Show us Your Interchanges!

[Darrius11able 728]

Kinda compact: 

[Haljackey 17,291]

Christmas special: UDI Tour of my latest 4-way interchange.

This is #18 if you can believe it!

 

[nissan_s14 26]

My first ever made NAM interchange. Definitely took me more than it should. I forgot the cosmetic pieces tho...

[Haljackey 17,291]

My last interchanges of 2018

Diamond

Fractional-Angle Diamond

Partial-Y

(Mainline turns here)

 

Happy New Year everyone!

[simonvangenderen 123]

I decided to extend the West-East highway connection from Linston to Pryley. Previously this connection was provided by an avenue just north of this interchange with a substandard highway north of that to Pryley where it ends in another avenue to one of the bigger cities called Sagemoor. This new highway will be a direct connection between Linston and Sagemoor, but the eastern part in Pryley and in the city of Sagemoor are still under construction.

 

Before:

 

 

After:

 

[bladeberkman 714]

Happy New Year!

Finally finished the parcloweave from a while back and wanted to share some closeups. Also, wanted to share another nearby frontage parclo and the interchange they're connected to. 

Here's the finished parcloweave:

A closeup of the center:

Love how this one-way intersection turned out:

Here's some wild de-weaving and a diagonal-bridge-enabled area over the uneven terrain below. On the map, this area is a stream, which I'll eventually MMP into existence. This end of the parcloweave is located near the edge of town and connects to the neighboring city.

On the other end of the parcloweave, we transition to the main interchange:
 

A mega Tarkus Stack:

This thing has... a lot of capacity. I was able to keep it pretty compact, but only if I used a combination of 6C and 6S.

Here's some of the surrounding setup that makes this possible:

Meanwhile, on the other side of the stack, a more modest frontage parclo. 

-Blade

[Socold 120]

Havent played much lately but I thought this is coming together well. 

[art128 4,618]

A three way interchange I created this weekend after many tries and headaches.

ps - don't mind the tunnel glitch, i will* fix it.

*one day.

[JulianMIA 1,412]

Trying to stay as linear as possible to preserve valuable land in what will some day be a giant megalopolis beloved by all it's citizens... haha

I had been wanting to use those older prefabricated level 0-2 ramps for some time but after installing them I have realized that the valuable land I was trying to preserve, inside of these ramps, is inaccessible to any roads - as I have built them anyway.

IDK - so maybe I'll fill them with beautiful south Florida greenery instead...

[Haljackey 17,291]

Very cool creations!

@JulianMIA looks like you got some weaving in the EB lanes, but I see you used two lanes to try and reduce it. Good choice!

I have created a rather unique connection (partial-y interchange)

Click image for full size.

[JulianMIA 1,412]

@Haljackey, ahh the difference between having plenty of space building through the beautiful countryside and trying to fit everything into an urban space where I built things that I'd rather not have to move before I put the expressway in...

Your set up there looks so nice and serene!

You are so right about the weaving!  I built this whole interchange over so many times to try to eliminate that very thing - but after several days I just decided to, uh, compromise.  What is not in the pic, off to the right, is a highway tunnel port that takes the expressway under the newly remodeled railway yard, the new South Yards business district, and the new HSR station.  And I had changed the terrain after I put the tunnel in so that you would not be able to redo the tunnel without tearing a lot of stuff down.

So the tunnel portal become one of those immovable facts that you have to build around and up to... there is never enough space!

 

Anyway, something funny I just noticed looking at another interchange, the jersey wall bleeds over when you have an elevated 6s and 4s right next to each other.  Not sure if it's too weird to leave like that but changing it means another major revision to the overall design.  What to do.

[nissan_s14 26]

well there's another rural t interchange! i guess

[Haljackey 17,291]

Beefing up an existing interchange (prepares for growth further north)

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

[Haljackey 17,291]

Couple new partial-cloverleafs

'Tight' parclo A-4 interchange.

