Hi, everyone. If you recall I asked a while back for some feedback on Freedemia and its progress, and major planned changes. I thought since everyone was so kind to give advice it seemed fitting to give a progress reports of sorts.
Christian Parkway is no more
One thing that had been mentioned was the clash between grid and contour in my street "grid". A lot of that won't be fully resolved until I go through and start fixing roads and neighborhoods (which as listed below is on my shortlist of long-term projects), but I did see one road that was a big part of the problem- Christian Parkway. The obnoxious freeway-like road going due north south through the city was not only an eye sore, but not cohesive with the rest of the city's street grid, and a major part of the problem.
After some advice from Portopolis, I broke the roadway up into much smaller streets where needed, deleted parts, downgraded it to secondary at most from a trunk road, and left the metro mostly the same so that the roadway would still sort of exist but not appear to go against the grid so strongly. The area still needs work, but it already looks way better. http://opengeofiction.net/#map=12/-3.3472/-2.4417 It also opened up a lot of opportunities to rethink development in the large "center" of the city.
I've been working on the railroad...
All puns and music references aside, one of the main feedback pieces I got was that my railway system is greatly flawed, something that I definitely agree with. It was one of the first things I mapped (a lot of it was even mapped haphazardly on a tablet shudders) and it looks as bad as one might expect. Partially inspired by Myrcia's recent overhaul of some of the area railways, I decided that while I try to get JOSM fully operational (still giving me some issues getting it to upload stuff) I would go ahead and slowly start working on the railways.
I started out within Quentinsburgh. I haven't gotten to a lot of the trouble spots along the main line yet, but I focused on the suburban passenger/freight lines coming off the rail line parallel to U-7 (The Reedsboro Line). This included the line from DaSilva Station out, as well as the Northcross, Gillepsie, Caroll Hill and Franklin Hill branches of the line. While they're still works in progress and the stations are currently out of place, I think you might see some improvement- http://opengeofiction.net/#map=12/-3.3201/-2.3641 The lines are smoother with less erratic curves. I plan to eventually go in and reshape some of the neighborhoods and communities surrounding these rail lines. I also started working on smoothing out and rerouting some of my metro lines, especially line 3 which now would run all the way out to Horizon Springs with a minor track rearrangement in Northcross.
What's next?
I do plan soon, hopefully over Christmas break, to continue fixing rail and to start redoing roads and highways similarly to how I've been working on rail, as well as to start an overhaul of land use, stores, and malls/businesses throughout Quentinsburgh. I also plan to work on rivers, but I'm planning to reach out for help on rivers/natural features from more experienced mappers, as I have found myself unsure of how to proceed. I want to knock these things out before jumping to Phase I of the overall Quentinsburgh revamp.
So far I've only made very minor steps, but they are, in my opinion, steps forward nonetheless.