Fares

[DermottBanana]

Is there any reason for passengers to pay inordinately larger fares than normal?
I've noticed that, sometimes, a 15-seater tram will leave a station, and the green number to indicate how much has been made in fares is showing like 90-120, when this is much higher than the amount of seats multiplied by the standard fare.
Is there some kind of bonus I'm unaware of?

Also, under what conditions do passengers avoid paying fares?
ie, if they're changing from a tram to a bus - do they pay? Or from a tram on one line to a tram on another line?
There's a bit of talk about forcing passengers to pay multiple times, or avoiding them continuing on their existing fares, so I'm trying to get a handle on it.

Cheers, and apologies if I'm re-asking what's been discussed before - I did do searches, but couldn't find answers.

Thanks in advance

 

[Legolas]

I think it has been noted that a passenger changing between vehicles of the same type does not pay a new fare. But changing between vehicles of different types means he pays. Haven't checked this myself though.

Also, I'm not sure why you seem to be getting a "bonus" on the fares sometimes. I only seem to ever get less money than I should, mainly because the passengers are not paying!

 

[gebbiz]

Large extra payment may happen if a passenger tries to cheat and is caught.

 

[Supraluminal]

I just got this game a couple of days ago, and the fare/transfer system is driving me crazy. As far as I can tell, passengers making a direct transfer (from one line to another at the same station, ergo on the same type of vehicle) don't have to pay again. This makes it impossible to build large, interconnected networks, because you end up transferring huge numbers of passengers from one side of the city to the other for the cost of a single ticket, which is disastrously unprofitable. Similarly, the fixed ticket price means long lines (like a cross-city express line) are unprofitable on their own, regardless of transfers, simply because you're driving passengers so far for so little money.

Apparently the best strategy is to build many short, local lines with stations near each other but not directly connected, allowing passengers to move from one line to the other but forcing them to pay for each ride. Or at least I assume it is; I keep trying to build wide-ranging networks and going bankrupt. Next attempt I'm going for this approach.

All of this is counter-intuitive and very dissatisfying - in essence, building a well-designed, efficient network that gets people from point A to point B as easily as possible is punished. Fares need to be based at least in part on the distance passengers travel!

There are plenty of other problems with this game (ridiculous breakdown rates come to mind), but right now this issue alone is making me regret spending $20 on it.

 

[speedking34]

I find this to be very untrue.

All my lines, be it bus, tram or metro are very long and interconnected, yet I still manage to steadily average a profit of 8000 a month. I think the key is not how far you take a passenger, but the amount of passengers you manage to carry.

And btw, a pasenger who transfers from a bus to another will not pay again, regardless of whether the two are on the same stop or not. Same applies for tram and metros.

 

[Supraluminal]

I find this to be very untrue.

All my lines, be it bus, tram or metro are very long and interconnected, yet I still manage to steadily average a profit of 8000 a month. I think the key is not how far you take a passenger, but the amount of passengers you manage to carry.

How do you figure? I mean I'm not arguing your in-game achievements, but it seems to me that if I have an arbitrary 1000 passengers per month and in one case I'm moving them clear across the city, while in the other I'm taking them on short, local trips, I'm gonna make a lot more money in the second scenario. Longer trips means higher per-passenger costs in terms of vehicle maintenance, fuel, wages, etc. Somewhere there's a break-even point where it costs you more to move someone around than they pay you for the trip.

And btw, a pasenger who transfers from a bus to another will not pay again, regardless of whether the two are on the same stop or not. Same applies for tram and metros.

Well, damn. So much for that plan I guess.

Edit: Or I suppose I can just never have a bus line adjacent to another bus line, thus arbitrarily forcing passengers to transfer to a different type of vehicle to extract fares from them....

 

[giladteller]

This is my strategy: I build a few long metro line with 3-4 stations each. Then I build tram lines that gets passengers from around the metro stations, so they can get on a local tram and change into the metro to get to the other side of town. Then I build small bus lines to complete the coverage of the city. Eventually, what I have is a system of long metro lines that get the passengers from local metro lines and the metro line get their passengers from the small bus lines.
Usually, I build my metro stations near train stations and airports.

 

[Zarine]

The best way to earn money with the system of fare is to build a system so that most of the passenger will do :
start -> bus -> tram -> metro -> destination
or the opposite :
start -> metro -> tram -> bus -> destination

This way they will pay 3 fares for 1 journey. You can sometimes add waterbus and helicopter but that would take only few people.

Why in this order and not tram -> bus -> metro ?
Because this order is made to use each type of transportation with the quantity expected.
The metro will be the center of your network, people will take it to move across the city and reach the center of the city. As it can have a high number of passenger, it's the perfect system for the high transit area.

The tram will be link to the metro and will allow passenger to spread a bit from the metro station. As they are feeded by metro, they will have a lot of passenger but less than the metro. So it should be able to handle them. Depending of the place, 1 or 2 tram line per metro station is the way to go.

The buses will be here to bring people where building a tram line would cost more than what you would get. It should be linked to tram station in order to get and bring passenger to your network. As it's the far end of your network there shouldn't be much people on those line so buses should be able to handle it nicely. Most of the time, you will need 2 or 3 lines for each tram line.

 

[timfrombriz]

I think Supraluminal is right.

The game has a single strategy for winning, and thats to inter-mix the transport types. If you are to build a network specificly of buses only or trams only, then due to capacities, transfers between buses would kill newly paying passengers.

I think Traffic Giants idea of zones works well, where passengers pay based on A to B distance in blocks, so each bus gets its share of profit for bus 1 A-B, bus 2 B-G, Bus 3 G-Q, thus, allows to see profitability of routes.

