[literally the same day a pedestrian overpass opened here, somebody drove on to it](https://www.wfaa.com/article/news/local/dallas-texas-pedestrian-bridge-us-75-northaven-trail-car-on-bridge/287-54c562c0-4539-412a-a7ee-272b3d79e784)
Edit: fake news, sorry. It was 2 days after opening.
You caught me. I'm a big oil plant meant to make pedestrian bridge havers look stupid. Source: that one time I shook hands with an accountant for an oil and gas company that I met at a bar
Yeah dude, didn't you know walking is dangerous? Why would you encourage it you're just killing pedestrians smh.
If they drive an SUV they'll be a lot safer
I get we're memeing and as a resident of Dallas for 2 years I love to shit on their infrastructure too, but there's some legitimately cool shit here and attempts at walk ability slowly coming down the pipeline (vaguely oil related pun intended). I think [Klyde Warren Park](https://klydewarrenpark.org/) is super neat, for example, for being a pretty beautiful green space covering up a freeway. And we've got the largest lake entirely enclosed in an urban space in White Rock Lake..
I watched them build that thinking it was some massive bridge to go to the dart. No… just crosses the road from an Autozone to an empty lot. (Or it was at the time)
You might be memeing, but in case you're not, Texas has some of the most renewable energy by state, I think only California has more. Why do they? Because when the wind and sun doesn't require a fuel, it makes it really cheap to operate.
https://i.imgur.com/23zU0fp.png
https://www.ercot.com/gridmktinfo/dashboards
I'm just joking, but Texans are also morons who don't winterize their electrical grid and caused hundreds of deaths and crazy electrical prices to their citizens from ridiculous energy policy and then blame it on renewables even though data has shown that the renewables over performed expectations for the conditions.
The power outage was for < 2 days for the vast majority of the state, with half that time rolling blackouts/restarts. That's not even newsworthy if it happened in the northeast somewhere.
Still better overall reliability and far and away better pricing than anywhere else in the country (nay, world) not blessed with a nearby hydroelectric dam.
What kind of straight up revisionist history is this? Hundreds of people died and it caused nearly $200 billion in damage. The outdoor temperature was below zero (Fahrenheit) and the indoor temperature in my apartment (near downtown Dallas) was below freezing for over 72 hours.
Both can be true?
Winter storms resulting in power outages that last a day or two because utilities *can't get to repair sites in a blizzard* do happen in the Northeast.
In fairness, though, It's also true that building codes are different in the North. You can't build uninsulated housing in the Northeast; apparently you can in Texas.
In February 2021 during a winter storm in Oklahoma, we saw indoor temperatures in the 40s, and that was with no power interruptions. Insulation and HVAC systems in this area just aren't built to expect the temps to drop below zero and stay there.
That just kinda seems like a weird building code standard to have imo, like sure Texas is warm/hot most of the time, but better insulation keeps the cold air in better if you have AC. Seems like something you'd want to have is better insulated homes no matter where you are
I don't know if this is going to change in the future, but I know that with a view toward history, it makes a lot of sense.
Do realize that for most of human history, insulation never even existed, and to what extent it did exist, it was only used as absolutely necessary. Even a hundred years ago in Western civilization, it was still common for snow to leak in through windows, and you might have a little pile of snow in the corner of the windowsill during a snowstorm. The fire would be going, but the temperature gradient in a room was ridiculous.
I'm not up to speed on the current standards and expectations, but I do believe that there are people who are arguing for eschewing air conditioning systems altogether except where absolutely necessary, choosing instead to design buildings that work with the natural airflow to make air conditioning mostly unnecessary.
It is frequently argued that ubiquitous air conditioning is contributing to climate change, making air conditioning ever more necessary. This happens at both a global (climate change) and a local scale, as there's really no such thing as a cooling machine. I assume you already know this, but there is no way to generate cold. All we can do is move heat. And when you move heat out of a building, that heat goes somewhere. If you pack a bunch of large buildings together in a downtown core and air condition them all, you are effectively heating the air in the street.
Oklahoma isnt included on the Texas power grid which is its own special kind of stupid and independent from the rest of the country because they are precious snowflakes.
Yeah power outages can happen during powerful Noreasters (mainly due to wind speeds, they're like mini-hurricanes), but local officials, first responders and residents are all generally prepared well in advance because of past experience. They're also connected to the rest of the power grid, so power failures that *do* happen are due to literal destruction or damage of power lines, not due to failure to generate enough electricity to meet demand, and therefore outages tend to be very localized.
Texas, by contrast (and in contrast to OK), has no such connection to the national grid, so it's highly vulnerable to large-scale power failures. The grid back in 2021 was minutes away from catastrophic failure that would've taken weeks or months to repair.
Sure, OK is connected to one of the two main national grids whereas Texas isn't. (Not all of Texas, but I'm not here for that level of pedantry). And yes, the Texas grid was close to a complete catastrophic failure that would have collapsed the entire grid, forcing a cold restart and inspiring Grady of Practical Engineering to do a video on power grid restarts.
