Freight Rail

[Plastic Manc 28]

Hey,

I was hoping someone could shed a little light for me on something. I have a south Island in my region where I plan to have an industrial area with a seaport. From this area I plan to build a dedicated freight rail line to travel up to the main island in the north but am unsure to which kind of area this should lead. Should this travel to another industrial area (where there will be another seaport) or should it be travelling to a commercial area (goods to market)?

[jim 546 43]

All freight travels to areas where it can dump its goods, which are either seaports or city tile boundaries. Freight that looks like it leaves one city does not enter another. Game mechanics wise, the only reason to make a freight rail system is to relieve congestion on roads leading to the edges of cities or to seaports.

[Plastic Manc 28]

Ah, ok. So on the back of that, these industrial areas will offload to the city boundary but the line actually being connected has no importance other than realism then?

[jim 546 43]

Originally posted by: Plastic Manc

Ah, ok. So on the back of that, these industrial areas will offload to the city boundary but the line actually being connected has no importance other than realism then?quote>

Right.  The line would be there just fr realism.  The line could also be used for passenger trains between the two cities.

[Plastic Manc 28]

Thanks, much appreciated. To ask one further question following on from this, as the area to the next city is quite small (small aread of main island appears in south island city map) it may become a bottleneck. Will keeping the passenger lines, of which there are two, seperate from the freight line have any benefit or are they best just being merged?

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Rail has relatively high capacity, but it does no harm to separate freight from passenger service.  It is unfortunate that freight does not cross borders, but just gets dumped.  this means, in effect, that you can ignore freight line continuations in the other tiles (just don't delete them).

I generally combine passenger and freight rail.  Freight is a minor consideration unless you are having congestion problems.  If my rail gets congested, I usually lay down a monorail to handle the overload passenger service.  You can do the same with Elevated Rail/Subway.

[Bplax15 2]

Rail is a great solution to moving workers from town to town. As others have said the freight rail won't do much, but rail moves people very fast from town to town. Just make sure the rail in each city is connect to a station in logical areas.

[editfish 0]

What drives the demand for freight then, and how can it be increased or regulated?

[jim 546 43]

Most (if not all) industrial buildings generate freight. I think freight needs to get to a "dump point" for the industries to function.

[weareanidiot 1]

They function without it, but desirability is higher in areas that are closer to connections, which means more jobs per building. Every freight that leaves town also provides cap relief which is crucial if you want a larga industrial base. Note though that there is a bug with the Maxis seaport which prevents if from reliveing cap, making it impossible to build a large port town without road connections close to the industries. It still improves desirability for the industries close by though.