Seattle, Washington, USA (Update 19: Seattle Municipal Tower)

[Matthias King 348]

The McDonalds logo and sign were removed by the creator.

[Roadman20 601]

1 hour ago, Matthias King said:

The McDonalds logo and sign were removed by the creator.

Well, drat.  I'm still going through my understanding of Blender, so nothing to show for it yet.

Meanwhile, between the Convention Center and Mercer Street, Interstate 5 receives its final alignment through the downtown core.  It's the toughest part of Seattle to build through, earlier builds of this area was a mess until I started toying with the Move It mod.

 

Also, Lake Union is in the way... the end of I-5 is right before the Mercer Street Interchange.

[Matthias King 348]

Looking good. Move It is absolutely amazing, isn't it?

I loaded an older city today for the first time in probably a few months. I've been working on a newer one lately, but I loaded this older one and spent hours just going through it, fixing things with Move It. Or sometimes rather than fixing, making things work the way I wanted at the time but couldn't.

I'm starting to get the hang of the tools in Move It to make curves and junctions smooth.

How close are you to complete? Or if not complete with the city, how close are you to done with any particular part of town?

[Roadman20 601]

16 hours ago, Matthias King said:

Looking good. Move It is absolutely amazing, isn't it?

I loaded an older city today for the first time in probably a few months. I've been working on a newer one lately, but I loaded this older one and spent hours just going through it, fixing things with Move It. Or sometimes rather than fixing, making things work the way I wanted at the time but couldn't.

I'm starting to get the hang of the tools in Move It to make curves and junctions smooth.

How close are you to complete? Or if not complete with the city, how close are you to done with any particular part of town?

Yes, Move It is a mod that you wouldn't think to be so critical until you start using it and seeing how versatile it is.  I've spent a lot of time redoing most of the original interchanges I've made for Seattle, which has been immensely helpful to compact everything with ease.

As for completion, making Seattle is like when I have free time available thing these days.  Splitting time between studying political science and working for the military doesn't allow too much free time.  I would say that I'm like 50% done with layout, now that everything south of Downtown Seattle is laid out as satisfactory as I like it.  Been working on east of Downtown towards Lake Washington and towards State Route 520 to the north.  Probably the last area to layout and develop is really going to be Queen Anne Hill to the direct north of Downtown.

Working on hilly terrain is the norm for Seattle, so it's probably one of the more technically challenging cities to recreate accurately. Wished it wasn't so off, but it is what it is.

[Matthias King 348]

I've never been to Seattle, unless you count running around an extremely abbreviated version in Infamous Second Son.

Do you build sections and populate them with buildings first, or do the layout and move on and come back later to put in the buildings?

[Roadman20 601]

I've done a bit of both of the section build/populate method and the layout/move on method.  Most of my earlier stuff has been been the build/populate, but I've started mainly to focus on layout before development as of late.

So you can visualize what I'm talking about, here is the overview of Seattle and generalized district areas in terms of development.  I'm targeting everything within the yellow zone as my goal for full development within the build limit.  The blue lines is the major regional highway network for coming into and out of Seattle.  This is what I know I could possibly build as I sit near 50% of the build limit.

The only flat area of building has been the Port of Seattle, Industrial District, Georgetown/South Park, and Boeing Field corridor along the river to the south.  The other roughly flat area is Interbay which hosts a large railyard.

Everywhere else is a hill, ridge or valley.  Most of West Seattle is on a ridge.  You can see the four other 'hill' sections, although Downtown is really part of the Capitol Hill/First Hill slope.

I've been recently working the I-5 alignment between I-90 and State Route 520 to prep development of Madrona, Madison Park/Monlake, and Capitol Hill.  This should in turn help with finishing when I shift west on Lake Union, the northern part of Downtown, and Queen Anne Hill.

 

[Roadman20 601]

I usually don't do video work because some areas of the city is completely crap tier for FPS, but here is something show for general traffic flow for C:SL traffic AI to navigate.  The city is at 100k cims and about 9,000 active vehicles plying the roadways.

I've long avoided the north end of the city due to terrain difficulties that I had a hard time dealing with until recently.  This will probably be the only video of the city for the foreseeable future.

[Matthias King 348]

On ‎11‎/‎14‎/‎2016 at 7:52 PM, Roadman20 said:

I've done a bit of both of the section build/populate method and the layout/move on method.  Most of my earlier stuff has been been the build/populate, but I've started mainly to focus on layout before development as of late.