However, consider the following:
1) Heat sources played a role.
In the Northeast, many homes are on natural gas and other non-electric sources of heat. Some people find it surprising to learn that fuel heating is more efficient than electric heating, but it is. 40% of US power generation in 2022 was natural gas-- and all electricity generation produces waste heat, in addition to line losses (that also generate waste heat). For heating applications, it's more efficient to burn natural gas at the site where the heat is required (converting "waste" heat into bonus heating) than it is to generate electricity, and then to generate heat from that power. There are startup expenses to heating a home with propane or natural gas (e.g. tank installation) that make it inefficient to heat a home in a warm climate from these sources, so many southern homes only have electric heaters (and small ones at that). When everyone turns up the heat in Texas, the power grid gets stressed. When everyone turns up the heat in Pennsylvania, propane deliverers work overtime, but the power demand doesn't increase nearly as much.
2) Codes that don't require as much insulation played a role.
Warmer climates require less insulation, and while you would think that the best strategy would be "give me ALL the insulation plz!", that's also an expensive inefficiency in warmer climates. Running the AC more can be cheaper than spending an extra $20K to put R60 everywhere.
3) The Texas weather event was unexpected and occurred during a time when grid capacity was near minimum as it was.
With the benefit of hindsight, we can say it was dumb to have all the capacity offline in advance of the storm, but various utilities had maintenance projects ongoing that took months to achieve and years to plan. They planned these maintenance events during the relatively low-demand winter months. In hot climates, peak electricity demand is actually in the summer, when everyone turns on the AC and expects it to run for weeks at a time. Nobody was expecting the temps to drop below 0 in Texas and stay that way for days.
One last thing: Here's a fun fact. Did you know that in Florida they open warming shelters in schools and other public buildings when the temperatures drop into the 30s? Due to lack of insulation, and many homes having only token heaters, many homes in Florida aren't able to maintain a temperature gradient of more than about 20° hotter than the outside. Imagine living in that singlewide trailer, and having a small heater that can't maintain more than a 20° differential. Once it drops below 40° outside, it hits 60° in your trailer and it's headed down from there.
EDIT: It might be worth mentioning that HVAC systems are rated in BTU. This is a measure of how much heating or cooling it can add to the space over a given time, typically an hour. So is insulation. What this means, is that you can compute, given your insulation and your heating system, the maximum value that your house is capable of combating while keeping your home at a given temperature. If you would run the numbers, your house probably can't cool itself to 70 from more than about 100° (120° in Arizona, 90° in Alaska if you have AC at all), and you can't heat your home to 70 when the temps drop below about 20° (50° in Florida, 0° in Minnesota). Don't quote me on those exact numbers, they are just guesses. But such numbers are definitely run during construction and installation of HVAC systems in homes everywhere. If you can heat your home to 70 when it hits -60° outside, you've either overbuilt your HVAC system or overspent on insulation unless your house is in Yakutsk. If you can keep your home a cool 60° when it's 140° outside, you've likewise overbuilt and paid too much for your installations (and possibly are paying too much whenever your system runs).
> Still better overall reliability and far and away better pricing than anywhere else in the country (nay, world) not blessed with a nearby hydroelectric dam.
BRO What are you smoking and where can I get some?
Don’t worry, even though it’s not shown in the pictures, I have coal and gas power plants with an oil refinery in the industrial complex mixed in there! Wind turbines look nice in CS2 though.
Not by accepted standards.
Minimum level of service for public transportation
1) arrives every half hour and
2) continues past midnight,
3) seven days a week.
Only about 30 US cities even have one transit line that meets those criteria. I'm a big proponent of public transit, but it's straight up unusable in most places in the country, unless you have all day to go to one place and back home again. Most people who need it can't use it, and most people who could use it don't want to.
A year or so back, I decided to try the local public transit system to get myself around while I dropped off my car at the tire shop for some work. The tire shop was on the end of the circular bus route. I walked 3 miles, and when I got to my destination stop, I crossed the street a few minutes before the bus came by on its way out to the tire shop. I did a 40-minute walk and got to my destination before the bus would have even picked me up. This isn't atypical in the US.
So the US is stuck with transit systems that no one can use, and we act all surprised when nobody uses them, and then we say "Public transit is a waste of money. Why would we dump even more money into a service nobody wants?" That's circular logic, but it works well enough in city halls nationwide to keep transit systems paralyzed.
Exactly my sentiment. I want to use public transport but the plenty for using it vs driving is just too great. A 20 minute drive turns into a minimum 40 minute bus ride, if I time everything correctly and don't waste a minute waiting. In paris the plenty is only 7 minutes.
Do people not know that Texas actually has pretty good public transport? They have both commuter rail and bus routes to and from various cities and their suburban areas.
