Commuting from City to City

baran3 · February 11, 2011, 09:42:09 AM

Not sure if this is the right forum, but it might involve the NAM.

I've got 2 cities on neighboring tiles. I've created a highway connecting the two. As an experiment, I have only Res in one city, and C and I in the other. The C & I city has buildings, and each building says there are workers there. My Res city shows massive unemployment (no job zots).

On the road connecting the two cities, all I can see is freight traffic. There are no green lines indicating car traffic. But somebody has to be working in those offices and plants; I assume it's the people from my Res city. Is it normal behavior to not show the cars commuting from city to city? Why would it show the light-blue freight truck line going from tile to tile but not the green car line?

Is it safe for me to assume that the workers in my C & I city are actually coming from my Res city?

Thanks for your help,
Ken

jp · February 11, 2011, 09:50:20 AM

Are you using the maxis highway or the RHW? because to make neighbor connections with the RHW you need to use the puzzle pieces, or else it won't work (only freight trucks will use it)

baran3 · February 11, 2011, 01:06:37 PM

Thanks for the response jp. I'm using the RHW-4. I took a closer look after your post and found that there were more options after the initial 'RHW Invisible Loop Connector'; I hadn't tabbed through that before. But even after fixing those I can't get car traffic to flow between cities.

Obviously I'm doing something wrong with the fundamentals of connecting cities with RHW. I drag my RHW-4 to the edge of the map, I accept the neighbor connection when prompted. I then drag the other side of the highway using RHW 4 and repeat. I now have 2 roads (one coming, one going) from my first city. Do I place the RHW Neighbor Connector now or after visiting the second city? I assume I place this neighbor connector on top of the orange arrows at the edge of the tile, making sure the white/orange stripe line up? At what point do I go the neighbor city and complete the road? Do I have to place 2 neighbor connectors there also? I've tried and it doesn't help.

If done correctly, should I see my green car traffic on this road taking sims from home in one city to work in the other city?

I am very frustrated by this right now. I've checked the 'showpaths' cheat and verified my roads are correct. I really think the issue is at the neighbor connector, but each and every combination of steps I try fails.

Can somebody please hold my hand and walk me through the neighbor connector with RHW?

Thanks,
Ken

baran3 · February 11, 2011, 02:03:17 PM

OK, after trying everything else that made sense, I started trying things that don't make any sense whatsoever. In my first city (the Res city) I needed to shift the RHW-4 a little to avoid a power plant. I used the piece called 'RHW-4 Lanes Shift' on one side of the highway.This took me from one space in between roads to no gap in between directions of the RHW-4. Once I deleted this 'lanes shift' piece and re-ran the highway everything worked. Turns out I was using the connector piece correctly the whole time. My 'no job' zots are gone and I see the green car lines on the roads with traffic query. The original piece was installed correctly with the orange and white lines on the correct sides.

Any idea why this would happen? Also, what should I do with the RHW-4 double curve piece? I tried that somewhere else and couldn't get anything to connect up with it?

Thanks for listening,
Ken

jdenm8 · February 11, 2011, 05:23:00 PM

You could use the old setup, but you would need to use the Invisible Loop Connector in the median. Same goes for any of the wider RHWs if you use a median. The RHWC networks don't have connector pieces since the centre two lanes work properly.

Ramona Brie · February 11, 2011, 07:54:43 PM

Quote from: jdenm8 on February 11, 2011, 05:23:00 PM
You could use the old setup, but you would need to use the Invisible Loop Connector in the median. Same goes for any of the wider RHWs if you use a median. The RHWC networks don't have connector pieces since the centre two lanes work properly.

Actually, toward the end of that tab ring, there ARE RHW-6C and 8C connectors so the full width of the system works without congestion.

baran3 · February 13, 2011, 04:09:40 AM

I'd like to wrap up this thread with my final troubleshooting findings. In my original post I thought my city connectors weren't installed correctly since I couldn't see car traffic leaving that city to go to the neighbor city for jobs. Turns out the highway leading to the city edge was bad. I'd used the piece called 'RHW-4 Lanes Shift' in the highway. The road looked OK, and the 'Show Paths' cheat didn't show anything broken. I removed that 'lane shift' piece and re-did the highway without it and everything started to flow again.

In further testing I started another piece of highway somewhere else and purposefully used that same lane shift piece before a neighbor connector. This time it worked perfectly. So it turns out the lane shift piece isn't broken. It was just a fluke when I built that original highway.

Near as I can tell all is good now.

Ken

jp · February 13, 2011, 04:55:24 AM

when you build something, you need to wait some time before it is used. maybe that's why at first it didn't work and after you used the lane shift piece it worked?

baran3 · February 13, 2011, 11:31:18 AM

It was the opposite. I built the road originally with the lane shift piece in place. I waited a long time; no cars. I removed the lane shift piece and rebuilt the road without it; I had plenty of cars.

Ken