Handbook

On time means reaching the terminal no more than five minutes late, without being short-turned or abandoned. Seconds round like this: :16 or more rounds up, :15 or less rounds down, so 5 minutes :15 seconds late counts as 5 minutes (on time) and 5 minutes :16 seconds as 6 (late). Each run gets a grade by the same bands as the GSTA bonus below: 🎯 Excellent (within 2 minutes, ahead or behind), ✅ Good Enough (within 5), 🥵 Early (more than 5 minutes ahead; a train can run up to 14 minutes hot) or 🥶 Late (more than 5 behind). Its Performance gives the minutes: "4 minutes behind", "7 minutes ahead" or "On schedule". Riders only mind late trains: an early trip still counts as on time for Rider Approval, but it loses the GSTA bonus, because a hot train is trouble for the railroad.

Each company is listed on The Board under its High Score Initials (2 to 4 letters or numbers, chosen when you create your company), like a high score at the arcade.

On-time performance is the main competition; net revenue after all costs is the second axis; crew satisfaction is the third: a third each net pay (raises, and the dues and pension the company pays), rest and morale of the crew on your last 18 runs in the period, read as each run ends (with fewer than 18 runs, the missing ones count at the average of every company's runs), so a short break neither lifts nor lowers it. On the Season and All time boards, anyone bored from having no work (see What Moves Morale) counts at their morale today if that's lower. Rider Approval on the Season and All time boards falls half a point a day while your company has fewer than 8 runs in the last 7 days, and each run earns a quarter point back once you're at 8. Trips of a job you took but didn't send before it closed (at the end of its tour; in the alpha, at the end of the day) are abandoned (ABD): they count in Rider Approval as not on time. A trip resolves the moment you press Send, so one sent at 03:59 and any seconds still counts; at 04:00:00 the job is closed. The Board has Today, This week, Season (the official standing) and All time boards, all live; you need a number of runs in the period to be ranked (8 for a day or a week, 18 for the season). On the Overall table, ▲ or ▼ shows how many places a company has moved since yesterday (in the last hour on Today), and NEW one that has just qualified. Boards are saved when each day, week and season ends, and your best finishes show as Records in the Office.

Hidden, usually 75%–125% and at most 66%–133%, it scales how long incidents and mistakes take, and how good the good surprises are.

On about 6% of trips: police aboard, a road car inspector riding along, a celebrity, an anonymous donor…

About half of all trips have one: a car singing along with a guy with a guitar, a rider thanking the crew, a clean fast boarding, every signal green. Most are just nice; a few win back seconds. Who's on the crew makes some more likely (a bartender talks down a drunk, a former tour guide gets thanked by tourists). A moment you've seen in your last 20 or so trips usually gives way to one you haven't, and the common ones are told in several ways.

Between 7% and 80%: a company that does nothing to prevent trouble faces trouble on most trips, and a challenge day adds to that; a new company can expect about half its trips on time, a well-run one four in five, and something to happen on about two trips in five. Each kind of trouble has its own causes. Equipment trouble follows your maintenance and the train; rider trouble follows dirty stations and how many station agents you have; your crew's own trouble (late to the train, hurt, arguing) follows their fatigue, years and chemistry. Fights, faults, false trips and riders pulling the cord happen to every company: a good crew doesn't make Gotham quieter, it handles what happens better and faster. Then type, class and severity (minor, heavy, severe), weighted by your crew's backgrounds and your orders. People in crisis ride more late at night (most around 04:00) and come down into the subway for shelter in cold, wet or very hot weather: each train runs in the weather of its hour, from midtown Manhattan's National Weather Service forecast, locked for the whole day at 04:00 so the same hour is the same for everyone, whenever they send (the header shows this hour and today's range). A real snowstorm, soaking rain or heat wave also keeps riders at home. On those nights police with outreach and a conductor good with people pay off. Crowds keep to their hours: parades 09:00 to 17:59, ball games 12:00 to 23:59, protests 08:00 to 21:59

A 12-9 is a person struck by a train. It happens to about 1 trip in 11,000, the real rate on the subway: in 2023 New York's trains struck 241 people, and 97 of them died. Some people walk away hurt, some lose a limb, and some die. Most are struck by the front of the train, where the T/O sees it first; now and then the C/R finds someone caught between the cars in the back section (on a one-person train, the T/O). Power is cut, EMS and police come, the riders are walked off at the station, and the trip ends there. Both crew members are relieved and go for the drug and alcohol test, so they may miss the job's next trips. They are shaken, and either of them may go out on workers' comp (below). Nobody grades their handling that day.