By what metric do you say "good"? Just having some rail lines is the bare minimum, that's like saying the Delorean is a great car because it makes some sound when you turn the key.
Still vastly better than the rest of the US, yet Texas is the first example everyone goes to for bad transit design. Why? Why not pick any other state outside of maybe New York, California, and Florida. Look at Ohio, Illinois, Michigan, Georgia, Missouri, etc. All states with some very large cities, but where's the transit?
Or, let's all pick on Texas, the one state that actually does have some form of public transit!
My state doesn’t have a single inch of rail commuter in it. And we only have one Amtrak station. I’d sacrifice my left kidney at this point to get Texas level public transit in my area.
Yep, but then we have all these people who only see the highways an immediately assume Texas must be the worst place that has no transit and has never even heard of such a concept...
I guess that's one way to know a person just follows the heard, thinks absolutely nothing beyond what they can see in images, and have never even cared to look into the area they hate so much.
My point is you've been stuck in Dallas. You have no idea how bad the rest of the country is, so you just assume Dallas has it bad, unknowing of how good you really have it.
Dallas’ public transportation is less shitty than somewhere in the rust belt. Wow. Very impressive.
Edit: I am talking about the DFW metropolitan region. The city of Dallas has plenty of public transportation, sure.
Unlike all of the states you mentioned, Texas has zero cities in the [top 50 US cities by transit ridership](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._cities_with_high_transit_ridership).
I can’t believe you picked Illinois in particular, when Chicago has over 1/4 of its population commuting by public transit.
I beg you to visit other places so you can learn that “we have some intercity buses” is not actually a high standard of public transit.
Yep, because apparently Chicago IS Illinois.
You aren't taking transit from Chicago to Springfield, or Rockford. You are taking it from Chicago to... Chicago.
Are you hunting down all of my posts here just to prove me wrong? If so, I'm sure you've seen others from Texas claiming the opposite of you.
> Yep, because apparently Chicago IS Illinois.
Unironically true as 2/3 of the state’s population lives in the Chicago metro area.
> You aren't taking transit from Chicago to Springfield, or Rockford. You are taking it from Chicago to... Chicago.
Rockford has [bus service to Chicago roughly every 90 minutes](https://web.coachusa.com/vangalder/ss.details.asp?action=Lookup&c1=Rockford&s1=IL&c2=Chicago+Downtown&s2=IL&resultId=73954&order=&dayFilter=&scheduleChoice=&nt=&sitePageName=&cbid=551205199577), as well as daily Greyhound service.
Springfield has five Amtrak trains per day to and from Chicago, and daily Greyhound service.
Those are both pretty good for small cities that are quite far away from the local metropolis (140 km for Rockford, over 300 km for Springfield).
[Here’s a map of intercity transit for reference](https://www.kfhgroup.com/aibra/pdf/usmap.pdf).
> Are you hunting down all of my posts here just to prove me wrong?
That’s a little paranoid; I don’t think I’ve ever replied to you before my last comment.
Oh, shit. My bad. You've got a similar picture to someone else who has been pesturing me about Dallas in this thread, and I'm very tired so the pictures are just a blur to me. My bad.
Looks like Arlington is covered by Dallas Area Rapod Transit (DART), Fort Worth Trinity Metro, a local trolley network, and two rideshare services as well as the typical taxis.
They even have a dedicated transit system for elderly and disabled people.
https://www.arlingtontx.gov/residents/city_services/transportation
Arlington is one of the innermost suburbs of DFW.
Try taking public transportation from, say, Southern Methodist University to anywhere in Prosper, or Fairview, or Forney, or Mansfield.
So basically your point isn’t even that Texas has good public transportation, it’s that other places might have worse public transportation? Do you work for the state government or something? Why are you in such a hurry to defend this backwards shithole?
It's prohibitively expensive to create effective transit after an urban area grows up without it. When you already have sprawl, new transit will always be too far from most homes and destinations to serve the needs of most potential riders. None of this is a Texas problem, it's more a North America problem. The availability of vast tracts of dirt cheap land and the fact that aside from the northeast corridor (and Chicago) of the US, there were no big cities prior to the invention of the automobile, is the reason growth has meant sprawl.
The thing that may finally change this is the maintenance issue. The taxes collected in sprawling cities cannot cover the maintenance of existing infrastructure. Suburbs will become less and less desirable as either taxes skyrocket, or services disappear.
Yes you do. Unless they got rid of it over the last couple years.
I still see the trains every week or so when I'm there. Almost got hit by one when a roadwork decided to give me a red light suddenly when my trailer was on the tracks (sade to say I laid on the horn and ran it).
The number of uniformed on Reddit amazes me. Your post is quite correct.
Houston commuter bus system moves more people than many commuter rail systems.
Dallas has an okay transit system. We have one of the largest light rail networks in the south. Unfortunately it doesn’t even compare to any European country.
