Is there an easy way or rule of thumb to drive the loop and pickup mostly customers who want to go "forward" ? As in not trying to fully min max the game but just improve it beyond random
Not a guarantee but it feels like customers on the right side of the road generally want to go forward. Much like in real life though not every passenger gets the unspoken rules, but the strategy still seems to work enough of the time. So I'll personally pick up red and yellow "short trip" passengers headed both ways in an area, and then when it starts looking sparse, I'll pick up a green "long trip" passenger on the right side of the road to take me into the next area.
I don't think so, unfortunately. The first few locations in the game are all pretty safe, it's not until you get to the parts around KFC and the church that people start going backwards, from what I remember. But as far as I can tell, there aren't any general patterns, they're all location specific.
I think the biggest pitfall is the highway customers, going from the baseball stadium or the station to downtown and back. Yeah, those are valuable customers and going back and forth will rack up your score in the short term, but doing that will kill your run once those locations dry up since you'll end up with a huge dead zone. That's what I did before I knew better. There actually does reach a point where driving passengerless across the highway becomes necessary, but that's for high level play (maybe $80k+), otherwise it's to be avoided like the plague.
The site with all the notes is still up! I could have sworn it went down at some point.