About 1 trip in 100,000, a rider opens fire in a car. Between one and ten riders are shot, and luckily nobody ever dies. The train pulls into the next station, police and EMS come, and the train is held as a crime scene: the trip ends there. The crew is shaken, and either of them may go out on workers' comp (below).

Boarding time depends on riders, door count and train length; the schedule expects normal rush-hour crowds, so only extra crowding costs time. Fatigue and low skill slow things down; old or worn cars drift late.

Sometimes the train waits for the train ahead, for the dispatcher evening out the spacing, or, at the entry or exit of an express station, for another train crossing through the switches. Nobody's fault, 1–6 min. The report shows the signal: a red lamp (Stop) for a red signal, three yellow lamps (Hold) when the dispatcher or the tower holds the train.

A late train wins time back between stations, mostly on long stretches such as express runs; short local hops give little room.

Crews may not hold at stations to get back on time. A good operator eases off instead when the train gets ahead of schedule (less on Push pace). At the main holding stations, mostly the big four-track ones, the tower sometimes catches an early train and holds it until it's on time (never twice close together); the wait shows as that stop's dwell. A train running ahead that isn't held arrives early and earns no on-time bonus.

Most trips have a few ("At station, a person holds the doors for a friend..."). They cost seconds, often none. Which ones happen depends on the hour, the crowd, whether there's a conductor aboard, and how clean your stations are.

Besides the incident roll, your operator and conductor can each make a mistake of their own: overrunning a platform, coming up too fast on a signal or passing a red (brakes in emergency), closing the doors on a rider. They follow the attribute behind them (Train operation for the T/O, Door operation at the doors), which is lower when the person is tired, unhappy or new; a worn-out or unhappy crew member also slips more on their own, and mistakes are likelier when rushed (Push pace). The run report says what was behind a mistake: "Train operation 6 today (tired and new to the job)", Push pace. Passing a red gets a fine when it's heavy. A severe one brings a hearing about a week later on one of the T/O's days off (going costs them the day off; most of the time nothing comes of it, sometimes a fine, now and then a suspension of 1 to 3 days), and now and then a Train Service Supervisor meets the train, takes it over and sends the T/O for a drug screening (too late back for the job's next trip, they sit for the rest of the job); rarely the riders are discharged and the trip ends there. Hurting a rider with the doors gets a fine. Opening the doors on the wrong side happens only to an exhausted crew member, and ends in termination. A borrowed crew member who would be suspended is sent home instead. A brakes in emergency that isn't the crew's fault (a signal that trips the train on a green, a rider pulling the emergency cord) is never written up. On an open-gangway train (Type U1T) a brakes in emergency takes 6 more minutes: the crew checks the whole train.

Backgrounds change how long things take. A former police officer gets police there sooner, a retired paramedic speeds up a sick-rider call, a former tour guide on the conductor's side sorts out lost tourists and questions, a former dispatcher gets the train moving after a hold. The report names who made the difference.

Every run earns experience, more when on time, after dealing with an incident, or when a supervisor praises them. Enough of it raises a crew member's level (1 to 20), shown on the Office (Lv. 01) and in Human Resources; each level takes a little more than the last, and level 20 takes about 200 runs. Levels 6, 10, 15 and 20 each bring a perk point to spend on the crew member's page (quick doors, street smart, first aid, stamina, and for operators Stop Artist, Stuntman and Motorman…). Experience makes a bad day hurt less: from level 10 today's ups and downs can take at most 5 points off an attribute (4 from level 15; 6 before level 10). And from level 10 a crew member teaches: the lower-level partner on their train gets 2.5% more experience a trip for every level between them (a level 18 with a level 8: 25% more).

