Colorado Discussion Thread

[CraptasticJack]

The Coors plant looks awesome! Would be awesome to be able to do some loads out of it!

[flight50]

Agreed. I did a bit of digging and all along that stretch of I-70 is MillerCoors territory. Getting 2-3 buildings in but only one as deliverable would be nice. As the worlds largest, I am sure SCS won't miss out on that one. It will be cool to see what kind of name they come up with. If they can get Boeing in with as crammed as Washington is with goodies, this Coors will be a piece of cake. We jut have to have enough cargo that relates to that type of establishment. I think its feasible with at least a dozen cargoes that can come in and about half a dozen cargoes that can come out.

[alecwarper]

@flight50
Saw someone had replied to you on the SCS blog about Denver's REALLY stressful/bad traffic, and I figured I might as well explain why its so bad as a local.
So here's a map I just threw together of Denver's roads which shows Denver's highway network.
Blue roads are definitely highways with no stop lights, and essentially built to Interstate standards
Green are tolls, so lots of people avoid them
Red SOMETIMES act as highways, but have lots of stop lights and intersections. They essentially act as funnels to the Interstates.

[ external image ]

now compare this to a city like Dallas, or literally any city east of the Mississippi, and the differences are obvious. The ring roads are only on the VERY edge (and not even fully looped), so their purpose to act as bypass traffic is essentially defeated because they're some of the only toll roads, so people don't really use them much, so people either use local roads, or just go onto the interstates.

I25 sees TONS of traffic. Basically the way the road network is constructed, if you wanna go anywhere you have to get on I25. And I25 is as wide as it can realistically be already, and still sees huge traffic jams. They built a train line along I25 south of Denver to try to help ease traffic, but its still horrendous, and now people are just packed like sardines on the trains.

Also tons of the existing infrastructure is REALLY old. In downtown Denver, driving along I-25, they still use mostly original bridges, in the part of the highway that sees by FAR the most traffic, so they're really falling apart, and just not designed for 2020.

This all boils down to Denver NOT being built to support the population it does now. More and more people have to live further and further away to go to work, so traffic just gets worse and worse.
Heck, Colorado Springs is basically just a commuter suburb of Denver now. When you see a place like THIS, https://goo.gl/maps/Kc7yzdbjVpWHDJy56 you wouldn't expect to see a massive traffic jam EVERY day, so you'd just built a standard 4 lane interstate. Flash forward to now, and that 4 lane interstate in rural nowhere is causing HUGE headaches, and they're trying desperately to expand the highway, as more and more people keep flooding in making things even worse.

So long story short, Denver has REALLY bad traffic issues, because Denver's road network funnels people into only one or two large interstates, and people have to travel further and further distances to get to work, so I25 and to a lesser extent I70 are just getting worse and worse.



sidenote: the large green areas on the map, Rocky Mountain Arsenal and Rocky Flats are not just big nature reserves in Denver for no reason. They're old nuclear/chemical weapon sites, and are so contaminated its impossible for any person to live there. They aren't just room for potential expansion, they're our reminder that some stuff messes up the earth permanently, and you just loose large parts of your city because of it. Denver has a really dark history of manufacturing horrible weapons, and we have the scars to prove it.

[SmokeyWolf]

@alecwarper 470 isn't that expensive to run. Cheaper than running to downtown to get on 76 or 25 north.

[fra_ba]

I hope 470 be included in the dlc, it will be the first toll road in ATS world. Also seems it is the straightest way to access Denver Airport

[flight50]

I was just about to comment and say that based on @alecwarper's sketch, that means E470 is out. However there seems to be tons of space East of Denver to include both Pena Blvd and E470 to the airport. The airport should really make the game because there are zero scale issues. Worse case, Denver airport gets pushed East a tad. With that said, it would be cool to have E470 connect I-70 to I-76 and I-25. It even looks like SCS could use E470 to tap into US-36 to reach Boulder, Co. With the type of money in our bank accounts, the toll could be $500 and it wouldn't hurt a bit.

[Shiva]

Denver E-470 north south very similar size to Berling ring road north/south IRL.

[Xaagon]

Colorado Springs resident here. I can confirm that a lot of people live in north Colorado Springs and work in Denver. This is mostly because you can buy a house here for a lot less money than up in Denver. The downside is that at a one-hour commute you're turning an 8 hour workday into a 10 hour workday. Years ago I lived in Fort Collins and worked in Boulder and that commute got old real fast. I can't imagine what that would be like with today's traffic.

I'm interested to see what SCS does with Denver, but afraid of what they will have to cut out. They could expand Denver at the expense of things around it (like what it appears was done with Salt Lake City). I'm kind of hoping they push Colorado Springs and Pueblo a bit south of where they realistically are so they could get a better Denver without cutting too much out of these.

[Shiva]

Xaagon, there is no passenger railway services between Colorado Springs and Denver?!
8h workday + 2 hour travel, that is or atleast was quite good.
Colorado Springs and Pueblo, they are already close to each other.
Will be interesting to see how they done.

[flight50]

@Xaagon. Your theory for getting a larger Denver could work. Imo it they have to exclude Trinidad as a mapped city. I honestly don't see it being mapped anyways. Too close to Raton. I think the I-25 cities should be Pueblo, Colorado Springs, Denver and Ft. Collins. Cheynne is a must and Ft. Collins might have to Shift slightly South which makes everything else shift South. Cheyenne to Ft. Collins is only 46.3 miles. That is reallllllly pushing it at 1:20 scale. Cheyenne might even have to get pushed a tad North. Trinidad isn't necessary imo. The devs can get a lot more space and distance between the larger (4) cities I named without Trinidad. Boulder should be mapped as its a big name city Colorado. It should get squeezed in as a small mapped city as well. But even it could get absorbed by Denver if need be. As long as the signage for Boulder and US-36 is there, we will get the impression that Boulder definitely exist. Colorado could be just as tight and dense just like Washington at the end of the day. Colorado can afford the misses that Utah had. Colorado has high expectations. I put it right after Texas as far as needing to meet expectations.

As long as the devs don't have to push any city to a Vancouver,Wa/Longview,Wa scenario, we good. The river threw things off big time as Vancouver was pushed way to far north. I think SCS should have made the Columbia river narrower and Vancouver could have been a bit further South. Its a bit too wide for a 1:20 scale map.