Economy

You run a transit agency, not a business. The network is not expected to turn a profit — it is expected to stay solvent while carrying people.

Starting position#

The subsidy is a floor under your operations. On hard it is small enough that a badly-run network cannot lean on it.

The daily ledger#

Each day the ledger records:

• Fares — revenue from the ridership the assignment pass produced.
• Operations — crews and fuel, per vehicle per day.
• Maintenance — rolling-stock upkeep per vehicle, plus track upkeep per km and station upkeep per level.
• Subsidy — your daily grant.

Route running cost is vehicles × (operations + maintenance) per vehicle. Track and station upkeep are charged separately, by kilometre and by level.

The same functions produce the numbers the UI shows and the numbers the ledger charges, so the figure you see when planning is the figure you are billed.

Farebox recovery#

Farebox recovery is fare revenue divided by running costs (operations plus maintenance). Above 1.0 the network pays its own way before any subsidy.

This is the number that tells you whether a network is healthy. Cash in the bank can be capital you have not spent yet; farebox recovery is whether the thing you have built sustains itself.

Capital versus operating#

Building is capital: track per metre, stations, vehicles. Running is daily and forever: operations, maintenance, upkeep per km.

This is the central financial trap. A line you can afford to build may be one you cannot afford to run — a metro at $450/km/day accrues cost every day whether anyone rides it or not. Capacity you laid down and cannot fill is a permanent drain.

Bankruptcy#

Cash below -$500,000 starts a 7-day grace period. Recover within it and nothing happens. Fail to, and you are bankrupt.

The grace period is deliberate: a temporary dip during a big build is survivable. A structural deficit is not.

What this means in play#

• Watch farebox recovery, not the cash balance. Cash is a snapshot; recovery is the trend.
• Every kilometre is a daily bill. Overbuilding is the most common way to fail — not by running out of money to build, but by running out of money to operate what you built.
• Vehicles cost twice. Once as capital, then daily as operations plus maintenance. Adding vehicles to fix crowding is a permanent operating increase.
• The grace period is a real window. Seven days is enough to cut a loss-making route or trim frequency.
• Demolition returns 25%. Cutting a bad line back recovers some capital and stops the daily bleed immediately.

See also#

• Demand and ridership — where fare revenue comes from
• Modes and infrastructure — the per-mode cost table
• City growth — how a good network grows its own tax base of riders