1. Place the board map in the center of the table.
2. Each player takes a set of colored plastic taxis.
3. Shuffle the Transportation cards and deal a starting hand of two cards to each player. Place the remaining deck of Transportation cards near the board and flip the top five cards face up.
4. Shuffle the Destination Ticket cards and deal two cards to each player. Each player must look at their Destination Ticket cards and decide which ones they want to keep. Each player must keep one or both cards. If they choose to keep only one, the returned card is placed at the bottom of the Destination Ticket deck. Then place this deck next to the board. Players must keep their Destination Ticket cards secret until the end of the game.

Gameplay:

Starting with the youngest player and proceeding in clockwise order, players take turns until the game ends. On your turn, you must do one (and only one) of the following three actions: draw Transportation cards, claim a Route, or draw Destination Ticket cards.

1. Draw Transportation cards: This action allows you to draw two Transportation cards. You may take the top card from the deck (a blind draw) or take any one of the five face-up cards. If you take a face-up Taxi card as your first card, you cannot take another card on that turn.
2. Claim a Route: To claim a Route, you must discard a number of cards from your hand equal to the number of spaces of this Route and place a plastic taxi on each of those spaces. A single player cannot claim both Routes of a Double Route. In two-player games, once one Route of a Double Route is claimed, the other one cannot be claimed by the other player.
3. Draw Destination Ticket cards: This action allows you to draw more Destination Ticket cards. To do so, draw two cards from the top of the Destination Ticket cards deck. You must keep at least one of those cards, but may keep both of them if you want.

Game End and Final Scoring:

When a player has two or fewer plastic taxis left in their supply, each player—including that player—gets one last turn. Then the game ends, and players calculate their final scores using the scorepad:

1. First, each player scores points for each Route they claimed during the game based on the Route Scoring Table printed on the board.
2. Then, each player reveals all their Destination Ticket cards, adds the value of each card they completed, and subtracts the value of any card they failed to complete.
3. Finally, each player scores one point for each Tourist Attraction connected to one or more of the Routes they claimed.

The player with the most points wins the game. In case of a tie, the tied player who completed the most Destination Ticket cards wins. If players are still tied, they happily share the victory.