oroen

As my participation in ST has been more sporadic recently, I been missing a lot of great new CJ's, this being one of those. Other than the very informative presentations, the views of the region are quite picturesque. I was interested by the farm layout stuff as well, because where I live in central Pennsylvania, the farms are quite irregular, not necessary parcelled in any set manner, and often need to conform to the contours of the landscape.

mmm... mixed use indeed... I liked the small transit map; gave me an excuse to use my Magnificator 3000SE.

Yeah, the two bridges (one freeway, one surface road) is totally realistic for a city like this. The NAM's traffic files will make it a moot issue. I like the mass-grid; you should be able to create block-after-block of row homes with that setup.

I was actually in the real-life Alexandria for a bit this weekend, so I know what you mean about those classic light set-ups, especially with the straight arrow to denote no turns allowed. Also, I caught a few of the Left turn yield on ::flashing yellow:: Odd that I spent four years in the B-W metro area and had never been to Alexandria.

I've been a bit absent from ST recently, but I had to drop by to see what you've been up to. I've tried a few versions of SPUI's myself but haven't quite been satisfied with anything yet. I haven't tried it the way you've done it, but it looks pretty good, especially with the diagonal intersections for the left turns. The older signage is great too, especially with the outlined route number and the new exit tab added.

Backlit sign?? What is this, Michigan?! As long as your left turn signals don't have the word LEFT above them. The signal assembly is quite snazzy, I must say.

I like your presentation so far. Looking forward to your cultivating this into something excellent.

I like the whole thing with the abandoned right-of-way, and the little detail about the roadwork at the old crossing is a nice touch. A lot of nice details overall. The road inside the promenade could easily be closed; even an anti-new-urbanist roadgeek such as myself would support turning the entire area into a pedestrian mall.

The NAM Act... that's great. I think I still have a few pre-NAM Act interchanges around myself. Interchange design is always an indicator for me as to how long it's been since I've played a particular city tile. The details on your traffic light assemblies are always great and quite telling of the area, like the difference between the wire-span at the old exit, the mast-arm at Technology Park Dr, and the worn support at Milburn Rd, with the local artistic flair on the sign too! I see the crosswalk countdown clocks are here, as in many parts of the DC area.

SOMY's buildings are about as good as you'll get for creating refineries. And I know what you mean about not wanting to show the Henday Drive/Calgary Trail i/c just yet; I'm never entirely satisfied with my interchanges either, but at some point I run out of patience and need to go elsewhere in the region. Then much later I'll reopen that city and think, What the hell was I thinking designing this interchange this way?

Yes, development does indeed occur whether or not new highways are built. So tough for people to concede that fact.... Let's just hope that CA-118 isn't rebranded as the Ronald Reagan Fwy... (/blatant political bias) It's difficult for me add anymore superlatives to describe yoru region views. They are among the best around.

I'm glad this has been bumped. I saw this earlier and really like the layout of the region and the style of the writing but didn't comment for some reason. Keep at it, and don't let an early lack of comments get you down.

Build all segments except for VI. So I and II are both I-65/I-20 duplex, III is I-65, and IV and V is a 3di of I-65 (maybe I-265 or something), better suited for thru-traffic with fewer interchanges than I-65.

I see that you've decided to go with making your own signs rather than using Kurumi's signmaker; that adds a nice element of uniqueness. I've tried it, but I'm never pleased with how mine end up looking. Eeek! is always my exact real-world reaction to seeing Clearview, especially the way PennDOT does it for some reason. I agree with Mikeaut that using the plazas as retaining walls doesn't really look too good; jeroni's walls are good, but I also like some of the walls made by the Japanese BATter NOB, which you can find about half-way down on this page . Most of the time now I just settle with sloping the land around the interchange and only using retaining walls where absolutely necessary (i.e. where adjacent development makes sloping impractical). You may also want to try using smoncrie's hole digging lots and the NAM's on-slope puzzle pieces to get nice flat overpasses, and a good slope mod to get smooth rises. I can point you to these things if you don't know where to find them. That crossroads between SR-641, SR-611, and I-73 reminded me immediately of what I did with the Shady Grove interchange on the Southern Turnpike, where Route 6 has a T-intersection with Route 17, and continues into the Shady Grove I/C. Have you tried continuing I-73 as a highway rather than using one-way roads? Is it logistically difficult? I see that on I-73 North, the Providence Pkwy exit is tied into the I-473 interchange, which can be a bit complicating, as I found out when trying to tie in the Brunswick Pkwy exit to my 54/67/346 i/c in North Silverdale. (I find it mildly amusing that I'm pulling all these comparisons from my own CJ, innit... as if it's like a real place or something...) I always liked the trailblazer and traffic signal assemblies you've made for my CJ, and they look even better here; you're definitely honing that particular craft. Oh my goodness, I wrote WAY more than I had anticipated writing when I first started this reply.

It's always nice to see anti-road groups put in their place. Thames Brighton Airport reminds me a lot of the airports in SC3000. Something about the textures and building styles.