Commute time (with a twist)

[rmugabe 0]

I apologize if this is a subject that has been covered before, but it didn't seem to appear in any of the commute time discussions. Here's my problem:

I'm working on a city of about 25K. I have a good mass transit system (subway) that is moderately used, and I do mixed zoning (ie every residential block is connected to at least one commercial block). R$$$ residents make up about 1/6 of my population, and no one commutes from my city to any of my neighboring cities.

 

The problem is that R$$$ and R$$ buildings keep getting abandoned due to commute time. The twist is that the commute will be listed as Long when in fact the Sims only travel about 8 squares (some Long commutes even consist of Sims walking across the street to their job!).

 

Needless to say, this is most frustrating. Has anyone else had this problem, or do you know how it can be fixed? Thanks a lot. 

[Peorth 18]

Some questions first:
1. What's your average commute time? (check your graph).
2. When you said, they only travel ~8 squares, that means you checked using the special Query tool in Rush Hour right? (the one below the plain Query tool).
3. How's the road congestion?

I'm asking #2 because having a near workplace is no guarantee the Sims will work there. The only way to definitely know is to use the Query which shows the travel paths. The third question is based on the fact that congestion can easily increase commute times despite proximity.

You should also consider the possibility that commute time is not the problem. The Query tool is very useful but it can be misleading. For example, if you click on an R building and your stats are all good except one, (e.g. commute time, traffic noise, etc.), this bad factor is NOT necessarily the reason for building distress or abandonment. This is a common pitfall. Seeing that your upper-end R's (which are more picky) are the ones getting distressed, try to do a more holistic assessment. Questions to ask:

1. Do your R$$/R$$$ Sims have enough jobs? If they can't find jobs to suit their social status, they will leave your city. In this regard, you need to have high-wealth offices/services, high-tech industry etc.

2. How are your educational facilities? This is extremely important. You need good education to generate/attract the wealthier sims. You obviously cannot have high-tech industry if your workers have low EQs. You should at least EQ in the 120's but as your city matures it should be in the 160's or higher. Low EQ is normal for a young city but be sure that your education graph shows an upslope. If it's flat or falling, then you're doing something wrong.

3. How are your police and fire coverage? Is air and water pollution and garbage getting to your Sims? It is possible to maintain absolutely zero garbage and water pollution (which i do for all my cities). Zero air pollution is not possible, but for a 25k city, it shouldn't be a severe problem unless you're full of dirty industry.

4. How is your desirability? R$'s can live virtually anywhere, even next to dirty industry. However as you go up the wealth scale your Sims get progressively picky. To stimulate R$$/R$$$ development, boost area desirability by placing recreational areas such as parks. Planting trees will also help.

5. How are your demand caps? There is no way to tell directly from the game but i would strongly advise you to get Equinox's RCI Query mod in the STEX. This will give you an objective assessment as to how much your capacities are filled. For R's, you can bust the demand caps by placing recreational areas and placing certain rewards (e.g. cementeries).

Some parting comments:
- Personally I think using a subway system for a 25k city is way premature. You can easily build a 25k road-only city and not have any problems with transport. Generally I only started adding mass transit systems (buses) at around 60-70k and subways at around 120-200k.
- Subways are too expensive for a small city. Use bus stops instead and place them strategically. Plop them near high-capacity buildings, especially those R$ ones that hold thousands of people. Don't forget to put stops at the workplaces. The bus system is your precursor to your subway. When you decide to put a subway later, the placement of stops is just a matter of plopping them where bus stops are especially busy. If you start subways right off, you run the risk of placing stations at inappopriate places.

Cheers!

[rmugabe 0]

Thanks for the response. To your questions:

1. My commute time is around 80 minutes (which seems excessively high for my city given limited travel to neighboring cities)

2. Yes, I used the special query tool.

3. Road congestion is fine- all roads are green. Like I said, the weirdest thing is Sims that cross the street to work and have Long commutes. Perhaps my Sims have trouble finding crosswalks. . .