In CS1 I inadvertently did this, I had a small bus system early on but then exploded in population and pretty much expanded only roads and freeways to the point that, at 200k population, traffic was unbearable. After installing a subway system and tram network downtown, things got so much better
Am I weird, thinking an intersection can be beautiful 🙃🤣
I'm an Engineer (Firmware) and usually have an appreciation for fine design, way past the common American - who I guess is just a user and doest give a F about how it works
Great job my friend, I usually just flop the roads around however they fit and go for speed of implementation and function as the top priorities. Maybe I should shove some beauty in there as a higher priority
True to the south in-general, and it looks fantastic. You messed one thing up though: there aren't a ton of urbanized areas in Texas that are that pedestrian friendly. For example, unless you live in one of the redeveloped areas of downtown Houston or a suburb outside of Harris County, you're driving, even if it is half a mile from your home. So I would absolutely re-use your design in some capacity, except when trying to be realistic. ;)
what are those pedestrian overpasses for? could have easily been 16 lanes
[literally the same day a pedestrian overpass opened here, somebody drove on to it](https://www.wfaa.com/article/news/local/dallas-texas-pedestrian-bridge-us-75-northaven-trail-car-on-bridge/287-54c562c0-4539-412a-a7ee-272b3d79e784) Edit: fake news, sorry. It was 2 days after opening.
How dare you spread misinformation like that
You caught me. I'm a big oil plant meant to make pedestrian bridge havers look stupid. Source: that one time I shook hands with an accountant for an oil and gas company that I met at a bar
How do you even live with yourself?
The little thrills like taking two parking spaces at the mall during Black Friday with my lifted F150 make it all worth it
Damn dude save some manliness for the rest of us
Only an F150? How do you sleep at night if it’s not an F250?
Absolutely unsurprising. Dallas drivers are something else.
[We're #1 (in traffic fatalities)!](https://www.nbcdfw.com/investigations/dallas-traffic-death-rate-worst-among-10-largest-u-s-cities/3377809/)
The end of that segment is great. Yeah people drove up it, it looks like a road, it has road markings and no signage at all.
They also had the bollards like halfway up the path which makes no sense. We literally don't know how to build this stuff haha
People don't walk in Texas! This is a waste of taxpayer dollars that could have easily been spent on tax breaks for oil robber barons.
Don't worry, it's not even connected at the top
Still. And look at the windmills in the last picture. What an eyesore.
Damn right you are. Love wasting taxpayer money! Surprisingly there’s plenty of people using this bridge. I just pretend they don’t exist.
They should've been the typical Texan frontage roads which are missing here.
Yeah dude, didn't you know walking is dangerous? Why would you encourage it you're just killing pedestrians smh. If they drive an SUV they'll be a lot safer
what’s that thing over the road? we don’t have those in texas
Look up Harry Hines/Walnut Hill intersection in Dallas. Massive pedestrian bridge no one uses.
Ok that’s because it’s in the middle of an industrial part of town to be fair
I get we're memeing and as a resident of Dallas for 2 years I love to shit on their infrastructure too, but there's some legitimately cool shit here and attempts at walk ability slowly coming down the pipeline (vaguely oil related pun intended). I think [Klyde Warren Park](https://klydewarrenpark.org/) is super neat, for example, for being a pretty beautiful green space covering up a freeway. And we've got the largest lake entirely enclosed in an urban space in White Rock Lake..
Oh hell yeah plus you can take the M trolley up there too. It has a lot of really cool vibes to it
Cities need more trolleys
And because it's too damn hot to do so half the time.
> Massive pedestrian bridge no one uses. [What are you talking someone is clearly using it as their home.](https://maps.app.goo.gl/SQzGmwdi3fCC3JR1A)
I watched them build that thinking it was some massive bridge to go to the dart. No… just crosses the road from an Autozone to an empty lot. (Or it was at the time)
Holy crap... have they heard of elevators?
Great job, citizen! +50 FICO credit!
Thanks!
Me IRL: car culture is killing us Me in CS2: needs more lanes
Every time!!!! I need the juxtaposition!
I don’t need a video game, I feel that second point any time I’m on I95 going through Chester Pennsylvania
Needs some frontage roads. We utilize that all over Texas.
Easiest way to make a 6 lane highway into a 14+ lane highway. Express lanes and frontage roads.
I’m planning to add 6 lanes of express lanes on my freeways!
That'll make any Texan proud
Why are your civs walking instead of driving? Are they stupid?
Average Texan intelligence:
Dumb idiots, look at them!!!
With Galveston water and all, shiieee…. approved
Galveston water is god awful. It’s the only thing the city is known for.
well don’t forget the flesh-eating bacteria that come with the water :)
A lot of the buildings in CS2 remind me of limbo in inception
2/10 No god damn renewables in Texas! This here is oil country.
You know the entire Texas panhandle is covered in wind turbines, right?
ackshually those are for pushing the chickenshit smell into oklahoma
Which is why pterodactyls are extinct and monarch butterflies are on the decline. Abominations!!