So you can visualize what I'm talking about, here is the overview of Seattle and generalized district areas in terms of development.  I'm targeting everything within the yellow zone as my goal for full development within the build limit.  The blue lines is the major regional highway network for coming into and out of Seattle.  This is what I know I could possibly build as I sit near 50% of the build limit.

The only flat area of building has been the Port of Seattle, Industrial District, Georgetown/South Park, and Boeing Field corridor along the river to the south.  The other roughly flat area is Interbay which hosts a large railyard.

Everywhere else is a hill, ridge or valley.  Most of West Seattle is on a ridge.  You can see the four other 'hill' sections, although Downtown is really part of the Capitol Hill/First Hill slope.

I've been recently working the I-5 alignment between I-90 and State Route 520 to prep development of Madrona, Madison Park/Monlake, and Capitol Hill.  This should in turn help with finishing when I shift west on Lake Union, the northern part of Downtown, and Queen Anne Hill.

 

That's awesome. And wow, that must be incredibly daunting for you to look at.

On a side note, is the University of Washington really that big?

[Roadman20 601]

8 hours ago, Matthias King said:

That's awesome. And wow, that must be incredibly daunting for you to look at.

On a side note, is the University of Washington really that big?

The actual University of Washington campus is probably a third of that block, the rest is mainly the University District neighborhood bordering Interstate 5.

I'm trying to get the I-5 realignment finished before the DLC comes out on the 29th.

[Matthias King 348]

Ah, that makes sense. I was going to say, that's a ginormous campus.

I've been putting off playing until after the DLC too, once everything settles down and the mods all get updated.

[Roadman20 601]

One of the last major interchanges dating back from the vanilla era of C:SL Seattle finally gets replaced as I've continued work north towards the Ship Canal bridge.

As Natural Disasters DLC will most likely ground further efforts for a few days, I've gone through some historical archives on the construction of Interstate 5 through Seattle.  Yes, a in the era pre-dating the Interstate Highway System. 

Construction of the Pine Street-Boren Aveune overpass in 1965

Elevated section of Interstate 5 under construction in 1962 along the eastern shore of Lake Union 

Interstate 5 construction at Seventh Aveune and James Street in 1963 near the future I-90 interchange

Construction of Interstate 5 looking towards the future I-5/I-90 interchange in 1965.  The Pacific Tower in the background.

Interstate 5 looking north toward the future SR 520 interchange and Ship Canal bridge

View from Beacon Hill looking north towards the future I-90 interchange

Same location a few years later.

[Roadman20 601]

When certain features are not available in Cities:Skylines, you have to improvise.  This is going to be the future of the "Seattle Monorail" by using Metro Overhaul Mod.  The street alignment below is an accurate reflection of what you would experience in Seattle if you visited it.  I thought about going with a two-lane one-way street with a one-cell one-way street paralleling each other, but then I figured, "Why not a four-lane one-way street and use Traffic President to close all traffic on third lane?"  Thus, this challenge was resolved.

Sidenote: I've grown to dislike building and rebuilding the downtown's three grids and trying to line up streets on both side of Interstate 5 has been a huge pain.

[whiteshark365 563]

So much history and realism in this journal. I've so far only got through a page and a half. Incredible work, takes me hours to make just one block in my city, couldn't imagine the time it has taken you on this to recreate an entire city on this scale.

Still so much more to read and look forward to.

[realdeal350 33]

Wow, your adaptation of Seattle is really, really mind blowing. Good job man!

Also, I live in Melbourne. I hope you enjoyed your stay here

[Roadman20 601]

After a few attempts of trying to align the various grids of Seattle, I've finally settled on measurements close enough to the real layout.  Should be developing everything east of the CBD shortly.  Still need to work on terrain refinement and the curvy roads that currently absent from the layout.

As for zoning blocks, I'm just below 40,000.

[realdeal350 33]

Looks very cool and realistic 

[Matthias King 348]

That's a lotta blocks.

There's a ton of work here. I'm glad to see you're still on it.

[hbn 244]

The scale of that!

Good work there Roadman. Probably hard to see from such far out but it looks like American cities are too reliant on interstates and freeways to get people to the centre. There are no obvious urban routes to the suburbs.

