Well then let’s list the things it’s good at:
I’m not saying that the game is perfect or that it’s not missing anything important (such as automatic replacement). I’m merely objecting to your choice of words. Unpolished, or even unfinished? Yes. A failure at all levels? No.
Please tell us even one thing this game does well. Balance is only the tip of the iceberg and trying to handwave this with “every major release” no.. that’s apologist speak. Every major release is not in the state that this is. While most major releases have bugs of varying degrees, they usually still do some things right and well. This does nothing right at any point.
I refer to the other released games only in the context of balance between trains and road traffic. These kind of relative numbers are hard to get right with the first try in a complex game like this and this is normal in the gaming industry. These things are then tweaked in patches.