Trains traffic (Passanger and Cargo) to outside connection clogged up. What should I do?

[Yamie]

its like 85% of my trains traffic want to use one particular connection and the tail of traffic clogged into my city. Any idea how to redirect the traffic into other form of transport or other rail connection?

[OneJasonBradly]

If there is no traffic to other rail outside connection I would investigate those rails for broken connections. If you have yet to experience broken rail you will need to get close to inspect them. Here are examples of broken rails.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1415562136
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1670338121
There could be other things happening to you like but more info would be needed to examine.

[Yamie]

well there are only 2 point of outside rail connection (east and west) in the map and the crowded connection is on the west side. The east side is accessible since there are few trains transporting tourist and goods into east side. Is it because my industry area heavily oriented in west side so all of the train's AI choose west connection since its the closest? or is it really because there is something broken in the rail heading to east connection?

Originally posted by OneJasonBradly:

If there is no traffic to other rail outside connection I would investigate those rails for broken connections. If you have yet to experience broken rail you will need to get close to inspect them. Here are examples of broken rails.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1415562136
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1670338121
There could be other things happening to you like but more info would be needed to examine.

[MarkJohnson]

Originally posted by Yamie:

its like 85% of my trains traffic want to use one particular connection and the tail of traffic clogged into my city. Any idea how to redirect the traffic into other form of transport or other rail connection?

I find most cases are due to over building the rail system. The outside connection is a rail station. so it has to unload at the border. So, if you have too many stations, you get too many trains and they clog up.

The vanilla game has "Up To" 4 outside rail connections. You can try to get the trains to use the other 3. You may need to alter the tracks or just bulldoze a section or two, and divert traffic to a different outside connection.

Also, overloaded train stations can start sending partial loads, so this can trigger a game mechanic and send basically two trains at a time. The smaller the load the more trains need for a 100% full load.

You can also connect train stations together in the city. For example, you have generic industry that needs to deliver freight to commerce a few tiles away, then you can centrally place a cargo station in an industry district and another in a commercial district and they can directly freed each other.

Lastly, I avoid mixing passenger trains with cargo trains. It makes it easier to diagnose the problems you may encounter.

[OneJasonBradly]

Originally posted by Yamie:

well there are only 2 point of outside rail connection (east and west) in the map and the crowded connection is on the west side. The east side is accessible since there are few trains transporting tourist and goods into east side. Is it because my industry area heavily oriented in west side so all of the train's AI choose west connection since its the closest? or is it really because there is something broken in the rail heading to east connection?

Originally posted by OneJasonBradly:

If there is no traffic to other rail outside connection I would investigate those rails for broken connections. If you have yet to experience broken rail you will need to get close to inspect them. Here are examples of broken rails.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1415562136
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1670338121
There could be other things happening to you like but more info would be needed to examine.

Proximity does not play that big of a difference when it comes to contracts with an off map connection. So having an industry close to a connection matters little. How is the highway connection to that side or off map connection?

EDIT: Mark has a point with having too many stations being able to access the off map connections. Though if that were the case both of your rail connections would show this issue I would think.

[Yamie]

Originally posted by MarkJohnson:

Originally posted by Yamie:

its like 85% of my trains traffic want to use one particular connection and the tail of traffic clogged into my city. Any idea how to redirect the traffic into other form of transport or other rail connection?

I find most cases are due to over building the rail system. The outside connection is a rail station. so it has to unload at the border. So, if you have too many stations, you get too many trains and they clog up.

The vanilla game has "Up To" 4 outside rail connections. You can try to get the trains to use the other 3. You may need to alter the tracks or just bulldoze a section or two, and divert traffic to a different outside connection.

Also, overloaded train stations can start sending partial loads, so this can trigger a game mechanic and send basically two trains at a time. The smaller the load the more trains need for a 100% full load.

You can also connect train stations together in the city. For example, you have generic industry that needs to deliver freight to commerce a few tiles away, then you can centrally place a cargo station in an industry district and another in a commercial district and they can directly freed each other.

Lastly, I avoid mixing passenger trains with cargo trains. It makes it easier to diagnose the problems you may encounter.

