The "Commuters: None" Problem...

[Rendell001 36]

I've been working on the "Big City tutorial" in the default "Timbucktu" region and thats basically a triangular coastal city, the coastal side is one long diagonal and it creates all kinds of problems trying to get mass transit to work properly. Though I'm a newbie, I have been looking through the threads here on Simtropolis, gotten a few mods like NAM 42 and generally learning by trial and error.

The main problem seems to be with transit times / jobs - I'm getting a lot of dilapidation and something else I've noticed... some buildings which report "Commuters: None" when I click on them with the route tooltip. I've installed the High Tech industry fix as well but clearly something is not right. I've attached a couple of pics to show the city, any advice you can give me will be greatfully appreciated!

[TheMurderousCricket 5,042]

Welcome to Simtropolis @Rendell001.  If you don't mind, I'll try to help you out.

The "Commuters: none" message can usually signify several problems. It is up to you to determine what is the root issue, but here's a rundown of the possible causes:

1. Not enough workplaces are available for your Sims. In this case, Sims simply have nowhere to go and hence the message. Even the best road infrastructure won't help if there are no employment possibilities.

2. Not enough adequate workplaces are available. You might think that you have offered enough employment possibilities, but it's more complicated than that.

You need to have employment possibilities for Sims at different education levels. If, for example, highly educated Sims can't find jobs that actually suit their tastes, they will, again, have nowhere to go and sit on their ass all day, giving you this annoying message. Ask yourself a few questions...

• What EQ levels are there in my city?
• Do I have development across all of the commercial and industrial spectrum? (i.e. Do I have services and offices? Perhaps I don't have any CO$$$ buildings? Maybe I have no I-D for the least educated?)
• If I don't, could I bulldoze something and invite the lacking development into my city? Read: redevelop parts of my municipality?

3. Your Sims cannot reach work because it is too far away. They simply give up their harrowing commute and sit on their ass all day.

Bottom line: try to make sure that your Sims have adequate employment possibilities. When you're done, try to make sure they don't have to go to the other edge of the planet to get there!

From what I see, you have some high-capacity roads and rail in this city, so I'm guessing that you are having trouble with issue #1 and #2.

But one thing I would like to stress as well... The cities present in the Timbuktu tutorial region are poorly built and very unstable. I tried to play them as well and also experienced wild dilapidations and many a headache. I think it would be best for you to start a new city or a new region entirely. This way, you will be able to control all things right from the start, rather than trying to repair someone else's sloppy city building.

Good luck, and remember to report back. 

[Rendell001 36]

First of all I'd like to thank you for your detailed reply and taking the trouble to get back to me!

There's a lot to unpack here, most of these things I was aware of and I know that this city is hardly "optimal" - I guess i just wanted to fix it!
I've mentioned the diagonal avenue / OWS that runs along the coastline and it was a pain to get junctions and roundabouts to interface correctly - I still think there may be issues there that I'm missing and that is affecting commute times in some areas.

I have provided services and education up to college level (university would take up too much room) and EQ is good in general. There are a large number of mid and high wealth offices particularly in the central coastal area where the landmark, city hall and Court are situated. I have noticed that they never quite max out their jobs though and occasionally dilapidate. What I don't understand is that there are large residential areas literally next door to them and these areas will often get mid and high wealth condos developing which then rapidly deteriorate.

I've attached a few data panels for more information.

[CorinaMarie 29,556]

24 minutes ago, Rendell001 said:

What I don't understand is that there are large residential areas literally next door to them and these areas will often get mid and high wealth condos developing which then rapidly deteriorate.

Have you tried using:

?

[TheMurderousCricket 5,042]

1 hour ago, Rendell001 said:

First of all I'd like to thank you for your detailed reply and taking the trouble to get back to me!

You're welcome. No problem at all. 

1 hour ago, Rendell001 said:

I've mentioned the diagonal avenue / OWS that runs along the coastline and it was a pain to get junctions and roundabouts to interface correctly - I still think there may be issues there that I'm missing

That might be a pain in the back indeed to try and get everything connected in a working fashion.

You can use the route query tool to make sure the traffic indeed flows through your intersections. Just click anywhere near the intersection. If you see the arrows crossing through the intersection, it means it is passable for the traffic.

1 hour ago, Rendell001 said:

I've attached a few data panels for more information.

It is clear to me that you don't have enough demand for R$$$ residential, which eventually will result in dilapidations.

Whenever you establish residential areas in SC4 keep one thing in mind - Sim developers and residents have unrealistic expectations!

Essentially, it means that they will attempt to upgrade lower-wealth establishments at earliest convenience, regardless of the local, economic situation!

Sims are overly optimistic. What may seem right for them in a short perspective, is not good for the city in the long run.

This means that the nouveau-riches will be comfortable for a short while but soon, the reality will kick in...

In other words, they will realize there are no jobs or demand for them. As a result they will, yep, you guessed it - sit on their ass all day and do nothing. Cursing their over-optimism.

The excellent mod that @CorinaMarie so graciously prepped for us players, is the answer to this problem. 

It basically prevents unwanted redevelopment that is unfounded from the future perspective. I use it as well and experience only occassional dilapidations, mostly due to my own mistakes as a mayor. 

The commute times look very good. Nice job there!  I think you should go ahead and install Cori's mod. Later, make sure that enough jobs are available and try to stabilize demand in your city!

[Cyclone Boom 16,829]

I wholeheartedly agree about the benefits of installing Cori's NKO mod. It gives much more mayoral control over growth.

@Rendell001

As explained in the NKO topic linked above, you'll probably also want to install Less Abandonment which helps prevent overly enthusiastic growth that otherwise may not be sustainable in the long run. This is completely compatible with NKO and we recommend to use both at the same time. The mod changes the thresholds of when RCI lots build or abandon, to make sure they don't develop until it's much more likely they will stick around.

[Rendell001 36]

I had no idea there were so many essential mods I needed!

Thank you all for the responses and I've downloaded and installed both of them - will report back later on their effects.

One thing I have noticed and that is how some of these buildings will sometimes say Short commute and then change to Long Commute within the space of a few minutes play. Additionally, I get a wave of "No Job" zots and even "no Road Access" zots randomly appearing when they do appear to be connected to roads etc. No idea whats going on there...

[TheMurderousCricket 5,042]

4 minutes ago, Rendell001 said:

I get a wave of "No Job" zots

All the more reason to take a better look at the employment structure in your city! 

Don't be afraid to just bulldoze unemployed homes. This way you can restore the balance to the neighborhood and reinvite the citizens later when the conditions are right.

[CorinaMarie 29,556]

16 minutes ago, Rendell001 said:

Additionally, I get a wave of "No Job" zots and even "no Road Access" zots randomly appearing when they do appear to be connected to roads etc. No idea whats going on there...

I'll start with the 2nd one: The "no Road Access" zots do double duty as "no Path to a Job" zots, but they look the same as "no Road Access". This often happens when the Traffic Simulator sub-routine hasn't fully caught up with everything and it's best to just let time run and see if they resolve themselves.

Btw, it's best to never run the game faster than medium speed. At the highest speed the game will defer many of the simulation calculations and that can throw things out of balance when they might not actually be wacky.

Then back to the first: The "No Job" zots can also appear if the simulators haven't caught up, but could simply be there aren't enough jobs for those Sim's wealth and education levels. I'd go once step further than Cricket suggested and dezone residential with persistent No Job zots until you can get the population stable. When running medium speed for several months, you'll want the total population to vary by no more than a few Sims. If it's bouncing up and down by hundreds at a time (or more) then addressing that is your first priority and is best handled by dezoning homes until you can restore the equilibrium.

[Rendell001 36]

16 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

Btw, it's best to never run the game faster than medium speed. At the highest speed the game will defer many of the simulation calculations and that can throw things out of balance when they might not actually be wacky.

I rarely run the speed at more than level one, only accelerate to level 2 for a short burst when I need too.

There are a couple of areas which I've marked on the following screenshot which show the worst areas in the city. The Red area is constantly building, abandoning and being bulldozed - I dread to think how much money I've lost through it. The Yellow area has stabilised somewhat when I added more subways and an elevated rail line going directly to the industrial estate but it's still not entirely stable.

[TheMurderousCricket 5,042]

51 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

I'd go once step further than Cricket suggested and dezone residential with persistent No Job zots until you can get the population stable.

I guess this is what I actually meant, thanks Cori.  Just block the residential development until you make sure you will be able to sustain it.

36 minutes ago, Rendell001 said:

There are a couple of areas which I've marked on the following screenshot which show the worst areas in the city. The Red area is constantly building, abandoning and being bulldozed - I dread to think how much money I've lost through it. The Yellow area has stabilised somewhat when I added more subways and an elevated rail line going directly to the industrial estate but it's still not entirely stable.

