Why won't anyone work in the water buildings?

[LexieAssassin (she/her)]

I've tried everything I can think of, and the most I've seen is 1 worker in the water well. I was careful to put pumps between each building's pipes so pressure can't be an issue. Power is fine. There's a direct bus stop from the apartments to a stop w/in < 150m walk from both the well and the treatment plant. Unemployment is around 50% something percent, so no shortage of workers. The bus stop at the apartments is crowded with people constantly, but nobody gets on the bus to the water buildings. Hell, I got another bus to a shopping district, and I honestly don't think anybody uses that one either!

[Silent_Shadow]

Usually when this happens it is because workers are crowded out at the station by passengers and students, or because the industries cannot be walked to from the station (check for broken paths).

Citizens will also not board vehicles unless they have another stop in their line from which they can walk to a job/need they are interested in or another stop that they can be forced off at. Typically the need to pray results in passengers hanging out at stations for "an hour,"
because they don't see any churches accessible from the stops in the vehicles' (buses') lines. You can satisfy their need to pray by using certain "attractions" like the lookout towers or carousel rides or by taking them to a church.

Passengers will only ride to your shopping center if they need something sold there.

[LexieAssassin (she/her)]

Checking from the bus stop, it is a 185m walk to the well, and 131m walk to the treatment plant. I can't see how the path could be broken and still showing walking distance from the bus stop. As for the shops, the apartments are complaining that the residents can't get food. Yet, all they'd need to do is hop on a bus for a very short ride to the grocery store and get food, and then take a bus back presumably. Except, there's very few workers in the grocery store for some reason. As for schooling, it is within the walking range of the apartment towers, yet only the kindergartens are near capacity. (...and despite the space being available, some apartment towers complain there is no kindergartens despite being in walking distance according to the building itself.) The basic schools aren't nearly as full for some reason despite being fully staffed. Indeed, this issue is even more pronounced at the medical school which is nearly fully staffed, and yet there are no students. (Some of the apartment towers are in walking distance, the others could just take the bus to the shopping area and walk from there.) The doctors available now at the hospital is arguably adequate for the moment, but the hospital is still understaffed. (Something I don't get with the ambulances is that they'll be out on a call, lights and siren going, and yet will sit in traffic when they could pass or something. Unless that's a feature of gravel roads is that they don't allow passing...?)

[Silent_Shadow]

Citizens may not be visiting the grocery store nor taking public transportation if it isn't staffed (they won't see it as an option if it isn't working).

If you are depending on walking to fill jobs, you should ensure workers have access to all the nearby workplaces and a station, otherwise all the job slots that they can walk to could be filled and they cannot find employment. You can manually assign workers to fill a workplace before going to another listed workplace or station with the "where should workers go?" mechanic found in the house and station menus. Beware that workers will only visit the buildings you select though.

School time is the same as work time, so just ensure students can walk to the school or they can find public transportation to the right school. Only children with a basic education will attend college, unless you have a dorm that can access the university by foot or public transportation (you can manually relocate people without children into dorms to attend university, children attending college who turn 21 will move into the dorm to continue their education if they can walk to the dorm from their current home)

[LexieAssassin (she/her)]

I'll have to check the option of telling people where to go from the bus stops in the morning, but the stop at the shopping area is directly adjacent to the grocery store, and the other store (when at present sells mostly clothes, and a few electronics) isn't much further across the street a ways. I can't see how public transit wouldn't be staffed if the buses are driving around. (Should note I'm using a fleet of orange vans with 7 person capacity, but I have quite a few of them. Thus, a bus comes along every few minutes or so.)

[LexieAssassin (she/her)]

Okay, I tried to assign both the apartment blocks and the bus stops workplaces, including the apartments a ~20% allotment to the bus stop. Nothing changed. I finally gave up and just built a tiny brick apartment building next to each building and one in the shopping/entertainment area and set each to only work at places within walking distance. I still don't understand why they wouldn't take the bus though, but at least unemployment for the moment is at 7%!

[Silent_Shadow]

Originally posted by LexieAssassin:

(Should note I'm using a fleet of orange vans with 7 person capacity, but I have quite a few of them. Thus, a bus comes along every few minutes or so.)

Do you mean once every few "minutes" of waiting at a station or every few minutes in real life? Citizens will only wait 60 IRL seconds before giving up (or going to linked stations).

[GeeBee]

As a test, try setting the bus stop to pick up workers only and see if that helps

[potski]

Originally posted by Silent_Shadow:

Originally posted by LexieAssassin:

(Should note I'm using a fleet of orange vans with 7 person capacity, but I have quite a few of them. Thus, a bus comes along every few minutes or so.)

Do you mean once every few "minutes" of waiting at a station or every few minutes in real life? Citizens will only wait 60 IRL seconds before giving up (or going to linked stations).

And far less than that when you are running at fast speed. It is surprising how many people go to the bus stop and give up because no bus arrives before their 60 seconds (one game hour) expires. The vast majority of complaints about needs not being met come from citizens who go to a bus stop or train platform.

