The car "looping" bug

[Comrade Kc 7]

Hello, So i have been reading around and i found that there is a bug in simcity4 that makes sims drive around in circles between 4 or more city's. I did not know about this, so i went into my region and looked into my citys, and low and behold, people will drive out of my biggest city, wrap around my outskirts and drive back to the main city exactly as i reed they would.

being that i have played this game for years and never noticed they just drive back in a circle, i was wondering how bad this is and how will it effect my city's?

i am using the CAM road MOD, so my roads can hold LOTS of travelers

as far as i can see all that traffic just increases the commercial costumer value to HIGH when i put stores next to the rout.

in fact all my regions i have ever played probably did this, because i always connect all my city's together as much as i can from all sides with roads. (highways and other mass transport never exit a city on more then 2 sides however.) but still roads do, they just exit the highway and drive back on the back-roads.

i even build a large New York region one time with 4.6 million people. and i never noticed any problem and i always welcome lots of drivers.

so please help me, why should i try to not let this happen? is it that big a deal?

as long as i can support the traffic then should i really stress about it, or just act like they are vacationing?

[CaptCity 4,669]

The "Eternal Commuter" issue can be a "serious" issue depending on the numbers involved and the length of time allowed to pass, and it may affect more than just the amount of traffic. However, simply having neighbor connections will not necessarily cause an eternal commuter problem. Much depends on the layout of the cities involved. You may not have noticed any issues due to your city characteristics relative to each other. You might check this post for more information... (Link).

[Tysons4 68]

you can get away with having a loop as long as there are places to work all around them, however they will begin to mulitply as you keep playing.

the best way to counter act that is make the whole city a snake, connecting one to only one other, and connecting that to one, and connecting that to one but that can be dull

instead make some money off it. if you see that you are going to have a loop add a toll booth on that highway, or do that loop with a rail line or other form of mass transit and soon your city will be rolling the the cash, you dont even need to have a city to make money with a rail or track making the loop.

i suggest since you are using cam and probably have a lot of buildings that add lots of new road traffic to use the nam simulator instead since the cam simulator is out dated and you will get more options for your modded game

[Comrade Kc 7]

hmm sounds good. i like the tool both ideal. And i go in and out of all my citys and put industry hear, jobs there. so all over there are scattered places to work. But i have a question about the road mods. it looks like the CAM is build in with the transport file. If i add the NAM traffic ultra Z into my plugins will it cancel out the cam one? i don't want to loose my 15 building stages, i cant go back to only 8 lol

i am going to try to build up a city that "snakes" around in San-Fransisco. i think this will look cool and i can test this out.

thanks a bunch guys

  Edited March 14, 2011 by Comrade Kc  

[CaptCity 4,669]

hmm sounds good. i like the tool both ideal. But i have a question about the road mods. it looks like the CAM is build in with the transport file. If i add the NAM traffic ultra Z into my plugins will it cancel out the cam one? i don't want to loose my 15 building stages, i cant go back to only 8 lol

If you mean the Traffic Controller that comes with CAM, then yes, you can replace it with one in NAM. It is actually recommended that this be done since the NAM controller is a newer and more effective version.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Fear not, but be alert for the condition. (We need more lerts).

But seriously, if you keep your transit structure between cities in a tree and avoid creating looping circuits, you should be OK. One of the near occasions of sin is a set of car ferries. If you get one that goes red along with the feeder roads, delete it. You can try replacing it with a parking garage and a passenger ferry. Makes it hard for them to loop.

You can, as someone mentioned, use toll booths to slow it down and make money off it. This may or may not have the result of breaking it.

One of the deadliest loops is sometimes rail/monorail. Just be careful.

[spa 968]

I'm not one for laying out my regions in chains. There is nothing natural or organic about that which, for me, kind of braks the fantasy. I limit (not eliminate) eternal commuting by not building any neighbour connections anywhere except near the centre of large city tiles (I play in all large cities). That way, potential eternal commuters have to actually drive or take transit a good ways through the city they're entering, hopefully passing some employment, before they can exit to the next tile. If you build road connections really close to tile corners, eternal commuting becomes worse because sims don't venture far into the tile before they have a chance to exit. It's a really sucky bug, but nothing we can do about it for now.

  Edited March 14, 2011 by spa  

[Comrade Kc 7]

thanks everybody for helping me out. I feel way better about all this.

i did find something cool out on my own, I opend up my main city where the eternal commuters were driving from and I just added some jobs and kept clicking on the city connections in the north till most the sims were staying in the city, however they were still coming back in from the east

anyway i followed the rout northbound by opining up the citys that they were looping in, and when i got back to the main city the number was down considerably, so when i/ or you catch it i think it can be fixed.

I will also use the tips all you guys gave me, all very good, and i can use them all to make my regions more diverse

i will take back control of my sims

  Edited March 14, 2011 by Comrade Kc  

[z1 566]

hmm sounds good. i like the tool both ideal. But i have a question about the road mods. it looks like the CAM is build in with the transport file. If i add the NAM traffic ultra Z into my plugins will it cancel out the cam one? i don't want to loose my 15 building stages, i cant go back to only 8 lol

If you mean the Traffic Controller that comes with CAM, then yes, you can replace it with one in NAM. It is actually recommended that this be done since the NAM controller is a newer and more effective version.

It's important to physically delete the CAM traffic simulator from the z_CAM folder; otherwise, it will override the NAM simulator, even though the NAM simulator is newer.

[Comrade Kc 7]

alright, so i finally put in the NAM traffic controller to my plugins.. and the sims sill "ride bikes" i'm so happy. but i still don't use all the puzzles.

anyway thanks again for all this input. i would like to share some routes i have found in my region they take, its nuts!!

my sims go north out my main city, then travel through 6 city's connected by my highway 21. hit the back road and travel through 4 citys south to the river, then follow the river back to the main city, 4 city's away

(the whole time they exit every so often to work at the many "dead forest paper factory's i have all over) anyway, they then go through the main city and exit this time to the east, to where they go i do not know...

i think this is kinda funny, but as long as i take control of the situation i don't think it will effect me in any way. At least now i can manage it, i did find however when i build up a commercial sector based on this traffic flow, it did not last very long. it had no costumers after i lowered the traffic...o well most don't anyway.

ok back to the game now haha

  Edited March 14, 2011 by Comrade Kc