end residential city.

Now I'm using few trick and now I have less than 50% job count than population. (Although growth is slow) (ex. 200 000 population and less than 100 000 total job count)

1. Build few job only city in your region where it has connection from only one side so they can't get out once they get in. (absolutely no residential area)

2. Avoid build connection at the corner of the map. They love move around one city to another.

3. Suggestion: try perfect path finding. I like this one best. It does work most consistently. ( in my opinion )

4. Make some route(road, rail, anything) so it by passes one city to other without having interaction with local network. If you use perfect path finding, they will ride it to other cities

where you've prepared right jobs for them(job only city).

5. Know the approximate EQ and income level of commuter depending on where they depart from. So you can build appropriate job for them.

6. Observe and know their tendency in choosing their commute route. Since they LOVE getting out of their city if border is close, try building more residential in the center of the map

and jobs out skirt if you want to have clear idea on where they are going.

7. In case of road connection, use avenue/highway only(if possible) so that you can see how many get in and how many get out.

Well this game is really puzzle, but when you succeed in controlling the flow of their movement, it is really fun!

[SC4BOY 21]

50% is essentially the "correct" ratio.. Generally only approx half (it varies slightly based on health and wealth and age) of residents "work" in SC4.. others are too old, too young, too rich, caring for children, etc. So having too many residents will leave a number of them with no job to go to.. if you have to be in error, it's probably better to have too many jobs by a small amount.assuming they are of a type which fits your population wealth levels.