Public Transit

[nickjbor]

I'm wondering what advice people have on running a public transit system in either packs. I've heard that you should use Trains to transport between cities, but what about a few other things.

• Can/should you use buses to move people from villages to cities
• How about to/from other villages
• When is it time to switch from/to Buses/Trams
• Do loop routes work best or line routes
• Can you make money running a public transit (passenger) only service
• Is there a 'good' year to start, and a 'bad' year to start, if you want to do this

I will be compiling all the answers and writing some helpful tutorials.

[prissi]

You can make plenty of money with public service. YOu must built up a network for this. Start in the biggest town and connect the next towns to it should do the trick. Use as many ferries as possible, since the water is free.

In pak128 I found with the current speedbonus tab either the very early years before 1920 or very late after 1960 busses tend to generate some profit. For pak64 all years should be equal, although vehicles are more expensive in later year and thus building up a network in later years is more challenging.

As for the rest, it mainly depends on your playing style. Try with -freeplay on the command line wihtout worrying about bankrupsy and and try it out. After the initial struggle you will be challenge to extend capacity as fast as you can.

[Combuijs]

Can/should you use buses to move people from villages to cities

How about to/from other villages

I prefer to start with busses all the time. How bigger the network is, the better the profits, so connect all villages, except for very isolated ones.

When is it time to switch from/to Buses/Trams

I'm playing pak64. For inter-city traffic I switch from busses to trains when I need about 8 busses for a line. That is also about the time to start a mail service with a mail-car.  For internal city-traffic I start with one hugh loop line. When I need more than 4 busses, I switch to a central hub (usually the train station) with several lines. The hugh loop line can then be used for mail-cars. When a line again needs more than 4 buses, I switch to trams.

Do loop routes work best or line routes

Loop routes are much better for making profit. Line routes are sometimes better if you are having trouble with capacity. See the discussion here: http://forum.simutrans.com/index.php?topic=149.0

[VS]

Loop routes are much better for making profit.

Agreed...