A Transport Subsidy or Subsidy is an incentive for you to transport a designated type of Cargo from one specific location to another. The Local authority will usually notify all players about the subsidy through the Newspaper. After the announcement, the first company to provide the service as described in the offer before the expiration date will be awarded the subsidy, which includes a bonus rate for that service for the next year; depending on the difficulty of the game, subsidized services will pay anywhere from an extra 50% (1.5x, 3:2) to quadruple the regular rate (4x, 4:1).

Please note that Passenger and cargo distribution, if activated, will disable subsidies.

Any subsidies available, or any subsidies you or other companies in the game have been awarded (either AI or player-controlled) will appear on this screen:

The Subsidies window showing available and awarded subsidies as well as the dates by which they must be claimed or will end, respectively

Open this screen by clicking on the Subsidies button: .

• Starting with 1.0.0 (r17113), the rule is the following: Any house belonging to the town (in case of a town being the subsidy destination) or any tile of the industry (in case of an industry being the subsidy destination) need to be in the Catchment area of the station you are delivering to, in order to obtain the subsidy. And another change introduced in r17113 is that awarded subsidies are no longer bound to a specific station. This means you can earn the extra payment in all stations in/near the target town/industry, instead of only in the one the subsidy was awarded for.

• Up until the 0.7 branch (inclusive), the following rule applied for being awarded a subsidy: If you are carrying cargo to a city, your station (that is the station 'flag'), needs to be within 9 tiles of the city center (that is the town 'flag'). The same holds for industries, your station 'flag' needs to be within 9 tiles of the 'industry' flag.

Players that take advantage of subsidies can find themselves making more money than players who do not. Subsidies are a good way for new players who join a Multiplayer game to get a strong foothold easily.