Making money from mass transit.

[X666X 0]

Hi all, I am new to Sim City 4 (I know i'm very late) after purchasing it on steam.

I'm having fun so far and have downloaded several great additions.

I have a busy bus and ferry service in my little city but only seen to make $10-20 per month through fares. Each bus stop has over 100 customers when i click it and the ferry port over 300. Is there any way to improve the income from these services? I must be charging next to nothing to use them and it dosn't seem worth the monthly cost to run them.

I have the nam addon installed but am not using the traffic flow tool (is there a setting in this that I am missing?)

Thanks for any help.

[Jasoncw 11,840]

100 passengers is actually a pretty small number, so keep on working on increasing ridership. I'm not sure how many passengers each transit stop needs in order to make a profit (more fare money coming in than maintenance money going out), but in the past I've been able to make quite a bit of money off the transit system.

In general, mass transit isn't for making money, it's something which supports the rest of your city, like schools or hospitals. With good mass transit you can fit more sims in your city without congesting your transit network, and keeping your commute times low.

But as far as I know, there isn't a slider anywhere in the game for increasing fares.

[nbr1rbl 0]

I suppose its possible to make money, however as Jasoncw pointed out the real reason for mass transit is to ease congestion and keep commute times low. Generally if i can keep it so that i make about 70-80% of the money i spend on mass transit back thru fares I am happy. Some things you might try to improve ridership are making sure there are enough stops in places people want to go, sims are lazy and if they have to walk too far to catch a bus or ride the subway then they will just drive instead. Also R$ sims will use much much more mass transit than R$$$ sims will. Placing many more mass transit stops in the poorer areas of your city, should improve ridership thus improving the amount of money you make from fares

[z1 566]

The Traffic Simulator Configuration Tool has a setting for changing the ferry fares.  If you didn't install it when you installed the NAM, you can get with the NAM Traffic Subsystem.

[X666X 0]

Thanks for the quick replys.

I just had a more detailed look after increasing the size of my city to 4500 population. I have 2700 customers on my whole transport systems and make $20 from fares. Thats less than $0.01 per customer. Would be good if there was a way to cover your costs.

Thanks for the advice, I will use fewer stops and place them more sensibly in the high congestion areas. I have one that is near the library and it is a very well used facility with 700 customers and another that has only 46 so could easily be removed.

Thanks again for the help.

Also thanks for the link i'll take a look now.

Edit: The tool in the link above has the option to set fares for all transport types. I had a tweek and am just about covering the costs now, so i'm much happier.

Thanks again.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Maybe you were just impatient, or running out of money.  For a large tile like the one shown in my shot below, I use the moolah command to grant them 2,000,000 simoleons for openers.  Today, I took the grant back because the city is now making about 10,000 a month.  The money balance on the snapshot is what has been actually earned by the city.

Notice that the mass transit is making money.  Maybe it is just that you didn't have enough people to make this happen.  I've been  running this city now for about two weeks, on and off.  It is a big region, and I have several cities on the go at once.

Anyway, here's the snap, marked up and cropped to show the important stuff.  It might be worth noting that the city is 133 Sim-years old.

[X666X 0]

Thats a great income, but from how many customers?

My main concern was $20 in fares from over 2500 customers means I was charging nowhere near a realistic amout. Here in the UK it costs me £2 to take the bus into town, so 2500 customers would make £5000 in fares. I wasn't looking to make big money just more than the measley $0.005 per customer. As I say I have tweaked it and almost cover the mass transit costs so i'm happy with that.

Thanks again for the reply.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Originally posted by: X666X

Thats a great income, but from how many customers?

My main concern was $20 in fares from over 2500 customers means I was charging nowhere near a realistic amout. Here in the UK it costs me £2 to take the bus into town, so 2500 customers would make £5000 in fares. I wasn't looking to make big money just more than the measley $0.005 per customer. As I say I have tweaked it and almost cover the mass transit costs so i'm happy with that.

Thanks again for the reply.quote>

Assume that about 1/3 of the population are workers.  In that case, I have about 71,000 customers.  Bear in mind that many of them pay multiple fares going from buses to trains to monorail, sometimes more than once, to get to their jobs.  Also, some of them are close enough to walk to work.

[Dizastrow 4]

I always put toll booths on all my major roadways.  Sims will snicker a bit, but they always pay.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Originally posted by: Dizastrow

I always put toll booths on all my major roadways.  Sims will snicker a bit, but they always pay.quote>

How often do you find yourself building toll plazas to handle the volume?

I use toll booths to choke neighbor connections when I want to slow things down.

[bigthing 35]

You could place mass transit between the industrial and residential zones, and then add toll booths on all of the connecting roads... that way everyone pays up on the way to and from work! MUHAHAHAHAHA!!

[Dizastrow 4]

Originally posted by: A Nonny Moose

Originally posted by: Dizastrow

I always put toll booths on all my major roadways.  Sims will snicker a bit, but they always pay.quote>

How often do you find yourself building toll plazas to handle the volume?

I use toll booths to choke neighbor connections when I want to slow things down.

quote>

Once my city starts growing and the population climbs, I put a toll booth on each major roadway that is a connection.  Im thinking this maybe cuts down on the number of tolls paid by actual residents of the city, and focuses most of the toll revenue on people traveling from other cities.

[z1 566]

Originally posted by: Dizastrow

Once my city starts growing and the population climbs, I put a toll booth on each major roadway that is a connection.  Im thinking this maybe cuts down on the number of tolls paid by actual residents of the city, and focuses most of the toll revenue on people traveling from other cities.quote>

The way the game works, Sims don't actually pay tolls; the city simply collects them.  The one real negative effect toll booths have on Sims is that it slows down their commute.  However, this cannot be used to regulate intercity travel, as destinations are chosen before routes.

[krbe 193]

Also, remember that what you make and spend in the game cannot in any way be compared to the real world. A 214k city making less than $450 000 a year in taxes? There's a reason the currency symbol in SimCity is

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

If you consider the poor Simoleon, it has one redeeming value at least:  no inflation.

[dghh70 5]

Put mass in the begginning so sims will use them off the bat. Also connect with poor cities. You will make lots of money then

[Spinmaster 75]

Hmm... nobody else mentioned this?

That $0.005 fare is per tile crossed. That would be like paying a measley half-penny to ride the bus... but for every 16 metres you travel. So it's not so terribly far off after all; it's as if that £2 takes you up to a little over 6 km. Not "as the crow flies" either, but with every centimetre of asphalt and brick the bus rolls over along the way.

In other words, it's not just how many people ride the mass transit, it's how far they go on it.

I have two small cities, about 6500 residents total between them. 1500 commuters travel by bus from one to the other - but they go most of the way across their origin town, then almost all the way around the perimeter of the other to get to work (it's an industrial town, on the other side of a channel, and the only bridge skirts the northern edge of the city). Both cities make a KILLING on mass transit - and I haven't tweaked a thing!

In fairness, bus doesn't incur the costs of track maintenance - that's why it's recommended to start with this until your city grows large enough to support the tracked types. But the point is the same. If you have 10,000 people on the monorail, but they only go a block or two, it's a waste. Send half of them across town, however, and just watch the money roll in!