Every crew member has six, from 1 to 20, where 10 is an average working crew member: Train operation (the T/O: overruns, signals, the running time, easing off when hot), Door operation (whoever works the doors: closing on a rider, the time at each stop), Public relations (riders' questions, tourists, announcements), Street smarts (criminal and mental health calls, sick riders), Investigations (finding and clearing a fault) and Stamina (how fast a run tires them). Each is a base (what they came in with and the points their levels earned, up to 20) plus what moves it: perks and background (which can take it past 20), traits and flaws, and today's ups and downs (tired, morale, well rested, new to the job, lunch), which are held to −6 and +4. The crew page shows every one by name, and what the number does in real percentages. Each level-up brings 2 points: practice places one (what they actually did on the job) and you place the other on their page, or practice places both if you leave that to it on the Human Resources page. From 13, a level of an attribute takes two points (a first point there shows as ½). The best crew you can run makes about half the mistakes of an average one. The fight, the fault, the rider who pulls the cord still happen; a good crew deals with them better and faster.

A crew member who is often exhausted, or over 50, can rarely pick up a flaw (bad back, short temper, sluggish, careless, hard of hearing…). Remove it on their page for $75,000 or a perk point.

It comes in six steps: Full steam ("Excited to be here"), On track ("Looking forward to having a good day"), Coasting ("Meh"), Dragging ("Don't want to be here today"), Off the rails ("Really should have booked off") and End of the line ("I feel like resigning"). The crew on a train works by its average: happy crews go by the book, with fewer and milder incidents; miserable ones aren't slower, but they set off more and worse incidents, especially their own mistakes. Morale alone moves on time a long way: a crew at Full steam is on time far more often than one at End of the line.

It drifts back to a resting point: 60, plus 3 for every 5% raise you give (up to 15), less 9 for every point of fatigue over 3, plus 3 for a week after working with a partner who shares 3+ interests, less 5 once the paid sick days are gone, plus 2 each when the company pays their pension contributions or union dues, less 6 for every day past a week that they have had no work (time on leave doesn't count). On top of that, things swing it for a while: a raise (+8), praise from a supervisor (+10) or a critique that stings (−12), an on-time trip (+1), coffee, lunch, good moments, being shaken (−8), hurt (−10) or written up (−10 or −15), a coworker terminated (−5 for everyone) or let go (−3), life (±8 now and then). New hires usually start at Full steam.

Each crew member has two in a row, which you can fix for the season on their page. On an RDO they can be called in: the whole day at overtime, a small lift (+3) and a fatigue hit. Their week shows as S M T W T F S (the working week starts on Sunday) on the Office, Human Resources and their page: working days filled, days off plain, today circled. On the Office, anyone off today is greyed out and listed last.

Twelve paid sick days a year (May 16 to May 16), unpaid after that. Tired crews get sick more often (every day last week that ended at fatigue 6 or more adds to the odds), and some people are hardier than others: you see their resilience once they're hired. Most sicknesses last a day, rarely more than three. Some call in before work; some fall sick during the day, finish the trip and go home. At Off the rails a crew member may book off; at End of the line they may give 14 days' notice and resign.

Each of your T/Os and C/Rs has about a 1% chance per job of a random drug test, only when they show up for work (nobody out sick or on leave is picked). Picked when they sign in for a job, they go at once and the extra board covers their trip. Handed one during a trip, they finish to the last stop first. The test site is near Kay Street–CityTek: the ride there, about an hour's wait, and the ride back to where the job's next trip leaves. Pick someone else for trips that leave before they're back; the job page tells you who is away. On the midnight tour a Train Service Supervisor has to escort them, so they wait for one to be free, or until 06:00, when they may go alone. Nearly everyone passes (97%). An inconclusive result (2%) means a retest when they next sign in on a later day. A positive one (1%) means they're out at once, suspended 30 days without pay. The drug screening after a supervisor takes over a train has the same results.

After a 12-9 or a shooting, each crew member on the train may file a workers' comp claim for PTSD: more likely after a death than when the person lived, and more likely for whoever saw it first. A former funeral director never does. They are out for a few weeks to a few months, now and then up to a year. While they're out, you pay them two thirds of their regular pay, and they pay no taxes on it; it shows as its own line in the books, and it counts in your net like payroll. They don't count toward your roster limit, so you can hire someone in their place, and you can't release them while they're out. When they come back you keep everyone, even over the limit, but you can't hire in that role until you're back under it.

Human Resources lists who is looking for work: new applicants every service day at 04:00, shared by every company (first come, first served), and people between companies, who stay until someone hires them. Each tour may bring up to two Epic or Legendary applicants, there for that tour only. They have more experience than most, a useful background and no bad habits, one standout attribute (an Epic at 15 to 17, a Legendary at 18 to 20, with a perk already earned) and one weak spot, and they ask more pay. Some are duds: brilliant at what their job needs least and weak at what it needs most, so read the card before you hire. Every hire costs onboarding training (see Fares and running costs). Rosters hold at most ten T/Os and six C/Rs. Someone dismissed by a company can't work for 28 days and carries a reinstatement fee.

