Zero Population

[BruceAtkinson]

  Hello everyone....it is that pesky Bruce again!!
  I have a city that is at about 29,000 people, however it decides to have commute time problems and rapidly decreases population to zero!  Now, in the Commercial sector and Industrial sector, there are jobs.....but absolutely no Residential and all buildings become vacant.  The Transit stations, Bus Stops, etc...show vacant as well.
  I seem to remember that certain custom landmarks can trigger this....just wondering and hoping if someone knows which ones.....
Bruce

[jmyers2043]

custom landmarks can trigger this

I haven't heard the landmark rumor.

How far away are the commercial and industrial jobs to the population? Do you have road connections and if so, is the population driving to the city next door instead of finding work in that city? Is this the first city in a new region? Are you using the NAM and one of those traffic controllers? Are you using a different traffic controller by someone else? If you quickly query a house, does it say long commute?  Do any of the demands plummet at the same time? Using any MOD that you forgot about or might be in your plugins from long ago?

Anything else unusual like ... oh ... like ... insect infestations

[BruceAtkinson]

....hey!, thanks for the very prompt reply......as far as the city is concerned it is not new, and it has been developing quite nicely...actually it is in year 78.
My demands are normal, all connections to other cities are fine and appropriate.  I am operating with the NAM, and the latest updates, however I do not feel that has anything to do with it, as all other cities are doing fine.
   I realise I mentioned landmarks, however I made a mistake on that...however there is some older custom content that can trigger some of this type of behaviour, but I forget which ones.  Regarding mods, I have not engaged any new modes so we can rule that out....
  The city is still at 29,000...as I have not saved it when it starts to decline, and the the only custom content that I put in prior to this starting to happen was the Pope Palace, but I did take that out and it still declines.
   This is basically what happens. The no job icon pops up over the residential areas, the bus stops have their usage at zero and the bus icons in the top part of the inquery box are shaded out....the population then starts to decrease and it takes about two years/three years and I'm down to zero population, but the jobs in the industrial and commercial are fine...and the demand is normal.
Thanks:
    Bruce

[jmyers2043]

Abandonment is almost always caused by commute time. The traffic simulator probably has the greatest bearing.

Think of other things too. If all of your Sims got education and became R$$$ but if the town has no CO$$$ or I-HT jobs there will be abandonment. Yes they'll try to travel to the city next door. But if the trip is too long (based on the traffic simulator) the home will abandon. The answer may be then to plop a park or two in the city so as to encourage high paying businesses.

If you bulldoze the homes. Who will move in. R$ or R$$$ ?? And do R$ find employment if they are the folk who move in?

Knowing the towns age - how about garbage? I once couldn't figure out why my farms were delapidating by the dozens. I checked the desirability and had 'red specks' of undesirable land all over the place. Turns out that I had piles of garbage everywhere. I had forgotten when the game started to provide means for garbage collection.       

[Indisguise]

Just wondering, you check your garbage output ? 

Sometimes when playing I forget to deal with it and then all of a sudden bam, your knee or eye level in garbage and all the Res make for the hills.

This is speacilly true if your using older lots that were made with the plugin manager, and thier stats not upgraded with the PIM. Found that some older lots had 100's of tonnes of garbage production above normal, which was glitch with the plugin manager stat generator itself, get even 1 or worse several of these growing at once, can lower demand in a hurry.

Yea I found some landmarks with very odd stats, some even with radiation accidently modded into the lot.  Actually very easy to do accidently, just pick the wrong stat with the ireader or imput the wrong hex number You can use the SC4Tool program to view the stats of the lots easily to see if you have any that need to be remodded.

ps are you using the CAM  ?