The idea of transers between same transport types dont pay but transfers between different transport types do seems silly. It kind of points the game to a one way play mechanic, and doesnt provide a sandbox feel that accomodates for all game play styles.

 

[unmerged(315007)]

The game has a single strategy for winning, and thats to inter-mix the transport types. If you are to build a network specificly of buses only or trams only, then due to capacities, transfers between buses would kill newly paying passengers.

It would be just about impossible to create a working transportation network in any city with just buses or trams, so using different types of transport is just logical.

The idea of transers between same transport types dont pay but transfers between different transport types do seems silly. It kind of points the game to a one way play mechanic, and doesnt provide a sandbox feel that accomodates for all game play styles.

That's pretty much how it's in real life. The longer the distance the passengers travel, the more likely it is that they'll use multiple types of transport. E.g if you live in a suburb and want to get to a shopping center in the city center, and the distance is quite long, you could first take a bus to the closest metro station, then the metro to the city centre, and after that you take the tram to the shopping centre. Why? Because there's no direct line between your home and the shopping center. There can't be a direct line to every destination from everywhere.

About the fares, in many cities you pay a certain price for the ticket, and the ticket is valid for x hours, even if you change to another vehicle of the same type. In some cities you don't need a new ticket even when changing transport type as long as you're not travelling outside the city.

 

[unmerged(325559)]

In the RW aren't there transferable and nontransferable tickets? For example, if I wanted to travel from point A to point B covered by the same bus line and that was all my travel for the day (or even if I made only one round trip there and back), I probably wouldn't buy the more flexible, expensive transferable ticket, instead I would pay a lower rate for one or two nontransferable tickets. It does seem odd in this game that the system seems designed for bus-tram-bus-tram-bus instead of just multiple bus lines merely so we can rake in the profits -- or is the AI smart enough just to walk or drive and skip paying for all those tickets?

 

[Barkydog]

I'm still practicing with the fares myself as I made the mistake with my map of my home city as I was charging bus passengers a flat rate £2 fare which in my area is the price you pay for a local return ticket from home to city centre and back home again.

I'm going to try again and put up my prices and see if that helps balance the books I think the mistake I keep making is trying to base the fares on their real life equivilent so in futue I think my bus passengers will be paying a £4 minimum fare.

It would be good at some point to be able to offer passengers a choice of fares so you could have a standard fare of £1 single, £2 Return and maybe the £4 tickets could be day tickets for example another idea could be the local council could have to keep paying you a subsidy for certain routes or a subsidy for the number of concessionary pass holders carried per service.

 

[Kayapo]

I think the fare/maintenance system is something I would think about improving in the game. It isn't fun at all to have to monitor fares and maitenance everyday because of economic changes.

We should be able to just set a general fare and maintenance. If I want to pay full maintenance and collect expensive fares I shouldn't have to change them everyday.

 

[unmerged(315007)]

It would be good at some point to be able to offer passengers a choice of fares so you could have a standard fare of £1 single, £2 Return and maybe the £4 tickets could be day tickets for example another idea could be the local council could have to keep paying you a subsidy for certain routes or a subsidy for the number of concessionary pass holders carried per service.

Thing is, people in CiM don't usually just go from point A to B and then back to A, instead they go to point C. So return tickets wouldn't be that useful. I just think that adding all these different ticket options to the game would make everything overly complicated, but to each his own.

@Kayapo: Have a look here for the automatic salaries/tickets mod.

 

[unmerged(325559)]

That's a good point, maybe too much micromanagement; but maybe the devs could come up with an auto way to compensate for a passenger's multiple bus transfers, such as the universal ticket price covers so many same mode station changes (say 2 or 3) and then the passenger automatically buys another ticket which covers the next same mode 2 or 3 stations, and so on.

 

[unmerged(273319)]

3-4 stations is a long metro line? loool. Try 38.

 

[TH1]

...as I was charging bus passengers a flat rate £2 fare which in my area is the price...
It would be good at some point to be able to offer passengers a choice of fares so you could have a standard fare of £1 single, £2 Return and maybe the £4 tickets could be day tickets for example...

sorry to ask, but why do you consider the money in the game as POUND? Just don't understand your logic, sorry...
should i charge 26 in the game, because that's the ticket price in prague in crowns or 320, because that's the price in Budapest in forints?

 

[speedking34]

sorry to ask, but why do you consider the money in the game as POUND? Just don't understand your logic, sorry...
should i charge 26 in the game, because that's the ticket price in prague in crowns or 320, because that's the price in Budapest in forints?

Or maybe you could not be a smartass and just realise he made a wrong assumption, everybody makes mistakes so there was no need for your somewhat rude reply.

Moreover, if he made a custom map based in england, it would definitly not be that far fetched to assume pounds are used as currency.

 

[unmerged(333671)]

I really struggled with this until I realised I was just trying to justify the fares in terms of pounds and pence (being British) when actually, you have to try and remove yourself completely from that way of thinking.

Just imagine that the city you're playing has it's own currency that you know nothing about and that 10 (whatever) is equivilant to say £1.00. Sounds like a fair price to me!

It wasn't until I put my fares up to 10 across buses, trams and trains that I actually started making a profit and had money to expand further. I left it at 10 across the board and monthly returns rarely went into the red, no matter how many planning mistakes I made. It didn't seem to have any noticable effect on passenger numbers either, although the ticker did occassionally say that passengers thought fares were too high, which I promptly ignored.

They only really started running away when I tried to make everything 15 but soon returned when I put them all back down to 10.

This was all done in "easy" mode by the way. Not sure if this a general rule of thumb for other difficulty levels as I have only recently started playing myself.

 

[The Blood Eagle]

I use this method: Pretend it's a real city, where would you put the stops? It's worked amazingly so far.