All the lines share one extra board. Each tour, some terminals and yards have a train operator or conductor on the board, ready to work. The call goes out when your job reports for work (or when the last trip arrives, if you lose someone mid-job). If a board person is at your trip's terminal, there's no wait; otherwise the nearest one rides over, and the trip leaves late only if they can't make it by departure. Or call the GSTA: someone shows up 15 to 90 minutes after the call. Board people work 8-hour days that start with the tour (04:00, 12:00, 20:00), and standing by and riding over both tire them a little; the run report shows their fatigue. The C has no board on the midnight tour, so from 20:00 a C train borrows from an A board or a yard. Whoever you borrow stays with your job for the rest of the tour, unless they're hurt or sent home. You pay them for every trip they work; if your job runs past the end of their day, the GSTA pays their overtime.

Everyone has a seniority date; years of service count from it, and pay goes up 3.5% a year in monthly steps on that day of the month.

They ride along on about one trip in twenty and judge the operator's handling and the announcements. Praise brings morale and experience. A critique is taken as constructive by a professional crew member; others lose morale for a while.

An operator and conductor who share three or more hobbies get along: better crew chemistry (fewer incidents) and +2 morale each trip together.

Now and then a spill in the cab costs 2 to 3 minutes, or a coffee handed over at a station keeps a crew member sharp for the rest of the trip.

Once a year, $1,250 each, within 5 days of the anniversary of the day they started with the GSTA (not with your company, so it stays the same if they move to another company). The crew member's page shows the date. A large neck (more likely with age) means 90 days off for a sleep apnea (CPAP) evaluation; an A1C over 8.9% means medical leave until a monthly test is back under it.

Each morning goes in the same order: physicals first, since they're scheduled; then anyone not already out may call in sick; then, at work, the random drug tests. Someone a physical sends on leave doesn't also use a sick day, and nobody out sick or on leave is picked for a drug test.

Rarely, a crew member needs a bathroom break and the train waits 4 to 17 minutes. About twice a year for someone who ever needs one, and many never do. A little more likely when they're very tired, pushing, after a long hold, or when they bring a late train in and have to go right back out.

When a failure takes any car out of service, the GSTA inspector takes the whole set out. There's no running short. After every run the inspector may also find a defect, likelier the worse the set's condition and the cheaper its maintenance. A set that goes out in the middle of a job doesn't end the job: send the rest of its trips with another set in service, or they're abandoned (ABD) when the job closes.

On a heavy brakes, air conditioning or lighting failure, with an RCI on duty and the right spare part in stores, an RCI meets the train a stop or three on and swaps the part: the wait is about half as long, and the spare is used.

When a failure takes cars out of service, they get one try each to fix the fault at the terminal, free, so the set stays in service: one chance in five, or one in two with the right spare part in stores (the spare is used).

$150,000 a car the GSTA inspector named (labor only with the right spare). A repaired set spends the rest of the day in the shop and is back the next service day, so a second set keeps you running.

Per car per run: neglected is free, wears the cars 1.5 times as fast and puts nothing back; basic ($120) holds a set near 70% condition; scheduled ($225) and premium ($360) keep it near 100%, raise reliability and cut incidents.

A run on the Sandy Rock stretch wears the cars 1.5 times as fast (on top of the maintenance level's rate). Each set's maintenance log in The Barn shows the wear, run by run.

Easy: careful running, fewer and milder incidents, less crew wear, but little time made up. Push it: makes up the most time but wears the crew, and is risky with tired or new crews. Push also wears the train faster and burns more power, whoever is operating; Easy is gentler on both. Normal is in between.