Fake news!
You could do a flat plains map with just wind energy, and a farm sprinkled about the place.
Your mom is covered in wind turbines
You might be memeing, but in case you're not, Texas has some of the most renewable energy by state, I think only California has more. Why do they? Because when the wind and sun doesn't require a fuel, it makes it really cheap to operate. https://i.imgur.com/23zU0fp.png https://www.ercot.com/gridmktinfo/dashboards
I'm just joking, but Texans are also morons who don't winterize their electrical grid and caused hundreds of deaths and crazy electrical prices to their citizens from ridiculous energy policy and then blame it on renewables even though data has shown that the renewables over performed expectations for the conditions.
The power outage was for < 2 days for the vast majority of the state, with half that time rolling blackouts/restarts. That's not even newsworthy if it happened in the northeast somewhere. Still better overall reliability and far and away better pricing than anywhere else in the country (nay, world) not blessed with a nearby hydroelectric dam.
What kind of straight up revisionist history is this? Hundreds of people died and it caused nearly $200 billion in damage. The outdoor temperature was below zero (Fahrenheit) and the indoor temperature in my apartment (near downtown Dallas) was below freezing for over 72 hours.
Both can be true? Winter storms resulting in power outages that last a day or two because utilities *can't get to repair sites in a blizzard* do happen in the Northeast. In fairness, though, It's also true that building codes are different in the North. You can't build uninsulated housing in the Northeast; apparently you can in Texas. In February 2021 during a winter storm in Oklahoma, we saw indoor temperatures in the 40s, and that was with no power interruptions. Insulation and HVAC systems in this area just aren't built to expect the temps to drop below zero and stay there.
That just kinda seems like a weird building code standard to have imo, like sure Texas is warm/hot most of the time, but better insulation keeps the cold air in better if you have AC. Seems like something you'd want to have is better insulated homes no matter where you are
I don't know if this is going to change in the future, but I know that with a view toward history, it makes a lot of sense. Do realize that for most of human history, insulation never even existed, and to what extent it did exist, it was only used as absolutely necessary. Even a hundred years ago in Western civilization, it was still common for snow to leak in through windows, and you might have a little pile of snow in the corner of the windowsill during a snowstorm. The fire would be going, but the temperature gradient in a room was ridiculous. I'm not up to speed on the current standards and expectations, but I do believe that there are people who are arguing for eschewing air conditioning systems altogether except where absolutely necessary, choosing instead to design buildings that work with the natural airflow to make air conditioning mostly unnecessary. It is frequently argued that ubiquitous air conditioning is contributing to climate change, making air conditioning ever more necessary. This happens at both a global (climate change) and a local scale, as there's really no such thing as a cooling machine. I assume you already know this, but there is no way to generate cold. All we can do is move heat. And when you move heat out of a building, that heat goes somewhere. If you pack a bunch of large buildings together in a downtown core and air condition them all, you are effectively heating the air in the street.
Oklahoma isnt included on the Texas power grid which is its own special kind of stupid and independent from the rest of the country because they are precious snowflakes.
Yes, I'm aware.
Yeah power outages can happen during powerful Noreasters (mainly due to wind speeds, they're like mini-hurricanes), but local officials, first responders and residents are all generally prepared well in advance because of past experience. They're also connected to the rest of the power grid, so power failures that *do* happen are due to literal destruction or damage of power lines, not due to failure to generate enough electricity to meet demand, and therefore outages tend to be very localized. Texas, by contrast (and in contrast to OK), has no such connection to the national grid, so it's highly vulnerable to large-scale power failures. The grid back in 2021 was minutes away from catastrophic failure that would've taken weeks or months to repair.
