Line Optimization: Styles of Passenger Rail

[Saint Landwalker]

So, in my current free play game, I'm at a point where I'm entertaining a change in how my rail lines are set up.

First, the current situation:

D — R — M — T — B
            |
            E
            |
            P

Those are the cities connected via passenger rail. All rail lines run only between two adjacent cities (that is, I have a D-R Line, an R-M Line, M-T Line, etc.), so it's just a lot of trains running back-and-forths. If a hypothetical passenger wanted to get from R to B, they would have to change trains at M and at T, taking three different lines to get there.

Now, I'm making good money. But I also have a lot of rail lines, and if I can clean that up without doing anything horribly unwise, I'd like to.

My current thought is to replace the six different lines above with just two lines: D-R-M-T-B and T-E-P. Long lines that stop at each station sequentially, but which continue along the whole distance, rather than a lot of small back-and-forth lines.

Does anyone have any light to share on how this might compare, profit-wise, to my current setup? As long as they're roughly even at the end of the day, I'll make the change, but if one is disastrously less profitable than the other, I'd rather steer clear.

[Aries]

Can you daisy chain them? Say you have a line going 1>2, 2>3 and they make decent money.
If you connect them and have one line 1>2>3>2>1 some passengers will stay on for the 1>3 trip and since distance=$ will bring more money.
I did that in my game. Used the line from two cities that have the most passengers and extend those to add new stops since when you cancel other lines, the passengers will be gone but few runs and they'll be back to the previous level of passengers
Could compare the profits as well.. Add individual lines profit before you combine them into one line and let em run for some time and see the difference.

[Saint Landwalker]

Originally posted by Aries:

Can you daisy chain them? Say you have a line going 1>2, 2>3 and they make decent money.
If you connect them and have one line 1>2>3>2>1 some passengers will stay on for the 1>3 trip and since distance=$ will bring more money.
I did that in my game. Used the line from two cities that have the most passengers and extend those to add new stops since when you cancel other lines, the passengers will be gone but few runs and they'll be back to the previous level of passengers
Could compare the profits as well.. Add individual lines profit before you combine them into one line and let em run for some time and see the difference.

Originally posted by Aries:

Can you daisy chain them? Say you have a line going 1>2, 2>3 and they make decent money.

This is basically what I'm currently doing.

Originally posted by Aries:

If you connect them and have one line 1>2>3>2>1 some passengers will stay on for the 1>3 trip and since distance=$ will bring more money

And this is what I'm contemplating doing.

Distance = $$, but so does Volume. My main concern is that in the second case, long-distance passengers might interfere with short-distance passengers and volume.

Let's start by supposing that all stations are equally far from each other.

In Scenario 1, let's say I have two trains: An A-B train, and a B-C train. These trains load up with 80 people at A and at C. They meet at B, unload all passengers, and load up with 80 new ones (some of whom may be transfers), going back to A and C. I get paid for:

• 80 × (A>B)
  
• 80 × (C>B)
  
• 80 × (B>A)
  
• 80 × (B>C)

In Scenario 2, let's say I fill up at A and C with 80 passengers each again. At B, 40 get off each train, and 40 new passengers get on. At C and A, all 80 get off. I get paid for:

• 40 × (A>B)
  
• 40 × (C>B)
  
• 40 × (B>C)
  
• 40 × (B>A)
  
• 40 × (A>C)
  
• 40 × (C>A)

In Scenario 2, I have used the same number of trains, over the same period of time, but I have transported 80 fewer "units" of people (even though I may have transported the same number of actual people, given Scenario 1 transfers). However, in lieu of those 80 unit-peoples, 80 of the unit-peoples I did transport were transported twice as far.

So if trips between A and C are worth y, and trips between A-B and B-C are worth x, it's now a comparison between:

• Scenario 1 — 320x
  
• Scenario 2 — 160x + 80y

The question then becomes: "Is y = 2x?"

