In Deling City, there is a single bus.
Based on the layout of Deling City that you can explore on foot, the bus loop appears to go straight up and down the main drag of the city. It stops at a combination of landmarks and commercial areas:
- Deling City Station
- Caraway’s Mansion
- Presidential Residence
- Shopping Arcade
- Galbadia Hotel
The closest real-world comparison I can think of is the DC Circulator bus, a soon-to-be-defunct bus line in DC that takes riders in and out of the central tourist area at a heavily subsidized rate. Sometimes the Circulator was free, but that would only last for a few months before they would renege on it. It ran infrequently, made very few stops, and was not intended for commuters.
The Definitive Pros and Cons of the Deling City Bus
PRO
- Free
- Direct access to high-traffic areas of the city
- Attendants at all bus stops
- Useful last-mile transportation from Deling City Station; good for out-of-town commuters from Timber
- Not load-bearing; downtown is walkable without needing a bus
CON
- No service to residential neighborhoods
- Limited stops
- Effectively a circulator bus for tourism and not a catch-all transit solution
- Funded by totalitarian nation-state that would revoke the bus the instant it was expedient
The “no service to residential neighborhoods” thing is a potential dealbreaker. A city is more than just a series of landmarks. All we get to see of Deling City in-game is the downtown section with the train station, the outdoor mall, and that central gate that is definitely not the Arc de Triomphe. Presumably, the people who actually live in Deling City live further on the outskirts, beyond the part of town that is conveniently serviced by a bus.
Is the rest of Deling City just as walkable as the downtown? Let’s hope so! The lack of buses coming from residential areas tells me that the actual residents of Deling City aren’t coming downtown that often, similarly to the transit situation Washington DC, where the locals don’t NEED to go to the Lincoln Memorial every day. But it could also mean they’re SOL on transit in their own neighborhoods if this is the only bus we ever see.
The moral of the story is, if I lived in Deling City, I would want to work from home.
(If you want additional reading on this subject, check out the book Virtual Cities: An Atlas & Exploration of Video Game Cities. There’s no FF8 in this book, but it tries to take fictional places like Clock Town and New Vegas seriously and understand how they would work as real, functional cities.)