How do passenger trains work?

[SinisterSlay]

So I tried to follow a guide someone posted here where using passenger trains to link districts instead of roads to reduce traffic.
I gave it a try but no one would take the train. They would bus to the train in the residential area, and then use the train to escape my city. Somehow the residential area was flourishing but my industry had 0 workers. I had 100% residential with no one taking the train anywhere.

So for a temporary fix, thinking maybe buildings need to exist first, I laid down some simple roads and sure enough the industry sprouted up. I then removed the roads and still no one took the train.

So what's the catch? I noticed the stations weren't even spawning trains until I hooked them up to the outside line.

[SinisterSlay]

bump

[cbond]

Did you create a 'line' between your two stations (like the metro lines, telling the trains what stations to stop at)? Were the stations turned on?

[Brian]

You need to setup lines for the stations, as you do for the bus lines. The same 'make a circular route' rule applies.

[SinisterSlay]

Brian の投稿を引用：

You need to setup lines for the stations, as you do for the bus lines. The same 'make a circular route' rule applies.

Oooohhhhhh! Never noticed that.
Thanks, I'll take a look.

[SinisterSlay]

Oddly it didn't help, they have trains now but no one takes them.
They love my metro system though. That's got 1000 passengers

[Brian]

SinisterSlay の投稿を引用：

Oddly it didn't help, they have trains now but no one takes them.
They love my metro system though. That's got 1000 passengers

They are best used over distance and in conjunction with other methods of transportation. So you have buses dropping off passengers at the train station in your residential aree, the train takes them directly to your industrial, then a bus takes them from that station to their destination and back again. If you have them by themselves, they won't be very effective.

[grapplehoeker]

With all systems, I've found it important to make sure you have 2 lines for each system, one each going in the opposite direction. That way it will take everyone to their destination constantly and increases the usage considerably in all cases.

[SinisterSlay]

Brian の投稿を引用：

SinisterSlay の投稿を引用：

Oddly it didn't help, they have trains now but no one takes them.
They love my metro system though. That's got 1000 passengers

They are best used over distance and in conjunction with other methods of transportation. So you have buses dropping off passengers at the train station in your residential aree, the train takes them directly to your industrial, then a bus takes them from that station to their destination and back again. If you have them by themselves, they won't be very effective.

Yeah I did that, they were ignoring it until I put a metro right next to the train station, then everyone buses to the train station, then gets onto the metro.

grapplehoeker の投稿を引用：

With all systems, I've found it important to make sure you have 2 lines for each system, one each going in the opposite direction. That way it will take everyone to their destination constantly and increases the usage considerably in all cases.

Now that I know you have to set routes, I did do that. I made a route that goes backwards.
That got my usage up to about 130 people between the two residentials, and 20 people going to the industry and commercial.

Maybe I'd better start over, I must have made a mess of this.

[Cast Iron Duck]

I just ran into this train problem. This thread was very helpful for fixing it. I think that if you've applied all the fixes that people suggest here and your cims are still going from the bus to the metro, your train routes don't go anywhere they want to. Try deleting routes and re-doing them until you see the problem.

[SinisterSlay]

Cast Iron Duck の投稿を引用：

I just ran into this train problem. This thread was very helpful for fixing it. I think that if you've applied all the fixes that people suggest here and your cims are still going from the bus to the metro, your train routes don't go anywhere they want to. Try deleting routes and re-doing them until you see the problem.

It never did work out, instead I just get a ton of people leaving the city.
I gave up and started over with a new city that uses a more grid like layout that connects residential to commercial to industrial. Oddly they still don't take them.
Metro however works really well and in some cases completely cleared out my bus stops from just putting a single station in each district.

[BonPadre]

SinisterSlay の投稿を引用：

It never did work out, instead I just get a ton of people leaving the city.
I gave up and started over with a new city that uses a more grid like layout that connects residential to commercial to industrial. Oddly they still don't take them.
Metro however works really well and in some cases completely cleared out my bus stops from just putting a single station in each district.

Kk depending on how you set your city and where you lay out your trains they may in fact not want to use them as they may be longer for your cims to reach destination by train, than metro / bus

I have seen people using the passenger train very efficiently, so def it works fine. I for myself kind of hit same trouble as you, as I probably do the same mistake. You really need to use trains where peeps want to go, and link 2 different parts of your city that are never connected by metro, and then you start to see more train use.

The problem you and I are probably encountering is as you get train later in city dev, and the fact it's over ground, makes us use it either on a weird line, or at places it's already too well served by metro. But I would say that the more stations you add, set very far away from each other, will get your numbers climbing.

But as other stated, make sure you have bus line serving from / to your train station, to reach other parts of the area, just the stations will not do the trick

[Phoenix C64]

if you share your gamesave i can try have a look what's wrong

[SinisterSlay]

It's OK, though my inner city trains don't work, my trains between districts work very well.
I made a new city that uses a transport hub and it works extremely well. I have no real traffic jams. Just some minor ones on highways that exit into huge roundabouts.
I'm trying different city layouts. The chaining of massive roundabouts surprisingly didn't work well. Now I am trying a swirl style which is working mostly well except the industry is clogging up the main road with trucks. So I'm working on that.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=429383441

I can certainly upload my test city though I was messing with when I started this topic. I was using unlimited money and all unlocks just to experiment with different solutions.

[Phoenix C64]

that's insane mate, that will never work

why so many busses? is there only 1 bus line for all the city and it all collides here?

bad idea! adding loops wont fix the problem, just displace it elsewhere. you need to get to the root of the problem

1)
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=408638011

build your "in middle of city" hubs like this
- 1 train
- 1 metro (can have multiple lines coming to it)
- a decent bus interchange. dont have 1 stop with 20 lines, make stops separate like in this asset i linked

2)
trains are not for close in-district tranport. that's what metro is for. trains are good for district to district tranport. check the upper side of this screenshot

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=429480859

3)
"bonus round"
add small hubs like the one in next screenshot to every single highway entry on your map. connect that cargo train line ONLY to your internal cargo network. this will reduce truck traffic and increase cargo train traffic
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=429480881

[Stephen]

Image 2 is very interesting, Phoenix. I don't see any red passenger trains. Is is coincidental that none are in the shot, or are these passenger lines strictly local? It looks like the passenger line merges with a freight line at the right of the screen, so I'm guessing that's the common line that serves regional trains (and that it's just a coincidence that we don't see any red trains). I'd love to see another shot of this network. looking straight down.