I call it tight because I am not using the avenue-RHW ramp pieces; and the TuLEP slip lanes to help reduce the size of the junction.

Click for full size.







Compare to a larger Parclo A-4 on the same road

-----

+ A new folded diamond partial clover further down the road

Both junctions located on a new highway in the south of my region

[Haljackey 17,291]

That Parclo A-4 has been modified to accept roundabout connections after I started developing the nearby area.

Click image for full size.

[bladeberkman 714]

Somewhere between a stack and a windmill... A Stack-Mill?  ::)

-Blade

[Lucario Boricua 7,027]

Great job there @bladeberkman !  It seems like it's pushing the limits of what's doable with the Real Highway Mod without making something excessively large!

 

It's been a while since this otherwise very active showcase topic got something this week. Currently experimenting with frontage roads and sunken freeways!

 

Experimenting with a diamond interchange with frontage roads, successfully tried both one-way and two-way options, but only beyond the interchange area.

 

 

Transition from at-grade segment to sunken segment. Sound walls courtesy of @Simmer2 , linked at the end!

 

 

Interchange at sunken segment, using the 7.5m (L1) avenue bridge over RHW-8S, will consider retaining walls once I find one of my liking.

 

 

Sound walls provided by Simmer2:

 

[TakemeThere 5,833]

Been a very long time since I posted and chimed in on this topic. Interchanges are one of my 3 favorite things to build in SC4 as is this thread on ST. The last time I posted on this topic was almost 2 years ago.
So it's high time I got caught up and checked out what I've missed in the last year 

@Houston_Fan Holy lanes batman!
@medit84truth Nice, now that's loopy  
@clonedclone87 Agreed! The NAM is the single biggest thing that keeps me playing SC4 all these years latter.
@Dragonxander You've been coming up with a lot of good designs in the last year, I particularly like the one with roundabout and the directional Y interchange 
@nos.17 An old one but a good one to be sure.
@velrox Crazy spaghetti, my kind of interchange! 
@drpfaff Windmill's make for an interesting design, did you get around to improving on it yet? 
@Tarkus Awesome to see the diagonal flex height ramps in action!
@Artimus Unique and funky, I like it!
@Razip That's a fresh take on the standard 3-way design 
@Squizie3 Those are some really cool designs, thanks for sharing! 
@Eggman121 Now that's exciting! So many possibilities.
@Haljackey Too many designs to comment on, a proliferation of asphalt goodness - my head is spinning like a sim driving too fast around a one of your ramps  
@Metalhead123 Your NAM abilities are progressing nicely, keep up the hard work.
@muuttolintu Wow, those odd angles look amazing.  
@Darrius11able Kinda an understatement, very nice work 
@nissan_s14 That's pretty good for a first interchange, nice n'smooth.
@art128 Me thinks the headaches were worth it, cool angled design 
@bladeberkman Fantastic work on those interchanges. That last design is very innovative, you really excel at building symmetrical interchanges.
It's interesting to see how it contrasts with my specialty, asymmetrical designs.


My turn to share. I know I've already shown this interchange plenty of times on the site already but I this is a view of it I haven't posted - the barebones version without mmp's or lotting, if only to show the technical aspects of it, also with the grid in place to show spacing.


Full disclaimer, the Transfer was is actually something I designed 3 years ago. It's one of several large scale projects that I unfortunately lost at that time due to huge data loss from a hard drive failure. But since returning from my hiatus I've rebuilding quite a bit of them, hopefully I'll have more to show sooner rather than later this time around. 