[Matthias King 348]

5 hours ago, hbn said:

The scale of that!

Good work there Roadman. Probably hard to see from such far out but it looks like American cities are too reliant on interstates and freeways to get people to the centre. There are no obvious urban routes to the suburbs.

That's true to some degree, but regarding the city where I live, most everything is still reachable via main thoroughfares. You can take the freeways and interstates, but you don't have to. They're only a bit faster, both in posted speed, and cutting through more as the crow flies than on the grid, but you can still get everywhere you need without them.

[Roadman20 601]

On 1/14/2017 at 5:16 PM, hbn said:

The scale of that!

Good work there Roadman. Probably hard to see from such far out but it looks like American cities are too reliant on interstates and freeways to get people to the centre. There are no obvious urban routes to the suburbs.

Yeah, that is problem with Seattle when it comes to transportation, it smacks up against the very geography it's built on.  Over the years of Seattle's development, city engineers have taken liberty to "manhandle" the geography of the city to it's benefit.  One of these projects was the construction of the Lake Washington Ship Canal between 1911 to 1934 by the US Corps of Engineers.  The US Navy was interested in building a major naval shipyard on Lake Washington, but delays in planning lead to the US Navy build the shipyard in Bremerton, Washington, west across Puget Sound.

So the northern approach of the city has six cross-water approaches; however, two of these approaches are high enough to not be drawbridges, which is the SR 99/Aurora Ave Bridge and the Interstate 5 Ship Canal Bridge.

Modifying the geography has been forever linked to the development of Seattle, through the Regrades and the Lake Washington Ship Canal

Ballard (15th Ave) Bridge, the second bascule bridge to open when the ship canal was finished in 1917.

Fremont Ave Bridge, the first bascule bridge opened when the Lake Washington Ship Canal opened in 1917.  It has the lowest vessel clearance of 30 feet (9.1 m) out of all the LWSC bascule bridges.  It opens an average of 35 times a day, the most frequently opened drawbridge in the United States.

University Bridge, opened in 1919.

Montlake Bridge, the last of the ship canal bridges to open in 1925.

Aurora Bridge was the first bridge over the ship canal to be built with enough clearance to not require a drawbridge, completed in 1932.  This was the last link to completing the Pacific Highway, US Highway 99. US Route 99 was the main US West Coast highway route before Interstate 5 was built.  It's a cantilever and truss bridge combination, there's a 150 ft (46 m) truss connection between the two cantilevers.  It sits 167 ft (51 m) above the ground.

Then the Interstate 5 double-decked truss bridge completed in 1962.

As you can see, water is a big challenge to Seattle and it's engineers since it presents the city with a host of natural choke points.  Probably one of the biggest challenges has been bridging Lake Washington since the average depth of the lake is 108 ft (33m) deep which makes a more conventional bridge type or causeway bridge impossible to build financially.  It's why Highway 520 and Interstate 90 are floating bridges, and why Washington State hosts the top three floating bridges of the world.

New Highway 520 Floating Bridge in 2016 compared to the old one next to it.

[SounderBruce 173]

I signed in for the first time in a year or two to compliment your work! As a native Seattleite, it's great to see this much attention given to the city I call home.

The limited road crossings of the Ship Canal does hinder travel quite a bit, but we're slowly building bypasses deep underground: in the form of light rail tunnels. The University Link Extension to UW (from Downtown via Capitol Hill) is nearly a year old and has boosted ridership by 30,000 daily (to 69,000). Further extensions are expected to open in 2021 and 2023, with a new phase (Sound Transit 3) expected even further out into the 2040s after getting funding approved by voters last November. The chokepoints are arguably a great asset when it comes to transit ridership.

And the last image came from my camera a few months ago! If you ever need some reference material, I'd be glad to go and fetch some for you.

[Roadman20 601]

On 1/21/2017 at 8:51 AM, SounderBruce said:

I signed in for the first time in a year or two to compliment your work! As a native Seattleite, it's great to see this much attention given to the city I call home.

The limited road crossings of the Ship Canal does hinder travel quite a bit, but we're slowly building bypasses deep underground: in the form of light rail tunnels. The University Link Extension to UW (from Downtown via Capitol Hill) is nearly a year old and has boosted ridership by 30,000 daily (to 69,000). Further extensions are expected to open in 2021 and 2023, with a new phase (Sound Transit 3) expected even further out into the 2040s after getting funding approved by voters last November. The chokepoints are arguably a great asset when it comes to transit ridership.

