My Real Fix for Eternal Commute Loop problem

[Kel9509 1,357]

Hi all,

So I play SimCity4 to grow my cities naturally, and I've been happily creating highways with NAM 47.  I've built up about 6 cities in the New York region to total about 230,000 sims.  Each city was about 30-40,000 sims, except for one larger one at about 70k. Unfortunately, I built a pretty comprehensive interconnecting network of rail, subways, and highways before I noticed strange behavior.  Hundreds of busses were filling my highways, some of my railway tracks were overwhelmed with 10,000+ commuters, subways were becoming overloaded.  Commute times in the graph in all of my cities kept rising to above 60 minutes, when before they were much less.  

No matter how many times I tried to alleviate the strain of rail, subway, and highways being overloaded, the more regional connections I made, the worse it got.  Looking around the forums for solutions, I realized I had developed the Eternal Commuter Loop, possibly across all 6 of my cities.

Reading these forums was instructive about the issue and  how it developed.  But most suggestions discussed how to avoid the issue in the future.  I wanted to solve it for my cities now, and end the loop permanently.  So I developed a solution and stumbled across an interesting idea.

Basically, what I did was load each city up, bulldoze ALL of its neighbor connections, and run the city for two years to reset that city's internal job search/commute pathfinding.  For the most part, cutting off all connections to neighbors did not impact the cities too much since they were relatively small at about 30-40,000 sims each.  They retained their population and basically hummed along as if nothing happened.  However, commute times absolutely dropped to nearly zero.  And the traffic amounts also crashed.  Internally, sims were locked into finding jobs only within their city tile, since no connections existed.  So if there were enough native jobs in the city tile, the city was fine.  And after running the game for 2 years, I'd save it and move to the next city to do the same thing all over again.

In two of my larger cities, however, the cities took a lot of help to recover from having no neighbor connections, probably because they did not have enough jobs on their own to maintain the populace. One city experienced a significant drop in R$$ sims due to a lack of jobs, and significant dilapidation occurred.  In order to fix that, I added high-density commercial and industrial zones (as demand for those skyrocketed due to the need for jobs) and eventually the city balanced itself out, with significantly more R$ sims and the R$$ sims recovering a bit.  New, high density skyscrapers grew that held thousands of jobs.

 

In my largest city, the resulting lack of jobs required me to plop several CO$$ lots that had about 4,000 or 5,000 jobs each (which I was planning to do since it's NYC anyway, up to this time all jobs were grown naturally).  After adding those, the city recovered and actually went to above 80,000 sims, even better than before the loop occurred.  

I have no neighbor connections now in any of my cities, and the rails, subways, and highways all still exist.  I still build them as I was making a connection, but DO NOT MAKE ANY NEIGHBOR CONNECTIONS (at least for now).  They only serve to move sims within the city itself.

Honestly, given the way the game treats jobs outside the city, where it's just a draw for sims to commute out with little benefits for the "exporting" city as well as the "importing" city, I wonder if there's a need for a neighbor connection at all.  The jobs outside of the city end up reducing demand within the city, and demand inside is better than demand out.  While the concept of a central commercial district or city is part of some strategies, I fear that the risk of an eternal commuter loop is very high.  Alternatively, even if I make a neighbor connection, it will be limited to ONE or TWO per city.  Certainly I'll never create multiple connections as I did in the past, with at least 4-5 avenues, 4-5 rail, 5+ subway, and at least 2-3 highway connections per city.  The risk of a loop is just too great.

And with the ability to plop buildings that have thousands of jobs, I can manage internal demand for now.  Maybe if the city gets to be very populated, I'll have to create a central business district or a city full of jobs, but that will need to  be heavily managed to avoid a loop.   At most, I might create one or two neighbor connections with a highway or rail, to better manage where the sims end up.

So in summary, to solve the Eternal Commuter Loop, eliminate all neighbor connections in each city and try to manage the demand for jobs within the city itself.  Neighbor connections across a large region run the risk of an eternal commuter loop and actually don't seem necessary for the health of a well managed city with enough jobs.

 

[Propfam 2,286]

There's a way if you want a connection but don't want to risk commuter looping: use cosmetic connectors. The steps are simple but not that easy:

1. Plop a puzzle piece that has your desired network, ideally a T-intersection piece. For instance, I want to build a fake street NC. The best way to build it is to use the T-intersection tram-on-street piece, that one that intersects with normal street. For some networks, you can literally use starter piece.
2. Destroy the street, as in my case
3. You should get a seemingly connecting street NC (wait, that's should be illegal).
4. Repeat this for every unneeded connections.

