Insatiable Frudtown

[Baldy's Boss]

When I bought a ChooChoo it served Frudtown with one bus.When Frudtown became my station with most "available waiting cargo" I started adding more busses to the line,but the more I add the more the crowd grows...more people than live in the town are waiting for a ride,and the route cannibalizes Ginnwell Woods (upper left),amply served by trains,because that's where the road depot is,even though I've branched out from cloning to send Frudtown busses elsewhere.
Is there a way to MEET this demand?

[Chrill]

Do you use paxdest? I'd recommend branching to more towns and perhaps add a train line to the town.

[Baldy's Boss]

Don't know paxdest.

[Alberth]

pax == passengers
dest == cargo-dist

[Baldy's Boss]

CargoDest and Dist are not enabled.

[Eddi]

without cargodist, there is really not much point in trying to transport ALL the passengers. anyway, here is an example how i tried to get all passengers of a town transported

[Baldy's Boss]

Just getting the platform queue down to lower levels is the goal...Frudtown is far and away that game's biggest-backlogged station.And each bus added has only made the backlog bigger.

[Sylf]

When you start with a low station rating, adding another small vehicle can raise the station rating up a little while not reducing the number of cargo (pax in this case) significantly. When the station rate goes up, so does the number of people who come to the station. What you need is a large fleet, or a fleet of vehicles with higher throughput.

[Baldy's Boss]

I think I've gone from one bus to six...and the waiting passengers exceed the town's population.

[Sylf]

My point still stands.

[Eddi]

six

take a look again at the picture i showed. i have there over 50 trams, and each tram probably has as much capacity as three of your busses.

so... 150 busses.

[Baldy's Boss]

six

take a look again at the picture i showed. i have there over 50 trams, and each tram probably has as much capacity as three of your busses.

so... 150 busses.

Your city in question is much larger.

[Eddi]

sure. but even if you say my city is 10 times larger, that still is 15 busses. and your travel distance is longer, so you need to increase the number again.

maybe instead of number of busses you should think in time between pickups. my trams in that game went on a timetable that had a tram every 5 game days (and you should really have a timetable, otherwise all the busses will inevitably clump together, with long stretches of nothing inbetween.

[Baldy's Boss]

Malberg Mauve R.R. Co., 22nd May 1958.png

(3.7 MiB) Not downloaded yet

[attachment=0]So are you proposing THIS level of service?
(Those yellow busses are not my company,I run the far more profitable railroad in the foreground)

[Eddi]

that is a feedback loop running amok.

presumably a combination of "my vehicles aren't arriving often enough, let's add more", and not noticing (or not being able to notice) how they get stuck.

in particular, never combine drive through stops with full load orders.

[bear1]

That's a small town to be causing these sorts of issues. I'd concentrate on increasing the flow of the traffic. Make it easy and quick for busses to loop around and head back to their other station by improving the road infrastructure. Let them go 'around the block' easily and quickly. Consider building more depots to move distribute the traffic.
I almost always only use buses to transfer passengers to trains, which in turn do the long distance runs. That way the buses can get back to their stations quickly.
I also only use double deckers rather than longer buses as they take up half the space in the stations.

[Baldy's Boss]

I don't have double decker buses available (I'm still waiting for the Leyland bus to replace the AEC!)
The AI built this as a feeder to the nearby train group,but all the buses I've added are actually starving the train station of passengers,it seems,which is why I've altered where some of them go.

[Eddi]

if you don't want to starve your train station, use "transfer and leave empty" or "unload and leave empty" orders.

[Kevo00]

Perhaps consider downloading Bob's British Buses for future games, gives you double deckers way earlier. Got to agree with bear1.

[Baldy's Boss]

Should anyone care,Frudtown has fallen off its perch as the most backlogged station in this game.
Now it's Fort Nanwell Woods,now up to 5 platforms with trains coming in and out all the time,but with thousands waiting.
Electrification is imminent but can the backlog be dealt with?

Edited to add a screenshot of that station,now 6 platforms,station now electrified but line and rolling stock still unconverted.