#Unrealistic(?) Cross-Terrain roads and Grid in new hillside development

35 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

sinful sleet
#

Please read through till end. Kind of a long post

#

I left the below comment in the YT video.

Hello Phil.
I came here to say as a person born and raised for half of my lifetime in the mountains, the roads you built across the terrain lines were painful to watch. The roads won't just cut straight up the terrain like that. Those type of stratight cutting roads wont exists unless its an absolutely unavoidable reason. ( the San Fransisco example doesnt apply here as its a rigid grid that didnt account for the terrain and learnt the lesson the hard way).
In reality, the roads would be more diagonal and curvy and go with the terrain (there may be sometimes switchbacks between the long parallel roads too). A good example to show you that I can think of off my head are the roads in Vinewood hills in GTA (San Andreas and GTA V). Those roads are steep, but they dont just cut perpendicularly up the mountains.

#

End comment

#

.

#

In pictures above, I have shared road layouts of my hometown Maskeliya,. See how cutting straight through the terrain is avoided as much as possible?

(7th street is a flat spot. The other two cut throughs are short and unavoidable situations)

#

Most of the roads are going the long way working with the terrain and curving and switchbacking at places that make sense

#

One of the most extreme examples is 4th strt and 8th strt, see how they are switchbacked and very close to each other with no buildings in between? Thats two different terrain levels ( about 2 -3 floors worth of terrain)

As for the areas with softer terrain, the roads are connecting diagonally.
(See Post office road and 2nd strt intersection)

#

For the softer terrain where the hillside community is built in Van Buren, connections similar to the 2nd strt - P.office road would make more sense

#

You actually did a pretty decent job with the road layout at your hillside university which is more realistic. Iam simply asking you to replicate that road layout for the residential areas too.

Thank you for reading throught to the end. Love your work. Please Feel free to ping me with anything you might need regarding this suggestion

sinful sleet
#

Unrealistic(?) Cross-Terrain roads and Grid in new hillside development

#

If anyone wants to contradict my point, I would gladly accept them too when examples are shown ( San Fransisco is not an example as its a special case scenario).

My comments above are based on where I lived and what I saw

#

Google Eart post card if you want to look around a bit
.
.
.

toxic halo
#

I totally agree on this, but I think a more viable solution is to delete the roads going up the hill in most of the instances. The area is very low density and personally it doesn’t make sense to have so many roads. The developer would probably want to skip as many roads as possible.

sinful sleet
#

And also, of the two parallel roads, the bottom one that ended un Cul-de-sac should have probably gone up the hillside diagonally and joined up with the University network as well

#

Phil actually did a nice job with the road layout in that university

quick locust
#

Yeah the university roads really resemble realistic roads on mountainous terrain

hard spire
#

Looking down a hill, I will take you to the middle so you can really see the scope of these slopes

#

Looking back up at this particular section

image.png
#

For an example not in Duluth, this is a road in Pittsburgh. Interestingly there are some curves and switches up to this road but this one is completely straight even though it is uphill.

image.png
#

I can't show this on maps because I live far enough away from things that the Google car doesn't come down our roads, but in my town there are several segments that go straight up and down multiple hills in straight segments. There's one in particular on my drive to work that is a 1.25 mile straightaway that goes up, down, and up again with an elevation change of at least 100 feet. Even coming from the town to my house there is a hill we come down straight, followed by a maybe 5 degree turn, and then straight back up, and that is even steeper with more elevation change. So while some areas respect the topography, to claim that an area not respecting it is unrealistic is wrong because there are very many examples across the US (and I'm sure the world) that make the topography respect them.

sinful sleet
#

The roads going uphil in CWC are

  1. much more steeper than they look from above
  2. they dont have any development on them.
    .
    Kinda makes you question why those roads exist when there is no development. Such steep roads just for the sake of reducing block length is still unrealistic and very uncommon
#

.
Also, Duluth's layout is still keeping to grids, albeit multiple grid patterns. And the main high traffic high speed roads seem to be following the terrain.
.
But you dont see any local roads that are respecting the topography, and then suddenly roads connecting between them that make the topography respect them.
.
In CWC, its unclear if Phil is trying to respect the topography or not respect it at all.
.
The new development is kinda doing both with those unnecessary cross roads between two roads that are going with the terrain.

sinful sleet
#

The cross roads in CWC are mostly redundant. In reality, if the only reason was to reduce block length, there would be like one road that connect between the two parallel roads and that would be it

quick locust
#

Yeah and it’s not like they are that good for pedestrian activity cause that’s a pretty big hike and definitely not an ada compliant grade

#

I do think the diagonal roads make sense and perhaps if need be more of those could be added as they actually have a development capability

sinful sleet
#

Diagonals do make sense. They can be seen in Duluth as well