[TheMurderousCricket 5,046]

18 hours ago, Kel9509 said:

So in summary, to solve the Eternal Commuter Loop, eliminate all neighbor connections in each city and try to manage the demand for jobs within the city itself.  Neighbor connections across a large region run the risk of an eternal commuter loop and actually don't seem necessary for the health of a well managed city with enough jobs.

In essence this, of course, is true. But to be honest, do you really want to build a series of disconnected cities that don't benefit from the SC4's greatest asset? This being regional play and transports?

From the pictures you have shown it indeed seems that you had excessive numbers of intercity connections. In such a case, where a Sim can find an entry to and exit from another city just few tiles away is just asking for the ECL to happen.

Neighbor connections are not detrimental to a city's health - on the contrary! They can save cities that don't have enough workplaces. In such scenario, citizens can and will seek the lacking jobs in another town, find them, and spare you the eyesore of your buildings degrading. As is, more often than not, a case in autarchic communities.

So my personal choice, if I may, is to simply build neighbor connections that make sense in the bigger, regional picture. I don't really need to connect all of my roads, streets and streetlets (is this even a word...? ) to another town, sure. The key is to make good connections and zone your cities in such a way that travelers find exactly what they are looking for before they find an exit route to another city! In essence, this means that if you see some of the Sims returning to where they started, you should try and build some workplaces around this exact throughway to catch their attention...

NAM is also a great tool in this battle as some of the networks it has offer greater capacities and travel speeds than others. So if you build, for instance, five road connections and one 4-lane avenue connection, there is a very good chance that the majority of Sims will choose the avenue rather then the roads, even if they lead to the same exact spot. Well, of course it depends on what is zoned and the layout of such avenue on the other side. But the speed of travel, at least with NAM in place, combined with convenient inter-border zoning is a powerful cure for the ECL problem.

[Kel9509 1,357]

Yes, I realize I had way too many connections.  Although, I was ignorant of the eternal commuter loop problem and did not expect it would cause such trouble.  I will be much more diligent about neighbor connections in the future, if I ever create them.

3 hours ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

Neighbor connections are not detrimental to a city's health - on the contrary! They can save cities that don't have enough workplaces. In such scenario, citizens can and will seek the lacking jobs in another town, find them, and spare you the eyesore of your buildings degrading. As is, more often than not, a case in autarchic communities.

I'm doubtful of their overall advantage in place of a well-managed city with enough jobs, but obviously they were useful to my larger cities which needed them prior to me eliminating the connections entirely.  Or else, they wouldn't have experienced the residential changes and the need for high-density zoning.  Still, I think that the idea of neighbor connections being great deserves a lot of skepticism.  The game just isn't built for the way we want to see it.  

3 hours ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

The key is to make good connections and zone your cities in such a way that travelers find exactly what they are looking for before they find an exit route to another city!

I'm not sure I have the skill to build a connection that, in the next city, lets sims off entirely where they need to go with a decent amount of jobs necessary all while I'm building in both cities overall, and to prevent the commuters from moving onto another city.  Also, wouldn't commuters just cause those native sims to seek jobs elsewhere?  It seems very difficult to manage, because the game doesn't really tell you how many commuters from without are taking the jobs that otherwise native sims would occupy.  The only thing to help is the trip paths tool, and that's pretty crude at best.  I don't even know if the demand bar graph takes into account commuters that are occupying a lot of jobs already, but I assume it does - if native sims in the city want jobs because commuters have them, there will be demand for jobs.  (And this is why I don't play with demand cheats, because they literally break the game and make it impossible to know what is going on in your city and if it needs anything at all).   

But you're right, the NAM is the best thing to help with this.  If I limit myself to highway-only neighbor connections, it might be easier to manage.  Maybe a rail connection or two.  I will also probably never build a ferry at all, and stick to bridges, since I hear that ferries are very dangerous in creating an eternal commuter loop.

 

[poshbakerloo 186]

The way I 'fix' the commute looping is to offset the region tiles so they are places like a brick wall! I use only large tiles, but it means you never get 4 corners together for sims to loop round.

[Kel9509 1,357]

I get very nervous when I see large commuters leaving the cities.  In my main city of 90,000 people, about 3,000 are using a bus or train to leave to the city north of them to work.  I can disconnect the neighbor connections with no problem and they continue to work in the original city with no issues.  I wonder if it's normal to have large amounts of commuters in the game?  I'm trying to create balanced cities so that all demands can be met within the entire city so they don't need to go outside to the region for jobs, but that might be impossible or too difficult to manage long-term.  

Lots of busses on the NAM highways just makes me nervous as hell that the commuter bug is back. And I'll never use subway neighbor connections ever again.

