Commute time is killing me

[kudos 0]

I stopped playing SC4 4 or 5 years ago, because of the commute time. I started again thinking that, well now with the NAM and other things that I just discovered, the commute time wouldn't stop my cities from growing. 5 years ago I did a test with a friend of mine running on PC (no update at the time, well he didn't had it). We built identical cities. He was getting 10 000 people coming in every year without any commute time problem, as I was getting a poor 2 000. The game was also lagging so much on my macbook 13'' 2 gig of ram but with the damn GMA950 graphic card.

Now, I installed the NAM, the road widening, increase subways and bus capacity, I even have the big dig from Boston made by NDEX I think, I had the tram (stop using it because of some of its contraints). Later on, I installed the less abandonment thing that is only suppose to limited devellopment of R$$$ and R$$ where they would later leave. I installed the x2 industries job, the x2 services jobs, ....

Still, with an average commute time of 0.2 (which I think would mean 12mins or 20 whatever it's still way low), I have long commute in some of my best spotted R$$$ hi-rise. I even saw this once : Palm plaza (download from the stex) 2500 R$$$ grew 20-25 tiles from the LG Building (I think 3000 or 4000 C$$$ jobs) that I plopped my-self in order to make a test, with one direct subway and one almost direct bus line. All the R$$$ from the palm were at the time working in that building. The result? They left the palm plaza. It was on the same boulevard, what is wrong with that. I know my industries are a little farter away, but they are easily reachable by subways and highways including the NDEX big dig.

What is wrong with that? I would post pictures but it would be useless. 20 tiles was the gap. The city have only around 40-45 000, but with 25 000 commercial jobs and 10 000 industries. I know it's a really small city but why does a palm plaza pop out just to leave it 2 years later. When I was playing, 5 years ago, I had a couple of half a million people cities, but the only way I had found at the time to control a little bit the cummute time issue was to put a line of residential from one side of the map to the other, then a slightly wider line of commercial and top it with an even wider line of industries......pretty boring I have to say.

Please tell me there is something I can do or I will just have to stop playing again.

[WowOmgItsMe 1]

A good strategy is to

A: Replicate major cities

B: One-way roads & the 4 space blocks

C: Bus stops every 2 blocks, Subway/EL every 4 blocks, & Rail every 8 blocks

[theman2000 0]

I know my industries are a little farter away

[Freiluft 6]

Actually, a picture might be helpful, though there seems always to be a few problem spots where even with the improved pathfinding of the NAM, even functional plops within a few tiles doesn't work. In that case I usually turn the zone into commercial, if the traffic is high enough, or a park or museum if it's not. If you zone residential on an avenue, you have to make sure that residents don't have to go too far out of their way to go in the opposite direction -- you can drag a street through an avenue in front of a large high-rise, for instance. This slows the traffic for everyone else, however, which is why I rarely zone residential on avenues unless it's near the edge of the city and the avenue doesn't connect to a neighboring city.

[Kifflom112 355]

I have no problem. I plop most residential and they are far from jobs. They have short commute and I have small roads and the new NAM. Just as long as you have enough jobs and the NEW NAM, you should not have any problems.

[His Divine Hand 244]

It should be noted that the game will incorrectly list a whole lot of issues that cause abandonment as being "due to commute time", so this cannot be trusted. Another thing, using your Palm Plaza and LG Building example there, jobs from any one source are split into multiple wealth levels. The LG Building, whether it be commercial office or hight wealth shops, employs poor sims and middle class sims as well as the obvious rich folk. In fact, no one class of job provider provides even half of its jobs as high wealth. So that 3000-4000 jobs probably would not provide enough work for a building of 2500 rich folk. And once Palm Plaza dilapidated and eventually abandoned due to lack of enough work for its residents, once queried the game would tell you it was due to commute time.

Sim City 4 has a complex system in place; it can take a lot of work to understand it.