Issue with transit numbers at borders.

[flyatl 4]

Hi,

 

I have a border between two cities that has a large difference in transit numbers when I look at each city. One city has a population of 180,000 while the other is newer with a population of about 20,000. They are connected by a highway and rail. On the large city  side, it shows 13,000  bus and like 10,000 cars travelling on the highway to/from the small city. From the small city side, it shows more reasonable numbers of 4,000 cars and 1,500 busses travelling to/from the large city. On rail, it shows 13,000 from the large city side and less then 100 from the small city side. I usually have differing numbers between cities but never this large. I don't think this is an eternal commuter problem since there really is no loop infrastructure wise. Please tell me if there is a way to correct this.

 

Thanks,

 

           fly

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Generally speaking, it takes some time for these numbers to settle down, even as much as six Sim-months to a Sim-year.  I think you need to try to sync the age of the two cities for this to settle out.

[His Divine Hand 244]

I would venture a guess that for some reason, the commuters from you bigger city cannot get to all the jobs available in the smaller city.  

The city only knows how many jobs are available in the neighboring city, not their accessibility.  Hence when you open the smaller city, the pathfinding engine runs the paths, and drops those commuters that cannot get to a job.  Of course, this info is not relayed back to the neighbor city, so this discrepancy will never go away.

[flyatl 4]

Thanks for your responses.

 

His Divine Hand: You are somewhat right. In the smaller city there is an island which is only connected by a ferry. I have since built a bridge but the numbers are still incorrect. Should I just demolish those jobs on the island to rectify this problem?

 

A nonny moose. The cities are now 30 years apart. They were around 75 years apart before. I will try to sync the times to get them closer. I have other cities that are like 125 years apart also, so it will take some time.

 

Thanks

          fly

[Turjan 1,048]

Should I just demolish those jobs on the island to rectify this problem?

 

Honestly, I wouldn't worry about it.

 

The game takes a few shortcuts with calculations, and it also projects demand into the future. That's probably what you see there. Which means, as long as things don't blow up around you (highly unlikely), just move on.

[flyatl 4]

Is there anyway to avoid this in the future then? My large city's transit network is being clogged from the traffic of the other border city going into the small city. I have also noticed that there is a lot more traffic going into the smaller city than there are jobs.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

If you are looking for precision in this game, forget it.  It is basically a stochastic simulation that simply runs in a single city tile and any correlation between tiles is at best serendipitous.  I don’t think they tried very hard.  There was a lot of pressure to get the game out the door.

[Turjan 1,048]

Is there anyway to avoid this in the future then? My large city's transit network is being clogged from the traffic of the other border city going into the small city.

 

See this as an opportunity to provide jobs in the small city. Create some industry park near the border connection. If there's lots of traffic, commercial areas should thrive. Put up a toll booth to reap the profits.

 

Just avoid connecting tiles in the corners and create eternal commuter loops.