Commuter Weirdness

[medit84truth]

I wanted to experiment in some region play, so I started new city and got the population up to 115,000 (city A).  With demand on the positive side in all zone types, I exited that city and started a new city directly to the south (city B). I zoned nothing but residential, to the tune of about 15,000 residents. The only jobs available in this city came via civic buildings (Police, Fire, School, Medical), therefore most of the sims traveled to the first city for jobs, which the traffic query indicated.

I then started a third city (city C) directly south of the second city, this time with about 5,000 residents, zoning no commercial or industrial, with jobs only coming via civic buildings, just like in city B. Okay, the same thing happens.  The sims head to city B, which the traffic query indicated, but there are no jobs in city B. I exited city C and went to city B and when I hit play, the traffic query acknowledged the traffic coming from city C with the exact same number city C's query told me was leaving, and as I expected, the traffic from city C was going "through", not "to" city B. Okay fine, so I exit city B and go to city A, hit play, and the traffic query indicates that there is absolutely no traffic coming into the city. Where did the travelers go?!

I exit city A to check city B and the traffic query still says there are 7,000+ sims traveling to city A in their vehicles. I hit play and the traffic that was coming through city B from city C disappears, but now 65 residents from city B are traveling to city C. I assumed these were civic jobs they were traveling to, and when I exited city B to check on city C, that was indeed the case. Now I query the route in city C and it's telling me there are still 2,000+ travelers leaving the city.

What happened to the commuters? They just vanished.

[Pythias900KMB]

Going by what you described, it seems to me that you have two bedroom communities to the south of a work district and are astonished that the commuters in City C have not gotten the idea that they need to drive through City B in order to get to City A (which is where the jobs are) ... sorry, compadre ... Sims are not that adventurous.

Let me give you an example from RL ... I exert great pains to conduct most of my grocery shopping at La Fiesta Supermarket because I have no confidence in the ethics of HEB -- the stores of which are EVERYWHERE here in San Antonio.  There are of course several minuses to this -- not the least of which is that there are fewer La Fiesta stores than HEB stores.  Further inflaming matters, the La Fiesta stores are located in areas where I have to prosecute a circuitous round trip expressly for that purpose because I am relying on the mainline transit service rather than an automobile.  When going grocery shopping, most people go to the grocery store and then straight home availing the shortest and most direct route to do so rather than traveling out of their way.  You may think that it is a real hoot to drive across a whole city as part of the work commute; unfortunately, the Sims feel quite differently and will show this displeasure by not prosecuting that commute at all.  Do know that they can be quite stubborn about this.

Want to redress this situation?  You can either revise City C so that it is a work district like City A or relocate City C to the west/east/north of City A.  Even if you have done everything right with the transportation, Sims are not thrilled at the idea of traveling through a whole city en route to another destination.  They will only tolerate a commute of 150 minutes AT MOST.

[APSMS]

I am not sure if you are running the cities long enough. Demand is calculated regionally, which means that to properly accumulate demand citywide, you should always run the game at least long enough for the city to rerun the traffic simulator (usually a few ingame months, best identified by watching the traffic query change on your busiest road).

I assume you have the NAM installed? In the base game, 150 minutes was the max commute time possible, but in reality (read: game code) this was really only 6 minutes; MAXIS multiplied this figure by 25 to give the traffic data view numbers.
In the NAM this max commute time was increased to 10 game hours (600 minutes), because lower times prevented Sims from reaching work at long distances, and there was no inherent disadvantage to higher commute times, esp. given the way the game treats time. With the NAM installed, it is possible to have your workers walk diagonally across a large city tile to go to work; they won't like it, but it is doable.

Running the simulator long enough to capitalize on the region-generated demand is important to properly setting up a commuter chain. The setup you created is sound in theory, and with the NAM I have known people to convince the Sims to commute several [large[ tiles to get to the jobs available, but this takes a lot of work, time, and patience. Commute time is reset each time a Sim crosses a city border, but longer commutes can get dangerous because Sims will tend to choose the closest jobs first; jobs in a neighboring city can potentially be seen as closer than jobs in-town, despite the fact that cross-border trips are always "Long", and this is because the destination finder (job locator) in SC4 runs independently of the pathfinder (the code that actually determines route and trip time). Placing city border crossings near corners next to neighboring city connectors can lead to the commuter loop bug, where commuters travel in an endless loop between each city in the circle (3 or 4 cities max), all because the nearest jobs are, to the destination finder, as close as the nearest neighbor connection, rather than the actually closer city jobs.

As for vanishing commuters, I don't know if they are recoverable. Often with commuter bugs, the traffic is forever lost to the region, and will never show up again in your city, but will confuse regional demand and screw with your numbers. Always remember to run the simulator. If you are trying to establish a proper commute, I would recommend playing the city for a few game years at least to cement the commute in place before leaving to play another city. You may be able to eliminate the commuters by running each city in isolation for a few years (disconnect the neighbor connections), but this might also require a proper job network in your existing city to function properly. Don't erase the city and start over either, because then the lost commuters will be orphaned and never go away (only solution is a new region at that point).