The Struggles of Sarkbus (Part 2)

A wise City Bus Manager player keen to found a profitable omnibus company on the peaceful, car-free Channel Island of Sark would start by building a depot on its bigger, more densely populated neighbour – Guernsey. Me, I naively sited my bus station just here, and have been dealing with the financial repercussions ever since.

A couple of days into Sarkbus’s first week of operation, I realised I’d made a fundamental mistake. While my hand-crafted network took in just about every building, tourist destination, and bus-navigable highway on Sark, it didn’t generate nearly enough income to pay my overheads. In order to flourish, I needed state subsidies, and the in-game bureaucrats were only willing to pay me those subsidies if I ran regular buses to the map’s most densely peopled places – St Peter Port and The Bridge on impossible-to-reach Guernsey!

In CBM, building a second depot is a hard-won privilege, so I couldn’t simply rectify my gaffe by opening an outpost across the sea. After contemplating the two available options – restart or retrench – I plumped for the latter.

In an attempt to stem Sarkbus’s eye-watering losses (approximately 1300 Euros a day) three of the company’s four buses were sold. With a heavy heart, I ruthlessly slashed services, and fired my cleaner, my mechanic, my researcher, and one of my two drivers.

Determined to minimise fuel costs and maximise environmental subsidies, I also invested heavily in green tech. The one bus not sold was an electric E-Way 9.5 that would, fingers-crossed, run on ‘free’ power produced by the depot’s solar panels in future.

Adding dog-legs here and there, slightly improved Route 1’s coverage, and reducing the frequency of its ‘tours’ allowed Morgane Foucher, my only driver, time to rest, teabreak, and toilet, between runs.

It wasn’t long before I began seeing the benefits of the austerity measures. Happily, Sarkites didn’t seem all that fussed by the reduced bus frequency. Most days my whining branch-brusher carried around ninety passengers, and pretty soon my losses were down to about 300 Euros per day.

True, there were hiccups – days when I literally paid the price of operating with a skeleton staff and a single PCV. A puncture meant re-hiring a mechanic and paying top dollar for the expedited delivery of a new tyre. While Morgane was happy to drive her bus through the washer now and again, she wasn’t prepared to clean the interior, so, mid-way through week 2, I was forced to briefly* take on a cleaner to deal with growing squalor.

* Because money was tight and CBM doesn’t allow part-time or productivity-based contracts, both of my emergency hires were sacked the moment they completed their tasks.

Most dispiriting moment of the Sarkbus’s first two weeks of operation? Probably having to turn down this transport request from the local school…

When the disappointed head teacher came round to the depot to urge me to reconsider, I demonstrated why we couldn’t oblige by dropping a toy bus into the office aquarium.

Most uplifting moment of the Sarkbus saga thus far? Probably, the day we only lost 113 Euros.

Will I ever open Sarkbus’s financial ledger and see a green number at the bottom of yesterday’s column? I hope so, but if I don’t it won’t be for lack of trying.