Transportation

If the Traffic page explains how citizens decide to travel, this page is the price list those decisions run on.

Walking distances set what is even physically reasonable without another mode. There is a comfortable walk-up radius, the standard five-minute walking distance used in urban planning. Beyond that radius, citizens will still walk if it beats the bus, but only up to a hard cutoff. Past the cutoff, walking is treated as not feasible in the mode choice model, and the citizen falls back to bus or car. The 1500 meter cutoff is a game assumption. The linked walking-distance study describes observed trips; it does not establish this cutoff as a ninetieth-percentile willingness to walk to work.

Cars

Citizens buy a car once their balance clears the sticker price (base price plus a year of license fees, with sales tax layered on top). They sell when their balance dips below a runway of upcoming license-fee payments. Nobody keeps or buys a car whose license fee would take more than 15% of their means: their income plus what their savings would yield at 4% a year. The rich keep their cars at higher fees, but no fee ever drains their savings: when the month’s fee falls due, an owner it would cost more sells the car instead of paying it. There is no commute-length check at purchase time. Besides money, there is one more gate: a place to keep the car. A household in a house buys only while its garage has a free space, and any other home buys only while the Traffic map shows no parking problems at its building (the Traffic page explains both). Fuel costs are charged daily based on the fleet you have put on the road. Diesel buses pay per liter, electric buses pay per kilowatt-hour, and gasoline cars pay per liter through the cost-of-living block on the Economics page.

Buses

Each bus drivetrain in your fleet (diesel, electric, hybrid) also pays a per-kilometer maintenance bill, billed daily, on top of fuel and electricity. The amounts are simulation allowances. The linked National Transit Database provides operating-expense data, but the references do not identify a fleet, year, or calculation that reproduces these three rates:

• Diesel buses are cheap to buy and a moderate cost to keep running.
• Battery-electric buses are more expensive to buy (a cost not modeled on this page yet) but materially cheaper to keep running. Regenerative braking spares the brake pads, there is no engine oil or filter to change, and there are far fewer moving parts. A battery replacement allowance has not been documented separately.
• Hybrid buses have the highest maintenance allowance in the game, representing upkeep of both the diesel drivetrain and the battery system.

Bus drivers are paid a fixed monthly salary out of the public transport budget for every driver you have on the payroll. The page also lists an hourly market rate, taken from NYC MTA data, that is currently for reference only: the city is not billed per hour of bus operation on top of the monthly salary.

Bicycles

About two in three citizens will ride a bicycle. Roughly one in ten rides any street. A bit over half ride only where bike lanes take them: to a cautious rider a street without bike lanes is no quicker than walking it, so they push the bike along it. The remaining third never ride.

A ride competes like every other trip, on time and on money. Riders travel at 15 km/h, for up to 10 km, and climbs slow them down: every 10 meters of climb adds about two minutes uphill and costs nothing downhill. A cyclist costs the street nothing. There is no parking space to find, no fuel, no fare and no place in a traffic jam. And a car owner whose ride would beat walking feels the car’s fees, just as one who could take the bus does.

Stations and lines

Stations are where buses stop. You build them on straight streets, at least 40 meters apart, and they cost nothing. A city can have up to eight lines. A line connects stations in the order you pick them, and needs at least two stations and a bus in service to run. A station can stand on no line at all until you connect it. Taking it off its last line removes it, and deleting a line removes each of its stations no other line calls at.

Buses belong to the city, not to a line. Every day the transit agency gives each running line the buses its riders need without crowding, then sends any spares to the line where people wait longest. Every running line gets at least one while the fleet permits. When the lines need more buses than the city owns, service becomes crowded or less frequent, and the Fleet tab says how many more they need.

More buses also mean shorter waits. A line whose round trip takes 30 minutes runs every 15 minutes with two buses, or every 10 minutes with three. Adding stations or meeting traffic can lengthen the round trip, so a longer line may need more buses just to keep the same frequency. The agency works out the service; you do not need to set a timetable.

Citizens can change lines at a station they share, making at most two changes on a journey. They count the walk to the first station, the wait for each bus, the ride and the walk from the last station to their destination. A fast connection can beat a direct line, but waiting and changing make it less attractive. One change adds a small inconvenience; a second adds more. These preferences affect the choice of journey, not how fast people physically walk or whether a bus waits for them.

A citizen considers the departures available when they set out, so they may miss a connection and wait for the next bus. They do not always arrive just as the best bus leaves. This makes frequent service useful even when it follows the same streets as an infrequent line.

