Sunken Highways

[soldyne 111]

I live in the Northeastern US (Ohio to be exact) and I dont really see any sunken highways anywhere.

where did this idea come from?  is it a European thing?  or this just something that was developed in a SimCity?

sure it looks good, but what purpose does it serve other than eye candy?

just wondering.

[Flumes 3]

I also live in Ohio, none here, but I used to live in Detroit and I-75 by the Zoo reminds me very much of the sunken highways, also the ford freeway,

[HoustonHusker 0]

Well, sunken highways are just eye-candy... both in simcity and in real life.  Pure elevated highways in large cities are an eyesore... One that quickly comes to mind, since I live in Houston, is US highway 59 through the southwest part of town (pictures from houstonfreeways.com):

Before

during construction

current

Though sunken highways also make for mighty fine rivers:

[hamsterTK 93]

heh, i remember that. those pretty overpasses looked nice crossing the water like that. also during that i remember the lady from channel 2 was interviewing a kayaker guy who decided to go out paddling there and she slipped and fell in and got all wet...

anyways, sunken highways arent good for places where it floods. In houston they spend millions on complex pumping systems yet you can just spit on katy freeway and people's cars will get swamped...

but then again its better overall because then the highway noise and uglyness doesnt affect the surrounding neighborhood.

[buddybud 63]

the other consideration is noise pollution..an elevated system or ground level system will project the noise in of the vehicles in all directions. With a sunken system the noise is projected up and away from the surrounding area

here in ottawa, canada we have a bus only sunken stretch of our transit system...though expensive this was the only way local residence would allow the stretch of the transitway to pass through there residential areas....the result is less noise and from groundlevel no eyesores...

montreal has an extensive highway system that is below grade..seen below

[Mikie 9]

Or go to Boston.. that whole "big dig" with the freeway going UNDER the city

[Energy Monkey 0]

In certain parts of Denver our highways are sucken and others are not raised at all and have walls to keep noise pollution down. Only near dowtown are the highways raised.

[soldyne 111]

ah ha! facinating facts. thanks everyone, now I know.

those pics of the flooded highway are kind of funny, although I am sure it must have cost a ton of tax money to dry it out.

[Skyfire2275 23]

I was going to show the same thing that buddybud showed (the Ottawa Transitway), but he beat me to it.

-Skyfire

[cam_man91024 0]

pasadnea on part of the 210 freeway its suken, not alot of it, but its suken for about a mile long strip

[DoctorSnow 0]

Here in Dallas our Central Expressway (Highway 75) is sunken just north of downtown. Personally, I think that it's much more asthetically pleasing, but it does cut down on noise pollution drastically. It cuts through the most expensive part of town and there are actually small residential homes sitting right next to (on top off) the highway. It's quite interesting. It also compacts space (at least in real life) by allowing the access roads to be built right next to the highway and even above the highway.

For the best satelite view, pull up Mockingbird and 75, Dallas, Tx in GoogleEarth.

[justanothersim86 83]

Part of the 278 in New York City is sunken in Queens. Had to use it to get from LaGuardia to Manhatten. Montreal has a few, but Montreal's freeways are the craziest ones I have ever been on.

Thanks to the NAM, sunken highways can be much more realistic in SC4.

[vester_DK 477]

In Copenhagen we have a stretch of motorway that goes through a populated area. Part of it sunken for something like 4-5 km. A long the road, is going local one-way roads for something like 12 km or so.

 

[soldyne 111]

hmm, well it seems sunken highways have a purpose then, the main one being to reduce noise pollution through residential areas. that, and it seems to be eye pleasing. well, I guess I will have to start experimenting with it now.

[RiverCocytus 0]

oddly, I've noticed that all sunken highways have -Vertical- walls. So how far are we on that vertical walls project? I would build more of them if the walls were vertical instead of this sloped nonsense. (Think of the docks in the CDK if you want to think of what vertical walls might look like in SC4...)

[nogoals4u 0]

In Philly, we have a sunken highway that runs pretty close to the CBD. It's more commonly called a cut-and-cover design. This way cross streets can continue over the highway without creating huge bottlenecks in the grid system of the city with only one or two overpasses. Generally, they are built to reduce noise and visual pollution.

[Daddy-O 1]

Many HWYs have a lot of this slopped nonsense. I've noticed it around much of the country, too. Many times the slopes are grass. Look around as you drive. You will be surprised how many HWYs are sunken below grade.

Some links to traffic cams that show slopped sunken HWYs in the US.

http://www.dot.wisconsin.gov/travel/milwaukee/cam019.htm

http://www.dot.wisconsin.gov/travel/milwaukee/cam039.htm

http://www.gcmtravel.com/gcm/showOneCamera.jsp?cameraName=DRT_100

http://pws.indot.org/pws/images/IM60019006.jpg

http://cmhimg01.dot.state.oh.us/images/SR161-LTW-East.jpg?1147711582516

http://www.cityofseattle.net/trafficcams/i5_albro.htm

http://www.cityofseattle.net/trafficcams/i5_85th.htm

[buddybud 63]

well put daddy-o....it seems alot of peeps forget that theres a whole world of difference out there if they'd only travel past their back yard...