[TakemeThere 5,833]

@JulianMIA I know exactly how you feel about having to design & build while being constrained in space. In many cases I don't have a choice since otherwise I'd have to demolish huge swathes of developed land, though in others I purposely try to build as compact as possible as the challenge of doing so is part of what I love about playing around with the NAM  

As for your particular problem, personally I'd want to fix it but I'm a stickler for making things look as realistic as possible.(I'm actually tackling some issues of my own with the NAM atm)

You seem pretty experienced with the NAM so I wouldn't be surprised if you've already considered these option. I have two suggestions, the first is to raise or lower one of the ramps to remove the median overlap, like so; 


Alternatively the overlap can be made much shorter by widening the freeway to three lanes after it goes over the rail tracks like so;

adding flexfly

raise the ramp and connecting the rails 

There's still a bit of an overlap but it's much shorter and hardly noticeable now;

[Sydney Claridge 106]

On 2/15/2019 at 4:04 AM, Takingyouthere said:

@Houston_Fan Holy lanes batman!
 

Yep, that freeway was largely based on the Katy Freeway just west of the 610 loop in the Houston metro area (FYI, I'm not from Houston and have never lived there, though I admire their freeways).  That 28 lane cross-section is not far off the mark of the widest point of the Katy Freeway, where there is a 29 lane cross-section (namely, at Bunker Hill Road; this includes freeway main lanes, managed lanes, auxiliary lanes, frontage roads, and turn lanes on the frontage roads).  If my frontage roads in my post below were able to have turn lanes  (but given the NAM's limitations they don't), I think I would be exceeding 29 lanes:

That said, the ramps that connect to the express lanes by flying over the mainlanes (and which look like half-basketweaves of sorts) are more inspired by the TEXpress Lanes in the Dallas-Fort Worth area (which is where I am actually from!).

I'd love to make a city journal for Soderstrom, a city which is very much inspired by Houston (there's a mix of Houston, NYC, and Chicago inspiration in different parts of the city; in spite of the Scandinavian name, the city's climate would be similar to DFW and North Texas), but I don't really have the time to.  The freeways are absolutely mind-blowing, though I'm nowhere near done with the region.  I'll probably post some more of the major freeway interchanges sometime in this thread.

[Sydney Claridge 106]

And I just got done making this beauty:

Once again, this interchange is along Interstate 30 in the Soderstrom region, this time with State Highway (SH) 400, the Soderstrom regional outer loop (I-435 is the inner loop).  South is at top.  Interstate 30 is the east-to-west freeway here (with the managed express lanes) and SH-400 is the north-south freeway.

This is a draft build; I may redo this in order to make all of the ramps UDI-compatible (perhaps to make Haljackey-style drive videos).  I need some suggestions though since I'm fairly close to a city border (you can see it in the SE [top-left] corner), and I would like all of the ramps to be at ground level for the neighbor connection (in order to use the RHW neighbor connection pieces).  I guess I could put SH-400 in a tunnel somehow, although I don't think there is a way to make a RHW-6S or an OWR-3 go into a UDI-compatible tunnel.

The right-turn ramp in the top-right (SW) corner is a remnant of the old cloverstack that used to be here, prior to widening I-30 with express lanes.  Also note that there are still some finishing touches needed for this interchange, namely the completion of the high-mast lighting.

[TakemeThere 5,833]

@Houston_Fan Ah I see so it's based on a recreation of the Katy freeway, definitely one of the most impressive highways in the world. After that expansion in '08 it took over the crown of the widest highway in the world over another one I'm familiar with the the 410 in Toronto, which gets as wide as 27 lanes at the interchange between it and the 404/410.

Yeah it's quite time consuming making a CJ, if you don't have a lot of spare time I agree you'd be better off continuing to post pics in this thread instead. As for the new interchange, that's a difficult arrangement to make fully accessible without the use of tunnels. For one it's impossible to do so in the configuration you have above. You won't be able to get another ramp over those directional ones that essential cut across the entire interchange. You'd have to run a ramp outside of them like so:

And you couldn't even do that for the other side with those transfer and the border being so close.

I thought of a couple solutions. I was going to draw it for you but then I realized they might not be feasible to being with so I started testing them in the game as sure enough it quickly became clear it they weren't variable options:


I widened the highway by one space but even with 2 spaces in between  it's not possible with the current NAM, see what happens to the level 2 ramp;

I believe it would be feasible with 3 spaces but then your highway will starting to look a little weird with such a big gap between the lanes. But I'm working on a completely different solution instead that won't require you to move any of your highway lanes, think "turbine".