Originally posted by LexieAssassin:

I finally gave up and just built a tiny brick apartment building next to each building and one in the shopping/entertainment area and set each to only work at places within walking distance. I still don't understand why they wouldn't take the bus though, but at least unemployment for the moment is at 7%!

I start to think that your approach is better in many cases. It seems to be better to have the pollution, rather than not getting food and meat etc.

Still, this should work:

Originally posted by LexieAssassin:

I'll have to check the option of telling people where to go from the bus stops in the morning, but the stop at the shopping area is directly adjacent to the grocery store, and the other store (when at present sells mostly clothes, and a few electronics) isn't much further across the street a ways. I can't see how public transit wouldn't be staffed if the buses are driving around. (Should note I'm using a fleet of orange vans with 7 person capacity, but I have quite a few of them. Thus, a bus comes along every few minutes or so.)

But I would dedicate the bus line to workers only. Don't allow the passengers and students to get on those microbuses. You need workers at the water treatment, and if you don't then no water is produced. And therefore none of the shops will work. Many buildings that need drinking water for workers will get no workers if they have no water. The workers won't even turn up for work. Unlike sewage where they will turn up and then complain when the sewage tank is overflowing, and this causes a health penalty.

A water treatment plant does not work like that - they will go to work even if there is no water substation nearby. It is assumed they drink some of the clean water they produce. I think the devs recently fixed that. For a water well, use the small vanilla one which doesn't require any workers to get started.

And, by the way, as long as you pick a reasonable location for your well away from sources of pollution, then you can easily get 93-94% quality. Citizens will complain about it when it is less than 95%, but it only has a minor effect on health. You can definitely start a city with no water treatment, and add it later. And water treatment does not produce pollution, so can be close to residences where workers will walk. You don't need to place the water treatment close to the well.

Have a small well on a hilltop powered by a windmill, and then you don't need to take workers or power there, nor get rid of sewage. Run a pipe to the edge of the city and build a switch 1:3 then build a water tower. Later you can run a pipe from that switch into the water treatment plant and then feed that into the water tower. Plan it so that you leave the space that the treatment plant will later need, and the pipes will go downhill. When the treatment plant is later built and operating remove the direct connection from the switch to the tower, so all of the water goes through the treatment plant and then is stored in the tower, before distributing it around the city.

Unfortunately, once the treatment plant is built and fully you can't just turn it off, and pass the say 93% straight through. You must have the workers and a supply of chemicals or nothing gets to the water tower, So make sure it is working fine before you remove the connection from the switch to the water tower.

That arrangement can easily supply a city with 2-3,000 citizens, and produce 100% clean water. But they only need 95% to stop complaining and be fully healthy, so reduce the water quality to 95% to save on chemical use, unless you are supplying some water to a vanilla food factory, which will require 97%. Most of the modded food factories were introduced before water and sewage and don't have any water quality requirement, so 95% will be fine for them too

[LexieAssassin (she/her)]

So a few things I've done in the meantime btw my last comment and now...

1. There's a dedicated truck line w/ I think 4 trucks to deliver chemicals to the water treatment plant. As of the last time I played, they all went to border, got chemicals and are sitting at the plant waiting for all their chemicals to be used up before leaving.

2. I replaced the tiny apartment in the shopping/entertainment area with an apartment tower as I needed more workers. EVERYONE wants to live there I swear. Plus, it's location with the addition of many footpaths and a road from the hospital to the water treatment plant has allowed an improvement to the bus route!

3. I replaced all the minibuses with the biggest bus I could buy. There's now 3 routes. One from the border to the main apartment towers w/ 2 buses. One that goes from there, to the water treatment plant, to the shopping/entertainment area, and then to a recently constructed area that has a coal fired power plant and a secret police. (IE- Clockwise loop of the town.) The other does the same loop in reverse. These two lines both use 3 buses each. All lines use line spacing now as well.

4. As I stated, I built a coal fired power plant and a secret police station. I built two tiny apartments btw the two buildings and set them both to only allow workers to go to those buildings. Some work in the power plant on occasion, but not many or often. NO ONE works in the secret police for some reason. The power plant is supplied with coal by a truck unloading station that feed into a large storage area and that in turn feeds into both the nearby heating plant and the power plant. The heating plant is situated such that it is more often than not staffed by a few apartment towers in the central cluster. The biggest shocker though was the realization that the reason employment dropped so low is b/c a good chunk of people died, and the rest fled the republic!

5. I moved all my construction vehicles from the free depots at the border to two dedicated offices on the far side of the city. After which, I removed the free depots. In trying to remove the depots, and dirt roads to them, I accidentally deleted two pieces of gravel road. Luckly, I'd already connected all three of the border post roads up to the road, so traffic (which is kinda heavy near the border) wasn't disrupted too much. I decided to try having the new construction offices build the roads back with resources bought from the border. Problem is, the trucks went to the border, dropped off the gravel, and one truck got stuck with a (?) icon above it and I can't figure out how to free it. I realized I had 4 slots free at the second construction office and no buses which I thought I'd need. So, I bought those and I've checked that the border is where they get everything BUT workers, and that is from the bus stop at the apartment towers. The buses just sit there though. IDK why. Not like there's a shortage of workers at the bus stop...

