Only one freight train station used out of 6!?!

[Agibaer]

Hi!

I have six districts with different industries, all with their very own freight train station, poperly connected to the rails leading out of the city, so all stations are connected.

Still, trucks from the various districts ALL drive to one train station to drop off their load, even from five tiles away, creating unsolvable traffic jams. What's going on there? Anyone have the same problem?

[Smidge204]

I've had a very similar problem in my first city.

If the intra-city rail network is connected to the inter-city network, then the trains will basically be used only for inter-city traffic. This is because it's a longer trip to put things on one train, send it around the city by rail and offload it again compared to using a truck.

In your case, the shortest trip is to truck it to that one station for export.

The solution is to first isolate the two rail networks. This may require building a seventh station right next to (ideally, across the street from) the one station that's getting all the traffic. All of the other stations feed into that new one, and then goods are trucked across the street to the one and only station that leads out of the city.

Then you need to make the trip by truck less desirable. That means applying a heavy traffic ban to force goods to be shipped by rail. Make sure goods can still be moved from your industrial to commercial zones, though.

If you did it right, nearly all trucks will vanish from the main roads as they use the rail to move things around the city. The only trucks you'll see will be "local delivery."

[Agibaer]

You mean like before the patch, when this was a solution to prevent train traffic jams at the edge of the map?

I tried that back then, didn't work to well either, because railroad cargo stopped dead, as all trucks went to the harbor to drop off their load. Befor that, the freight stations worked fine, every truck sticking to the freight station in its own district.

I guess, the only solution is a heavy traffic ban around every industrial area to prevent trucks from leaving it. But then goods want reach the commercial zones either...

[Agibaer]

And I wonder why they drive to a freight station that is so far away to export goods? If p.e. the oil trucks would drop of their load at the station in their disctrict, which is at the edge of the map, the goods would be exported much faster...

[BonPadre]

Originally posted by drunk@ouzo:

I guess, the only solution is a heavy traffic ban around every industrial area to prevent trucks from leaving it. But then goods want reach the commercial zones either...

Wrong cause boxtrucks and delivery vans are not considered as *trucks*, and the trucks that still need to deliver because they have no ther way to do it, will still use the places where ban is activated.

I, by the way, always used heavy traffic ban to *force* the truck traffic, but still for any reasons that I'm unable to understand (and don't make me say what I don't say, I don't consider this as a bug, but a process out of my reach ;-p ) I still have some trucks passing right trough heavy traffic ban anyways (that looks more exporting, so not considered as delivering goods...) but it's amount is well neglectable compared to what would be without the ban

With the ban I can very well control most of my trucks then to use only the closeby cargo station, still have all my city parts connected to avoid any strange behaviors from service vehicles.

As for using rail cargo and want to avoid having trucks going directly to harbor, you can still try to drop a cargo station that is only connected to your inner city loop near harbor, that would as well probably help avoiding trucks going directly to harbor, and also that could help using more the inner cargo station to dispatch to fastest way... either train or boat to export, as well as probably beeing able to raise your exports numbers due to higher capacity.

[Agibaer]

Okay, so then I don't have to create a seperate internal loop again, I can just stick to the one railway network and enforce heavy traffic ban around the industrial areas, correct?

[BonPadre]

nah it's better to crate an internal lines (or even maybe 2 depending your volumes of industries and places). and it's still a very valid argument to separate passengers line from cargo line. Just to limit still the numbers of trains that would all spawn on same track...

Personally I create multiple indstrial zones and I tend to help deliver the goods closer to bigger commercial zones with even a dedicated cargo station, So I tend to abuse cargo stations... thus that tend to spawn many trains. so I sometimes prefer to have 1 or 2 lines depending on that and geograpgical (ore /or oil specialized) locations.

[TheDemotarian]

You don't need that many stations lol

[BonPadre]

Originally posted by TheDemotarian:

You don't need that many stations lol

Well that really depends on how you lay out your city, what you want to achieve, how much your city rely on industries or offices...

I personally drop 2 or 3 cargo stations for creating the import/export loop...(1 connetcted to the outside, and using 2 to have 2 separate geographical lines from the industries in city, avoiding hence too much spawn on one single line) then probably will have 1 for each specialized industries on various places of the map because I use ininite oil and ore, so most likely than not I need 4 more stations, then I usually drop 1 or 2 close to my commercials to avoid the road transport from the goods I produce and export...

Then if I feel like adding a few more industrial spots, I may end up adding maybe more cargo stations... All that works fine for me.

So in that logic, can you tell me why you may think that this is too many stations with a reasonable explanation ?
I personnally use offices too, but I just don't want to create an office main base for workplaces as I think industries is what creates the most challenging traffic management in the game.

Everyone set his own goals in his city, and we all deal with different issues... depending on our choices. You probably do things differently, and will face different challenges.

[Agibaer]

Ah, nothing works. As always, when creating an internal loop for freight trains, noone uses any train station anymore, everything gets exported by road. Traffic ban or not.

And, as usual, all the trucks use only ONE lane from pretty much their origin to their destination, for whatever reason.

This game has serious flaws with it's traffic management, which is is to say it's completely FUBARed.

I hope there will be a decent mod soon to fix that.

For a game that started as a traffic manager, that's a pretty poor statement for the programming skills of the developers...

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=482421407

[barrygreybeard]

maybe you could share the original game save on Steam?

[grapplehoeker]

If you spent less time complaining about the game's AI and showed us the problems you're having and accept that you're the one responsible for the placement of your road layout and the problems are actually down to you, then the sooner we can help you solve them.
Finally you provide an example...
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=482421407
If this is any indication of the rest of your city then I'm sorry to say it is clearly, poor traffic management on your part.
In the screenshot, avoid zoning on an interchange. An interchange is meant to keep traffic flowing fluidly in and out of your city via the highway. You therefore should keep it free of any buildings, especially industry that will have not only service vehicles attending to them, workers commuting and perhaps even parking next to them, but also deliveries entering and leaving them on a route that should be kept clear at all times.
Fix that yourself and show some more, or SHARE your save game and we might fix it for you ;)

[Agibaer]

Well, it souldn't matter where I put industry buildings, intersection or not. As these are all TWO LANE roads, traffic should flow around vehicles entering or exiting buidlings, not get stuck behind them.

Anyway, that isn't the problem. The problem is the unflexible and illogical AI.