 

To the other questions:

1. I believe that I have enough jobs- +20K for a city of ~25K.

2. Education is excellent- levels around 160, with no age group below 130

3. Police and fire coverage are excellent as well. My garbage is exported to another city, so I don't have to worry about that. Pollution is low. No dirty industry.

4. Desirablity is also excellent- I'm a fan of the parks.

5. My demand caps are the strange part- from about year 5 (I'm at year 30 now) they've been hovering between -2000 and +2000, with a tendency towards the negative side. Hence, it takes a while for zones to be developed. I have no idea why this is.

 

Finally:

1. As you may be able to tell, I'm not running a straight-up no cheat city, so money isn't the biggest problem for me. I find subways more convenient than bus stops. Ah well.

2. On the subject of mods- do you just put them in the Plugins folder? I've tried a few different ones (to overcome this strange problem in my city) and none of them seem to have any effect. Thanks a lot (again).

[ElBarto92 7]

Welcome to Simtropolis, rmugabe! Sorry, I don't really have an answer to your question, I've just always wanted to welcome somebody

[SamFlash 0]

Welcome to Simtropolis.  Mods are placed in your C:\Program Files\Maxis\SimCity 4\Plugins folder.  Sorry I can't add anything more on your commute problem other than to tell you to try the NAM.

[joeynymets 19]

Welcome to Simtropolis rmugabe PM(Private Message) me if you need any help.  I suggest the NAM you can find the name on the home page about halfway down the page, or in the modding files under the essentials almost at the bottom of the page.

[Peorth 18]

Actually rmugabe, I'm stumped as to why your commute is long. I'm just a bit bothered by the average commute time. I have 2 cities with populations of 312k and 302k and my commute time is only slightly above 60 minutes, at no point has it exceeded 80 mins. For a 25k city, it does seem too high.

According to thy451's excellent Simcity 4 guide, the upper limit for the maximum trip time (time to reach the workplace) is around 150 minutes. However this seems to apply only to R$ Sims. Quoting

As commute time is a huge part of determining desirability, it means that for the richer Sims they do not like a high commute. Thus they may move out of their house even before reaching 150 minutes. The effect is thus that the house will be downgraded. Thus 150 minutes is the time limit for poor ($) Sims but not the richer Sims

So it might be that your commute time is really too high. Regarding your road system, is it possible you're using too little roads, hence the high commute time despite low congestion? Maybe you can post a screenshot of your problem areas and transport grid so we can have a better idea.

Regarding the subway, with a money cheat it's fine to build since the maintainance is low. You should note however that you can't really substitute a mass transit system for good roads. Your R$$$ Sims are the most averse to using mass transit, since they would like to use their fancy cars to get to work. Thus a good road network indirectly stimulates R$$$ development.

Regarding the demand caps, you might have misinterpreted this a bit. These aren't the ones in the RCI meters but actually some value hidden in the game. They're expressed as percentages, and each wealth class within R, C, and I have them. For example, your R demand caps can be like this: R$/R$$/R$$$: 15%/25%/100. When a cap reaches 100%, the corresponding R/C/I will not grow at all. However since you mentioned you place a lot of parks and your city is only 25k, i doubt that you've hit your demand cap for R.

Regarding the NAM (Network Addon Mod), it's a good suggestion to have. I think it optimizes some aspects of how the transport system works, so it's a good try. It also extends your plain vanilla transport options greatly (e.g. overpasses and the like).

Hmm, some new questions:
1. 25,000 for a 30-year old city seems on the low side to me. Are you limiting it artificially via reduced zoning?
2. Have you applied the latest patches? They're available at simcity.com

[rmugabe 0]

Okay, here is a picture of the affected area (hopefully the picture isn't too large). I tried to make the R/C areas more visible (the yellow circles are obviously subway stations:

 

I've advanced my city some since my first post in an attempt to fix the problems (ie my city is now 30K, though most things are unchanged). I've demolished the abandoned buildings in the Residential areas north and south of the soccer fields, and increased the amount of subway stops (the two in the soccer  block had not existed). Despite this, the problem has continued.

