It seems we are not supposed to start rail lines immediately and the population go Yipee and start riding trains just so I can make profit.
You have to build up the towns to create demand. When you start nothing much happens at the fitst town you are working on. It doesn’t grow much, And you start hauling goods to feed the town, But it still doesn’t grow much. Two things make the citizens build new big houses in a frenzy:
1) demolishing houses and building the biggest streets available, When you unpause after spending 10 million in begining or 30 million in midgame on a town, kaboom here comes the multi story buildings, These are good cause the town now demand more goods. You try find avenues that you can upgrade, but if you want and effiient road network only the biggest roads all with buss lanes for your vehicles to use. So you want to do this first before you
2) connecting with another city now they start building houses. And if you haven already made the skelleton road networj it will now cost 30 million instead of 10 to correct the town.
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After that it is just as you people say, you earn money by hauling goods with trucks, and you haul passengers between cities using trams. If you have done 1) then 2) the city will grow fast almost even if it does not have a supply of goods. It just magically grows. So soon you can not add more trams on the lines cause the streets are packed with them,
Warning about using the games tram stations, when you get the longest tram called “Cobra” at the end of the game they can get entangled and cause a grid lock. So I have a tip for you, I build my own tram stations, using medium city road, one lane in each direction, and it is a buss lane so no cars can enter my home made tram station.
You have big road. And at two points you have a crossing so the trams can get off the road turning in on another big road Betwern these two big roads you pack medium roads as tight as you can so that the game can not put any buildings there. I usually make this tram station where the train station is going to be. When they get off the train they will see a myriad of roads and tons of tram stops. You can have any number of tram and buss lines coming in you just build more roads. And it is fun the see the AI running around like ants jumping from tram line to tram line , trams to bus etc.
If you want to be artistic you can put the medium roads on the diagonal as it is done here and there IRL.
The goal I had was to lure the AI into building the biggest houses veeery close to the train station. Which the AI did. So then I add my first train a diesel, and a few carriages. I say it is darn difficult to attract travelers, even if I beat the trams in speed.
IRL there is a time table. People know when the train comes. You can relax watch TV or do something useful. Then you get to train station when the train comes. Who cares if the is a tram every 20 minutes with a travel time of 60 minutes if there is a train coming every 40 minutes with a traveltime if 30 minutes.
I think it is hard to make the passengers like the train. Or stop liking trams and start shoocing train. I remember when I just got the game I just slamed down a railway between a couple of cities and hoppla they started to ride them when there were not other choice. And after a couple of minutes a full game speed I had 9 trains between 5 cities.
It seems that if they get used to taking the tram it takes forever for them to change if at all.
Give them a train and nothing else and hopefully they stick with trains until end game.