Lisbon · EuropeOSM land-use zones

Lisbon

Hills, a river, trams that never left, and a Metro that opened in 1959 into a city that was already walking.

Steam · Mac · Windows. Not a browser.

Existing transit 44 lines · 1323 stops · Carris

Local bus

Bus — lines, stops and colours from the operating agency's published GTFS. Water and roads: OpenStreetMap (ODbL), Overpass extract of the playable core. 983,712 residents in 150 zones, pack 2020.

#Facts, figures, history

Lisbon, as the pack records it.

Population by decade, a sourced metro series scaled to the 2020 pack.
Year	Population
1950	433,672
1960	503,638
1970	604,349
1980	814,723
1990	844,111
2000	889,085
2010	935,366
2020	983,711

The pack's sourced population series runs from 433,672 residents in 1950 to 983,711 in 2020.

The zones cover 513 km², about 1,916 residents per km², with 452,512 jobs at the workplace.

The pack seeds 44 bus lines drawn on the map.

Difficulty is Demanding.

✓What winning here takes

Six ways to win Lisbon, each set by Lisbon.

There is no score to beat. Each condition is computed from the metro as you inherit it, with the engine's own arithmetic; these are the bars the game will set on day one in Lisbon, in 2025. The blue tick is where the city stands today; the red band is where it has to get to. The run continues after you win.

Transit Capitalheld for a year

1.5%today · the real system carries

1.5%needed · carry yourself, for a year

The region's existing system carries about 1.5% of all trips. Those lines are not in the pack as playable rail, so the bar is to carry that much on a network of your own.
Roads Unclogged

0%today · relief before you build

10%needed · cut in peak congestion

Against what the region would have without your network, not against the day you started — the region grows, and holding congestion flat through growth is the harder achievement.
Carbon Cut

0ttoday · net tonnes avoided today

20,000tneeded · net tonnes of CO₂ a year

The floor: 20,000 tonnes, which is more than 0.02 tonnes for each of this metro's 983,712 residents. Net, after the trains are charged for their own power.
Held the Lineheld for a year

0%today · on time, before a train runs

80%needed · on time · 65% satisfied · a year in surplus

All three at once. The cheapest route to a surplus is cutting the service that produces the other two, so this is the condition that cannot be bought.
Within Reach

0%today · within a walk of your stops

10%needed · of the metro within a kilometre of a stop

There is no playable rail to inherit, so coverage starts at nothing and the bar is the absolute one: a tenth of the metro within a walk. Two long rail lines through the core, roughly.
Ten Minutes Back

0%today · cut so far

10%needed · off the average regional commute

Measured on every resident, including the people who never board a train — a network that takes cars off the road shortens the drive for everyone left on it. The day-one average is the model’s first solve.

Carbon Cut's bar is 0.02 net tonnes a year for each resident, floored at 20,000. Transit Capital, coverage and the commute are taken from the network you inherit: where the pack seeds operating rail, from that system's first solve; where it does not, Transit Capital uses the model's default present-day share (floored at 1% and capped at 6%) and coverage starts from nothing. The gauges' Transit Capital tick is that default either way.

What you are given

Every one of Lisbon's 150 zones arrives with derived numbers attached: resident population from OSM land-use shares of a sourced 2020 metro series, jobs allocated from the land-use mix, and a gravity-model home-to-work matrix. These are not US Census tracts and not LODES commute pairs — the pack says so on its provenance string.

Work trips are a gravity model from those land-use shares, labelled DERIVED, not a census commuting matrix. The streets, water and operating lines are still observed: OpenStreetMap and the agency's published GTFS.

Lisbon's pack has no playable rail. You are starting from nothing but bus, and the map will tell you honestly that there is nothing there.

What makes it hard

What makes Lisbon hard

Demanding. A real city with real structure, and enough density in the middle to reward a trunk line. You are inheriting a system, which means you inherit its shape and its operating cost as well as its riders.

And the decade changes the problem, not the vehicle list. Lisbon in 1960 is a different city from Lisbon in 2025: the pack's sourced population series (UN World Urbanization Prospects and national census) is scaled onto the 2020 zone map, so the rivers and the rail yards stay where they are.

Lisbon is in the full edition. The free game rotates through thirteen metros so you can check the model on a city you know before taking anyone's word about the other sixty-six. The full edition, $25 once, opens all seventy-nine. Buy Mac or Windows direct and an extra 30% — Valve's cut on Steam — goes to pro-urban organisations.

Play Lisbon Full edition

Sources

How the model turns these into riders, with every mechanic named →

Lisbon

Transit Capitalheld for a year

Roads Unclogged

Carbon Cut

Held the Lineheld for a year

Within Reach

Ten Minutes Back

What you are given

What makes Lisbon hard