[Saint Landwalker]

Originally posted by Aries:

Used the line from two cities that have the most passengers and extend those to add new stops since when you cancel other lines, the passengers will be gone but few runs and they'll be back to the previous level of passengers

Ah, good catch. Here I was all set to create brand new lines, instead of extending the "main" lines that I already have.

I think I'm just going to create a backup save, and then make the switch. We'll see how things turn out!

(Of course, I'm also going to be replacing all my Atlantic + Clerestory/Six-Axle trains with EP-2 Bipoliar + Heavyweight Parlor trains. So there's going to be a wee bit of up-front cost...)

[Barboss]

you people write very sexy algorithms for this game

[Saint Landwalker]

Originally posted by Landwalker04:

(Of course, I'm also going to be replacing all my Atlantic + Clerestory/Six-Axle trains with EP-2 Bipoliar + Heavyweight Parlor trains. So there's going to be a wee bit of up-front cost...)

Of course of course, I forgot that none of my passenger stations are electrified yet. So I'm going to be losing all the passengers no matter what I do.

Short-term losses, ho!

[LennZ]

Originally posted by Landwalker04:

The question then becomes: "Is y = 2x?"

In my experience, yes. As long as you manage to keep your trains filled, you're going to make the same amount of money, or at least almost the same. I'd be more worried about not having full trains at the end of a long line if you fully saturate it. For example, only people going to D are sitting in the train from D to R, wheras all people going to R and D are sitting in the train from M to R. So the further in the middle of the line, the more passenger potential there is.

So you're either transporting less people than you could, but have full trains, or you're transporting all of them, but don't have full trains. From a purely money focused perspective, lines between two points are almost always better.

I personally don't give my lines more than three stations, at least not when money is a concern. However, I do like to skip every second city with my main lines, so the people can spend some more money on a second train. I simply love money too much to pass on that opportunity.

[Saint Landwalker]

Well, that was a rollercoaster of a few years.

Started in 1919 with about $105M in the bank and no loan. By the end of 1921, I had less than $100K in the bank. (I had also taken out, and managed to repay, $30M in debt to pay for train upgrades.)

1922 was the first year with marginal capital expenditures, and I managed to turn a net profit of about $15.4M... which is about $3-4M less than I had been turning in 1918.

Each of the two long commuter lines, it seemed, turned about as much profit each year as one of the component short lines they had replaced. The T-E-P commuter line did much better than the D-R-M-T-B commuter line. I believe this is primariliy because consolidating the T-E-P line was much more straightforward. I was only merging two existing lines and upgrading the trains, so it was easy to keep them appropriately spaced out and there was more room for fidgeting without messing things up.

Merging the D-R-M-T-B chain was a nightmare. I let it run for a year or two without upgrading the trains (because there were too many for me to afford), so I had a hodgepodge of trains running up and down the line. The fact that this coincided with me upgrading everything to electric track, and the "trains randomly reverse" bug that upgrading stations entails, resulted in a lot of the D >> B trains getting bunched up together and clogging up the whole chain. It took a lot more work to clean that mess up (and it still isn't completely cleaned up) and to get all the trains to "match" each other (which I also still haven't completed, but the eight trains left on that line now only come in two flavors instead of four).

Final verdict: Long commuter lines might work... if you plan for them from the start. Converting a series of short lines into a long commuter line is challenging and financially punitive. Once they get all sorted out, they will probably run fine, but you'll lose a couple of years in the process just trying to get everything running smoothly again. Under no circumstances should you simultaneously try to merge short lines and upgrade your rail system to electrification...

[Cibaris]

Hi. Using one line two way to cover all stations in series if you like works fine and generates $$. One of my last Train fever games I was up to $10 billion dollars with multiple routes. Cant we have euros and ££ please!

[gGeorg]

Originally posted by Landwalker04:

Does anyone have any light to share on how this might compare, profit-wise, to my current setup? As long as they're roughly even at the end of the day, I'll make the change, but if one is disastrously less profitable than the other, I'd rather steer clear.