[TakemeThere 5,833]

Went with an entirely different design that emphasized compactness, as per usual for me .

You won't need to change the placement of any of the highway lanes but there is one significant change your going to have to make for this or practically any other design to work within the allot space you have - you'll have to use level 3 RHW.

You can make the ramps level 3 but then lose the ability to use flexfly ramps so it makes the most sense to elevate one of the main highways, in this case the SH-400.One you do that you can run the ramps for all directions between the two highways. It can be made very compact by using flexflys and high transitions.
From there the key to making it work is using starter pieces. Level 1 & 2 single lane RHW in the red circled areas;

Spoiler

 

And level 3 three lane RHW in the blue circled areas.

 

Then you can go about placing the height transition, connecting the lanes and the ramps(best in that order) and this is the end result;

Not the most elegant solution(that can be improved upon) but highly compact nonetheless


The capacity can also be increased by change out the single lane flex flys for two lanes ones and some other minor changes.

[Tarkus 6,932]

Wow . . . this is some really great stuff here.

1 hour ago, Takingyouthere said:

You can make the ramps level 3 but then lose the ability to use flexfly ramps so it makes the most sense to elevate one of the main highways, in this case the SH-400.

The Project 57-Mark IV effort I mentioned over in the NAM: Requests thread the other day does add L3 and L4 FLEXFly into the equation.  The actual FLEXFly bits for those networks have been done since NAM 33 (all the new FLEXFly setups were done in one go), but the rest of the L3 and L4 network connectivity was in such rough shape that we disabled them until there was a substantial enough improvement for their availability to make sense.

Speaking of FLEXFly and such, did actually squeeze in some quality time just playing the game again . . . and did this (which you'll see more of if/when I can actually get Tarkusian Cities going again).  It's basically just a compact T-interchange, with some surface connections very nearby.

-Tarkus

[Sydney Claridge 106]

4 hours ago, Takingyouthere said:

Went with an entirely different design that emphasized compactness, as per usual for me .

You won't need to change the placement of any of the highway lanes but there is one significant change your going to have to make for this or practically any other design to work within the allot space you have - you'll have to use level 3 RHW.

You can make the ramps level 3 but then lose the ability to use flexfly ramps so it makes the most sense to elevate one of the main highways, in this case the SH-400.

One you do that you can run the ramps for all directions between the two highways. It can be made very compact by using flexflys and high transitions.
From there the key to making it work is using starter pieces. Level 1 & 2 single lane RHW in the red circled areas;

And level 3 three lane RHW in the blue circled areas.

Then you can go about placing the height transition, connecting the lanes and the ramps(best in that order) and this is the end result;

Not the most elegant solution(that can be improved upon) but highly compact nonetheless


The capacity can also be increased by change out the single lane flex flys for two lanes ones and some other minor changes.

I'm trying to do this right now; is there a certain order in which I need to place the FlexFly pieces and starter pieces?  I'm trying this with the spacing you used and it isn't working (I can't place the FlexFly pieces) and I am on level terrain.  I'm on the latest NAM (Sept 2017 release); are you happening to be using a developer/beta version by chance?

[TakemeThere 5,833]

9 hours ago, Tarkus said:

The Project 57-Mark IV effort I mentioned over in the NAM: Requests thread the other day does add L3 and L4 FLEXFly into the equation.

Brilliant! That opens up so many possibilities, will be great to have off ramps at level 3 & 4 rather than the main highway.
 

5 hours ago, Houston_Fan said:

I'm trying to do this right now; is there a certain order in which I need to place the FlexFly pieces and starter pieces?  I'm trying this with the spacing you used and it isn't working (I can't place the FlexFly pieces) and I am on level terrain.  I'm on the latest NAM (Sept 2017 release); are you happening to be using a developer/beta version by chance?