 

The problem primarily affects the Residential blocks to the north, south, and east of the soccer fields, as well as the three blocks at center-south. This is where 95% of my NJZs have appeared. I also have vacant Commercial lots elsewhere in the city (within close distance of this area) so I'm thinking it's not just a straight-up I don't have enough commerical jobs either.

 

In response to the new questions, Peorth:

1. My city's slow development is a combination of two things: 1) My historically low demand for R and C; and 2) My gameplay: I've been going pretty slow with this city- developing it in stages, allowing each section to develop before I move on to a new one. I want to make sure that my city is sustainable with each addition before I move on, in case growth suddenly gets out of control and I realize my city is doomed.

2. I have indeed applied the latest patches from Maxis (if the latest patch is the sku 1 update [or whatever it's actually called] from 11/14/03).

 

Thanks again for the help and the welcome.

[Peorth 18]

Oddly, i can't see the picture you posted. Could you fix it?

In truth I'm getting the inkling that it's not so much the commute time as maybe more fundamental problem(s) in your city that's causing the distress and/or abandonment. Since your demand has been apparently low for a long time, i would really suggest you try experimenting and placing a a neighbor city (with proper road connections and all). A common mistake in SC4/RH is to play in the single-city style reminiscent of old versions, or dwelling too much on one city. In SC4 you have to have at least two connected cities. What I do is that I play with one city for a while, and when I feel that things are starting to stagnate, I switch to the other city. The improvements you make in one city will impact on the other, so that by switching between the two repeatedly, you'll stimulate growth in both of them.

One easy way to rack up demand is to make a slum city first. This is basically a city filled with dirty industry and only fire protection and a basic education. After building this up a bit, make a neighbor city. You'll note that building this second one is easier due to the shared demand from the first. You can make this other city your nicer one, with colleges, universities and all. You can then attach more cities and grow them. Afterwards, what i do is go back to my slum city and slowly convert it into a nice one. This means jacking up the dirty industry tax rates steadily, coupled by selective demolitions. This will urge development into manufacturing. Later, i jack manufacturing rates up and do demolitions, so that high-tech industry will develop.

The shared demand aspect of SC4 is very powerful if you utilize it correctly. As an illustration, i had two well-developed cities filled entirely with industrial high-tech (tax rates for I-D and I-M were astronomical to stop them from growing). I started demolishing the IHT because i needed more space for R and I. I then founded an industrial city connecting the two, thinking i could make slum city. Tax rates for I-D, I-M, and I-HT were all equal. To my surprise, all my industrial zones started developing IHT, with only a sprinkling of I-D and I-M. What happened was that the negative demand for ID and IM in my neighbors carried to my new city despite the equal tax rates. My IHT demand was huge because of my demolitions in those two other cities.

Incidentally, don't forget to save your cities once in a while. In a shared demand scenario, disastrous manipulations in one city can infect your other cities, so you always have to be prepared to have a fallback.

I uploaded this for another thread, but this is also a good illustration here. See here how a bunch of nice residential R$$ skyscrapers have started growing, after only 23 years. These are on the edge of the map since they work in a commercial district in the adjacent city:

http://gateway.cjb.net/link/Pleasantville-22yrs.jpg align=baseline>

See how the low-wealth residential slums (seen on the right) are being steadily replaced by medium and high-wealth residential buildings. The high-wealth Sims in this area were so numerous they demanded for a private school, despite having more than adequate educational facilities (elem, high school, museum and library). Note also the centralized layout of the educational and health services, for maximum efficiency. The layout here is credited to thy451, which he called the ORS or original residential superstructure. The skateboard parks, tennis courts, and large flower gardens serve to increase desirability in this area.

Another interesting pic pertaining to desirability:

http://gateway.cjb.net/link/Pleasantville-condos.jpg align=baseline>

Here is year 46 of the same city, where I got my first McCarthy Condos, a R$$$ holding ~2600 people (tall blue building). And it grew in the oddest of places, right next to my polluting power plants. This was only possible because the air purification plants below suck up all the pollution. The lesson here is that you can grow any structure, as long as there's demand and all your desirability factors are okay.

