Eternal Commuters and Commuter Dead Zones

[longhorn 25]

I've been playing the game on the same region since it came out and have about 12 million sims on about 60 tiles of varying sizes.  I've tried various things to minimize eternal commuters.  My understanding is that they enter the tile looking for a job, and will leave via a neighbor connection if the closest connection is closer than an available job.  I have several places where commuters don't seem to actually be looking for jobs at all.  I've placed every single type of commercial and industrial employment opportunity in their paths, often directly next to their point of entry. They still go right by it and onto the next tile.  This even occurs when I break the loop and allow them to begin again from their true point of origin.  I have also noticed that no sim ever commutes to an industrial employer from another tile.  So I'm guessing that my eternal commuters are looking for industry, but because of a game flaw, they can't work in industry on any tile but their home tile.

 

The other thing that occurs, and may be related, are commercial dead zones.  In building queries, these show up as having workers, but they don't have any commuters at all.  They also are contiguous zones which appear like dropping an antibiotic in a petri dish on traffic volume view.

 

I was wondering if anyone else has noticed these things, and if so, what have they done to resolve them. A relatively simple fix should be possible if the code were available.  Sims should exhaust their employment search on the current tile before considering the nearest connected tile.  

[CorinaMarie 29,556]

I haven't advanced far enough to experience this, but the Further Clarification on the Eternal Commuter Bug thread seems to be the most thorough investigation of the problem. @z1 and @JJogurt provide the most information in posts 2 & 3.

I hope this helps.

[Prophet42 1,500]

How is your mass transit network?.  Have you placed bus stops in all three zone types?  I have found that if sims have access to bus stops within the commercial and industrial zones, they have a greater likely hood of finding a job since the busses actually have to 'stop' and the stop.

Also, you can try placing a toll booth on a road that is experiencing an eternal commute.  This will force some sims off the route and maybe help them to find employment.  It will also bring in some extra cash for you.

 

[APSMS 1,892]

Keep in mind, building queries only display available jobs capacity, not the actual number of workers. The number of jobs available under ideal conditions is the denominator (larger number), while the actual jobs present under the current demand conditions is the number on the left (typically smaller). Only the route query tool on a given building actually shows the employment in that building.

This isn't the most intuitive thing, but does demonstrate how the game lies to the player, and how you need to be smarter than SC4 to encourage employment in your job rich zones.

[z1 566]

Another factor that comes into play here is that the Sims' educational and wealth levels must match up with the job openings available.  A building might have lots of jobs available, but if none match the Sim's educational and wealth level, the Sim won't be able to work there.

[Mister Giggles 310]

A sim resource does not determine where it works. The occupant type of the workplace does, and EQ is not factored in.

EQ levels determine the demand for a given occupancy type.

More information can be found here. The first table lays out what occupant type employs which sim resource; the second shows the interplay between education and demand.

[z1 566]

9 hours ago, Mister Giggles said:

More information can be found here. The first table lays out what occupant type employs which sim resource; the second shows the interplay between education and demand.

From the introduction to the second table:

Quote

These drives tell us what kind of occupation (commercial and industrial) is accepted by the workforce (population), based on their wealth and education.

So if a job with a certain wealth level does not have an entry in this table for a particular Sim's wealth level and education level, the Sim can't go to work there.

For example, look in the lower left of the table at the R§ entry.  The CO§§§ column has an entry only for the education level of 150-200.  This means the R§ Sims cannot work at any CO§§§ job unless they have an educational level of at least 150.

[Mister Giggles 310]

"accepted" should be "demanded", though the accurate term would be "created".

The first table lists the percentages of how much a given job type's occupancy is allowed for a given resident type. These, and only these, determine where a sim works (...in the context of this conversation).

This is easily proven by creating a town of entirely low-wealth sims with the only available jobs being from farms. Educate the low-wealth sims until the city's average EQ is 150. You will find that, while demand for other job types has risen, the sims are still working at the farms instead of quitting their jobs and abandoning the city.

