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18th and early 19th century road transport

Started by jamespetts, December 27, 2012, 12:52:52 AM

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jamespetts

Alongside the canal overhaul currently in progress, we need a little work on 18th century road transport, I think. One adjustment that I have already made is to increase the loading time of stagecoaches from being the same as the Hackney carriage (less than a minute) to being between 5-10 minutes (to reflect the time taken to load people's luggage, etc.). This should ensure that they are used for only long-distance routes, as intended.

Also, the horse omnibus needs to have its maximum speed reduced from 18km/h (the same as the stage coach) to something like 12km/h to discourage people using the horse omnibus as a stagecoach substitute on longer distance routes.

We also need to consider a new road type, similar to but distinct from the current unsurfaced road: the unmaintained road. This ought to be the default inter-city way type in the 1750s, but have a new prohibitive constraint making it unsuitable for any wheeled vehicle. The only unwheeled "vehicle" at present is the livestock drover; but to this ought be added the mail boy (riding a horse) and the packhorse train, the latter of which ought be capable of hauling (at low speed and considerable cost, given the number of horses involved) all manner of cargoes over the rough unmaintained roads. City roads in the 1750s should continue to be built with the existing "unsurfaced" roads that allow wheeled vehicles, albeit at a low speed. Any suggestions on how to distinguish the graphics between the current "unsurfaced" and the proposed "unmaintained" road; or any better suggestions of names for either? Also, do we need to consider, perhaps, a single track road type?

We also need to consider different sorts of horses, as horse breeding "technology", if it can so be called, developed considerably during the 18th century. Perhaps we ought to add the cheap but lower powered mules, and the slow but more powerful shire horses to our range; and possibly others? Any suggestions are welcome. The physics of horse-drawn transport needs recalibrating, too, given the recent change to the physics calibration parameters affecting land transport. (For that matter, steam road vehicles also need their power recalibrating, although those are more late 19th and early 20th century concerns).

Any other suggestions on improving the realism of 18th and early 19th century road transport is most welcome.
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ӔO

Interesting timing. I was thinking of something similar.

Dirt road | 15km/h, 10t
Bridleway or Green lane | 15km/h, 10t
Byway or country lane | 25km/h, 10t
Cobblestone road | 25km/h, 20t
Gravel road | 40km/h, 15t
Macadam road | 40km/h, 25t
Sett stone or brick road | 40km/h, 25t

Up until 1994, the maximum road weight should be 38t.
After 1994, the maximum was raised to 44t.

restriction name should be unimproved or unmaintained road.

Not a huge amount of distinction between dirt road, bridleway, greenlane, byway and country lane, except different names for different eras. They're all only for light traffic.
Cobblestone should be slower than Macadam, because Macadam was an improvement over cobblestone. This road should belong inside cities or well travelled roads.
Gravel road is pretty common in areas where there are industries like farms and logging. In principle, it should be a heavier and faster version of dirt.
Macadam is one of the first type of road using a more modern approach to road construction.
Sett stone or brick, you may see in well developed cities and should be a replacement for cobblestone.
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kierongreen

According to www.bbtrust.org.uk/misc-items/roadway.pdf linked from http://www.bbtrust.org.uk/misc.html the following names would be suitable:
Bridleway (from 1800 onwards)
Horseway (until 1800)
Horse Causey (until ~1800. Causey later because causeway as in modern usage, narrow causeys would have been raised above wider tracks in areas where required).
Driftway (around 1800, effectively a drover road)

(other names for different width of track around 1800 would have been footway/footpath and cart-way

My own suggestions and other ones I like are:
(Dirt) Track
Bridleway
Byway

jamespetts

Interesting, thank you for the input! Any thoughts on:

(1) how to distinguish the graphics between the different types of dirt roads;
(2) if the feature is implemented, which should have the single-track property; and
(3) which should be the default intra- and inter-city roads in which eras?
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kierongreen

My opinion is the current dirt road should remain the default inter-city road (any less than this seems ahistorical given there was significant amounts of wheeled traffic to and from major cities even before 1750). Although maybe the top speed on this could be reduced to 5 or 10km/h to encourage upgrading, and simulate how from 1750 onwards carriage usage on unimproved roads tended to lead to deep ruts. As is the case at present, improving this with cobbles, or later, macadam would be the players responsibility as a turnpike owner. There could possibly be a paved road to represent the type of technology used by Telford and other engineers immediately prior to the MacAdam road in the era from 1780 to 1820 - although I'm not convinced of this as major speed increases didn't actually take place until the 1820s, and cobbles are available before this (although these should be an expensive improvement). MacAdam, Tarmac and Asphalt roads should become the default inter-city roads as they are introduced.

Intra-city roads should in my opinion be dirt before 1800, cobble from then to 1900, then tarmac until 1930 (although a version with a lower speed limit than inter-city usage), then the current city road. This reflects the trend for road markings to be introduced beginning in the 1920s.

Single track roads shouldn't be the default for intra or intercity usage - unless you can introduce a system whereby there is a primary grid linking the major settlements followed by a secondary grid linking smaller villages. For the most part I'd say they should be an option for the player to have reduced maintenance for linking remote settlements and factories. In theory single track roads could follow the same timeline as dual track roads - although dirt track/bridleways could be limited to non-vehicular transport in all eras because of the dangers of rutting.

Effectively this means that the only new graphics are likely to be that for single track roads, which can reuse textures for the current dual track roads.

jamespetts

Very useful input - thank you! As to the only new graphics being the single track roads, didn't you also suggest new graphics for a different type of tarmac road?

