How would you set up this passenger train line?

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Using a map of the US. I get plenty of passengers at my stations but they all bunch up in the middle of my line and sit at stations.

Route is from Boston to Miami and stops at every city on the east coast in both directions. 7 cities, 14 total stops. Its year 2000, using 2 New Haven electric trains hauling 99 people using bombardier wagons.

Rate: 106
Frequency: 11 mins

Losing $2 million a year

I added one train on an express line from New York to Miami but it loses $1.5 Million and stays half empty.

My brain tells me to just add more trains but just two are losing money as it is. Pretty sure I had three on the line at first but sold one since the line was losing so much.


https://imgur.com/Lsd9q2e

https://imgur.com/Wgu9ROs

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BTW: I have buses connecting all cities on the map and started in 1850. This same route made millions a year in the mid game despite the passengers bunching up in the middle but now that electric trains are my only option their expenses have wiped out any profit.

[Tsubame ⭐]

Are trains full?

Problem with multi-stop lines like this, in this game anyway, is that the central sections tend to be full, while the outer sections not. A better way to make money would be to assign each section its own train, with the appropriate consist length.

A multi-station line can work. But you likely need to underserve the line a little bit so that the line is full in its entirety, and assign the spare train in the central section for relief.

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So the trains are mostly full but... they will go from NYC to the next stop Washington DC with 99 people... drop like 10 off at DC and pick up 10. Does this all the way through the middle then starts heavily unloading near Tampa and Miami "the end"

So I thought, ok most arent getting off at the middle stops so I added the express with its own double track that is unused expect by the one train. Its at max speed almost the whole route.

The express Train stays half empty and loses money though.

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My thought would be to have one train running between each city but then that lowers the public transport for each city. Because now NYC is only connected to its neighbors instead of being connected to 6 other cities. Passenger traffic plummets when I do that.

I've tried this in the past. Then if I add one or two trains on long runs to increase the public transport bonus "for city growth" the people will choose the long route and wont use my direct lines as much...

I'm making plenty of money elsewhere but worry if I add a train for every city, then start adding my more regional trains ill have 10 trains at $2.5 Million a year maintenance. This works fine when trains are cheap but now in 2000 they are all way to expensive for what im getting in revenue

[Tsubame ⭐]

This is a problem, few passengers using the line in the central section.

Also, check if the line is being heavily affected by "backtracking" behavior - for example, Philadelphia>-NYC>Washington - which tends to affect multi-station lines.

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Im following one of the trains right now: 99 Capacity

On Board:

Boston-NYC: 74, unloads to 50 fills up to 99
NYC-DC: 99, unloads to 49 fills to 99
DC-Charlotte: unloads to 89 picks no one up
Charlotte-Savannah: unloads to 68 fills to 74
Savannah-Tampa: unloads to 35, fills to 48
Tampa-Miami: unloads to 18, fills to 55

and it will be full again by the time it gets to DC.

Meanwhile

Savannah has 320 people sitting "Via Charlotte"
Charlotte has 355 sitting via DC
DC has 57 via Charlotte
NYC has 346 Via DC


Maybe me not knowing exactly what the "via" actually means, I dont know if they are coming or going.

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Looking at NYC-DC

NYC has 346 via DC
DC has 3 via NYC

My brain says via DC means they came from DC but maybe thats where they want to go and by the time the train gets to DC its full so cant move people down the line which starves the stations down the line.

is confusion

[Tsubame ⭐]

Via means the next station in that section. Hover over to get more information. For example, hover over "via DC", and see what stations are these people going after.

Are trains fully offloading at the end of the line? As I said, multi-station lines tend to be prone to having passengers backtracking, especially on congested lines. This will decrease efficiency and profitability.

You could break down this line in two sections. Boston-Washington could have its own line as it is busier.

You could do Miami-Washington with smaller trains, and see if you can get a profit that way.

Also, are you providing bus feeder service in each city?

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WOW... im over 200 hours and didnt notice you could hover over the passenger number and it shows you where they want to go..... Thats different than the destinations tab for each city which is what ive been going off of.

Thanks so much.

No they arent fully unloading at the ends so it looks like 20 or so are back tracking on the ends.

Problem now though is out of the 300 plus sitting in NYC they want to go:

100 to DC
50 to Charlotte and Savannah
80 to Tampa
and only 30 to Miami even though its bigger than Tampa.

Still dont know if these "destinations" are transfers or final stops since I have the multi stop line.

For now im going to delete all lines and set up appropriate length trains between each city and see where demand falls then ill start adding my regional ones once it settles down.....

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"Also, are you providing bus feeder service in each city?"

Yes, every city is connected with a 100mph highway with bus lanes and 2 buses.
Then I have trams doing the standard CW/CCW in every city that has a train station.