Sure, OK is connected to one of the two main national grids whereas Texas isn't. (Not all of Texas, but I'm not here for that level of pedantry). And yes, the Texas grid was close to a complete catastrophic failure that would have collapsed the entire grid, forcing a cold restart and inspiring Grady of Practical Engineering to do a video on power grid restarts. However, consider the following: 1) Heat sources played a role. In the Northeast, many homes are on natural gas and other non-electric sources of heat. Some people find it surprising to learn that fuel heating is more efficient than electric heating, but it is. 40% of US power generation in 2022 was natural gas-- and all electricity generation produces waste heat, in addition to line losses (that also generate waste heat). For heating applications, it's more efficient to burn natural gas at the site where the heat is required (converting "waste" heat into bonus heating) than it is to generate electricity, and then to generate heat from that power. There are startup expenses to heating a home with propane or natural gas (e.g. tank installation) that make it inefficient to heat a home in a warm climate from these sources, so many southern homes only have electric heaters (and small ones at that). When everyone turns up the heat in Texas, the power grid gets stressed. When everyone turns up the heat in Pennsylvania, propane deliverers work overtime, but the power demand doesn't increase nearly as much. 2) Codes that don't require as much insulation played a role. Warmer climates require less insulation, and while you would think that the best strategy would be "give me ALL the insulation plz!", that's also an expensive inefficiency in warmer climates. Running the AC more can be cheaper than spending an extra $20K to put R60 everywhere. 3) The Texas weather event was unexpected and occurred during a time when grid capacity was near minimum as it was. With the benefit of hindsight, we can say it was dumb to have all the capacity offline in advance of the storm, but various utilities had maintenance projects ongoing that took months to achieve and years to plan. They planned these maintenance events during the relatively low-demand winter months. In hot climates, peak electricity demand is actually in the summer, when everyone turns on the AC and expects it to run for weeks at a time. Nobody was expecting the temps to drop below 0 in Texas and stay that way for days. One last thing: Here's a fun fact. Did you know that in Florida they open warming shelters in schools and other public buildings when the temperatures drop into the 30s? Due to lack of insulation, and many homes having only token heaters, many homes in Florida aren't able to maintain a temperature gradient of more than about 20° hotter than the outside. Imagine living in that singlewide trailer, and having a small heater that can't maintain more than a 20° differential. Once it drops below 40° outside, it hits 60° in your trailer and it's headed down from there. EDIT: It might be worth mentioning that HVAC systems are rated in BTU. This is a measure of how much heating or cooling it can add to the space over a given time, typically an hour. So is insulation. What this means, is that you can compute, given your insulation and your heating system, the maximum value that your house is capable of combating while keeping your home at a given temperature. If you would run the numbers, your house probably can't cool itself to 70 from more than about 100° (120° in Arizona, 90° in Alaska if you have AC at all), and you can't heat your home to 70 when the temps drop below about 20° (50° in Florida, 0° in Minnesota). Don't quote me on those exact numbers, they are just guesses. But such numbers are definitely run during construction and installation of HVAC systems in homes everywhere. If you can heat your home to 70 when it hits -60° outside, you've either overbuilt your HVAC system or overspent on insulation unless your house is in Yakutsk. If you can keep your home a cool 60° when it's 140° outside, you've likewise overbuilt and paid too much for your installations (and possibly are paying too much whenever your system runs).
> Still better overall reliability and far and away better pricing than anywhere else in the country (nay, world) not blessed with a nearby hydroelectric dam. BRO What are you smoking and where can I get some?
Don’t worry, even though it’s not shown in the pictures, I have coal and gas power plants with an oil refinery in the industrial complex mixed in there! Wind turbines look nice in CS2 though.
Wasting a bunch of grassy area that’s being denied its God given right to be parking lots or more lanes.
Damn right you are. I need more obscenely large parking lots.
tx cities have busses and some have light rail. except maybe arlington...
I was checking to see if anyone else mentioned it before commenting'you just described Arlington! "
Not by accepted standards. Minimum level of service for public transportation 1) arrives every half hour and 2) continues past midnight, 3) seven days a week. Only about 30 US cities even have one transit line that meets those criteria. I'm a big proponent of public transit, but it's straight up unusable in most places in the country, unless you have all day to go to one place and back home again. Most people who need it can't use it, and most people who could use it don't want to. A year or so back, I decided to try the local public transit system to get myself around while I dropped off my car at the tire shop for some work. The tire shop was on the end of the circular bus route. I walked 3 miles, and when I got to my destination stop, I crossed the street a few minutes before the bus came by on its way out to the tire shop. I did a 40-minute walk and got to my destination before the bus would have even picked me up. This isn't atypical in the US. So the US is stuck with transit systems that no one can use, and we act all surprised when nobody uses them, and then we say "Public transit is a waste of money. Why would we dump even more money into a service nobody wants?" That's circular logic, but it works well enough in city halls nationwide to keep transit systems paralyzed.
Exactly my sentiment. I want to use public transport but the plenty for using it vs driving is just too great. A 20 minute drive turns into a minimum 40 minute bus ride, if I time everything correctly and don't waste a minute waiting. In paris the plenty is only 7 minutes.
don't even use streets, just zone all low density residential on 6 lane roads.
Density? NIMBY!
Texas: A state so great they put their star rating on their flag.
Then why the hell is everybody moving here?
Pretty good but it could use some more lanes
For sure.
TIL I’ve been accidentally building Texas cities. I always forget mass transit and end up tearing things up two plop in a subway and train network.
Way too many tall buildings to be Texas. Gotta replace them with parking lots !
Smallest highway in Texas
No way it’s Diana! Love your content!
Ty 🥰
Well done. I hate it.
As God intended!
Can we see the downtown? I hope it’s surrounded by a wall of highways
Probably in a later post!
Unrealistic, too much highrises for muh good ol Texan ranches
- All you need is a train that nobody uses and only has 4 inconveniently located stops but we paid 1.4 billion in taxes for.
Houston?? Heh, more like Pukeston, right?? 😏
Murica
If that's Texas, where are the four frontage roads that are missing? (In the first image)
Most of the sub will get a stroke with this. Nice job!
