Positioning the train station

[Rufus Honker IV 100]

I don't really like setting up the train station.  It's just got one non-avenue road connected to it - no choices - and you can't build it on a road and then build the track over to it, you must build it on a track and then extend the road (though you can build out the track first). 

 

On top of that it always ends up being a mass of heavy traffic. 

 

Has anyone else found any tricks, etc?

[Panos 29]

Yes.

 

 

First of all what you need is to plan ahead for where you want your train lines. 

 

Given that they take the size of a large building + 2 (railway, road) you need to make equal space. 

 

The best approach is to have a railway running around the edge of the map. So when you plan your city edges, build the road one tile deeper+large building size,  from the edge of the map. So you will have high density buildings plus the railroad. 

 

When comes to fit the train station. Just demolish the part of the road you want to remove and plop it. Having the railroad all around the edge of the map (avoid to cross the motorway coming into the city, go around) it removes any crossing with normal traffic. 

 

When you want to build train station in the centre of an area/city, then things get trickier. 

 

Following the example above, on a square city, you have the railway running in parallel with one of your corridor roads. But try to half the amount crossing on that road, that you have done otherwise. You are going to have a lot of traffic stuck, because each station generates one train.  Or even best, avoid completely crossing them. Redirect the car traffic around. 

 

The same you can do in round cities, running train lines paralleled to the rings, or vertically to the main corridors. 

 

The huge benefit of the train stations are that they are better than buses. Distributing the traffic evenly across the roads. Because all agents are driving/walking towards the train station. Don't be afraid to run two parallel train lines on empty spaces. If you have 10 trains, you will avoid to have a long line of trains going into and out of the same train stations. 

 

I wish we had the option to limit the amount of trains generated and set their routes

 

But they work fine. 

[Lurch_123 0]

Really wish they could bring out some other rail options, the new trains are looking pretty cool and stuff its just not forced tunnels, no overpasses.

I has the train line crossing my entrance road, all was ok until my passengers started getting above 23k per station and trains were wizzing past the entrance to my city every couple of (in game) minutes. really had a big traffic problem on my hands. The needs for an over or underpass on these city's is immense.

Streetcars do not seem to help with traffic in my experience. everytime I lay out a map with streetcar avenues its a complete abortion after a couple of days. the real problem I see with them is that there has to be a traffic light at any intersection and this creates dead traffic all the time.

If anyone has suggestions for this I would be interested to see.