In real life you find high speed trains with less capacity for the long range transportation and slower trains with higher capacity for the short range / commuter service.
Due to the rising of the speed bonus with the appearance of faster vehicles, the urban commuter systems become unprofitable.
As I understand the speed bonus, it should force the companies to invest in fleet modernization.
A modern simutrans pak64 commuter service nowadays is performed by Panteress and Tigress I/II, which are much more effcient (too low costs + speed bonus) than the proper BR185 / TPI Lopomo trains.
My suggestions to get back to useful lower speed traffic:
1) fair payment, part 1
- Replace the speed bonus with (operation independent) maintenance costs, which increase with the vehicle age.
A newly bought vehicle doesn't need much maintenance. But with each covered kilometer/mile and with each year of standing in the rain, the vehicle needs more subsistence money, even if it does not move. Compensate the maintenance costs with slightly lowered operation costs.
Additionally this will force the companies to purchase more precisely and keep their fleets as small as possible.
To help the companies to keep track of the growing costs, the vehicle list should become sortable by age and margin.
2) fair payment, part 2
And please raise the costs of Panteress and Tigress I/II 5 to 10 times.
Not neccesarily. The 160km/h waggon hold 112 passengers, compared to 48 for the tigress. Moreover, into the space is sacre. With a single tile station (and the engine trailing) you get 224 passengers with the doubledecker car and 48 with the tigress. This is a strong reason not to use tigress.
Also the costs need another rebalancing. But generally the costs are for a 50% filled train with maximum speed capability.
??? In pak64 Version 100 the Tigress car has a capacity of 90 passengers and the doubledecker 148 (1st picture).
In a short test I replaced a line of 3 6-tile tigress II trains with 2 doubledecker trains pulled by a panteress and profit broke down from about 400,000.00 to about 10,000.00 per month, while costs per km went down from 117.00 to 64.50 (2nd picture).
In another short test I removed the speed bonus (set to 500 km/h) and ... see 3rd picture.
Conclusion: Oops, I should start a new simulation without any speed bonus ;D
Back to "fair pay": I still like the idea of age dependent maintenance. It would also force you to spend money for refurbishment after introduction of last timelined vehicle in about 2030. There are more than 126 billion causes to spend money in the 4th picture ;)
My line was more like: In a city, the maximum station length on a circle line can be 1 tile with tigress cars ... however, it seems the seating capacity of tigress cars is too high.