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While I haven’t reached mid / late game yet (I’m still in 1920’s) I have wondered how people prioritize their mode of transport once cars become widely available. I have a few questions relating to this;
What is the deciding factor on who owns a car, or is it random
If the quickest mode of transport is always used, wouldn’t a car be the quickest the majority of the time. If someone has to walk > wait for and take a bus > wait for and take a train to another town > wait for and take a bus again > then walk to their destination, surely going by car would almost always be quicker than taking transport. If travel time is the only factor as to which mode of transport is used then no one is going to use your services… maybe this is why a lot of people are saying their trains aren’t making money in late game. There needs to be other factors as to which mode of transport is used like traffic density, parking space / costs etc that people consider.I think in the real world driving to work is quicker for a lot of people but they take transport as it costs too much to park or there is no parking available.
Would be interested to hear the devs / other peoples thoughts on this. An idea could be to make stations upgradable with car parks (visible or not) to attract people to them. I know a lot of train stations in the UK have this and it could also be an extra source of income for the player as they are almost never free
I’m in the year 2080 in my game. I had to reduce the frequency of the lines to about 3-4 minutes to compete with the cars. Overall, they are quite slow, so if you use some 200km/h running trains and proper high-speed tracks they can beat the cars easily.
I also destroyed the shortest street connections between the cities and build longer ones (just to help them, so they don’t have to climb steep hills 😉 ). But I didn’t notice a significant increase.
But I noticed, that if you have a big city, the cars get stuck anyway because there are so many. So they balance themselves out somehow. In that case, I can really recommend to build bus-lanes, so your trams and busses don’t get stuck and get another advantage over cars. So in the end, cars are not that much of a problem.
I think, you have to switch tactics with your lines, when cars are becoming more and more.
Away from a few trains with high capacity to many trains with lower capacity.
That way you ensure that your frequency is high enough, so people tend to use your trains instead of your cars and that your trains are filled, so you don’t have one train driving full and 3 others, who leave the station empty.PS: Maybe it helps to spread anxity about communism, because remember, it’s only a small step from mass transit to communism ;P
Azrael – For that to work effectively spacing would need to be changed so that vehicles are spaced evenly along the whole length of the line otherwise there is a need for huge micromanagement on your network. I already have an issue where 4 trains arrive one after the other and then nothing for around 5 minutes which causes my line to make a loss. I know i mentioned this in another post and using signals was suggested but that’s hardly realistic and I don’t want to have to guess where to place signals to keep trains spaced evenly
@RickD: I had the same spacing problem, but I got rid of it by removing the signals between stations that I placed before, so that they have to wait till the other train leaves the next station. Also, don’t run lines in paralel.
Are you even playing the same game as me? Vehicles auto-space themselves. It’s a feature I very much like and think all transport sims should have. Why do I keep seeing people crying about spacing?
Person…. – When you say vehicles are spacing themselves, are they just putting x amount of distance between them and the vehicle in front, or are they spacing themselves so that they arrive at each station along the line at regular intervals. I know the former of those 2 is correct for me and I even posted a thread with screenshot illustrating my point.
Azrael – that is an option but I like having tracks in both directions, especially on long routes. I might give it a try on my longest route when I next play though to see how it goes, I guess i could use it on a double track but just remove all signals except for at stations. Have to say thought that it seems a bit silly having to judge where to put passing points, or signals so that vehicles space themselves evenly. It would be different if the train could load at the station until its path was clear, then it would be worth doing
@rick: It depends. Generally they’re spaced evenly, however I think if the gap is too big they will just go and there will be “X amount of space” between them. Generally though my trains go regularly enough to be evenly spaced, only 1 line in my game is not.
Where it really fails super badly is if you a medium-length truck route that needs say 10-15 vehicles to service properly.
Person, only the road vehicles are spacing themselves out, trains aren’t doing this by themselves, they need to be controlled by signals to achieve this.
Yes you are kinda ‘forced’ to build single tracks to keep spacing between trains. This really needs to change in future updates! Trains should wait at stations until the calculated average freq time is met. Then leave. In the end, with double tracks.. the trains will always tailgate.. signals or not.
There are three things that needs to be ‘fixed’
– Use of multiple platforms at stations
– Use of freq time before leaving station
– Waypoints for lines!There are no Autobahn in the game, so the max speed for cars should be about 100km/h. Trains can reach up-to 300km/h so should be faster over longer distances.
I never see a problem with spacing trains… I do use signals, but it’s really easy, no hassle, no micromanagement.
Just by having signals doesn’t mean trains will always stop and go. With proper placement, they only need to wait at a signal once, then they will become spaced out and next time they will arrive spaced out – no need to stop.
The key [in my opinion] is to place a set of signals near the two stations, and a set in the middle of the track. With 2 or 3 trains it will force them to space out once then this space is kept
Person, only the road vehicles are spacing themselves out, trains aren’t doing this by themselves, they need to be controlled by signals to achieve this.
I think I figured out what’s happening here by the way. Especially with late trains, the first train pulling in takes a long time to load, and that load time basically eats up all the designated spacing time, thus the trains don’t space as well when they have high late game capacities and lots of passengers because they’re all waiting the same amount of time (or depending on the route, the following train is waiting less time). As stated by others, it is often possible to set up signals in such a way that spacing is forced to be adequate, although far from always.
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