Dispatch sorts trouble aboard into two kinds of call. A criminal call is someone threatening people, fighting, damaging the car or harming someone: Police are the best answer. A mental health call is someone who isn't violent but is in trouble or in the way: shouting at nobody, naked, asleep across the seats, holding the doors, smoking in the car, on the tracks. Police with outreach is the best answer there, and the outreach workers keep your crew from being shaken. Police alone on a mental health call walk the person off, but nobody helps them, so now and then they get back on a few stops later and the crew has to signal en route for police again; police with outreach on a criminal call are slower, since the officers bring the outreach workers and have to keep them safe. Mental health calls come most late at night and in cold, wet or very hot weather, when people come down into the subway for shelter: that's when police with outreach pays off. More police are on patrol on the midnight tour, so on a call they get there sooner. Police cost $750 and police with outreach $2,550, only when an incident calls for them; a theft never does, since police only take a report. Now and then, before help gets there, someone on the train ends a minor or heavy call themselves; the wait is shorter and the call is still paid for. Ignore incidents is free: the crew keeps going, and a criminal or mental health call usually blows over, costing about half the time. Sometimes it blows up instead, worse and longer, and it can blow up again. A mental health call nobody answers blows up more often: an assault (your crew is shaken), a smashed window (the train goes out of service), a light fixture torn down (the car is cut out) or a wrecked message board. And supervision may write the crew member up: fined, or suspended for 1 to 3 days. It blows up at least as often for a good crew as for anyone (more often for a crew that handles people poorly): skill only helps when they answer the incident.

Stricter gates stop more riders who'd skip the fare, but some of them walk away instead of paying. At rush hour most of those stopped pay, so strict earns a little more than standard (tens of dollars a trip); overnight most walk away, so light earns the most and strict loses about $100 a trip. Midday and in the evening, light and standard come out about even and strict costs a little. People at the gates also deter crime aboard: strict means a little less of it, light a little more. Light is free, standard $1 and strict $3 a station served. The run report shows how many paid, turned away or rode free.

The authority pays your company for every trip you run: $110 per scheduled minute, and a short-turned or out-of-service trip is paid for the part it ran. A completed trip earns a bonus by how close to schedule it finished, early or late, minute by minute: +415% right on time, +370% at 1 minute, +305% at 2, +200% at 3, +135% at 4 and +80% at 5; beyond that, no bonus. Arriving hot isn't better than arriving on time: your riders sit outside the terminal while the train ahead still holds the platform. Late or hot trips are never cut, just not rewarded. This is most of your income, and running sharp is where the money is. On the week's tour bonus tour (the one companies worked least over the two weeks before; Pick Jobs names it), fares and this payment pay 10% more.

After three days of operating, lenders will finance a train: 20% down, the rest paid daily over two years at 1% to 4.5% (a financier, business owner or accountant on staff gets you a better rate). A loan can't be paid off early in its first week. Buying a train never counts against Net Profit, whether you pay cash or finance it; a loan's interest does, as a running cost.

Each job on Pick Jobs shows a fare adjustment: how much more or less you collect in fares on that job's runs. It's set when you take the job and holds for the whole job. Each time you worked the same job in the seven days before today takes off 5%, up to 25%. Moving to a different line from your last job adds 2%, and to a different tour another 2%. They add up: a job you worked twice this week, on a different line from your last one, is −8%. Only fares change; the GSTA payment and its on-time bonus don't. It keeps one company from working the same few good jobs every day.

$3 a boarding, no free transfers, minus fare evasion. Running costs, per trip: track fee $100 a station served, power $3.50 a car-minute, stations $50 a station, insurance $1,000, the line pool (5% of the GSTA payment, for shared line services), maintenance and gate staff; police $750 or police with outreach $2,550 when an incident calls for them. Staff are paid daily whether or not they work. A No-Show (a missed tour beyond your Missed Tour Allowance of 2 a week) is a Failure to Cover fine, from $25,000 and up. The top rate is $150,000 a year for an operator and $120,000 for a conductor; crew start at 80% of it and reach it after four years, in monthly steps, and contract raises (1.5% to 4% a year, from May 16) lift the whole scale. Road car inspectors (RCIs) earn 20% more than a top-rate operator; every company has at least two (one at each end of the line), each with two days off a week, and four keep two on duty every day; station agents earn $1 an hour more than a top-rate conductor. On top of wages the company pays payroll taxes, insurance, health and pension (about 41% of wages), uniforms and physicals, and onboarding training on every hire ($45,000 for an operator, $15,000 for a conductor; the GSTA pays 5%). Raises stop at 1.5 times the operator top rate. Crew pay federal, state and local taxes, Social Security and Medicare, a pension contribution and union dues out of their pay; the company can choose to pay the last two for them.