That picture was an illustration that it was cheaper for me to make a longer Steel bridge (compared to the conventional route with a Wooden bridge) because it involves a slight shortcut and I can avoid some grades this way. Steel I think is 75% speed limit, but with less corners and grades and a shorter route I can only speculate that there will be little difference in journey time (don't have time to test properly).
I agree completely that there are places where ramps cannot be avoided. The pic was an illustration of how could I take a realistic advantage of the cheaper bridges (as currently set). I'm to a degree isolating the bridge from the ramp cost, and therefore I am seeing some advantage, however as you can see it's rather a specific case and definitely not useful the way that the lowered consumption rate is. I don't know if I would use it, but the suggestion for lowered graded track cost was to make the bridge option more useful on a normal bridge (with ramps). You could always get fancy with this and put hidden territories along the rivers . . .
The lowered consumption is quite a big advantage, but it feels right for the scale of the map. For example distances like Valmeria-Exportosta, Ventspils-Liepaja, etc. can be done on one service/maintenance stop.
Anyway, I see that you re-did the connection offer timeframes. This is good for rails (lot less tight), makes play more similar to when the bonuses could be had at any time, but with added strategy of timing. I started Valmeria (Meat) -Exportosta (direct via Saulkrasti). A direct train provided enough revenue to hit he 1st year target. Focused on immediately upgrading the port. . . . It's looking good so far. End of Year 5 I was @ $4M CBV, and profits (Year 6) are going to be $3M+. I went to Estonia early (maxed bonds when bonus offer came up). Not sure if it was a good idea.
But I thought I would post to ask about reserve cells. Were there any changes there? Maybe this seed is just randomly unlucky, but I had a church right in the way (dozed it) of my regular Riga station on the east of the river. Even after dozing the church I couldn't place the station how I wanted (missed a Museum in the south).
Also in Parnu there's two houses right in the way of my "regular placement."
I have the option for a placement on the north side of the river (unreserved cells), but I miss a Stadium and also don't have any catchment for port production that's going out to sea. I haven't decided yet if I should doze the houses or not.