[SOLVED]How to make public transport profitable and/or efficient?

[Friends with Benedicts]

EDIT: This thread has been necro'd. It's been over 2 years I think since Ive last played C:SL and I can't recall much about the game. That being said, feel free to use this thread to discuss your takes on profitable public transport.

I'm really proud of my bus lines. Most of them have hundreds of passengers and are quite efficient. Profit is sometimes positive, sometimes negative, but nothing outstading.

I'm able to also create one or two efficient subway lines, but they have a great deficit on the weekly balance.

The remaining are just plain useless. Even the airport feels like it shouldn't be there, although I do make a lot of money out of tourists, so maybe I should build one, but I feel that 70k pop ain't enough for that...

When I reached the problem of goods not getting into stores in time, I tried using cargo stations, like harbors and train stations, but these are just traffic jammers. I'm thinking about building three train cargo stations, side by side, in order to lessen the traffic effect.

Taxis are quite good, but they clog up traffic, and I'm thinking about not using them.

PS: Bicycles are the future! It saves so much money and travelling. I tried it on a new city and it helped me a lot! The only downside is that you need to replace your roads with trees with roads with cycling lanes... I think is worth it anyway.

[ZuMan]

I don't think the intention of public transport is to turn a profit in the game. Their main purpose is to reduce the amount of traffic on the road. Still, I understand how cool it is when you are able to get a certain transport service at a profit (or at least break even - curse you monorail!).

Every tool seems to boil down to managing congestion. I wouldn't advise putting your cargo stations next to each other as that will really murder your roads. Instead, you can use multiple cargo stations as a way to bypass the road network i.e. you have one of them where your factories etc are, then the other one where your commercial centres are. The goods then go Industry > Cargo A > Cargo B > Shops.

Bicycles are pretty amazing once everyone is using them. They do take up more space though in terms of how you lay everything out.

Blimps are the *real* future though. They are the most inefficient form of transport I've managed to get to work *cough*. I also once built a town based on cable-cars. End of the day, it's less about raw challenge and more about what whacky set-up you can get to work. It's not like real cities are designed around efficiency anyway (politics keep getting in the way!).

[atozcf]

Originally posted by Renan da Towner azul bebê:

The remaining are just plain useless. Even the airport feels like it shouldn't be there, although I do make a lot of money out of tourists, so maybe I should build one, but I feel that 70k pop ain't enough for that...

When I reached the problem of goods not getting into stores in time, I tried using cargo stations, like harbors and train stations, but these are just traffic jammers. I'm thinking about building three train cargo stations, side by side, in order to lessen the traffic effect.

FIrst of all, You should build an airport. 70,000 population needs to get international. At least regional. For the goods not getting in time, that's probably your highway connection. You will need a separate direct highway connection to your industrial area. So the goods can go highway, faster then by road and street.

[atozcf]

Damn
He posted just when I did

[Aturchomicz]

Originally posted by Renan da Towner azul bebê:

I'm really proud of my bus lines. Most of them have hundreds of passengers and are quite efficient. Profit is sometimes positive, sometimes negative, but nothing outstading.

I'm able to also create one or two efficient subway lines, but they have a great deficit on the weekly balance.

The remaining are just plain useless. Even the airport feels like it shouldn't be there, although I do make a lot of money out of tourists, so maybe I should build one, but I feel that 70k pop ain't enough for that...

When I reached the problem of goods not getting into stores in time, I tried using cargo stations, like harbors and train stations, but these are just traffic jammers. I'm thinking about building three train cargo stations, side by side, in order to lessen the traffic effect.

Taxis are quite good, but they clog up traffic, and I'm thinking about not using them.

PS: Bicycles are the future! It saves so much money and travelling. I tried it on a new city and it helped me a lot! The only downside is that you need to replace your roads with trees with roads with cycling lanes... I think is worth it anyway.

do you not know that bysicles can drive on the the thing thats next to the road?You know there where the cims walk

[kristofburger]

Originally posted by Aturchomicz:

do you not know that bysicles can drive on the the thing thats next to the road?You know there where the cims walk

It's less efficient though, bicycle lanes/paths allow higher speeds.

[Magnus Aurelius, Bright Lord]

I think Im going to experiment today and enact the " electric car only" accross the whole city, and see if it makes people use public transport more.

[Friends with Benedicts]

TY guys for the replies. I'm going to try a new city later, with better traffic distribution. The neighbourhoods that weren't supplied were usually huge ass commercial neighbourhoods. They were too big, maybe that's the problem.

Also, creating a connectin between industry an city, with rails seems smart! I'll sure try that later.

[Friends with Benedicts]

IDK if anyone is still curious about it, but I'm managing to make some profitable bus and subway routes.

They both have many things in common:

• Going through high density Residence areas, using routes that are often used by private cars.
  
  
• Make the line cut as straight as possible through your neighbourhoods, and don't overdo it. I started using buses with 10 thousand pops, and subways with 25k. 2 sub lines and 3 bus lines were enough.
  