And the last image came from my camera a few months ago! If you ever need some reference material, I'd be glad to go and fetch some for you.

Yeah, I lived about 90 minutes north of Seattle for about 15 years, so I followed Seattle events all the time.  I still do, but not as much these days.

Where I use to live is not in the Sound Transit taxing district, but I disagree with parts of ST3 planning, especially their plan on the future Ballard line if they don't tunnel under the ship canal.  I do agree the chokepoints is great for ridership, but it's completely terrible for routing interstate commerce.  I'm glad they are pushing the infrastructure out, but the price tag of $50 billion with a timeline to reach Tacoma and Everett by 2040 is so far out in the future.  Although, after living in Europe and Japan for some years now, I think Seattle's approach to a full light rail network isn't future proof, also I've seen the proposed travel times with LRT from Everett to Seattle isn't much different than a normal commute on I-5.

Honestly, Seattle needs a denser core overall to address concerns, but also an investment in a re-routed heavy commuter rail line that is not on BNSF alignment with high-speed capabilities for a vastly improved Amtrak Cascades (160 kph to 200 kph) from Olympia to Everett/Marysville would be a better longer-term investment for intercity travel.  I envisioned BRT/trams on major east/west corridors with LRT serving major north/south corridors.

________________________________________________________________________________________________

In other news, there will not be any further work done on Seattle probably until summer because I'm away from my desktop for a very extended period of time.

 

[evan123 0]

I live in Mill Creek, which is about 20 minutes north of Seattle. However, I used to date a girl who lived in Belltown and became pretty familiar with the city as a whole. It is very beautiful there, it has it's own unique feel to it compared to other cities i've been in. Theres a nice progressive feel as well, the high rises they build are tall but look glamorous. Lots of parks and various modes of transportation. I think you're doing a great job with the map so far!!!

[Roadman20 601]

This is a mini-update, I've been off and on Cities:Skylines since the beginning of the year.  Obviously, I'm not inactive as you see in other parts of the forum, but Seattle hasn't really been worked on a lot since the beginning of 2017.  I'm going to finish up the street layout this weekend most likely, but renewed development is going to have to wait until after Poland in July.

Right now, I'm working on an exclusively on a roads only save of Seattle that has been a test on figuring out how bad the scaling 1:1 is for recreation.  After figuring how much fudging I had to do, I stopped working on the built up Seattle saves to correct the street layout to maintain accuracy although I'm no longer to scale everywhere.  This overview is of last week.

 

Also very recently, testing @Lost_Gecko's retaining walls which is going to part of my next generation land quay replacement in spots.

[Lost Gecko 481]

Very impressive stuff as usual! If the props pass the testing good luck with using them, as it's quite tedious on such a massive scale...

[Matthias King 348]

I concur, very impressive. I wish you the best of luck getting it the way you want it. It's hard enough getting a city the way you want it, but making it accurate to the real-life city is another level.

[Matthias King 348]

Double post. Please delete.

[hbn 244]

Hoping those adjustments work. That grid and sprawl! Hope the plop placing works. I've used piers but they can be a bit inflexible to use. Those walls look good if not a bit jagged though.

[Roadman20 601]

This particular intersection is a perfect test bed to test various applications of those walls.  These will see large scale use in the build.

Probably the most useful the walls will be useful for will be in covering flyovers and sunken road portions that are extremely close to other roads seen in the first two pictures to give that illusion of a "concrete wall filled with earth behind it".  

 

In this picture, besides the flyover ramp being covered, the other two applications will be a vanilla quay replacement although the jagged edges is the downside of using them.  The second application is using it as a retaining wall plus a sound wall.  

In this Google Street View, roughly the same area on the residential street.  On the other side of the sound wall, Interstate 5 is sunken down but slowly grades upward.

I've tried both quays and this design for solving tight quarters like this and accepted this design as slightly superior.  Quays on land will still be used, but replacing them in a lot spots will occur.

 

[Roadman20 601]

Project Lid: Interstate 5 Freeway Park

Meanwhile, turning former tunnels into a whole new lid concept for a known park over a freeway.  It's not exactly how the real Freeway Park is, but it is the concept what counts.