Empty trams in City Transport Simulator 2026: What is really behind the low passenger numbers!

Many players of City Transport Simulator 2026 know the situation: You drive a long tram or a large bus through Tramau, but only a few passengers are sitting inside. This is especially noticeable in large vehicles. An almost empty tram quickly feels strange, because on a normal line you would expect significantly more people to be travelling.

The issue does not only affect the vehicles themselves. Stops also feel too quiet in some places. Too few people are waiting, too few passengers board and the line operation therefore feels less alive than one would expect from an urban transport simulator. Especially if you care about full vehicles, believable stops and a lively city, this point stands out very clearly.

However, it is important to say: This does not seem to be the state the developers want to achieve in the long run. According to the current state, it is more of a technical issue or a balance that is not yet perfect. In the background, there may be enough pedestrians available in the system, but they apparently do not always appear in the game world in the way that would be needed for believable occupancy.

This explains why Tramau feels so empty in some areas. Passengers are not fundamentally missing from the game concept. Rather, the system does not yet seem reliable enough to make these people visibly appear at stops, board vehicles and fill them accordingly.

At the same time, the topic is not as simple technically as it may sound from the outside. Of course, the obvious request would be: just spawn more people. But this is exactly where the performance question begins. Every additional passenger has to be displayed, animated, calculated and integrated into the game world. More passengers mean more life, but also more load on CPU, memory and graphics.

That is why a middle ground is needed. A city like Tramau should feel alive, but not at the cost of playability. Especially on consoles or weaker PCs, a much higher number of pedestrians can quickly become a problem. The developers therefore do not only need to add “more passengers”, but create a system that feels denser without damaging performance too much.

The good news: The issue is known. The developers are working on further improving the display and distribution of passengers. In the short term, patches can help make more people appear visibly in the game world again. For a clearly livelier city, however, more extensive adjustments may be necessary, because passengers, AI, stop logic and performance are connected.

For players, this means: The empty vehicles are frustrating, but they are very likely not a sign that CTS 2026 is intentionally supposed to feel this quiet. It is more about optimisation. Tramau should become livelier without the game becoming unstable or noticeably slower.

If you do not own City Transport Simulator 2026 yet or want to take a look at the current content and DLCs, you can find the game here. With our code SIMULATORENNEWS, you get a 5% discount:
👉 https://citytransportsimulator.net/?ref=SIMULATORENNEWS

Does Tramau currently feel too empty to you? Do almost empty vehicles in line service bother you? Qould you accept slight performance losses for more passengers? How full should buses and trams ideally be in CTS 2026?