Anyway, as my first post at the forum, I'd like to suggest a few things;
1) Cities are too small relative to stations and especially airports. Cities need to be larger than they are. Some other posters have suggested elsewhere that the size of the buildings themselves are too small, and that may be true as well. What I would like to see is larger buildings maybe, and definitely larger spread of the towns. To complement this, at least some of the stations need dramatically increased coverage areas, and others, like bus stations, just need their coverage area at least scaled to match the upscaling amount of the town.
2) Cities should be able to annex more land as they grow. When you do a query on a tile, it shows the owner. I have rarely seen a city grow beyond the areas which it owns. If a city spreads, it should grab up more land as it does so.
3) After a city has grown to a respectable size(an upscaled equivalent of what would currently be 2000+ citizens in the town), any company should be able to give the city a grant. This grant would be listed as "Urban Development" or some such, and would basically encourage a building boom in the town. The cost would be HIGH though, as in millions of dollars. This should have two main effects. It should cause the city to grow by a random amount, and it should cause an increase in how well liked the player is by the local authority. This would have a lot of the same effects as bribing, only be legal and a lot more expensive. Later in the game when you are super rich, the cost could be as much as 10 million or more, to keep things balanced.
4) It would be nice if placing your headquarters near a town had some sort of impact on the game, such as making that town naturally more friendly toward you, or automatically acting as a free advertising for you in that town. This would give players a "Home town" for their company, which could be fun, especially in multiplayer.
5) Bribing corporations to shut down industries. Click on the industry, then click on a button to bribe the company, and if they accept, the company will shut down the industry. Make it expensive enough to be difficult, and make it able to be turned on or off as an option. Also, you could possibly make it so that any attempt to shut down an industry that another player is supplying transport to will probably result in regulatory action, and a drop in overall town approval for the player responsible in every town on the map. Also, it should have a very low chance of succeeding in such a case, as well as being far more expensive(basically make it super risky).
6) More options to make a town happy, none of which should be especially cheap, but as it is now, the player is unreasonably hated for small things, and not hated enough for really big things(like flattening a mountain).
7) Weather would be really cool. Nothing complicated, just some rain for temperate or jungle, and some snow or a duststorm for artic and desert areas. The weather would drop the reliability of any vehicle passing through it temporarily, and possibly make vehicles sometimes do stupid things like ignore signals at railroad crossings(not being able to see them or some such).
Far more dynamic options for breakdowns would be good. Several different levels of break down difficulty would be nice. Crashes also could be good in limited amounts on specific things, which the user could set. Such as planes could run into buildings while landing, but maybe not crash any other way. Just more options would be cool.9) Connecting nearby towns with a road should encourage them to grow toward each other, regardless of what transport you are providing. This would encourage the players to create an interconnected country, which would look neat and be more realistic, without ruining the original gameplay style.
10) Sharks with friggin lasers on their heads!
I don't think the above suggestions really would change the core gameplay in any bad way, or for the matter, any way that would ruin the feel of the original. Especially those suggestions on urban sprawl, because everyone here has had frustration trying to put a train into a town without killing the town's growth in that direction. Certainly everyone here has had frustration with trying to use an airport that is as big as, or bigger, than the whole damn city!
Let me know what you think!
