Gothic
A high-speed ‘diverging’ gothic interchange with overlapping roadways. Unique in having left-hand drive going on right in the middle of it all! Note that the second-to-last and last screenshots show my suggestion on how to use NoPillars’ ‘ground construction’ mode to place some really nice embankments throughout the interchange.
Size: 150×150 cells laterally , 42 cells across the diagonal
Base cost: 96200 (woof!)
Upkeep: 1118 p/w
Max height: 12 meters
Right-hand drive
Built with:
Precision Engineering
NoPillars
Fine Road Heights Mod
Usable without mods!
Part of my real life-sized interchange collection.
Check out the guide I created on making these kinds of real life-sized interchanges.
Some how this interchanges is both my smallest and my cheapest one yet, beating out the cloverleaf for length and cost, and even the 5-level stack for width! Bottom line: this is a very efficient interchange in-game. If only those left-hand exits and merges weren’t such a big problem in real life!
Maximum height is 12 meters so that the mainline roadways can cross over each other within reasonable distance. As a result, four of the direct connectors are elevated while the other four stay at ground level. Overall, the constant switching between ground-level and sloping roadways, means that this interchange has got a certain ‘bumpiness’ to it. Not as a function of its design in particular, but because neither Cities: Skylines itself nor NoPillars have a great grasp on ‘vertical alignment’.
Speed-wise this interchange work pretty well: the mainline diverging roadways come in at just under 100 km/h (12×12 cell 19°-angled curves), the right-hand turns can be driven on at around 70 km/h (13×24 cell 45° transition curves), and only the left-hand direct connectors are substantially slower, with 6×10 25° transition curves providing for a 60 km/h design speed. Sufficient de- and accelerating length is provided for though.
All in all I feel a bit conflicted about this interchange. Within Cities: Skylines’ gameplay constraints it’s probably my best yet, since it’s the cheapest and smallest I’ve made so far while preserving design speeds and overall freeway geometry. It looks pretty good as well, especially if you add the suggested embankments through the use of NoPillars’ ‘ground construction’ mode (CTRL + Right, upgrade roadways to one-way roads first, re-upgrade them back to Highways or Highway Ramps).
On the other hand, these diverging ‘gothic’ designs have proven to be unsafe in real life, since left-hand entries and exits to the mainline freeways just aren’t very good ideas. Sightlines are a bit problematic as well – when driving on it, it’s hard to see what you can expect from your merges in advance with this layout. Still, I really liked being able to add this type of interchange to my stable of designs, it’s been used[www.google.com] in real life in a couple of places, and adds to the variety of options with regard to interchange design!
