Building roads, railways, ports and airports Transport Fever Guide
Last update: 02 December 2016
In this chapter you will find basic information about building roads, railways, ports and airports.
Roads and railways
Establishing connections for cars or railways is not that difficult on its own. With your first click you start designating a given section, and when you release the button, a small window pops up, in which you can either accept or cancel the build. Alternatively, you can click to decide if you want the section to head higher or lower. A small icon near the "dot" at the end of the section, informs us if the railway/road is flat, or heading either upwards or downwards.
It is worth remembering, that the game's system calculates costs in a very specific way. The idea is, that when designating a section of road or railway, the game will try to create as short and as flat of a connection as possible, regardless of its cost. The game will create very high ramps, deep trenches, bridges and tunnels, which will cause your expenses to skyrocket. The longer the route that you are designating is, the bigger the costs. Try to design short sections of the route to work against that. Not only will you save a lot of money, but you will also have more control over the shape of your route. The obvious disadvantage, is that you will be unable to create a perfectly straight and flat connection. When building railways, numbers will be popping up in the circles along the tracks. These show you the maximum speed that a train can be going of a specific part of the track. This information is crucial if you want to design a very quick connection.
Ports
Building a port is entirely dependent on whether or not the nearby sea or river can support maritime transportation. You can create a port regardless of the facts, but keep in mind that it could be entirely useless. Use the filters on the right side of the screen, that is the previously mentioned "layers" and use the cargo layer. You should place the port in such a way, that part of it is on the water, and the second part with the road is situated on land. It is absolutely necessary to link up this location to the existing road network, otherwise the flow of goods will not commence. The only exception being the oil rig, which is a port-like structure by itself. Remember, that you will build the docks in an identical fashion.
Airports
Airports require vast amounts of space, so it is best to build them in the outskirts of cities, perhaps even with some distance between the airport and the buildings. Only a very small section or even barely a shred of the city will be in their range, so it is worth building road or railway connections to your airports. This will allow the passengers to access the airport, which will then transport them to a more distant location. The costs of building an airport are very high, and given time the planes also become more and more expensive. Make sure that you put enough thought into your decision about where, and near which cities, you will build such stations. It is best to build airports in the largest cities (there will be no shortage of passengers) in the remote corners of the map (planes are the fastest means of transportation, and longer distances will increase your profits from ticket sales).