Circular Commuters?

[KeepItStandard 2]

Hey everyone, so I'm having an issue.  I'm playing SC4 stock (absolutely zero mods, hence the username), and I have 3 cities bordering each other in the Timbuktu region.  It's one of those set ups where it's 3 medium-size city areas, one which is placed above the others and stretches about halfway across each (from above it almost looks like a pyramid).  So my problem is that I have a highway system I'm setting up as a connector between the 3 cities.  However, I'm trying to do it to maximize efficiency in regards to traffic flow and fighting congestion.  My problem is that the sims that travel my roads seem to go nowhere!  Whenever I use the route query on the road I'm trying to adjust for traffic, it says the cars and buses are all going one way; but when I switch to another city and check the same route, all the cars are going the other way.  The traffic originates from my main city (the "top" of the pyramid) and goes down to the second primary city, on the bottom left of the pyramid, and they go from there through the bottom left city towards the bottom right.  When I check the traffic flow in the bottom right city, it says that the traffic is headed south towards the city on the bottom left.  I'm really confused, as this obsviously is contradictory.  So what's going on?  Why are my commuters so inconsistent?

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Merry Christmas: You've found the Eternal Commuter Loop.  It does require a minimum of three cities connected in such a way that a Sim can go from city A to City B to City C and back to A.  All they do is ride around forever.  This is a deep bug in the code and cannot be fixed, so you should rethink your highway system into a tree structure.

 

Also, get off the Timbuktu region.  It can be reset without your knowledge on some game hiccups.

[APSMS 1,892]

Firstly, I have to recommend the NAM. Of course, you're not interested, but I would insist on even the most basic of installations which includes the refined traffic simulator/pathfinder. This would solve a number of bugs Maxis left in the original game. Support is also much easier to get if you have the NAM; it eliminates a wide number of possible causes of your problem.

 

Secondly, are you running SC4 deluxe/rush hour? If so, is your game patched? Your SimCity4.exe should be at version 1.638 or higher. A large number of bugfixes were included in this patch, and it is absolutely necessary for any technical support. It isn't a mod.

 

Thirdly, what kind of jobs are we talking about? what kind of Sims are moving, and how many? Traffic can be fickle in the base game. Pictures would be helpful; I'd say you have the eternal commuter loop bug, but traffic isn't circulating between the three cities, just the bottom two. Not sure why, but again, pictures would be extremely helpful.

 

Also, Merry Christmas!

[Ro-Bo 183]

city A <--> city B <--> city C <- -> city A

 

Setting up transportation network with a loop like so is the problem.

 

You have to cut off direct roads/mass transits from C to A. Travelers from A to C now will reenter A through B and vice versa. No more eternal commuter loop.

[KeepItStandard 2]

city A <--> city B <--> city C <- -> city A

 

Setting up transportation network with a loop like so is the problem.

 

You have to cut off direct roads/mass transits from C to A. Travelers from A to C now will reenter A through B and vice versa. No more eternal commuter loop.

 

So it turns out that this is exactly what I did.  Issue resolved, now the commuters are actually using my highways (although there's still an excessive amount of people going in and out of my smallest city-the # of cars and buses is higher than the population of the city itself!)

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Put toll gates on all the connections and give it about a Sim-year to settle down.  Also, try and get your Sims to Jobs ratio in each city to 2:1.