It's possible to make money with buses after all. Took me 15 minutes to design by putting bus lines where subway lines are supposed to be.
It is 100% buses. At ticket price at 4.60 it earns 2300 income at 1200 cost making for a solid (roughly, depending on economy) 1k income per month. Coverage 32% so plenty of space for improvement. (You can see airport and many factories aren't touched yet, those lines will earn a solid income too.
Scenario was 1970 Vienna. It has buses with 4% failure rate, 50 speed and 18 capacity which are very cool and which I use to run those lines. Total cost of entire thing was at around 20 000 (mostly bus cost, 650k a piece). It consists of 8 medium-length lines with 3-4 buses per each so far. Lots of red faces on stops but I only add new buses when all new ones earn cash (100 per vehicle in "manage vehicles" overview).
Most lines connect railway stations and market places with city centre where they loop around and go back same route on the opposite side moving people both directions with just one line. Stops are spaced out,` their maintenance costs quite a bit (I used cheapest stops) and they slow the line considerably so I try to not have two stop "circles" touching each other unless they are on the opposite sides of the street (and even then I try to place them between each other).
I restart all lines yearly to space out vehicles because due to lack of scheduling they "bulk' together and it lowers line effectiveness. All lines start 1 stop before the busiest place because when you start a line or add a bus, it doesn't pick up passengers at first stop.
It's not a real bomb and it doesn't earn all that much but with 1k a month using just standard starting cash you can start steady and slowly replace the thing with trams (1970 tram has 24 capacity, 70 speed and same small 4% breakage rate so it's much better than the best bus). And eventually with subway to start making a huge buck.
So... buses do work.
