Monorail -> HSR ... prudent or pedantic?

[Pythias900KMB]

Salutations, everybody!!!  I am really finding my groove with the RHW and the Network Width Mods thanks to your support.  The Tuleps are not very forgiving if you make a mistake in positioning them; in order to do a good job, I am finding it necessary to put in the turning-lane puzzle pieces on all approaches, the turn lane transition puzzle pieces, the intersection puzzle piece, and the rest of the custom-overridden roadway in that order.  My prowess has picked up a lot from having to correct the mistakes I made; still ... UGH!!!

In any case, the feature presentation is that I am pondering a decision as suggested in the subject line.  I have experimented a bit with some of the hi-speed rail puzzle pieces and there is some promise of it being a solution; still, I have to work it into the master plan which is as follows:

CURRENT NETWORK ALTITUDES

Monorail + Elevated rail (+15 meters)

Avenues + roads + F&P heavy rail (at ground)

Subways + RHW (-15 meters)

There is a city where I have subways everywhere -- even under the newly constructed RHW.  I wish to bring subways to ground level for the purpose of crossing RHW but have found that elevated rail is not kind to RHW-6S; as such, I will have to avail either RHW-4S or RHW-8S under such a crossing.  Anyway, back to this.

Since ground HSR and heavy rail are both at the same altitude, it is impossible for them to cross -- and it would be really dangerous in RL because bringing either to a halt for the purpose of yielding the right of way is both difficult and impractical.

Bearing in mind that both heavy rail and GHSR are best kept at one altitude and cannot cross at grade, the altitude policy is revised thus:

NETWORK ALTITUDE POLICY (revised)

GHSR (+15 meters)

Avenues + roads + F&P heavy rail (at ground)

RHW (-15 meters)

Elevated rail + HSR (+15 meters when crossing RHW)

In order to execute this, it looks like I will have a lot of terraforming to do.  I do have a question, though:  can GHSR and HSR be made to turn corners like I can with monorail?

[mgb204]

I find as it has options for both ground and 15m (L2) heights, HSR is much more useable than Monorail/BTM. How are you building HSR? You make it sound like you are plopping lots of the starter pieces together? Just to be clear, plop a single starter, then use the monorail tool to drag HSR, much like SAM, RHW or NWM. Curves are of course possible as you would expect.

[APSMS]

I'm really confused.
Are you referring to the in-game subway network, because that goes under everything, and occupies the subterranean layer of the game (no relationship to typical terrain elevations. As such, a subway can pass effortlessly under a sunken highway, and in fact IRL will do so. The Boston T is one example of this happening; The EMUs used by most subway/light rail systems are light enough and powerful enough to handle slopes much steeper than typical heavy rail cars.

If you have a slope mod (you should, at least, try it out), then it would be most realistic to have GHSR elevate itself to cross over ground Heavy Rail, as the extra speed of the Bullet Trains give them better height climbing ability (this was discovered by both TGV and Bullet Train/Shinkansen engineers). Use EHSR to cross the rail network.

An at-grade crossing (level junction) between HSR and standard, slow rail, would be feasible IRL via timetables (no one stops trains at the crossing except on unfrequented branch lines; they wait in sidings miles before the crossing if there is a conflict), except that the speed limit across the level junction would be extremely reduced due to safety concerns, limiting the benefit of the HSR line.

[Pythias900KMB]

Okay, guys ... I paid heed to your counsel and worked with the HSR some more ... and found something rather troubling (points to the attached screen capture)

As you can see, HSR is not kind to RHW overridden into MIS, 4S, 6S, 8S, and 10S.  What kind of redress should I effect?

[mgb204]

Well that setup is quite illogical.

Put a space between each of the RHW networks, then you will find it works better. Trying to use so many different networks compacted together like that will cause the overrides to fail.

[Pythias900KMB]

The attached screen capture is one of the many HSR viaducts that will have to be built across the RHW; as you can clearly see, there is part of it where I succeeded -- and part of it where I am having trouble.  The eastern on-slope refuses to stay flat as one piece so I have tried to revise that -- the fruits of which are shown in the screen capture.  I am also trying to build a T junction so that the train can turn west (coming from the north/south) along with north or south (coming from the west) ... which is not going well.

It seems like I will have to re-design the monorail system in my city to better reflect the limits of the HSR; unfortunately, I am having difficulty getting any Sims to take up residence so that I have some mad money with which to fix my mistake.  I want to save this city, guys ... please, I need your help here.

[MushyMushy]

Aside from the fact that HSR (and many other overrides, although stability for different overrides is something the NAM Team appears to be working on) will not play nice (will not work) crossing all of those networks, you're trying to cram it in too much. The height transition isn't working because of the junction being too close to the transition spot. You need to spread the networks, transitions, and junctions out more for it to work.
As for the money problem, I'd just say cheat. Years ago when I started using the NAM (when I still played SC4 as a game instead of a diorama-builder), I quickly realized a lot of the puzzle pieces and overrides and such that requires repeated bulldozing quickly gets expensive and will drain a non-cheating city's budget very quickly

[mgb204]

HSR over RHW-8S, easy, but build the HSR first and ensure the On-Slopes are those with starters.

But most of what you are attempting, simply won't work. One of the design principles of HSR was never to allow sharp turns, as fast high speed trains would simply derail if they were to encounter them. As such, the closest you can make the rail parallel to the embankment with two lines branching off is 11 tiles away:



And I've more bad news, want to run that avenue between the RHW? Not going to work, you'd need a one tile gap either side between the avenue and RHW. You could transition the RHW-8s to 6-S and use the outer lanes to achieve this (tested). Bear in mind though it's an overhanging network, so it looks weird so close to an embankment as the Hard Shoulder is in the slope. More to the point though, it's not exactly likely that an avenue would run in the middle of a highway, so perhaps you should think again about this?

So indeed, if you've been using the Maxis monorail network, you are going to need to change your approach when using HSR. If you want to make tight setups, then you are probably better off using the Bullet Train Mod or sticking with the ugly monorail.

[Pythias900KMB]

Gratitude for the sage counsel, everybody!  I have figured out the trick to convince the Monorail to stay overridden into HSR when crossing the RHW ... you see, if an HSR viaduct is built, it places support pylons every other tile.  When I run the RHW-8S underneath that viaduct in which one of the tiles is where the pylon is, the HSR reverses its override and it just looks horrible.  The technique I discovered to defeat that is to avail the RHW Disconnect Tile to delete the crossing and then place another HSR starter near the properly-overridden Monorail prior to dragging it across with the Monorail and drawing the RHW afterwards.  I have only had to do this twice with each viaduct before the HSR decides to cooperate completely on my terms.  I figured that I would share that success story with everybody.