[newyorkstate 6]

I've seen highways Sunken for 5 miles then elavated for a few miles than underground, etc.

[Bloxx 0]

Hi.

As you might know,here in germany we call the highways Autobahn.These kinda highway in a residental area r often  sunken build also with diagonal walls.I live near a "Autobahn" (about 2km) and i actually do not hear the sound cause of this walls it depends where the wind comes from.This is like a natural noise blocker.And it also looks good.

[soldyne 111]

first of all daddy-o, your pics are mostly just a bunch of ground highways with hills next to them, not sunken highways. a true sunken highway is one where the construction crew purposfully digs a very deep hole in the ground with verticle walls and then lays the road. at best your pics are real world representation of Bones1 slope mod when building networks on uneven ground.  by your apparent definition all ground highways are sunken as they all have some small pile dirt next to them at some point.

and secondly, buddybud, I take a little offense to your comment, as I assume you are refering to me being the only one here who had questions about sunken highways. I have travelled far more in my time than most people. I have lived in all four corners of the united states, Washington, Florida, Connecticut, California, Hawaii, Ohio, and driven through every state in between except Alaska. granted I have never been out of the US except Canada for a short two week trip, but the US is a rather large place with very diverse areas. In all that time and travel I have seen few sunkens.

My question was more focused on how popular sunken highways are and if they serve a purpose in RL and in the game since they are obviously very expensive and time consuming to build, which is the whole reason they are not very common. the answer is yes, they serve the purpose of noise reduction in real residential areas, but in the game they are just eye candy.

now, lets try to refrain from making slanderous comments until we know more about the people we are refering to.

[buddybud 63]

no soldyne i was referring to rivercocytus with his comment "sloped nonsense" ......and it was not meant as a flame it was a response to his saying nonsense when its not...the transitway picture i posted above is merely a short distance of the route and further up there are indeed bits that have 45' angle slopes......again no offence was intended and for that i apologize...

[soldyne 111]

hmm, well, perhaps I did overract. sorry for the snap. I am feeling a little stressed right now so I am a bit edgy.

but to put the disscussion back on topic, I have been using raised highways in my large, dense inner cities where I put a lot of comm next the highways. I have been using ground highways in the suburbs with two tiles or so of thick trees (mostly pegs and jeronij's seasonal varieties) to act as a sound buffer and pollution reducer. I have another suburb comming under development soon so perhaps I will make a sunken highway and see how that looks.

thanks for all the input everyone, and again sorry I snapped.

[buddybud 63]

no prob...and click my link in my sig to see the sunken highway walls im working on...theres a beta of the straight bits a page back or so

[Tolomar 5]

a lot of the sucken highways now are done for 2 main reasons...eyesore...more ppl don't like the look of the eleveated highways...noize control...sink the highway down and put up enbankments ...this greatly reduces the amout of exhuast and noise to areas surrounding highways as the noize and some of the polution go stright up insteed of sidways (found more often the pollution sits there like fog)...but thats the the gerneral theory and reasoning

and a lot of ppl try and do recreations in Simcity4...so they want to recreate the highways as well that they see in their travels

[A199999999 0]

  Here is some sunkin highy way in  the "inner loop" of the my hometown rochester n.y. in the u.s

i think sunken highways work good in dense areas where they dont need to lift each road crossing it above the highway. and off ramp can  be dug out of the side of the ground.

[Compromise 1]

Well there aren't any sunken highways near me but there a good looking a feature in SimCity 4 and reflect real life by the idea they reduce noise levels, improve the view, make it easier for roads to cross above and put a portal into a tunnel on the sunken highway.

[shivsood 5]

theres quite a few sunken main roads (a route/motorway) here in London. They try to make the walls look aesthetically pleasing rather than just plain concrete.

[nogoals4u 0]

Here are pics to the one i was talking about in Philly, courtesy of PhillyRoads.com:

[nk 0]

Just an idea of how to get vertical walls on your highways downtown:

If you build a sunken highway with slopes on the sides, and then zone on the slopes, wont the buildings that pop up be leveled with the ground above the highway, with retaining walls facing the highway? It just seems to me that it would be a good way to get your downtown to look like this:

http://www.phillyroads.com/roads/vine/img7.gif 

(edit: the link is taken from the above post, so no credit to me for finding it)

Ofcourse this will only work at places where you have buildings next to the highway, and create an akward transition in places where you decide not to place buildings next to the highway...

i havent tried this out yet, so im not 100% sure that it will work...

EDIT: so i made a little test, and it seems to work:

http://img131.imageshack.us/my.php?image=sunken16kw.jpg

http://img224.imageshack.us/my.php?image=sunken27mi.jpg

It seems that different wealth buildings have different retaining walls, which dont look very nice next to each other... so if anyone have any retainingwall mods...

Also i cant get my overpasses to be very nice... does anybody have any solutions to that?