Is there a way to run a daily or a hourly train?

[Kyrah Abattoir]

At the present time, my passengers get super upset if they have to wait, but i can't see a way to schedule lines that don't provide "subway" level of train frequency?

Or rather, I can, but the passengers don't care?

[adlet]

I think passengers tend to get upset regardless. I don't pay attention... after all they are just senseless electronic bites, no feelings, no brains, no families... :) so why would I care.

To schedule hourly train, set line duration such that it is a multiple of 24. If your line duration is 1 hour, you need 1 train to get hourly runs. If your line duration is 2 hours, you need 2 trains. If your line duration is 1 hour 17 minutes, change it to 2 hours and you will need 2 trains.

To schedule a daily train, use manual orders. Or set line duration to 24 hours.

Note your trains will sit at one of the stations for the extra time. For daily trains, it may be helpful to include the depot into the line. and have the train sit there.

[MirkoC407]

Hourly works, I have that running. Hourly with a "visible connection" (literally translated from German "Sichtanschluss", sarcastic for when you by schedule can see your connecting train leave the station while the one you are on rolls in) can be an issue, because then the passengers have to sit that hour at the interchange station. Real passengers are not happy about that either, so live with it. It is realistic. Or plan better connections, if you want to make them happy. That's what real passengers expect in that case as well.

Daily connections are similar. Passengers can only be generated in the 3 hours up to a valid connection if I remember correctly. So they will also have some considerable waiting time, up to 3 hours at their departure station or at the station they arrived already by commuter train and change to the daily train. Daily trains don't make passengers happy either.

So yes, you can schedule like that. And yes, passengers care by getting angry about bad connections. However, you can't serve everone. Scheduling trains is a compromise, and your task as (virtual) traffic planer is to find the best of those compromises that will make most passengers happy.
To make them all happy you need indeed metro headways - but who will pay for that? As a sandbox player I'm not sure about current level of implementation. But happiness depends on not only travel time but also price. If you have to buy the trains with ingame money, ticket prices for metro like service will also make your passengers unhappy because you have to charge them for those 11 trains that run every 5 minutes where 1 train per hour would be sufficient for the number of passengers.

[TKR]

Originally posted by MirkoC407:

...

Daily connections are similar. Passengers can only be generated in the 3 hours up to a valid connection if I remember correctly. So they will also have some considerable waiting time, up to 3 hours at their departure station or at the station they arrived already by commuter train and change to the daily train. Daily trains don't make passengers happy either.

...

Passengers don't start counting their journey until they board their first train. It's true they will only spawn 3 hours before they can make their journey maximum. But they only start counting when they are on board.

As far as I can tell waiting for a transfer of a station specifically doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is how much you charge them to go from A to B, and how long that takes them to complete that journey. Of course if you let a passenger wait nearly 3 hours on a 10km journey they are not going to be happy. But no need for metro like services on mainlines, just lower your prices and make sure the trains aren't full.

[adlet]

By the way, I suspect the passengers emotions on pricing are relative. I am not exactly sure how it works, but I think it might be tied to relative price per km of straight travel. If the path they take goes around a bit, they would be less happy, if the path is more or less straight, more happy. I don't think it is affected by the absolute value of the price you charge. In other words, if your base price is $1.00, $5.00 or $50.00, I think this will not significantly affect how happy they are.