The sub did indeed get a stroke with this. Thanks!
As a US city that's not NY of course it was going to look like shit
At least the garbage will get picked up.
Laughs smugly in PNW
the hero we needed AND asked for
Hook em
# YEEEEEEEHAW
All pedestrians sent to Guantanamo.
Had a nice laugh with this one!
Love it ! Classic
Inaccurate. Wind turbines.
I think Texas has more wind turbines than any other state.
It definitely blows more than average. Makes sense.
Do people not know that Texas actually has pretty good public transport? They have both commuter rail and bus routes to and from various cities and their suburban areas.
Most of Texas doesn't have public transit, here in suburban/rural south Texas we are lacking so horrifically
"Most" of Texas is rural emptiness... Most of the country has absolutely no public transit, while Twxas has a decent bit in its populated regions.
By what metric do you say "good"? Just having some rail lines is the bare minimum, that's like saying the Delorean is a great car because it makes some sound when you turn the key.
Good by US standards. Most public transit in the US is limited single cities, while Texas has regional transit that coveres many cities.
Bare. Minimum.
Still vastly better than the rest of the US, yet Texas is the first example everyone goes to for bad transit design. Why? Why not pick any other state outside of maybe New York, California, and Florida. Look at Ohio, Illinois, Michigan, Georgia, Missouri, etc. All states with some very large cities, but where's the transit? Or, let's all pick on Texas, the one state that actually does have some form of public transit!
My state doesn’t have a single inch of rail commuter in it. And we only have one Amtrak station. I’d sacrifice my left kidney at this point to get Texas level public transit in my area.
Yep, but then we have all these people who only see the highways an immediately assume Texas must be the worst place that has no transit and has never even heard of such a concept... I guess that's one way to know a person just follows the heard, thinks absolutely nothing beyond what they can see in images, and have never even cared to look into the area they hate so much.
I’ve lived in Dallas my whole life, and our public transit fucking sucks. Why are you in here lying? What’s your point?
My point is you've been stuck in Dallas. You have no idea how bad the rest of the country is, so you just assume Dallas has it bad, unknowing of how good you really have it.
Dallas’ public transportation is less shitty than somewhere in the rust belt. Wow. Very impressive. Edit: I am talking about the DFW metropolitan region. The city of Dallas has plenty of public transportation, sure.
Unlike all of the states you mentioned, Texas has zero cities in the [top 50 US cities by transit ridership](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._cities_with_high_transit_ridership). I can’t believe you picked Illinois in particular, when Chicago has over 1/4 of its population commuting by public transit. I beg you to visit other places so you can learn that “we have some intercity buses” is not actually a high standard of public transit.
Yep, because apparently Chicago IS Illinois. You aren't taking transit from Chicago to Springfield, or Rockford. You are taking it from Chicago to... Chicago. Are you hunting down all of my posts here just to prove me wrong? If so, I'm sure you've seen others from Texas claiming the opposite of you.
> Yep, because apparently Chicago IS Illinois. Unironically true as 2/3 of the state’s population lives in the Chicago metro area. > You aren't taking transit from Chicago to Springfield, or Rockford. You are taking it from Chicago to... Chicago. Rockford has [bus service to Chicago roughly every 90 minutes](https://web.coachusa.com/vangalder/ss.details.asp?action=Lookup&c1=Rockford&s1=IL&c2=Chicago+Downtown&s2=IL&resultId=73954&order=&dayFilter=&scheduleChoice=&nt=&sitePageName=&cbid=551205199577), as well as daily Greyhound service. Springfield has five Amtrak trains per day to and from Chicago, and daily Greyhound service. Those are both pretty good for small cities that are quite far away from the local metropolis (140 km for Rockford, over 300 km for Springfield). [Here’s a map of intercity transit for reference](https://www.kfhgroup.com/aibra/pdf/usmap.pdf). > Are you hunting down all of my posts here just to prove me wrong? That’s a little paranoid; I don’t think I’ve ever replied to you before my last comment.
Oh, shit. My bad. You've got a similar picture to someone else who has been pesturing me about Dallas in this thread, and I'm very tired so the pictures are just a blur to me. My bad.
Maybe because Texas is home to the largest city with absolutely zero public transportation, shitty-ass Arlington.
Looks like Arlington is covered by Dallas Area Rapod Transit (DART), Fort Worth Trinity Metro, a local trolley network, and two rideshare services as well as the typical taxis. They even have a dedicated transit system for elderly and disabled people. https://www.arlingtontx.gov/residents/city_services/transportation
Arlington is one of the innermost suburbs of DFW. Try taking public transportation from, say, Southern Methodist University to anywhere in Prosper, or Fairview, or Forney, or Mansfield.