[BruceAtkinson]

 First...thanks jmyers and indisguise for your most informative responses: 
  Yes, I may have been mis-managing this city, as I was concentrating on one thing and not paying attention to all the other needs of my residential population, so next time I'm in the city I'll check on everything the two of you have mentioned!  I do know one thing, as the city stands now, a good portion of the 29,000 are of the upper wealthy class, and my Commercial zones are all low density....
   As far as the garbage, it isn't visibly piling up, however I have not really payed attention to what I'm doing with it!!
So within the next couple of days, I'll be able to get back into 'Queensbridge', and I'll set about managing a litttle better.....and yes I am utilising the CAM.....
Bruce

[BruceAtkinson]

....ok!, I just got into Queensbridge, and this is what I have found:  In the Budget Panel...under Monthly Expenses and further under Transportation, although my funding sliders are at more than adequate levels, each individual item, such as buildings, elevated rail, etc are showing zero.....all the way down the line.....so, my funds are not going to any of the Transit and Transportation....even Road maintenance!
  Possibly I have a 'mod' that is malfunctioning??
Bruce

[BruceAtkinson]

....further to my problem, and possibly a better description:
When I open up Queensbridge....it stands at 29 thousand and change....and slowly one will see the no job icon appear above the residential areas.  When one inquires on a Bus Stop, or Train Station...one will see the inquirey box, with the little bus icons at the top shaded out.  Further investigation shows the following:  In the Budget Panel: under the expense section and under Transportation/Utilities one would see the funding slider is set to appropriate levels, however if one looks at the detail in this box, the buildings, bus stops, etc...even the roads do not have any money going to them...they all read zero.
  If I let the city progress through time, in about three years, my population goes to zero...and all the while I have jobs in the Commercial areas, and Industrial areas and the demand bars still read at normal levels.
  I use a variety of bus stops, not just one kind, but I do so in all my cities....however I think I have plotted something that has created an interference in the flow of funding and such.  Another non-normal situation is that the city just statrted to get once a year, an infusion of about a million dollars...in which I didn't do anything to set that up, however something that I put in the city is now generating that annual infusion.  I'm not sure if the two are connected in any way.
Bruce

[jmyers2043]

You have the CAM and you're getting unexplained millions of $$$ per month - I'd be looking for a MOD or something like a park lot the deposits money into the bank. A conflicting mod could be a problem. There used to be (don't know if it's still around) a money tree lot. A 1X1 park lot that made monthly deposits into your bank. Somthing like that wouldn't have anything to do with the abandonment issue.

Funny thing is - every time you make observations I have more questions. Such as - I wonder if you have a bus stop that is impeding traffic. Basically modded wrong so that it stops automobile traffic but allows bus traffic. R$ Sims will use the bus. R$$$ Sims will take a subway but hardly ever take a bus. This would cause abandonment.

You're going to have to figure out why your Sims can not get to their jobs. Simple as that. If that were my city? I'd probably delete all the roads in the urban areas. Get rid of the bus system and delete passanger rail stations. Rebuild the roads and make sure there is a path a Sim can travel from home to work. If the Sim has to travel to a neighbor city then make sure the trip is short. I'd also remove all the mods. You can keep asthetic mods such as terrain mods, tree mods, stuff that pertains to how your city looks. Keep the CAM. But I'd remove every other mod you may have for the time being.

Remember that demand is regional. You may have good looking demand as demonstrated by the graphs but this can be the result of extrapolated demand from the various other cities in your region. Usually when I get a city that is out of whack? I'll play a few years in all my other cities. This puts the other cities demand into play and things get averaged out bit.

I think this is a good time to back up the region too. 

With respect to your roads budget. I can't even begin to understand why they're not showing any type of maintenance. I tend to be a fussy downloader. I rarely get burned by a bad game asset.

You're not alone. We all have difficulties from time to time. I had a city once. Every Sim had a job and the demands were great. I wanted to build it up some more but ran into a stumbling block. I only had freight rail traffic to neighbor cities. I needed the cap relief that road and street connections provided in order to continue to grow. I made road connections. All of a sudden I had massive abandonment because all my Sims decided to travel great distances to work in the cities next door. The trip was too long. I was bulldozing neighborhoods by the dozens. I was able to build the population back up but it took 250 game years. It was always the 'problem city' in my region and I almost hated revisiting it because it was .. like ... work. Your problem seems different because from your description it sounds like the Sims are not even making the trip to work because of the road network has issues.