P.S: I forgot to add earlier but i always play at the slowest speed. That way i can micro-manage all my utilities and such and get the most of my money.

[pnorrell 4]

It's not every day we have a chance to answer commute questions for an African head of state . Show us a pic, President Mugabe!

[rmugabe 0]

Okay, I wasn't having luck with the inserting picture thing, so hopefully this is somewhat adequate. I don't know if it was the file type or what that was preventing me from inserting my picture. I'll respond to the other questions a bit later. 

[pnorrell 4]

OK - have looked at the pic. First off, that's a nice example of how to mix R and C zoning... or rather, it should be, since you report it doesn't seem to be working.

As for why the long commute, my guess is it has to do with your reliance on subway for mass transit. I seem to remember reading that high-wealth sims hate the subway. Their first choice is always the car.

If your goal is to get high-wealth sims to commute, then you need to look at your road/highway connections and consider adding other forms of mass transit than subway.

Also, it sometimes takes several game-years for the pathfinding engine to match residents with jobs across neighboring cities. You often need to open a city and let it run for several years, then open the next, then the next, until the program calculates the paths for everyone.

A final step that will almost certainly help the problem is to download the Network Add-on Mod (NAM), which includes, among other things, two options for improving the game's pathfinding engine. The perfect pathfinding option works beautifully, but seriously taxes system resources and may result in a noticeable drag on the game. The better pathfinding option is a nice compromise if your computer can't take the stress of perfect pathfinding.

Here's the link for NAM: https://www.simtropolis.com/modding/index.cfm?mode=details&show=380

Follow the auto-installer instructions and read the readme carefully...

Good luck!

[rmugabe 0]

Okay, so in response to the latest posts:

Peorth- He comes the next step in you name problem, I tell you how it doesn't apply game- thanks a lot for your patience. My city is part of a region of ~250,000, and connected to two other cities (one at 130K and the other at 5K). I have created a slum city already which did improve the previous NJZ/development problems I was facing in the city. I however, have not extensively used the work on the neighbor city and then this city alternately thing. It might be worth a shot. . .

 

pnorell- Yeah- I like the mix of R and C because it usually lessens traffic problems, and makes me rely on mass transit less. I will look into other forms of mass transit. Do you reccommend buses or trains (or something else)? I enjoy the monorail- unfortunately, my Sims don't seem to share my love of it. I think that I will try the NAM to see if that improves my problems, as well as working on the alternating cities thing, as well as perhaps addding another neighbor city.

 

Thank you both for your help- there may be some re-allocated farmland near Harare in your futures. . .I'll let you know how it goes.

 

rmugabe

 

[pnorrell 4]

As it happens, I work in agricultural development, so I'm your man, Mr. President!

Bones1 did experiments with commute time and distance that I think are pretty conclusive. Check out the thread here .

In my own experience, I find (strangely) that even R$$$ will use buses heavily, followed by trains, though they still prefer to drive. I have much heavier road traffic in my high wealth areas than my slums (as it should be, I guess). Despite all the numbers in its favor, I've had the same success as you with monorail...

One more thing about trains - they allow your R$$$ sims to have the best of both worlds. They get to drive their gas-guzzling SUVs and park at the train station. If you place stations at strategic areas along the borders of the city, with direct routes to jobs in neighboring cities, it will encourage sims to drive there and hop on a train. The same effect can be achieved by placing parking facilities next to other mass transit stations, including subways.

[hairmetal4ever 0]

Do you have the NAM?  It helps a lot.  Sims are lazy and stupid, and even with the NAM will $%&^! about commute time when they have to go a half-kilometer.

[Peorth 18]

To tell you the truth, I see nothing really wrong with your city layout. The zones are of a good size and the road network looks adequate. My only major comment is that I find little need for the subway system. At your level of city development, the roads should be more than adequate for your transport needs. Especially considering you're using a mixed zoning approach, I doubt you even need a mass transit system.