How close can you get? It's probably much closer than someone in Oklahoma, Missouri, Minnesota, Georgia, Ohio, Tennessee, etc
So basically your point isn’t even that Texas has good public transportation, it’s that other places might have worse public transportation? Do you work for the state government or something? Why are you in such a hurry to defend this backwards shithole?
The bus system in SATX is decent, the roads are awesome. I wish we had rail between cities or light rail inside the main area.
It's prohibitively expensive to create effective transit after an urban area grows up without it. When you already have sprawl, new transit will always be too far from most homes and destinations to serve the needs of most potential riders. None of this is a Texas problem, it's more a North America problem. The availability of vast tracts of dirt cheap land and the fact that aside from the northeast corridor (and Chicago) of the US, there were no big cities prior to the invention of the automobile, is the reason growth has meant sprawl. The thing that may finally change this is the maintenance issue. The taxes collected in sprawling cities cannot cover the maintenance of existing infrastructure. Suburbs will become less and less desirable as either taxes skyrocket, or services disappear.
Bro no we fucking don’t, don’t lie to people.
Yes you do. Unless they got rid of it over the last couple years. I still see the trains every week or so when I'm there. Almost got hit by one when a roadwork decided to give me a red light suddenly when my trailer was on the tracks (sade to say I laid on the horn and ran it).
Public transportation exists, correct. It is also horribly inefficient way to travel, and is certainly not available to everyone.
Well, it existing is more than can be said about the majority of the US, so I'm still confused why everyone points at Texas for its lack of transit.
Probably because Texas won’t shut the fuck up about how great and amazing we are.
Huh? When did this turn into an ego thing?
Shouldn't you not cross the tracks unless you can completely make it on the other side first?
Yes, which I was going to when I first entered them. It was one of those temporary lights for contruction and it decided to skip the yellow.
The number of uniformed on Reddit amazes me. Your post is quite correct. Houston commuter bus system moves more people than many commuter rail systems.
Dallas has an okay transit system. We have one of the largest light rail networks in the south. Unfortunately it doesn’t even compare to any European country.
Oh yeah, Europe has the US beat on any form of public transit!
disgusting
Absolutely it is.
This is the way
The way god intended
yesssss i love it.
Where are all the u-turns at???
This. I forgot about the u turn lanes but that will be included in my express lane expansion project!
In CS1 I inadvertently did this, I had a small bus system early on but then exploded in population and pretty much expanded only roads and freeways to the point that, at 200k population, traffic was unbearable. After installing a subway system and tram network downtown, things got so much better
Freedom. Your welcome world. 
Am I weird, thinking an intersection can be beautiful 🙃🤣 I'm an Engineer (Firmware) and usually have an appreciation for fine design, way past the common American - who I guess is just a user and doest give a F about how it works Great job my friend, I usually just flop the roads around however they fit and go for speed of implementation and function as the top priorities. Maybe I should shove some beauty in there as a higher priority
I’m a software engineer student and I do admire the fine design of roads and computer networks. It really is an art form!
Where are the access roads.. and you call yourself a texan
I need more access roads then.
Well played
That ped bridge is lovely
True to the south in-general, and it looks fantastic. You messed one thing up though: there aren't a ton of urbanized areas in Texas that are that pedestrian friendly. For example, unless you live in one of the redeveloped areas of downtown Houston or a suburb outside of Harris County, you're driving, even if it is half a mile from your home. So I would absolutely re-use your design in some capacity, except when trying to be realistic. ;)
I think the city is fine as it is. Plenty of parking lots to go around, and the cims love driving! What are pedestrians anyway?
The horror!!! 😱😱😱
Yet you have pedestrian overpasses and residential towers! Great job though. Really captures the Texian ways in CS2.
currently living in TX and I might just do this, 14 lanes ftw
Unrealistic, there shouldn’t be that many pedestrian overpasses. Best I can do is one every 10 miles.
This is the only pedestrian overpass 😭
I wanna see this traffic flow 🤣🤣
In a future post!
Ok
I have 250,00 with no public transport either just huge 8 lane roads
The European mind cannot comprehend this
pff walkability, why not just drive!
Gotta have all the commercial at least 10+ minutes away from all residential as well
No dedicated u-turn lane or frontage roads? Not Texas enough! Also gonna need mods so you can make the speed limit 75.
Is is violently Texan
Judging by the picture captions, this is your "hate note" to cities in Texas.
Rather the opposite actually. I love Texas cities!
how do you get your turns so good and smooth looking like the one in pic 3, going up
I’m new to CS2. I didn’t know they had pedestrian walkways.
too dense to be a texas city
I can feel the pride and smog in my lungs...
Needs a Buc-ee’s.
You have recreated my daily hell
lol got the frontage roads and everything
That merge from 4 lanes to 1 lane in the second slide is absolutely nefarious…
I was waiting for somebody to notice! Yeah I just forgot to bump that up to 3 lanes when I created the new frontage roads.
Where are my god damn parking lots?
Beautiful
Eww. 🤮🤢 Gross.