rupe909

Thanks for all your replies. I have a much better understanding of how far Sims will commute! I have another question. I have tried to find the answer on this website and on You Tube but so far I have not found an answer. I am trying to build a railroad over a river linking my two cities (Bristol and Gloucester), I want the bridges to be a certain height so ferries can pass under it. However I can only raise the bridge to a certain height before the system indicates that this is not possible to build. I think it may be because the land I am trying building it on is low lying, however I might be wrong. I know this is a typical newbie question but could anyone point me in the direction of a tutorial that might show me how to do this? So far my search has not yielded any results. Thanks for all your help!

I have returned to SimCity 4 after sometime and I am faced with the same similar problems; that of abandonment due to unemployment or long commute time. I have just started out on a new region with the NAM installed. The population of my first city Bristol is 17,977, it has 3,929 Commercial jobs and 4,747 Industrial jobs. It is connected to a much smaller city, Gloucester which has 1017 in population with 268 Commercial jobs and 1,376 Industrial jobs. Gloucester did have around 4,000 industrial jobs before I deleted some of its industrial zones as Sims from Bristol decided for some reason not commute to many of the industrial furthest away from the city border of Gloucester and Bristol. I have done some research on the forum and found that a healthy jobs to population ratio (combined of commercial and industrial jobs) should approximate to 1:2. In Bristol I approximately have this ratio of jobs to population and if anything before I deleted some industrial zones in Gloucester I had a surplus of jobs there anyway. I also have minimal problems with congestion. Despite the small size of Bristol, I have converted some of the roads to avenues where necessary and I have also have introduced public transportation into the two cities already with a network of bus stops (which show high percentage of capacity used relative to the size of the two cities). Despite having minimal congestion and healthy jobs to population ratio I am still having problems with what the system indicates as “abandonment due to long commute times.” This is especially affecting my R$ population located actually in a part of my city which is located furthest away from Commercial and Industrial zones. My first question would be what does this actually mean in regard into how the simulator works? Does it mean that Sims will only travel so far to get to work before they give up, e.g. they would only commute so far into the adjacent city before they regard that the commute time is too long and give up? From reading similar posts in this forum I have the idea that this is not true that they are prepared to search for a job in further locations, if jobs are not available to them closer by. However my interpretation (which may be wrong) was contradicted by looking at how Sims commuted between Gloucester and Bristol. Sims would commute from Bristol to the industrial zones of Gloucester bordering their home city but no further to other industrial zones in Gloucester. Or secondly that my interpretation of the jobs to population ratio is wrong and in fact there are not enough jobs for my Sims in Bristol? Or a bit of both? Could anyone who is more knowledgeable in this field put me in the right direction into identifying the cause of the problem, how I might tackle this problem and which (if any) of these assumptions are right? It would be much appreciated!

Thanks for the tutorial, would not have known how to use the SC4 Mapper without your help. Thank you!