hi i have some buildings that are abondoned becasue of commute time and i was wondering if there is any way to fix that?
the simple (and most obvious) solution is: lower the commute time. This can be done by either upgrading streets to roads, roads to avenues and one way troas, etc. Another way is to add mass transit options (bus, subway, EL-rail). I would also recommend downloading the NAM and CAM (as they improve the pathfinding and make the game more realistic)
hope this helps ;)
I have this problem in many of my cities: I find the following helpful:
If you have already taken some simple measures, such as building avenues, upgrading streets to roads, etc... You might try the following.
First, build highways, it is a high-speed way of transportation.
Second: I like to use bus-stops in almost all my cities, this lightens up the load on the roads. I like putting them every 6-8 tiles except in low-density residential areas(I sometimes just put one by a parking garage, this makes a park-and-ride station.)
Third: Sometimes, subways can be extremely helpful in high-density areas for a number of reasons:
1: They are underground, they leave more space for development.
2: they have a large capacity per-station.
3: They don't have to worry as much about the traffic above, if a line is busy, you might just double it.
4: pollution and traffic noise is helped in these areas.
Fourth: Monorail is the fastest transportation available.(By far.) if you can afford them, you might find them helpful.
Fifth: Have you tried one-way roads? if you have grid-based streets, you may want to try placing the one-way roads in alternate directions to each-other, look below:
>
< | |
> uP > Down
< Up < Down
See how they are in alternate directions? This is extremely effective whenever you have already done all else and it still hasn't worked. not only that, but they really help at the traffic intersections.
I really hope that this helps you, I understand that it can be frustrating. :)
The most common cause of commute time problems (when you really have a PROBLEM, not just normal transport) is inter-city traffic. When you start seeing a high proportion of your population leaving and/or entering a city from outside it means that you have done a poor job of matching the population and its educational and economic mix to the jobs available in the city. When you do this they have to leave (and/or come in from other cities) to find a job.. and especially the R$$$ sims will not travel far before they report "no job" or "commute too long" .. correct this jobs-to-population mix and you will find your commute times will drop by by huge amounts.
Say, how are your commercial zones doing?
Anyway, if you're finding your wealthier citizens griping about "no jobs", and there's enough space nearby, for zoning, plop down commercial zones. This will rapidly develop and hopefully give your citizens more jobs quickly, and business will do fine with the high amount of commuter traffic. This solution is great at getting more jobs in, but it may not be the optimal one.
Of course, I must stress that you should really plan your city carefully.
One of the main things to do is not zone all your residential, commercial or industrial zones in their own areas and separate them by a long distance. If you take a look at most real cities in general, they tend to have a commercial 'downtown' area that is more or less in the city center which is surrounded by residential zones which is in turn surrounded by industrial zones...but at the same time, all 3 zone types are mixed though-out the city limits, they aren't limited to just one place inside the city. In fact many residential zones have commercial zones mixed right in with them so that you have self sufficient communities within the greater city.
So it would be very realistic to add commercial and even industrial zones into an area that is having employment and development problems, that is actually how many cities tackle the problem of urban renewal to be honest.
I guess the simple message I have is 'don't be afraid to mix zones based on needs, city councils do it all over the world'.