It's a little hard to make out details from this map, but after analyzing it, it does seem that the employment options are somewhat limited in your city. The industry brings lots of jobs, but the commercial zones are rather small and spread thin.

NKO will help you with that as well, as it will give you a chance to simply refuse some forms of commercial development. This, will create lots of pent-up demand, necessary for bigger workplaces. If you do it right, your commercial demand will never be negative! 

And let me go back to the education levels of your population for a moment. If it oscillates around 120, it means that you have workforce who seek more responsible office jobs. Don't underestimate the R$ - they are good office workers as well and will feel disappointed if they can't find this type of work in your city! Try to expand your commercial "acreage" and I bet there will be fewer "no job" zots. Try to do it even at the cost of the residential zones you don't need! Redevelop them into new workplaces! 

If you are worried about loosing population - don't be. When the employment situation stabilizes, you can simply rezone some of the already existing residential zones into higher densities and make up for any losses.

[Rendell001 36]

Well I've had a go using the mods and the advice you all gave me and I think I have observed some subtle changes as a result...

Firstly I did start to gradually dezone residential areas in the Red zone when they abandoned and replaced them with more commercial zoning. These filled up quickly with both offices and low rent shops / services. One thing I noticed was that though I was losing housing, the population remained fairly stable and actually slightly increased - it's now actually a bit higher than before, maybe by 1K. 

Additionally I was sending police cars to a crime hotspot and noticed that the cars had to take a roundabout route to get to the hotspot - I was then able to identify where another underpass would shorten the route for that area as a whole. Funnily enough this was through the big diagonal coastal avenue...

I think that if I was expecting a sudden sea change on a grand scale then obviously I was mistaken but I do think I'm on the right lines thanks to your advice and the mods.

[CorinaMarie 29,556]

15 minutes ago, Rendell001 said:

I think that if I was expecting a sudden sea change on a grand scale then obviously I was mistaken but I do think I'm on the right lines ...

That's a good observation. The more established a city is, the more likely turning it around will need to be done in multiple, subtle steps. Ofc, the same can apply to newly created cities you build from the ground up too. Ideally you'll want to add and grow things slowly with plenty of observation time for each growth spurt. The game's simulators each feed off the data from others so it can take months for it to balance out.

Prolly the main tip is to keep your population stable after each growth spurt. It's fine to have commercial or industrial with no Sim workers whereas residential that cannot find a job throws the city into a cycle of no job zots, abandonment, and then an influx of Sims. This is when it's very hard to steer the city in the right direction because each new incoming batch of Sims start with a base EQ and HQ and that also throws the job finding part into a tizzy (especially for the upper levels of work).

I'm glad to hear you are making progress with it.

[TheMurderousCricket 5,042]

@Rendell001 could you remind me how many citizens there were before in this city? Good job with taking such brave decisions.

It's true that, surprisingly, commercial and industrial can exist without employees (automated or robotized, I guess? ) but residential cannot be unemployed.

Another question - why are you sending police patrols on your own? Trouble with riots?

[Rendell001 36]

1 minute ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

@Rendell001 could you remind me how many citizens there were before in this city? 

Another question - why are you sending police patrols on your own? Trouble with riots?

The population would fluctuate between 54K and 56K, now after the tweaks and mods it's more like 56-57K with much less diferential.
As for the policing, Whenever I found a building with medium or high crime I would send a squad of cars to that location - seemed to have an effect.
I do have good Police coverage in the city but I do get hotspots and it seems to be increasing as the city gets larger...

[TheMurderousCricket 5,042]

1 hour ago, Rendell001 said:

As for the policing, Whenever I found a building with medium or high crime I would send a squad of cars to that location - seemed to have an effect.

I have to try it then. I'm not sure if it is intended to work that way. 

Normally, the police squads are used to quell riots if you have any. It seems logical though that they could work like normal patrols... Perhaps we need a mod for that as well, eh?

It could be nice to have some kind of a mechanism that would let you schedule the work of police in one way or another.

[Rendell001 36]

21 minutes ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

I have to try it then. I'm not sure if it is intended to work that way. 

Normally, the police squads are used to quell riots if you have any. It seems logical though that they could work like normal patrols... Perhaps we need a mod for that as well, eh?

It could be nice to have some kind of a mechanism that would let you schedule the work of police in one way or another.

Okay I don't feel so embarrassed now - I thought patrol cars and helicopters weren't just for riots but were there to curb crime!

Usually I'll send a pile of them if it's a high crime spot, they don't stay too long and they might not reduce it first time, but after a couple of call outs it usually goes down to medium. I can sometimes also place a car or copter there and it stays till moved. That usually takes care of the problem by itself within a fairly short period. I do that for a $$$ block or business as you know how sensitive they are to crime...

So how do you tackle crime then?

[CorinaMarie 29,556]

46 minutes ago, Rendell001 said:

So how do you tackle crime then?

Install this:

The key thing being that you have not installed any custom content police stations which override the Maxis vanilla ones. The above mod does safely replace the vanilla ones so unlike other overrides, the existing police stations do not need to be bulldozed before installing.

However, if you have installed other custom content police station overrides, then those would indeed need bulldozed everywhere and only then remove the CC plugin(s) before using our update.

(The ModPacc Zero stuff @Cyclone Boom and I are making is intended for installation in a fresh, empty plugins or one in which no corresponding overrides have been installed. We do, ofc, intend to also provide info on how to integrate our MZ mods with existing content, but that documentation isn't complete yet.)

Btw, if you do have other fixes installed, you can make sure ours are the active ones by putting them in a sub-folder in your Plugins so they load last.

 

On a different note, be sure to make periodic backups of your Timbuktu region. There are certain situations where the game itself will decide to copy the entire original version of the region over all your hard work and everything then gets lost.

And in that regard, it's much safer to use this version:

[Rendell001 36]

52 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

The key thing being that you have not installed any custom content police stations which override the Maxis vanilla ones. The above mod does safely replace the vanilla ones so unlike other overrides, the existing police stations do not need to be bulldozed before installing.

However, if you have installed other custom content police station overrides, then those would indeed need bulldozed everywhere and only then remove the CC plugin(s) before using our update.

 

On a different note, be sure to make periodic backups of your Timbuktu region. There are certain situations where the game itself will decide to copy the entire original version of the region over all your hard work and everything then gets lost.

 

Wow, I'm very glad I posted on here otherwise all my work might have been for nought!
Good point about the region backup - I've made duplicates of the cities in there that I've worked on and put them in the downloads folder, I'll update them on a regular basis.
So I take it that your Crime mod won't interfere with the "Crime doesn't Pay" mod? I can alway put that one in a subfolder just to be safe, it doesn't add new stations, just alters behaviour for things like airports...

[CorinaMarie 29,556]

2 minutes ago, Rendell001 said:

So I take it that your Crime mod won't interfere with the "Crime doesn't Pay" mod?

Our mod includes what that one does so you can simply remove theirs.

 

Btw, I also felt like playing and fixing Big City. I still have ripples in my Jobs and Population graph, but they aren't too severe. I'll toss the pic in a spoiler so it doesn't sidetrack your topic too much.

Spoiler

[TheMurderousCricket 5,042]

Cori is like a magician - once you thought you saw everything, she keeps pulling rabbits out of her black hat.

Also...

"Bad Sims, Bad Sims, what you gonna do? What you gonna do when they come for you?".

[Rendell001 36]

20 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

Btw, I also felt like playing and fixing Big City. I still have ripples in my Jobs and Population graph, but they aren't too severe. I'll toss the pic in a spoiler so it doesn't sidetrack your topic too much.

I must say that you've found much more elegant solutions to the problems in that city - I think I might go back to some of the avenues and tweak them.
What did you put on the island btw? I keep getting pestered to build an airport but the only way I could do that would be to expand the island and put that there...

[CorinaMarie 29,556]

7 minutes ago, Rendell001 said:

What did you put on the island btw?

^ The stone bridge wouldn't be cost effective in the real world, but I added it as the way to get there. The main avenue bridge is one I built way later for another neighbor connection. I played the rest of the region filling every tile except up on the mountains / large hills. I also propagated the demands throughout so that makes growing big things here much easier to accomplish. (I can post region pics if you like, but won't clutter your thread with them unless you want to see.)

 

10 minutes ago, Rendell001 said:

I think I might go back to some of the avenues and tweak them.

That's a good idea. Here I've turned the world to show the avenues better:

^ For the most part, I tried to stay true to the original city layout by only bulldozing original growth when absolutely necessary.

 

11 minutes ago, Rendell001 said:

I keep getting pestered to build an airport but the only way I could do that would be to expand the island and put that there...