 

[Propfam 2,286]

57 minutes ago, Kel9509 said:

I get very nervous when I see large commuters leaving the cities.  In my main city of 90,000 people, about 3,000 are using a bus or train to leave to the city north of them to work.  I can disconnect the neighbor connections with no problem and they continue to work in the original city with no issues.  I wonder if it's normal to have large amounts of commuters in the game?  I'm trying to create balanced cities so that all demands can be met within the entire city so they don't need to go outside to the region for jobs, but that might be impossible or too difficult to manage long-term.  

Lots of busses on the NAM highways just makes me nervous as hell that the commuter bug is back. And I'll never use subway neighbor connections ever again.

 

90k? That's a rookie number, man. I have like tiles like 10x of that and yet, my region is functioning fine. As long as you make not so enticing connections, noone will use them and therefore, no commuter loop! 

[TheMurderousCricket 5,046]

11 hours ago, Kel9509 said:

I get very nervous when I see large commuters leaving the cities.  In my main city of 90,000 people, about 3,000 are using a bus or train to leave to the city north of them to work.  I can disconnect the neighbor connections with no problem and they continue to work in the original city with no issues.  I wonder if it's normal to have large amounts of commuters in the game?  I'm trying to create balanced cities so that all demands can be met within the entire city so they don't need to go outside to the region for jobs, but that might be impossible or too difficult to manage long-term.  

Lots of busses on the NAM highways just makes me nervous as hell that the commuter bug is back. And I'll never use subway neighbor connections ever again.

 

@Kel9509, if that is your concern I assure you that there is nothing wrong going on with your city commutes.

I would say that this is a fairly common percentage of Sims leaving their hometown for work elsewhere. In my biggest single-tiled city to date (250'000) about 9000 people leave to work beyond the city's borders. Note that both our cases translate to, roughly, 3,5% of intercity commuters (do the math yourself). This really is not a number that you should worry or get nervous about.

The fact that your Sims leave for another city is not a proof in and on itself that the city is unbalanced. It just imitates real life in which people are tempted to pick a job beyond administrative borders of their hometown if they can reach it faster. But that doesn't mean you did a poor job managing the city.

Tread carefully. Because if you choose to cut off all your cities from each other, you may loose the traffic that spurs commercial growth, demand bonus adding up from other cities and even money from tolls (if you have any booths that is). While balancing each of your individual cities, you may find yourself in a situation in which you will unbalance the entire region.

[CahosRahneVeloza 385]

I hope it's ok to necropost on here but I just have a question regarding City tiles at the edges of regions. I know we SHOULD always build Tree branching city connections to avoid creating loops. but what about the city tiles at the very edges of the regions we are playing on. Would it be safe to make Neighbor Connections to essentially nowhere? Or would doing so still cause the issue? Also I'm only asking because I'd want more options for freight to exit such Edge of Region towns. Also to unlock BTE Rewards that have a number of Neighbor Connections as an unlock condition.

[CorinaMarie 29,577]

1 hour ago, CahosRahneVeloza said:

I hope it's ok to necropost

In ye olden dayes it was was highly frowned upon, but we've completely revoked said rule because we feel that asking a question in the topic where it has a bunch of discussion is the very best way to do it.   (As such anyone else not familiar with the topic can review it all in one thread if they are so inclined and need not try following a chain of back linkys to find older discussions of the same thing.)

 

1 hour ago, CahosRahneVeloza said:

Would it be safe to make Neighbor Connections to essentially nowhere?

It's completely safe.   Make all the connections you want to  Nowhere. A key element in eternal commuter loops is you have to visit each city tile in said loop for it to propagate its data and since you cannot load the non-existent city tiles that cannot happen.

[CahosRahneVeloza 385]

@CorinaMarie Thank you for the prompt answer

[nathkel 31]

I'm wondering now if the ECL is what's preventing my hub city from building in NYC-style downtown. I cant get the skyscrapers to blossom!

[CorinaMarie 29,577]

11 minutes ago, nathkel said:

I'm wondering now if the ECL is what's preventing my hub city from building in NYC-style downtown. I cant get the skyscrapers to blossom!

That is entirely possible. Ofc, without any other details it'll be difficult to say. And often times skycraperlessness can have a multitude of factors. I believe a few pics of your downtown along with the relevant charts like demand, population growth, the Census Repository screen, and such might help.

And it'll prolly be best if we split this out into its own topic. (Go ahead and reply and we can do the split afterward.)

[Prophet42 1,501]

If you are not getting skyscrapers but feel your city has the population for it, check for demand caps.  A demand cap on commercial will prevent skyscrapers.  Also check the desirability of the tract of land you want skyscrapers.  If the desirability is too low you cannot reach for the sky.