Why does my bus have negative income
It dropped off some passengers and got a freaking -7000 ! Inflation is off and that bus' upkeep is about 1400 a year. Overall, not a big deal, cuz i'm in late game, but it's still weird.
Posted Dec 27, 2019, 8:12 PM UTC
85
The game calculates payment rates on a per-leg basis, under the assumption that the standards you set in the current leg will be maintained in subsequent legs. As a result, if the transfer is intermodal (or just to a much quicker or slower service in general), you can end up making a lot of profit or taking a lot of loss on the back end, even if that service is still adequate.
For example, suppose you carry passengers 200 tiles on a fast train (5 tiles per second), depositing them at a station where they transfer to a slow ferry (0.5 tiles per second), riding 20 tiles to their destination.
When the train deposits the passengers at the transfer point, it will do so assuming that the passengers will continue at the same pace: that their entire journey will take 44 seconds. But when they transfer to the ferry, the journey actually balloons to 80 seconds, which means you should have gotten paid a lot less at the transfer point, so it makes up the difference at the destination -- and will register as a loss, even if the service should actually be profitable. You're making up the excess you were paid upon the transfer.
However, passengers in the opposite direction will have the opposite effect: they think they're taking an 80-second journey, and the amount they pay upon arrival at the transfer point will reflect this, but then they hop on the train and the journey time shrinks dramatically. (Assuming the train shows up promptly!) As such, they'll pay more for the train than they otherwise would, to make up for the underpayment for the ferry trip.
This creates a situation where "feeder" routes almost always lose money relative to the national network they serve.
Just some correction. You actually weren't paid during transfer (that's why it's yellow tooltip). It's just for bookkeeping purposes. If the cargo is gone before you delivered (e.g. by transfering at station with low rating), you won't get paid at all.
And the time waiting at station isn't included in the travel time.
I'd always heard a generic explanation of "feeder legs lose money," but this is the best detail explanation of it I've seen. Definitely wiki-worthy.
Thanks a lot!