Guess this is my source of the problem, I built too many cargo stations which have access to outside connection which trigger to spawn lot of export cargo train. So should I reduce amount of station which has access to outside and connect the rest for internal traffic?

For the amount of outside connection, I reckon there was only 2 rail connection in my map. Does it mean I can create new outside rail connection or I just stuck with those 2 rail connection?

Yes I have segregate passenger and cargo train traffic in my city! and I saw majority of my train traffic is export cargo, For internal cargo train traffic (industry to local commercial or other industry) seems doing fine.

[Yamie]

Originally posted by OneJasonBradly:

Originally posted by Yamie:

well there are only 2 point of outside rail connection (east and west) in the map and the crowded connection is on the west side. The east side is accessible since there are few trains transporting tourist and goods into east side. Is it because my industry area heavily oriented in west side so all of the train's AI choose west connection since its the closest? or is it really because there is something broken in the rail heading to east connection?

Proximity does not play that big of a difference when it comes to contracts with an off map connection. So having an industry close to a connection matters little. How is the highway connection to that side or off map connection?

EDIT: Mark has a point with having too many stations being able to access the off map connections. Though if that were the case both of your rail connections would show this issue I would think.

Ah I see that proximity plays little role on determining AI's train route. For the highway, All of my industry have either direct or close access to highway which has interchange with highway connected to outside connection. So I think my highway connection to industry is good enough. But its like only around 10% percent of my export is handled by truck since the industry seems preferred to use train to export their goods.

Yes Mr. Mark bring a good point about the amount of station connected to outside connection. This is my first time growing city this big so I'm kinda haphazardly build train station and now the traffic is so crazy, more than I can handle lol. So I need to try revise my train infrastructure with Mr. Mark advice in mind.

[MarkJohnson]

Maybe reduce a a couple train stations, especially if they are close together.

Then you can add cargo airports and/or Cargo Ships to offload freight by other means.

Exporting is always a major issue as your city grows. You may need to focus on more office buildings as they don't have freight, just jobs.

Hopefully you have added highways to your city. Too often this doesn't happen and your local traffic suffers from all of the slow roads and the delays to get traffic delivered. I usually have at least one highway per city tile. I have lots of overpasses to get directly across the highway with on/off ramps to the overpass, so traffic can get in and out of the highway and to districts easier.

[Osu]

I have never gotten over how hilarious it is that you can make broken train connections WITHOUT anarchy enabled, but then are able to FIX the connections ONLY with the help of anarchy. Make it make sense!!!!

[OneJasonBradly]

Originally posted by Osu:

I have never gotten over how hilarious it is that you can make broken train connections WITHOUT anarchy enabled, but then are able to FIX the connections ONLY with the help of anarchy. Make it make sense!!!!

You certainly can break a vanilla rail connection or better said intersect, which is weird. I agree you don't even get a warning icon like you would for anything else in game practically.
And you certainly can fix them with mods but...
I have always fixed rail disconnects with vanilla tools. Never trusted mods enough to fix someones rails with them. Seeings that most of the times they were messed up by mods to begin with. I have seen it where I had reported broken connections to the creator of a city and they be surprised of the findings. So now it is somewhat of a habit.

[Bannedit]

I have no use for passenger trains in CS but cargo trains are a breeze. Just make everything one way going out to four outside connections. Give all your terminals their own bypass spur. Stand back and let them roll. :) If you're determined to have passenger just make sure to keep them on a separate track. And remember the CS dispatcher is an idiot.

[Doc001]

My rule of thumb is one train line, or outside connection, per station. And for cargo, stations, it's always export, never import.
And if you're not opposed to using mods, use Move It! and move that node right at the edge of the map further in to give more space for trains to come in or leave.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1619685021

[Bannedit]

Originally posted by Doc001:

My rule of thumb is one train line, or outside connection, per station. And for cargo, stations, it's always export, never import.

I agree. I have maps with up to 10 cargo terminals and 52 outside cargo rail connections running issue free just to see what's possible, but there's really no benefit to having that many. Five cargo terminals and four outside connections is every bit efficient.