Rivals

Computer-run companies after the same cargo.

When you start a game you choose how many competitors there are and how good they are: Relaxed, Normal, Ruthless.

Rivals run bus lines between towns, truck lines between industries and freight railways, and truck goods and food into towns.
They add mail vans to their bus lines, and link big towns with trains that carry passengers and mail together.
They move in on industries whose output nobody carries.
They add vehicles where cargo piles up and sell the ones that lose money. A route that never pays is torn up, stations and all.
Their railways are single track without signals, so they run one train on each.
They also run ships: freight from oil rigs and coastal industries to a plant on the same water, up to 80 tiles away, and ferries between coastal towns of 500 people or more.
Once they have $200,000 in hand they fly too, between towns at least 40 tiles apart.
A rival lays a new line a stretch a day, so a railway takes weeks to appear, and runs nothing on it until it is finished. Build across it and it goes round, or gives up and tears down what it laid.
The best ones open new routes about three times as often as the weakest, and borrow more to do it.

Competing

When your station and a rival's cover the same industry or houses, the two best-rated stations share the cargo. Serve often, with fast and new vehicles.
You cannot build over or demolish a rival's stations or track, and vehicles only stop at their own company's stations.
Each town council rates every company separately.
Rivals win subsidies and town requests too, and one may hold exclusive rights in a town: Subsidies & requests.

The Company league (L) ranks everyone by company value. The World map can show rivals' routes, so you see where they are and where they are not.