Can Sims commute through different city tiles?

[Me obviously]

Just asking because I have a small city tile in my region right next to a bustling metropolis in need of workers and I wondered if Sims could live in one tile and work in another.

[Ilja]

Yes they can. You need to take few things in to account.
- Crossing title is always considered as long commute time.
- Game is old, so tile data is not getting updated at real time. Load connected city tiles every now and again.
- Avoid making connections to tile corners, so that sims could loop back. That would risk "eternal commuters" -bug.

Regional play is possible and actually really fun. Just keep those things in mind and start experimenting.

[NetPCDoc]

Originally posted by Me obviously:

Just asking because I have a small city tile in my region right next to a bustling metropolis in need of workers and I wondered if Sims could live in one tile and work in another.

Short answer: YES!

This is one of the ideas of Regional Play! Placing Industrial Parks in one regional-city-tile, bedroom communities in a second regional-city-tile; and commercial "Down Town" areas in yet a third regional-city-tile. Connect-up all three of these regional-city-tiles with appropriate neighbor transit-connections and away you go ...

Due to commute times it is harder to get Sims to commute across intervening regional-city-tiles, but if you place transit all the way across such an intervening tile you may get some low-wealth sims that won't mind the commute times; or higher-wealth sims may take a monorail across smaller (64x64) regional-city-tiles. I have successfully run utilities across a region from one corner to the farthest corner regional-city-tiles; just don't forget to run wires, pipes, etc across the intervening cities - and DO remember to SAVE said intervening cities before going back to play the city (or cities) that you are attempting to grow.