Keep in mind that you are paid for air distance. e.g. when 3 cityes are connected to a V shape route. like A-B-C where B city is a peak of V. Then a passanger who travels from A to C via B pays only for air distance A-C e.g. it is money wise force him transfer at B. In this case he pays from A-B then from B-C which is 3x more.

However, longer trips could reach far away places, so stright routes are better to do at once. People are able to get more distant places in a given time. e.g. transfering consumes time of travalers. But zigzag or branch routes, piece by piece. Especialy wrong is a circular trip. Many passangers will do a half of circle but will pay for air distance whch is a fracture.

Is it understandable ?

[naryl4]

Also I'm pretty sure that unlike TTD TPF tracks individual passengers so the sooner they can get to their destinations the sooner they start their next trip.

[Probably Lime]

Have you tried establishing the longer line and gradually phasing over to it, or did you create the new line and just swap everything all at once?

[Saint Landwalker]

Originally posted by WWKDLime:

Have you tried establishing the longer line and gradually phasing over to it, or did you create the new line and just swap everything all at once?

The latter.

And lest you think that ruined my passenger loads... well, I lost all of those in the station upgrades anyway, and believe me they bounced back in a matter of maybe a month. They were crazy.

The big issue, as mentioned for the longer line, was train misbehavior during the station upgrade, subsequent bunching, running out of money to upgrade them all (which resulted in some being significantly faster than others), and having no money to maintain enough trains. The D - R - M - T - B chain had originally featured a total of 13 or 14 trains, but after the upgrade it only had eight, and I didn't have the money to get five or six more into service at the time (or even upgrade all eight of the ones I had left).

It was a bad situation that probably could've been handled better.

[ComplaintsDept.]

Hmmm.
I'm assuming double track and two trains per section (ie D-R, R-M etc...) for a total of 8 trains.
If it was me I'd try splitting the main line in 2 and running 4 trains on each section, so 4 trains running D-R-M-T-M-R-D and 4 doing the same on the R-M-T-B-T-M-R section.
This makes half empty trains at each end station less likely due to reduced frequency, yet keeps the frequency up for the 3 busy middle stations with each having twice as many trains as the end stations
As for the branch line out from T, I'd probably run 3 trains on an out and back service.

[Saint Landwalker]

Originally posted by ComplaintsDept.:

Hmmm.
I'm assuming double track and two trains per section (ie D-R, R-M etc...) for a total of 8 trains.
If it was me I'd try splitting the main line in 2 and running 4 trains on each section, so 4 trains running D-R-M-T-M-R-D and 4 doing the same on the R-M-T-B-T-M-R section.
This makes half empty trains at each end station less likely due to reduced frequency, yet keeps the frequency up for the 3 busy middle stations with each having twice as many trains as the end stations

That's not a bad idea (although frankly, Baltimore {B} is booming. Bridgeport {D}, not so much yet...)

I started a fresh game and am trying to run a three-station line right from the get-go. Admittedly, the ability to do that with D 1/3s is pretty unimpressive to start with. However, it's turning a fair profit, about $700K in the last year and with enough passenger demand to probably add a couple more trains to it (currently running with five). Unfortunately, I wasn't forward-thinking enough to create a duplicate save from before I set up the three-station line, so I can't run a parallel simulation using two separate lines and compare their performance. >_<

Edit: As an aside, one clear advantage to be had from running many smaller lines is the ability to tweak them at the individual level to manage the demand specific to that "stretch." It's also much easier to micromanage the spacing of trains across a two-station line than it is across a three-or-more-stations line.

[BitCaps]

My experience with a six city passenger loop (circle) is that it loses money. When converted to a series of lines sevicing just two stations each, the money poured in vast amounts.

Although not very sexy, passenger trains with fewer stops are more profitable and also easier to manage as you pointed out.