To illustrate futher, I'll show you the opposite of mixed zoning; that is, confining RCI's to specific zones. This is Mecha City (originally designed to be a slum), population 87k at only 14 years of age.

Zoning layout:

Actual thing:

Some statistics:


In the second pic, the travel path from one Zaidi Apartments (a R$$ building containing ~4000 residents) is mapped out. It's pretty obvious that with this layout the Sims have to commute a fair deal. However despite the distance of the workplaces, the commute time is below 60 and there is little congestion (commuter shuttle service  and carpool incentive programs are not used). The only mass transit used are bus stops. Note also the absence of distress/abandonment in the city. This jives perfectly well with Bones1's experiments on transport (thanks pnorrell for the link). Re-printing some of the text for convenience:

Maximum distance Sims will travel to work (tiles)

-------------------------------------------------

 

 

              Road    Ave.     Hiway

----------------------------------------

Walk         21       21           21

Drive       186      240          492

Bus*        276      360          600

...If you design your city well, and keep traffic congestion down, there's no need to use mods to allow the sims to travel far to work. You don't have to have your industrial areas and commercial areas that close to home.

Given all of these, you can see why I don't think the subway is even necessary. When the city was 25k in size,  I was not even using any bus stops. My two other 300k cities are laid out similarly but I only placed subways at 150-200k size. These work very well in interconnecting the distant zones (especially R to C) and relieving commuter burden from the bus stops.

[hairmetal4ever 0]

As commute time is a huge part of determining desirability, it means that for the richer Sims they do not like a high commute. Thus they may move out of their house even before reaching 150 minutes. The effect is thus that the house will be downgraded. Thus 150 minutes is the time limit for poor ($) Sims but not the richer Sims

Which, at least in the US, is somewhat the opposite of real life. The rich live way out in the suburbs while the poor live in the dirty inner city. Obviously a major overgeneralization, of course.

[rmugabe 0]

So I've installed NAM (which may or may not be working- I still had abandonment and NJZ a few years after installing it). I installed bus stops and parking garages (neither of which are used) yet commute time has dropped to around 60 minutes. I still get Long commutes from Sims who travel to adjacent blocks to work (easily the single most frustrating thing about SimCity 4). I've demolished all of the distressed R$$$ and R$$ buildings- most have been replaced by now, so I'm waiting to see whether or not they also become distressed. I will probably move on with my city anyway, since this is the only area affected. Hopefully new additions will not be affected by this problem.

 

I'm also willing to chalk this up to a weird phenomenon I've noticed- that of cursed cities. Specifically, the area that this city is built on. This is something like the fifth city I've built on this lot (I lost my first when my computer crashed, and cities 2-4 ended up with NJZ/development problems and were obliterated). I've noticed that when saving the city after exiting God Mode and before you actually start time, saving tends to result in higher RCI demand overall. However, when I saved this city, I got negative commercial development right away, so my city started off with negative C demand right away. It's kind of weird.

 

Has anyone else had this issue- where some cities seem to have a higher natural long-run RCI demand than others, and that some cities (no matter how appealing you make them) never seem to grow quite how you want them to?

 

Perhaps there should be an option for more state control over commerical development. . .heh heh. . .

[EricN 0]

Date: 1/31/2006 3:09:27 PM
Author:rmugabe

R$$$ residents make up about 1/6 of my population, and no one commutes from my city to any of my neighboring cities.

quote>

Your problem is not commute times...it's overpopulation of R$$$ sims. The following chart is the most crucial piece of information in SC4:


____\_Jobs Provided
Jobs_\R$___R$$__R$$$
CS$___100%_0%___0%
CS$$__68%__27%__5%
CS$$$_62%__30%__8%
CO$$__40%__50%__10%
CO$$$_20%__65%__15%
IA____100%_0%___0%
ID____100%_0%___0%
IM____50%__45%__5%
IH____10%__80%___10%


You simply can't employ more R$$$ sims than the chart allows. Even if every single job in your city is CO$$$, only 15% of those jobs are suitable for R$$$. Even Goldman-Sachs or Morgan-Stanley needs janitors, security guards, receptionists, admins, etc. Not every employee is a millionaire stockbroker.