In most cases you need to place the starter pieces first but there's a few tricks I employed to reduce the size of the interchange by one or two pieces one of those tricks requires the placement of flex height pieces first but let's just throw that out the window and simplify things.

I built an expanded capacity version late last night(which will need to be slightly bigger by default in any case). I'm going to reverse engineer it so that it'll be easier to duplicate. 

 

[TakemeThere 5,833]

@Houston_Fan Here we go, I reverse engineered it and then rebuilt it piece by piece. This will be much easier for anyone to follow and rebuild. This is a higher capacity build out with every ramp 2 lanes, however you can change out any of the ramps to be single laned instead by replacing the corresponding 2 lane starter pieces with single lane ones.

Step 1 - add the following 34(!) starter pieces in the exact same place


Step 2 - add these 6 flex height pieces


Step 3 - added these 8 flexfly pieces. They have to be plopped in the exact spot and height level as shown before, but if you make a mistake don't demolish the pieces, instead use the RHW disconnector to remove it.
after plopping them (note - for anyone not too familiar with them NAM, you can't plop them all at once like in the image you have to place them one at a time, I just photoshopped it into one image instead of having 8 seperate images). 


Step 4 - The fun part, connect everything! IT doesn't matter which order you do it in, the starter pieces make everything inherently stable so it'll turnout just like this.


Step 5 - Once you have the core built the rest is relatively easy, from here you can expand outward and all the other lanes, ramps, transition and flex fly pieces


The end result: A high capacity 4-level compact turbine.
A heavy duty workforce(total of 64 entrance lanes(18x2, 14x2) that works with the exact lane setup you have in place. 

[Sydney Claridge 106]

On 2/18/2019 at 2:33 PM, Takingyouthere said:

@Houston_Fan Here we go, I reverse engineered it and then rebuilt it piece by piece. This will be much easier for anyone to follow and rebuild. This is a higher capacity build out with every ramp 2 lanes, however you can change out any of the ramps to be single laned instead by replacing the corresponding 2 lane starter pieces with single lane ones.

Step 1 - add the following 34(!) starter pieces in the exact same place


Step 2 - add these 6 flex height pieces


Step 3 - added these 8 flexfly pieces. They have to be plopped in the exact spot and height level as shown before, but if you make a mistake don't demolish the pieces, instead use the RHW disconnector to remove it.
after plopping them (note - for anyone not too familiar with them NAM, you can't plop them all at once like in the image you have to place them one at a time, I just photoshopped it into one image instead of having 8 seperate images). 


Step 4 - The fun part, connect everything! IT doesn't matter which order you do it in, the starter pieces make everything inherently stable so it'll turnout just like this.


Step 5 - Once you have the core built the rest is relatively easy, from here you can expand outward and all the other lanes, ramps, transition and flex fly pieces


The end result: A high capacity 4-level compact turbine. 
Not the most elegant of designs but definitely a heavy duty workforce with a total of 64 entrance lanes(18x2, 14x2)

Great tutorial!  I was able to complete this interchange (well, a variation anyways) with 2 of the left-turning connectors being single lane, and the other 2 left-turning connectors having 2 lanes.  I'll post it as soon as a get a chance (and I was able to keep the "transfer" [interwoven ramps] between the mainlanes and the frontage roads that were between the interchange and the city border!).

[Metalhead123 260]

  

Behold my latest creation

[TakemeThere 5,833]

On 2019-02-19 at 7:04 PM, Houston_Fan said:

Great tutorial!  I was able to complete this interchange (well, a variation anyways) with 2 of the left-turning connectors being single lane, and the other 2 left-turning connectors having 2 lanes.  I'll post it as soon as a get a chance (and I was able to keep the "transfer" [interwoven ramps] between the mainlanes and the frontage roads that were between the interchange and the city border!).

Thanks, glad to hear it worked out this time. I didn't attempt to include the transfer ramps but I figured there should be enough space for them.

When your all done post up your completely finished version of it. It'll be cool to see how it looks with the frontage roads, transfers and finishing touches in place.