mltsandwich

Originally posted by: ceoltoir Thanks, mitsandwich. The residential section in question IS close to a corner. Would it matter that the sims have to drive through the indistrial zone of their own city to get to the neighbor city?quote> It could if there were no appropriate jobs available in that industrial sector.

That's sometimes due to the commuter loop bug. If a city connection is closer to the residential area than the jobs within the city, the Sims will go to the nearby city. Once in the city2, if there is another city connection that is closer than the jobs within city2, they will take that connection, etc. Some of the common workarounds to the bug are to avoid placing residential areas near the edges of the map, especially not in corners. Place intercity connections near the center of the maps. Place work zones close to intercity connections.

Originally posted by: SC4BOY I'm sorry but this simply isn't true.. prime example is here in Ohio among Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati.. a total population of about 5 million spread over 250 miles.. not even close to enough for this "pipe dream".. quote> I do think that plan that ODOT has to build 70 mph lines (and call them "high speed") is a waste. Conventional rail won't see high enough usage because it doesn't have any clear-cut advantage. Planes are far faster. Cars are faster and cheaper. HSR could work, however, as it does have some advantages over cars and planes in the 50-500 mile range. At those distances HSR beats cars in travel time; though cars would remain cheaper except in those areas with high tolls and parking fees. HSR beats planes in both travel time and cost. Plus HSR has the added amenities of cell phone usage, laptop plugins and WiFi access. The plans for actual HSR in Ohio would add the 3C corridor as an extension to open additional routes rather than as a primary starter line. In that case, the traffic volume would not be limited to those going between Cincinati and Cleveland, but also those going between Indy and Pittsburgh or Columbus and Detroit, etc. Originally posted by: SC4BOY Even if they manages to get every single non-freight passenger who uses that route from start/finish, they still would lose money.. for pete's sake..they lose money in NYC.. how much more dense can you get? And to tax every single man/woman/child in the state on the order of $10 per year for this? I mean really.... But we aren't unique.. show me ONE route in the US that DOES pay for itself for OPERATING COST alone.. not to mention the $3.5 million a mile construction costs? quote> Highways and airports operate in the red also. They're subsidized because of the added benefits that don't directly affect the revenue stream of the highway/airport: increased sales tax revenue to communities connected to the network; cheaper and faster transport of goods for consumers, transport of troops and equipment, etc. An HSR network adds some benefits beyond the bottom line. It opens up an additional option for traverlers and has some actual advantages over the alternatives for mid ranges. It will also help alleviate the strain on highways and airways. The Acela (which is the closest thing we have to HSR in this country) operates a profit. It also demonstrates that Americans are willing to actually use HSR as the traffic share of trains between NYC and Boston jumped 20 points since the Acela line was opened.

A national network could potentially happen by virtue of linked corridors. eg. You could travel from Denver to NYC not because they built a line intended to link the two cities, but because there is a chain of links through KC, St Louis, Indy, Columbus, Pittsburgh, & Philly.

I would recommend getting the NAM mod. It includes pedestrian-only streets allowing you to build a filtered permeability transport network. It will also let you build tram lines. There's another mod that I can't remember the name of off hand that you will want to increase pedestrian traffic. By default, the game engine will have the population prefer cars for any distance over ~100 meters. The mod will extend the walking radius and increase walking speeds to simulate bikes. I'll see if I can find the name for you. You may also be interested in reading about an NU based city another member created: https://www.simtropolis.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=36&threadid=57406

Originally posted by: SC4BOY HSR is an extreme niche element of transportation in the US market... even a casual review of the facts of both past, present and planned programs reveal them to be huge failures. Until the government decides to make cars either illegal or VERY expensive to either buy or operate, rail will never come back as a significant element of the US transportation program. Let it not be forgotten that the US had absolutely the best rail .. both suburban and "high rail" in the world.. we simply moved on past that. If the people of the US feel that they should place a "surcharge" on each and every American, regardless of their access, use, or benefit of the rail travel, it will always be doomed to failure. The reason we used to have the best in the world is that it MADE MONEY for the operators!!! (a strange concept, I know) Now it only makes money for a few wealthy contractors with good government ties and a few labor unions. quote> While I tend to agree that there shouldn't be huge expenditures of money building public transport nobody would use, the current plans have HSR in very specific corridors where expected usage would be high. Automobile commute times in these areas are high due to congestion. Projections have HSR door-to-door travel time beating planes and cars. Ticket costs would beat planes almost always and would even be cheaper than cars in many instances due to the tolls and parking fees prevelent in these areas. A full, nationwide network certainly wouldn't work in the near future, but these narrowly focused lines show a lot of promise.

Originally posted by: Retep Molinari mltsandwich: A plan to manage it? Can you post a link? quote> That second article I posted has links to their plan at the bottom, split into five parts. They're about 1000 pages in total.

The $8 billion is just the Federal allotment to the project. The total cost would be north of $150 billion. Originally posted by: deion30296 And who would operate these high speed lines? Crappy Amtrak?quote> The FRA requested bids and France's SNCF (which recently set the world train speed record at 357 mph) is the only company that has submitted any serious plan. http://dvice.com/archives/2009/09/big-plans-for-2.php http://www.thetransportpolitic.com/2009/09/19/breaking-sncf-proposes-development-of-high-speed-rail-in-midwest-texas-florida-and-california-corridors/

Originally posted by: pepsi38 With the right signage, I think this is pretty sweet. It does not look like it will remove the need for traffic lights but it does eliminate turn lanes at the lights and turning through and across traffic. I have seen more confusing and disorienting interchanges so I feel like people should be able to handle this.quote> If you check some of the videos, you'll see that the use of blinders makes it so that you can barely tell that you're driving on the left side of the road. You won't see traffic flowing in the opposite direction to your right.

Another vote for the Ryugyong Hotel. While many of the building posted here were selected for their aesthetics (or lack thereof), the Ryugyong Hotel is a disaster on all fronts. It's ugly, poorly constructed, cost way too much and didn't fill any need in the first place. Jealous with South Korea being chosen to host the '88 Olympics, North Korea began construction on the hotel in '87 to prove that they could compete on a global scale. KP then dumped 2% of their GDP on this monstrousity before they abondaned it in '92. Their government regularly airbrushes all official photos of the city to make the building less of an eyesore. Many specialists say that the materials and workmanship were so poor, that building cannot be safely occupied even if it is ever completed. Then there's the question of why you would even need a 3000 room hotel in North Korea.