Anyone ever make money (or break even) with taxi cabs?

[Fox_NS_CAN]

I never seem to. Maybe I am doing it wrong.

I almost never see a cab sitting at a stand. They just work and return and work again, always seem to be on the go, yet I still lose on the deal.

Real world, they should be paying me for licensing. Game-wise I doubt that would work properly (taxi spamming to make money), but it would be nice to at least make a little money on them.

 

[ristosal]

From the Skylines Wiki:

The taxi service allows tourists and citizens to order taxis to take them to their destination. Taxis do not use lines, they receive requests from tourists and citizens and travel automatically to pick the customers up. If a taxi does not have a new customer in line, it will go to the nearest taxi stand to wait for a call if there’s still work shift left.

Taxis are important for the Commercial specialization districts. Tourists visiting tourism districts and citizens in leisure districts will both make use of a good taxi system.

I guess it would be an idea to follow them through an entire shift, both day and night time. Can you give any exact income/expense numbers, and how many stands you've put down?

 

[metacritical]

i've never made money from them; doesn't matter how many taxi ranks i add or how many taxis i have, they never wait at taxi ranks and are always in use. I've never made mney from any of the transport services i add to my city, including buses.

 

[medopu]

i've never made money from them; doesn't matter how many taxi ranks i add or how many taxis i have, they never wait at taxi ranks and are always in use. I've never made mney from any of the transport services i add to my city, including buses.

that's strange. Busses always make loads of profit to me. Metro usually breaks even or makes a very slight profit, while trains make a consistent loss no matter how much i tinker around with the lines.

 

[Fox_NS_CAN]

I guess it would be an idea to follow them through an entire shift, both day and night time.

I have followed them in the day (I have night off at the moment, as I find it easier to build in the light), and they pick up person after person, until the shift ends.
If they are all busy, they should be making money. Perhaps the drive to pick people up is too long?
They never sit at the stands. (I have only ever seen it once.)
I have noticed this in more than one city.

Maybe the pay is higher at night?

My buses usually make money.

 

[Fox_NS_CAN]

that's strange. Busses always make loads of profit to me. Metro usually breaks even or makes a very slight profit, while trains make a consistent loss no matter how much i tinker around with the lines.

Pretty much how it goes for me.

 

[lrbaumard]

that's strange. Busses always make loads of profit to me. Metro usually breaks even or makes a very slight profit, while trains make a consistent loss no matter how much i tinker around with the lines.

BUT THEY LOOK SO COOL

 

[Promethian]

They did mention making money with your public transit in the info we've gotten on the upcoming DLC. I suspect the balance of costs and income is going to be adjusted. Actually I think better since they also said they are going to allow better micromanagement of public transit. If we could set ticket prices per type or even per line we could choose how little or much profit we make from public transit.

As for taxis. The way the mechanics work make the stands mostly pointless. When you drop a taxi station it looks at the demand for taxis in a radius and deloys as many taxis as is necessary to meet that demand up to the station's maximum. The key point here is it only deploys based on demand in its radius but taxis will take jobs from your entire city. So demand almost always exceeds the number of taxis deployed. This means its rare for a taxi to be deployed and not have a pickup/dropoff queued. The stands only come into play if a bunch of taxis are deployed but demand for them decreases before they "time out" and return to the station. If they don't have a stand they just wander until time out or they get called to a job. The only benefit to stands is you can get idle taxis to wait near points of ingress for tourists like harbors and airports.

In reference to profitability, taxis don't make a profit in the base game. However they are very cheap and provide a lot of benefit for their low cost. You can blanket your city in taxis at the same cost of a single train station.

 

[Sanny]

I've never ever made profit with them. Perhaps the running costs are far too high.

 

[medopu]

Maybe taxis would make more money, if we could enact a "BAN UBER" city policy