So far I've simply ignored their pleas tho in some test runs where I didn't save the city tile, I did bulldoze and dezone some residential to put one in, but never kept it.

[Cyclone Boom 16,829]

@Rendell001

Just to let you know about our crime fixes package, we've made an updated v1.3 release which you might wish to use instead of the prior version. It isn't a major update since the file includes changes mostly for non-English uses, but there is the better looking UI now including a typo correction.

[Rendell001 36]

So just a quick question: at what point would you start zoning for high density / skyscraper buildings?

Would it be at a certain population level / demand?

[TheMurderousCricket 5,042]

1 hour ago, Rendell001 said:

So just a quick question: at what point would you start zoning for high density / skyscraper buildings?

Would it be at a certain population level / demand?

Honestly, I zone dense from the very beginning but dense zoning takes effects only after a while.

There is something in SC that is known as "growth stages". To make a very long story short, it means that you can zone for dense but some large buildings will appear only when the overall population reaches certain level.

In SC jargon it goes down to saying "build out, in order to build up". 

[CorinaMarie 29,556]

And I go the complete opposite as Cricket does.

I zone and grow only low density until I have demands in the 5000+ range for any given R, C, or I. Only then do I zone that type and water a few zones for medium or high density, run time, and see what happens. If it goes well, then I'll zone more in the higher densities. My reason is I used to zone a lot for high density early on and the growth would be tepid at best, then years later I'd suddenly have massive vertical growth all over the place and the balance would go so out of kilter I'd have trouble maintaining my city.

[TheMurderousCricket 5,042]

44 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

years later I'd suddenly have massive vertical growth all over the place and the balance would go so out of kilter I'd have trouble maintaining my city.

Well, as it always is in SC4, it all comes down to a good balance between things.

Let's make it clear that I don't zone dense all over a fresh city. I simply prepare some pockets of high-density zoning so that I can later slingshot through the growth stages.

These days I am confident enough in my abilities to do this without suffering negative demand or rampant unemployment.

[Rendell001 36]

I've generally been zoning medium density over the original low density areas though I did try high density in the industrial estate - I got a few larger firms move in but I think it's going to a gradual transition.

I've been tweaking the residential areas further along the coast at the opposite end from the industrial estate and have noticed a surge in those areas. The problem is that only some of the buildings there are stable - the rest have problems with jobs and transit times before degrading. This is despite a large commenrcial and small high tech park being on their doorstep...

RCI demand is pretty high across the board except for dirty industry which has taxes of 20% to keep them out.

Have just gotten the TV studio though I'm unclear on what benefits this provides and wether better placement will give improved results.

[TheMurderousCricket 5,042]

1 hour ago, Rendell001 said:

I've generally been zoning medium density over the original low density areas

Yep - that's definitely a good idea too! In this scenario, you don't have to remove any buildings and they will upgrade when ready.

1 hour ago, Rendell001 said:

The problem is that only some of the buildings there are stable - the rest have problems with jobs and transit times before degrading. This is despite a large commercial and small high tech park being on their doorstep...

RCI demand is pretty high across the board except for dirty industry which has taxes of 20% to keep them out.

Again, just because the demand is high, it doesn't mean that it is realistic. But there are many factors to examine here. Let's stick to demand and jobs first.

Try to zone less than your actual demand. Even if you have a high R$$$ demand, it doesn't mean that you have enough jobs for these people. You get the point? 

It sounds like you need to gain more control over what is built in your residential zones. If you see R$$ and R$$$ springing up in your zones and failing... why not remove them for the time being and keep evicting them? Basically - bulldozing until you get R$ in their place.  The same, of course, is true when you have a surplus of R$ residents - just don't let them build anything.

But... I would like to see your demand maps.

And here's my other point. Perhaps you do have enough jobs after all but some other factors have deteriorated?

Crime? Garbage? Pollution? Traffic? It will have huge impact on R$$+ living comfort!

I speak from experience when I say that that whenever I saw distressed or deteriorating R$$+ homes, 99% of the time I had garbage accumulating on their doorstep. After cleaning that up, they were happy again.

Also, try the "Mandatory car smogging" ordinance. In my biggest and busiest city to date, it increased the occupancy levels in R$$$ blocks by about 25% (and I can't revoke this regulation now, or else I lose residents. )

  Edited October 19, 2021 by TheMurderousCricket  
Fixed typos.