Making money without metro?

[VMPSaberwolf]

Has anyone managed to just use buses and trams to make a profit? If so, how?

I have partial success by limiting my route to 2-3 stops max, I prefer 2. This forces the bus to unload it's 10 or so passengers rather than drive by to the next stop, which can be bad considering traffic. Unfortunately I had about 40 routes midgame on the Berlin map and 40 busses, but they were pulling in 40-120 profit. It gets overwhelming after a while to create 8 routes of 2 stops each to connect your residences to the middle of your city.

Another question if I may, some screens use Income and some use Profit when detailing stats about your vehicles. Does Income represent (like in real life) your money before expenses? If so, what expenses are deducted? Should I just pay attention the Profit numbers? I'm having a difficult time figuring out if my buses are actually making money without looking at the main HQ budget screen.

 

[City Builder]

Playing Berlin 1920, I've finally managed to make money on a bus line, going from one railway terminal to the other and back next to the ferris wheel, with stops all between them, and it's making a small profit.

other than that I've always had to use metro thus far.

 

[douglasrac]

I have the same problem. Because if your bus have more profit than fuel consumption, you still no nothing about maintenance. And what about energy? And driver wages? Fuel, energy, they are the same? I'm confused. Away from the game now, can' t check.

 

[unmerged(273151)]

Buses are more difficult to make money on and seem to be best used to bring people from residential areas to tram/metro stops.

On the Berlin scenario I started with just trams and was making £1-2k a month fairly easily.
I only build them on the double roads with space in the middle, and looped them off at the ends, trying to avoid main roads as much as possible.

 

[unmerged(274363)]

Fuel/enegry is the same as far as i know. In the first scenario it is possible to make profit without metro. You just need to focus on the smaller roads with the buses, but most importantly you should use "off-road" trams. There are quite a few places to lay tram tracks in the 1920 Berlin so that the trams will not get affected by trafic. If you have to build your tram lines on roads, i suggest you use as much as possible the very big roads with grass in between.

In general you should have trams covering the city center with long lines while buses feed the tram lines in the other places.

 

[Kalpa]

Am starting to think that the key to success is in laying out bus stops everywhere and designing lines so that you'll have near 100% coverage before you unpause the game at beginning of your session. If you don't get the coverage up soon enough, the (apparently inavoidable) Traffic Jam of Doom takes over your downtown in a few months time... and then your possibly profitable centrum trams/buses will be worthlessly stuck in the traffic!

Do take loans to build up basic tram infra in downtown and use buses as feeding service for the trams. I have had limited success so far with trams and buses this way, but nothing compared to taking 50k loan and metroing all places imaginable

 

[unmerged(272700)]

Same, I tend to use buses to link people from outlying areas where it would be prohibitively expensive to lay track.
Also, sometimes I'll use a simple bus loop downtown to link two other services that are fairly close to each other... maybe I'll link a tram to a metro that are maybe two blocks apart. This is nice because I get to charge people for the tram, then the bus, then the metro.
This is best done in areas that you've got fairly well covered so there is little automobile traffic.

 

[VMPSaberwolf]

Thanks for all of your advice. I am enjoying the game so far, minus the save game crash issue I reported in my other post. I have to admit I am really hellbent in making a city without a metro, just to see if it can be done.
One benefit of multiple 2 Stop only lines was that I was guaranteed money quickly. Rather than a bus of 10 coming to a stop, only to pass 130 people up because no one wanted to get off there, people would be forced to unload and wait for the bus at the next part of the "stop chain". It's kind of cheap and not really realistic, but I am anxious to see if the income is greater than the increased employee wages and stop / bus maintenance.

 

[Jabakunsa]

I made my first metro on Vienna, the third chapter of the campaign.

Here i posted some screens of my Amsterdam living without a metro and without a single loan open:
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?523589-Scenario-2-Amsterdam