Passengers jumping from one stop to another

[Vladki]

I have noticed quite weird behavior on the Stephenson-Siemens game.

Suddenly "Peache Quay" became overcrowded by over 1000 passengers, all wanting to go to (or via) "All pettingstone". I was not able to cope with that amount, but at the turn of next month passengers dissapeared, and moved to nearby "Peach Central Dock" of another player. Both players have docks in All pettingstone, also quite near of each other, and the line capacity between Peache and All pettingstone is also similar for both players. I thought it was just a temporary glitch due to connect/disconnect or loading the game local, but the graphs on both docks show it is long time situation. See the scrrenshot:


Maybe it is because the waiting time gets very high due to overcrowding and low capacity of the line, so the passengers move to the other stop, causing overcrowding there. Then the waiting time average gets better on one stop and worse on the other, and when the meet, passengers will change stations again. Added screenshot with travel+wait times on both stops. Compare mail and passengers, both should be the same, but mail is unaffected by overcrowding (as there is not so much mail):

[jamespetts]

If the stops are within walking distance of one another, then passengers may well re-route themselves to a place with a lesser waiting time and walk to a different origin stop in order to do so: this is not an error.

[Vladki]

Yes they are within walking distance. But it is funny to imagine 1000 people walking at once to another stop just to overload it too. If they would split evenly, then probably both companies could adjust the capacity accordingly. Now it is a month with overcrowded harbour (and full boats), and a month of almost no traffic.

[jamespetts]

Unfortunately, this is the unavoidable result of the routing system in which all passengers/mail/goods from and to any given points will use the same route, which system is necessary not to overload the computer on larger maps.