Three · Lay a bus line

Test a corridor with a bus

A bus lets you test a corridor without risking much of the city budget. Place stops along a strong demand street. Takt finds the street route and prices the plan before you build it.

Follow one strong corridor

A planned bus line with eight stops following one strong demand corridor through central Berlin — **Give the first line one clear job.** Join two useful places along the same busy corridor.

Do not try to cover the whole city with one line. Follow one continuous band of strong demand. A direct line is easier to understand and faster to ride.

Press + and choose Bus.
Place the first stop near one end of the corridor.
Place five to eight stops along the corridor.
Keep about 300 to 500 metres between stops.

Read the next stop

A planned bus stop with the street route, a good 348 metre stop gap, and mixed traffic and reserved track prices in the build card — **Read the card before you click.** It shows the street route, stop spacing, and construction choices.

Click near a street and the stop snaps onto it. The blue preview shows the route from the previous stop.

The spacing verdict changes from too close to tight, good, wide, and too far. Close stops slow the bus. Wide gaps make people walk farther.

If no usable street is near the cursor, the card shows the distance to the nearest one.

Keep the road route connected

Each bus section needs a usable connected road route. A nearby stop does not make disconnected roads join.

An older game can identify an unavailable connection while retaining its stops. Repair that connection before relying on service across it.

Read the route preview when moving or replacing a stop. Demolish section does not apply to buses, which lay no track of their own.

Start in mixed traffic

Mixed traffic · 18 km/h · €0.4M/km. It follows any usable street and keeps the first experiment cheap.

Reserved track · 23 km/h · €2.5M/km. Use it when the route is busy enough to justify the faster trip.

Choose the construction type before you build each section.

Fix a detour before you build

A planned bus section taking an indirect street route between two stops — **Before.** The automatic route takes a street you do not want.

The same planned bus section moved onto a different street between the same two stops — **After.** The stops stay in place while the planned section uses another street.

Drag a planned section onto another street to change its route. Press Esc during the drag to cancel.

You cannot drag a built section. To change a built route, remove an affected stop and plan its replacement.

Removing a terminus shortens the visible line at once. Extend the new end to change its destination within the same plan.

Change a line explains removal costs, Undo, and Discard plans.

Read the experiment

Add the line to this year's plan, then finish the year. The line opens and the exact model shows whether the corridor, stops, and street route work.

A busy bus that needs frequent service can justify a tram. A tram carries 250 riders instead of 90.

Bus facts

Bus stop	€0.4M
Capacity	90 riders
Walk reach	500 m
Fastest service	Every 3 min
Running cost	About €250/day per bus + €5/km