Studying the problem of rail gridlock the single biggest bugaboo seems to be intercity passenger rail behavior. The system can handle intracity commuter rail if the routes are managed intelligently, and it can handle inbound and outbound freight rail but add inbound and outbound passenger rail to the mix and have it flow separate trains to each and every passenger station you create and hook up to the network and all hell breaks loose every single time. That's where we are right now.
Right now there's no way to prevent that from happening short of just not hooking everything up, which is a hassle and isn't intuitive for new city builders. Yes you can manage the train AI in game to a point but I feel like I shouldn't have to build to manage derpy AI behavior since that breaks immersion, when the AI behavior is the real problem and should be addressed.
One thing that would solve the problem without amazing mental traffic gymnastics is if you could designate one, and only one, passenger train station as your Central Station to handle all rail connections from and to the outside of town. Passengers that wanted to head out of town would filter through the local commuter trains to the central station, and then embark for parts unknown. Tourists that wanted to come to town from parts unknown would disembark at the central station and only there and take commuter rail from there into your city. Having only one, or only a small handful, of big intercity connections is how most towns actually do handle intercity rail traffic after all
Maybe even just make that a separate kind of rail station that handles ALL external passenger rail and strip that functionality from standard passenger stations. Of course we'd have to make sure it could be a stop on standard commuter lines as well for easy connection to the light rail lines, but with that behavior limited to one chosen station, the rest of the rail traffic would hang up a whole HECK of a lot less. This would prevent external passenger rail from filtering into clogged intercity lines and solve 99% of the problem.
Question for devs/modders: How hard would it be, do you think, to strip long distance rail arrival and departure from the standard Train Station and create a new building or, alternatively, create a new building that only worked as a rail transit destination and had no inbound and outbound behavior and use that for intracity commuter trains and use the Rail Station as the grand central terminal? Actually I prefer the second solution as simpler/easier for the community to handle on its own (or you'd at least think so).
If there's a mod out there already that (accidentally or deliberately) already does this, fantastic, I'd really like to know about it and I'll be happy to promote it when people come to the forum with the trainspam problem.
Right now there's no way to prevent that from happening short of just not hooking everything up, which is a hassle and isn't intuitive for new city builders. Yes you can manage the train AI in game to a point but I feel like I shouldn't have to build to manage derpy AI behavior since that breaks immersion, when the AI behavior is the real problem and should be addressed.
One thing that would solve the problem without amazing mental traffic gymnastics is if you could designate one, and only one, passenger train station as your Central Station to handle all rail connections from and to the outside of town. Passengers that wanted to head out of town would filter through the local commuter trains to the central station, and then embark for parts unknown. Tourists that wanted to come to town from parts unknown would disembark at the central station and only there and take commuter rail from there into your city. Having only one, or only a small handful, of big intercity connections is how most towns actually do handle intercity rail traffic after all
Maybe even just make that a separate kind of rail station that handles ALL external passenger rail and strip that functionality from standard passenger stations. Of course we'd have to make sure it could be a stop on standard commuter lines as well for easy connection to the light rail lines, but with that behavior limited to one chosen station, the rest of the rail traffic would hang up a whole HECK of a lot less. This would prevent external passenger rail from filtering into clogged intercity lines and solve 99% of the problem.
Question for devs/modders: How hard would it be, do you think, to strip long distance rail arrival and departure from the standard Train Station and create a new building or, alternatively, create a new building that only worked as a rail transit destination and had no inbound and outbound behavior and use that for intracity commuter trains and use the Rail Station as the grand central terminal? Actually I prefer the second solution as simpler/easier for the community to handle on its own (or you'd at least think so).
If there's a mod out there already that (accidentally or deliberately) already does this, fantastic, I'd really like to know about it and I'll be happy to promote it when people come to the forum with the trainspam problem.
Last edited:
- 1