There are also the words of RippleJet himself.

[z1 566]

@Mister Giggles,

Just to confuse things a bit, it appears that RippleJet contradicts himself in two different posts.  In the last post you cited, he does indeed say,

Quote

The workforce drives tell you what kinds of jobs will develop in your city, based on your population's wealth and education.
If your city only houses low educated R$ and R$$, there will simply be no need for CS$$$ to develop.
You need highly educated R$$ or R$$$ in order to get the drive for CS$$$ to develop.
However, that does not mean that CS$$$ wouldn't employ R$, 62% of their workers will still be R$.

which is what you are saying.  However, back at the original tables, in the introduction to the second table, he says,

Quote

The table below should be read from left to right for each row separately. Eg. the row named R$$ 150...200 tells you that well-educated middle-class residents may be working in CO$$$ (44%), CO$$ (15%), CS$$$ (7%), CS$$ (30%), and I-HT (52%).

This implies my conclusion - that no R§ Sims with an EQ under 150 work in C§§§.

To resolve this confusion, I went to the Prima Manual, pages 65 and 66.  The text here clearly confirms that what you originally said is correct - education plays no role in which jobs Sims take.  As a corollary, though, the quote directly above is incorrect, as these numbers represent demand, and not available jobs.

[longhorn 25]

Thanks everyone.  After playing with one of the eternal corners again for a little while, I managed to get a lot of them to stop by disconnecting my test corner from the remainder of the tile. Its odd though because none of the tile residents were working in that corner anyway.  It also isn't a close connection.  Its 14x30, but it does have 13,000 peds, 8,000 bus, and 14,000 subway commuters crossing it.   Around 20,000 of them are not eternal yet.  I may give exit tolling a shot as someone suggested.

I'm still not sure what to do about the dead zones, but it may just be a case of a lack of commuters, so I'll probably replace half of them with residential.  When the dead zone cities were first built they had no neighbors, so edge residents went to the core.  Now many of them are choosing to leave in spite of limited employment opportunities elsewhere.  It sucks because it forces me to build aesthetically unpleasing cities with CBDs on the edge of the tile and residential in the center.

[zahrul3 471]

2 hours ago, longhorn said:

Thanks everyone.  After playing with one of the eternal corners again for a little while, I managed to get a lot of them to stop by disconnecting my test corner from the remainder of the tile. Its odd though because none of the tile residents were working in that corner anyway.  It also isn't a close connection.  Its 14x30, but it does have 13,000 peds, 8,000 bus, and 14,000 subway commuters crossing it.   Around 20,000 of them are not eternal yet.  I may give exit tolling a shot as someone suggested.

I'm still not sure what to do about the dead zones, but it may just be a case of a lack of commuters, so I'll probably replace half of them with residential.  When the dead zone cities were first built they had no neighbors, so edge residents went to the core.  Now many of them are choosing to leave in spite of limited employment opportunities elsewhere.  It sucks because it forces me to build aesthetically unpleasing cities with CBDs on the edge of the tile and residential in the center.

Just because the CBD is on the edge of the tile doesn't mean it makes things bad, unless you have some kind of OCD. The CBD could simply continue on the neighboring tiles, for instance.

[markussaage 762]

Well, inspired by this thread and https://community.simtropolis.com/forums/topic/52887-further-clarification-on-the-eternal-commuter-bug

I did some research in my city tiles as well by restoring old savegames, deleting everything on this tile and letting the game run a while, until the number of residents didn't change anymore. I found out, that on one tile in an early savegame I had 1088 eternal commuters, the same tile some savegames later reduced those down to 331. I usually save every year (12/31/xx) and store this savegame in a backup folder. So it is possible, that eternal commuters find jobs later. On another tile I had 2 (two) eternal commuters running around right from the beginning, and it's a huge map and there have been no commercial or residential areas in corner of this map. Weird, isn't it? And BTW: how can you determine eternal cummuters in the Census Repository Query?!
I'd like to look them up if this is possible...

Kind regards!