6. After noticing the population had fallen from ~4k to ~1k, and occasionally dropping below that, I spent a bunch of money on filling every apartment with Soviet immigrants. (I have ~3 mil Rubles left, and until I can solve the transportation issue, I'm hesitant to start anything that involved exporting.) Unfortunately, escapes and unemployment skyrocketed nearly immediately. Folks complaining they can't get food, entertainment, electronics, ect., ect. The only bus people seem to get on are workers on the bus to the border and back, despite there being no work that way. Everything else they insist on walking to. I've added a few pedestrian bridges over the roads to enable better walking, and added an indoor pool and soccer field to the shopping/entertainment area behind the medical school.

I'll try the workers only thing, but I'm pretty sure I already tried that, and it didn't work.

Originally posted by Silent_Shadow:

Do you mean once every few "minutes" of waiting at a station or every few minutes in real life? Citizens will only wait 60 IRL seconds before giving up (or going to linked stations).

I was making a rough guess on what I thought it would be like for the people waiting at the bus stop. It was rather frequent, but I can't say for certain the exact time it took.

As for the pollution, I built a monitoring station next to the heating plant for the heck of it, and it shows green everywhere in the town. So, IDK... I tried assigning people and it seems to only partially work. (IE- Power plant has two 12 worker apartments next door, and usually only has 1-3 workers tops. No one works in the secret police as mentioned, and the rest in the apartments complain about being unemployed.)

[esbenmf]

I think screenshots are needed. Preferably with building window opened for some of your residential buildings.

[GoRun]

Secret police needs educated workers. Every workplace needs workers in 3 shifts so 3-4x workers in total. If you have workers on bus station and you set force out option for last station next to workerplace they will travel. Timing of buses is big problem in this game. Follow bus to see how much time it needs for A>B>A route and when is next shift needed. Pollution goes 500m so walking 300m+300m via station is good option without buses.

[potski]

Originally posted by GoRun:

Every workplace needs workers in 3 shifts so 3-4x workers in total. If you have workers on bus station and you set force out option for last station next to workerplace they will travel. Timing of buses is big problem in this game. Follow bus to see how much time it needs for A>B>A route and when is next shift needed.

There are no such things as "shifts" in the workplace when say 10 people finish work and then another 10 arrive to replace them. People come and go throughout the time.

A bus line will show you Average Lap time, ie. the time it takes for the whole route and the number of buses on the line. Divide the Average Lap time by the number of vehicles to get the approximate frequency when buses arrive at the stops. This time is given in seconds, ie. real life seconds if playing at normal game speed. And 60 seconds = 1 game hour, which is the maximum someone will wait at a bus stop or train station.

So, just looking at one of my lines I have Average Lap time of 422 seconds, with four buses. That's too long. Even if there are spaces on the buses then only about two thirds of workers have a chance of a bus arriving before they give up.

[potski]

Originally posted by LexieAssassin:

1. There's a dedicated truck line w/ I think 4 trucks to deliver chemicals to the water treatment plant. As of the last time I played, they all went to border, got chemicals and are sitting at the plant waiting for all their chemicals to be used up before leaving.

In the tooltip and the window for the vanilla Small Water Treatment plant it shows you that it uses 0.25t of chemicals at maximum production. And that occurs only when you have five workers there all the time AND you are treating the water to be 99% clean. 95% is fine, there is no health penalty from 95% or greater.

A single truckload is absolutely fine, unless you are bringing the chemicals from the other side of the map. The truck will empty, go and fill up again (at the border?) and get back in plenty of time before the 2.1 tons of chemicals storage is used. Even at maximum use (and in my game I am not using anywhere maximum for a city of over 4,000 people), the chemical storage would take many many days to be used up. In fact, I see no obvious signs that any of it is being used when converting nearly clean water to clean, 94 -> 95%.

Use three of your covered hulls to do other jobs, like delivering food and clothes to the shops.

[potski]

Originally posted by LexieAssassin:

3. I replaced all the minibuses with the biggest bus I could buy. There's now 3 routes. One from the border to the main apartment towers w/ 2 buses. One that goes from there, to the water treatment plant, to the shopping/entertainment area, and then to a recently constructed area that has a coal fired power plant and a secret police. (IE- Clockwise loop of the town.) The other does the same loop in reverse. These two lines both use 3 buses each. All lines use line spacing now as well.

Why from the border?

People will come from the border to work in your republic. This is designed to help people when first starting in Realistic Mode, when there are no citizens living in your Republic. They are expensive if you are using these to work in your factories, power plants or shops. New citizens who are immigrants also cost money, but this is a one-off amount to recruit them. Foreign workers have to be paid for every workday.

People will also come from the border as tourists, Tourists need attractions to get them to come, but when they do they will spend money and generate some income. If you have no attractions, hotels etc. then it is not worth sending a bus to the border, they probably won't get on.

Your own citizens will never go to the border as far as I know.

[GoRun]

Tourists only need hotel and 2 overall star score. If you want more than 250x2 tourists per month per customs then make better hotels and attractions with 4 stars to get 2500 tourists. Customs only gives 20 foreign workers per day and can make you small profit in hotel with price level 5.