Your levers

The Transport panel shows each line’s interval, assigned buses and daily capacity use. Daily use measures boarding places used across a day; it is not the number of occupied seats on a bus at that moment. Changing lines uses capacity on each line boarded. The figures are smoothed across recent days.

The coverage reading counts residential buildings near running service. It does not say whether their residents can reach their jobs. The map’s building colors show nearby service, while street colors combine frequency and traffic delay. When editing a line, its streets take that line’s identifying color instead.

The walking distances are fixed game assumptions. Put stations near destinations as well as homes: a long walk after the bus can make the whole journey unattractive. Connect busy places directly, or through a shared station with frequent service, and watch both crowding and the interval between buses. A cheaper fare helps citizens choose the bus, but cannot shorten a long wait or remove an awkward change.

Fleet composition is the long-run dial. A long-lived electric fleet swings the daily operating cost down over time. A hybrid-heavy fleet keeps maintenance high. Mix accordingly.

Bike lanes are the lever for cycling. Join homes to jobs and shops with bike lane streets, and the people who can ride will, leaving the streets and the parking to the people who still drive. Parking fees and license fees push the same way: a car owner with a ride on offer, quicker than walking, feels them, and one without does not.

Parameters

Walking distance

400

Comfortable walk-up distance, the radius within which a citizen will reach a bus stop on foot, or skip the parking fee for a near-job commute. Standard 5-minute walkable radius used in urban planning.

⚠️ Source pending

Max station leg distance

2000

The longest a bus line may drive between two of its stations when a station is connected: five times the walking distance to a stop. Urban bus stops stand a few hundred metres apart; a leg longer than this skips the neighbourhoods a station between them would serve, so the planner refuses it and the player builds a station on the way.

Basis: calibration

Cycling speed km h

15

How fast a citizen rides a bicycle, on any street. CBS reports an average 2007 bike commute of 4.29 km in 16.76 minutes, implying about 15.4 km/h; the game rounds this to 15 km/h.

Basis: measured

Source: CBS StatLine: Mobiliteit Nederlandse bevolking, motief, vervoerwijze, 1985–2007 (table 37338)

Cycling never share

0.33

The share of citizens who never ride a bicycle: about a third, the “No Way No How” type of the four types of cyclists.

Basis: measured

Source: Geller — Four Types of Cyclists

Cycling cautious share

0.56

The share of citizens who ride, but count a street without bike lanes at walking pace: the “Interested but Concerned”, 56% of the Portland region. The confident riders are the rest.

Basis: measured

Source: Dill and McNeil — Four Types of Cyclists?

Cycling confident street weight

1.26

How much longer a confident rider feels a street without bike lanes: riders go 26% out of their way to use a separated path.

Basis: measured

Source: Broach, Dill and Gliebe — Bicycle route choice model

Gas car price

$26,000

Average purchase price of a new car. Citizens buy cars when they can afford it and can use it to commute to work, and sell them when they need money.

Source: Numbeo

Diesel cost per liter

$1

Cost of diesel fuel per liter. This cost is used to calculate the operating expenses of diesel and hybrid buses in the city’s public transportation system.

Source: AAA state gas price averages

Electricity cost per kwh

$0.14

Cost of electricity per kilowatt-hour (kWh). This cost is used to calculate the operating expenses of electric and hybrid buses in the city’s public transportation system.

Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) — Electric Power Monthly

Bus maintenance cost per km diesel

$0.75

Maintenance and repair cost per kilometre driven for a diesel bus. Covers scheduled servicing, brake and tire wear, engine repairs and consumables, the day-to-day cost of keeping the bus on the road, separate from fuel. Charged daily alongside fuel against the same publicTransport budget line so the player sees the true operating cost of a larger fleet.

Source: U.S. Federal Transit Administration — National Transit Database operating expenses

Bus maintenance cost per km hybrid

$0.85

Maintenance and repair cost per kilometre driven for a diesel-electric hybrid bus. Highest in the fleet because hybrids combine a full diesel drivetrain with a battery and power-electronics system, both age and need service. Charged daily alongside fuel and electricity against the same publicTransport budget line.

Source: U.S. Federal Transit Administration — National Transit Database operating expenses

Bus driver salary hour

$29

Hourly salary paid to bus drivers operating in the city’s public transportation system. This amount is deducted from the city’s funds for each hour a bus is in operation.

Source: NYC MTA

Bus driver monthly

$5,000

The monthly salary paid to each bus driver. This amount is deducted from the city’s public transport budget.

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics