One more thing:
The general transportation model seemed kind of flawed, and I think that was the root cause of a lot of the issues. SimCity is mainly about laying out interesting grids for your city - the roads and such, and the residential/commercial/industrial that goes within those grids.
But the Sims apparently have a preferred walking radius of only about 6-8 ‘cells’. Typically, I lay out my cities with a block size of 7 (1 road, 6 R/C/I, then another road, etc), which is probably close to what others use. This means Sims will only walk 1 city block to get to public transportation, and 1 city block when they arrive at their destination. It’s not very realistic. As I mentioned above, in Chicago, a large portion of the downtown workers arrive by train, at one of two train stations, and they then probably walk an average of 8-10 blocks, and sometimes more, to their workplace. SimCity doesn’t simulate this. San Francisco is similar - BART doesn’t take you doorstep to doorstep - you have to walk/drive part of the way, but SC4 isn’t very good at simulating this.
Also, the Sims seem reluctant to use highways and bridges, so the car/road traffic feels unrealistic, too.
It’s a nice game, but it doesn’t feel too much like the real cities that I’ve lived in.