[joeball123]

Originally posted by D.B. Cooper:

Still dont know if these "destinations" are transfers or final stops since I have the multi stop line.

If you're talking about the destinations numbers in the city overview, I'm pretty sure that those are final stops - it's basically quantifying how many buildings are reachable by means of public (bus, train, plane, ship) / private (foot, personal vehicle) transportation from the selected city.

If you're talking about the overlay, that's basically a "how many people are pathing down this road / track / etc at the present time" metric.

If you're talking about the destinations listed when you hover over the passenger count, that's just showing you where they get off the line that they're currently waiting for and so can be either a transfer or a final destination.

Originally posted by D.B. Cooper:

Yes, every city is connected with a 100mph highway with bus lanes and 2 buses.

There are no 100 mph highways in the unmodded game - road speed limits top out at 100 km/h (~62 mph) - and if you have a mod that provides one then I'd say you're ill-advised to use it, especially if there's a private vehicle that can take advantage of it, as theoretical no-traffic door-to-door travel time is the primary metric used by the game to decide how a potential customer gets from A to B. By that metric, taking a personal car from A to B at 100 mph is very likely to be more appealing than walking a block or two to get to the local bus stop, taking the bus out to the train station, hopping on a ~125 mph train that gets you to the city where B is, hopping on a local bus in that city that'll get you to within a block or so of B, and walking the rest of the way.

[REDACTED]

Originally posted by joeball123:

Originally posted by D.B. Cooper:

Still dont know if these "destinations" are transfers or final stops since I have the multi stop line.

If you're talking about the destinations numbers in the city overview, I'm pretty sure that those are final stops - it's basically quantifying how many buildings are reachable by means of public (bus, train, plane, ship) / private (foot, personal vehicle) transportation from the selected city.

If you're talking about the overlay, that's basically a "how many people are pathing down this road / track / etc at the present time" metric.

If you're talking about the destinations listed when you hover over the passenger count, that's just showing you where they get off the line that they're currently waiting for and so can be either a transfer or a final destination.

Originally posted by D.B. Cooper:

Yes, every city is connected with a 100mph highway with bus lanes and 2 buses.

There are no 100 mph highways in the unmodded game - road speed limits top out at 100 km/h (~62 mph) - and if you have a mod that provides one then I'd say you're ill-advised to use it, especially if there's a private vehicle that can take advantage of it, as theoretical no-traffic door-to-door travel time is the primary metric used by the game to decide how a potential customer gets from A to B. By that metric, taking a personal car from A to B at 100 mph is very likely to be more appealing than walking a block or two to get to the local bus stop, taking the bus out to the train station, hopping on a ~125 mph train that gets you to the city where B is, hopping on a local bus in that city that'll get you to within a block or so of B, and walking the rest of the way.

Sorry yeah I meant km/h. Just the biggest country road connecting each city.

My main problem is figuring out how to evenly spread out the line.

Each city is roughly the same size except new york which is twice the size of everyone else. I just set up a direct train between each city which after about two in game years im now losing $11m on. Which I know the cities arent big enough to support that many trains which is why I went with the first set up.

Any tips on how to even spread the line so they dont bunch up in the middle.

A-B-C-D-E-F-G-F-E-D-C-B-A is what ive been trying but it doesnt work.

Whats most confusing is after setting up the direct routes I set up DC-Tampa Express line.

Tampa destinations tab says 34 people want to go to DC..... Yet there are 150 people sitting at the station waiting to go to DC... when I look at DC it just says they came from Tampa. I dont know how to tell where these people are actually going. I assume they are transferring to other cities but since im not using multi stop lines I have no "via" passengers which is how I would tell normally.

https://imgur.com/1hqEDTt

[TheGreenFellow]

Going with 1 big continuous line the whole way probably won't work well because of the varying populations and demand for transport thereof.

If your individual towns are too small to support even a minimal-length train to keep it profitable on a simple point to point route, and the towns happen to be in a row and about the same size (or in other words, will have roughly the same rate of demand), you can do a profitable 3 or 4-stop route with the 1 train for that segment.

Otherwise, the majority of the time, the simplest thing is to do point-to-point routes, with 'express' routes only between the largest population centers that are far enough away to allow the express train to accelerate to its full speed at least once before reaching the destination station.

At least, that's the methodology I follow and it works out well.

[canophone]

Train to every second city (skips a city), bus serving sets of 3 cities.

[canophone]

Originally posted by TheGreenFellow:

Going with 1 big continuous line the whole way probably won't work well because of the varying populations and demand for transport thereof.

This depends, but with the default density growth, it is usually true. With a manual growth change, it works quite well.