The problem happens to be reported as a commute time issue because of how the game works; the last R$$$ will drive and drive and drive, but be unable to find a suitable job within 150 minutes from home, simply because there aren't any.


There are only two ways to solve this problem: kick out half of your R$$$ by lowering desirability or raising taxes, or somehow get much more CO and HT into the city. Just remember that you can't build a city without lots of R$ and R$$. Not everybody can be rich.


EDIT: fixed typo in chart...80% of IHT jobs are for R$$, not 0%

[Bones1 96]

Where'd you get that chart? (By the way, is the last line supposed to be IH____10%__80%___10%   ?)

 

One other possible solution is to build lots of excess CO$$$ and IHT capacity. Commercial and industrial buildings seem to stick around just fine, even if nobody's working there. If there's excess job capacity, then your city should be able to support more R$$$ sims.

[Peorth 18]

EricN, that's a very interesting and useful chart indeed. I had the gut feeling it had to do with the supply/demand relationship of R$$$ Sims but couldn't quite put it into words. This chart makes everything clearer. Particularly, I was wondering why Co$$$ buildings keep sprouting even when my Co$$$ demand is lower than Co$$. Since the high-wealth commercial office also holds a lot of Co$$ jobs, then it makes sense.

Bones1, it's possible to just build Co$$/Co$$$ instead of IHT, right? In my medium map 300k cities, I'm running out of space for expansion. IHT consumes so much space for the amount of jobs they provide, so I've been steadily rezoning/bulldozing IHT to commercial and residential. I've relocated the IHT to a neighboring city instead. So far, things have progressed nicely and Stage 7's and 8's have been growing in the re-zoned lots. Lately I've been experiencing very strong Co$$ demand (+4-6k), though i can't quite put a finger on why this is.

[EricN 0]

Date: 2/2/2006 12:21:03 AM
Author: Peorth
articularly, I was wondering why Co$$$ buildings keep sprouting even when my Co$$$ demand is lower than Co$$. Since the high-wealth commercial office also holds a lot of Co$$ jobs, then it makes sense.

quote>

Actually, it's more straightforward than that: CO$$$ has priority over CO$$ when they are competing for the same piece of land. If there is demand for both, then the $$$ will pop first. When $$$ demand is satisfied, then $$ gets to build, and so on.

In my experience, my healthiest, most stable, and most lucrative cities have something close to the following tax rates:


___$____$$___$$$
R__5.5%_7%___10.5%
C__3.5%_4.5%_5.5%
I__9.5%_9.5%_9.5%


One common myth is that R$$$ won't move in without full services. This is totally false. All R$$$ needs is demand and desirability above a certain threshold. R$$$ will be perfectly happy with no police, fire, education, or health coverage at all, just as long as there is a park or two nearby. I have experimental cities with 100,000 R$$$ residents and no services.

However, R$$$ will not stay if they can't find a job. Every 1000 R$$$ sims of working age need 7000 worth of CO$$$ jobs. The problem is that you can't get 7000 worth of CO$$$ demand with only 1000 R$$$ sims...you need thousands more sims for that level of demand, hence the need for huge numbers of R$ and R$$.

The easiest way to prevent R$$$ from moving in before you have sufficient employment is to tax them. They will have no problems moving in once the real demand is there, and you get tons of income when they do.

[rmugabe 0]

AHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! I've won! [demented laughing continues]. So, yeah- in case anyone was wondering, what solved my problems was building a third neighbor city, in which I left tax rates at default levels, resulting in a city of 40K R$ Sims. These eventually increased demand levels in that city, which in turn increased demand in the city I was having difficulties with, solving my problem of low demand. My abandonment in my problem area has greatly decreased- at least now, if I have to demolish something, it is rebuilt quickly.

So, thanks everyone for all your help. I feel sometimes like this game is my nemesis, and must be beaten into submission. For now, I have won.