  
• Most bus stops are at least 20 squares from eachother, because those "Cims" can really walk a lot without resorting to another transportation. I would recommend something between 30~40 squares.
  
  
• I try not to go over 4 subway stops per Area (I'm considering that each of those huge squares of land you buy are called an "Area"). Place University besides one of them, as a hotspot. I don't actually know if that works.
  
  
• Try intersecting lines on important roads, like big avenues that feeds into commercial areas or collect from industrial ones.
  
  
• They don't seem profitable on low residential area, so... Avoida that.
  
  
• You'll need to try them a lot of times. I think it took me over 10 cities to get public transport to be profitable, and that only includes buses and subways (metro)...
  
  
• Survey your lines right after creating them. Cims adapt REALLY quickly to new routes, so, if they are not using your line, it means you screwed something up
  
  
• You'll need to take your time and adjust lines till they're the closest to having both full cars and empty stops, meaning you have the same ammount of cars as people needing them.
  
  
• Follow a car through a complete lap. Watch for traffic jams, useless routes and where people are getting in. You'll get a better view of what's happening with your line.
  
  
• For the love of god, don't encourage biking, do not give free ticket prices, nor raise them. I've never meddled with these while trying to create a profitable line, so I don't have a jist of what's their impact, but it seems like turning any of these on would interfere severely with public transportation efficiency

Public transport can support itself. You won't be able to make a considerable ammount, but the other taxes raises the profit so high you'll be able to provide full services to your citizens and raise land value, meaning more money.

[CreepFodder]

I have a city that I’m working on that has 176,000 people in it and I have only used ½ the land in my 9 tiles so far. It has become obvious that I’ll never be able to grow the city to its full size without an unlimited money mod or something due to the huge deficits created by the public transportation systems. Up until one of the latest patches I was at least able to make a profit from my buses, but now my city went from having a profit to a 2k deficit. I wanted to complete my city without using any mods, but I guess the developers have decided that you should not be able to make a 9 tile high density city without at least using the unlimited money mod. It’s too bad really, it was my favorite game until they made it impossible to go further without using some kind of cheat or mod. I think I’ll try rolling back to the version of the game just before releasing any dlc’s, maybe the game wasn’t broken back then.

[ancienthighway]

@battymonster
If you haven't, raise your taxes across the board to 12%. This is the max possible without cims complaining. I've got around 30,000 people in my current city, and 7 million in the city coffers.

Take a close look at your routes. If a bus rarely runs at 50% capacity, move stops around to increase traffic or delete the route. Same for the other types of transport. Make sure transportation go from home to industry and back, home to shopping and back and home to hub and back. With the newest patch cims tend to walk further, so keep that in mind when looking at stops. Take a look also at adding pedestrian and bicycle paths that may reduce the number of public transport lines you have.

[grapplehoeker]

https://steamcommunity.com/app/255710/discussions/0/1739964766313550862/#c1739964766313998529

[CreepFodder]

Actually I have set all taxs to 12% and have tweaked all my bus routs so that they are all running at 90% capacity. I fixed my problem by rolling the game back to v1.9.1-f3, my small profits are back and my city is back in the green :) Hope they fix what they have done, but if not I'll just stick to v1.9.1-f3 of the game and call it good....

Originally posted by ancienthighway:

@battymonster
If you haven't, raise your taxes across the board to 12%. This is the max possible without cims complaining. I've got around 30,000 people in my current city, and 7 million in the city coffers.

Take a close look at your routes. If a bus rarely runs at 50% capacity, move stops around to increase traffic or delete the route. Same for the other types of transport. Make sure transportation go from home to industry and back, home to shopping and back and home to hub and back. With the newest patch cims tend to walk further, so keep that in mind when looking at stops. Take a look also at adding pedestrian and bicycle paths that may reduce the number of public transport lines you have.

[Tankfriend]

Even if you completely separate your city into different sectors that can only be reached by public transportation (which actually works pretty well), you still won't really make a profit. The PT options are really just there to handle traffic and congestion so you can cram even more people into your city.

[macluk]

Originally posted by ancienthighway:

@battymonster
Make sure transportation go from home to industry and back

That's where i always have a problem - no matter how well the bus lines are laid - long or short, straight or not so, dense or sparsely, with frequent or unfrequent stops - buses in industrial areas are always empty - whether they run from a busy train station traying to pick up any workers and get them to work, or straight from residential areas - no one seems to want to go there by bus.

[ancienthighway]

How do they leave the train station then?
Are they walking/biking because their workplaces are in walking/biking distance? Don't need the buses then.
Are they using pocket cars? Then their cars are faster than the bus. Big loops with multiple stops are going to run empty. A point to point bus line with just the two stops on a route designed for high speed bus movement,i.e. limited other traffic, may do better IF the bus stop is outside of the walking/biking range of the station.