The idea of a primary and secondary grid is an interesting one, but I am not sure how much work that that would take to implement. Distinguishing which connexions ought be primary and secondary ought not be too difficult, as we already define three classes of towns for the purpose of the growth factors; but I have not looked into how easy/hard that this would be to code.

As to historical road transport, the following is an extract from "British Canals - an Illustrated History" by Charles Hadfield:

Quote from: Charles Hadfield (p. 18)
Land carriage, of course, has always existed, but before the days of the road engineers of the later eighteenth century roads were so bad that waggons were not always able to be used and much of the carriage was done on the backs of horses and mules. Except for very short distances, however, the cost of land carriage made the movement of goods by its means prohibitively expensive. One horse can draw perhaps two tons on a level road, and from fifty to a hundred tons on a good waterway, according to its size, in each case accompanied by a man and a boy. Land transport was therefore limited to short distance carriage - for instance the carriage of coal for a few miles round the colliery - or to bring goods to or from a river or the seaside.

I did particularly want to simulate what Hadfield here describes, which is why I suggested the earlier, lower class of road being the default road.
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kierongreen

There is a difference between "waggons were not always able to be used" and "waggons could never be used", which is the effect that having a default road type prohibiting vehicles would have.

What might be interesting is having the following choice in the 1700s:

WaySpeed LimitRestrictionsMaintenance
Dirt Road5km/hNone10
Bridleway15km/hNo vehicles20
Cobblestone Road35km/hNone200

So, dirt road is cheap, slow, but can take anything, a bridleway is cheap, fast, but limited to non vehicles, while a cobblestone road is expensive, fast and can take anything. Canals have the advantage of a larger weight limit than all road types. The introduction of MacAdam roads in 1820 with a reduced maintenance changes the dynamics of course, but by that time railways are almost on the horizon.

Once you have built ways then the cost of transport per unit should be lowest for the canal, highest for horseback with waggons being between the two.

I think there is a hard coded limit of 50km/h on city roads (of whatever type) so I don't think different graphics would be necessary for tarmac roads.

jamespetts

That's an interesting idea. Perhaps the "bridleway" might be single-track? Any thoughts on how difficult that it might be to code different default routes depending on the size of the towns connected?

I don't think that the 50km/h limit for city roads works in the way that you imagine: it used to work by selecting the road with the speed closest to 50km/h as a limit, but that has been superseded by the simuconf.tab choices for default city roads, so the 50km/h limit is now a matter for the pakset maintainer to enforce; this means that we shall need new graphics after all.
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kierongreen

From wege/strasse.cc:

void strasse_t::set_gehweg(bool janein)
{
   weg_t::set_gehweg(janein);
   if(janein  &&  get_besch()  &&  get_besch()->get_topspeed()>50) {
      set_max_speed(50);
   }
}

This is run any time pavement is added (or removed) from a road.


      if(besch->get_topspeed()>50  &&  hat_gehweg()) {
         set_max_speed(50);
      }

This runs every time a map is loaded.

The 50km/h limit is hard coded - in standard at least.

The bridleway could indeed be single track if you so desired. It shouldn't be difficult to code different beschs to be used depending on the size of the largest town connected.

jamespetts

Ahh, I wasn't aware of that - thank you for pointing it out (I do wonder whether I might have changed that for Experimental a while ago, but I am not sure now). If we had a system of different roads between larger and smaller towns, would it be sensible to have the bridleway as the road that connects smaller towns and larger towns connected to each other with the "dirt road"?
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kierongreen

Yes - I would suggest dirt roads being used to connect large towns to each other, all other links being bridleways.

jamespetts

Seems sensible.

What are your views on the suggested "gravel road", and distinction between cobbles and sette stones proposed by AEO above?
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greenling

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ӔO

gravel can be a slightly better version of dirt. In real life, it really is only that. Better than dirt, but not something you would want heavy traffic running over regularly. Just like dirt, it develops ruts and washboards very quickly, unless it is maintained regularly. It is very cheap to pave out, however. Nearly all types of improved roads use some form of gravel as their bedding material.

Sett stone is between cobblestone and macadam and does allow higher speeds than cobblestone, due to its smoother surface. It is still prone to being damaged, if heavy traffic uses it. It's not important for players to use, so it could be kept as public player only tool. Macadam would have been better than cobblestone or sett stone in all aspects, due to its bituminous surface treatment.
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jamespetts

Quote from: ӔO on December 27, 2012, 07:57:02 PM
gravel can be a slightly better version of dirt. In real life, it really is only that. Better than dirt, but not something you would want heavy traffic running over regularly. Just like dirt, it develops ruts and washboards very quickly, unless it is maintained regularly. It is very cheap to pave out, however. Nearly all types of improved roads use some form of gravel as their bedding material.

Is there any UK historical precedent for this, do you know?

QuoteSett stone is between cobblestone and macadam and does allow higher speeds than cobblestone, due to its smoother surface. It is still prone to being damaged, if heavy traffic uses it. It's not important for players to use, so it could be kept as public player only tool. Macadam would have been better than cobblestone or sett stone in all aspects, due to its bituminous surface treatment.

As to bituminous surface treatment, are you confusing plain MacAdam roads with tar MacAdam ("tarmac") roads?
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kierongreen

I would have said that what AEO was referring to as a gravel road would be a MacAdam (or similar) road. MacAdam uses gravel and rocks of varying sizes to build up a loose road surface (one which didn't cope well with the higher speeds of motorised vehicles). It was however cheaper to build than a cobbled surface, although did require more maintenance (I would have thought). As jamespettes points out - MacAdam is different from Tarmac (tarred MacAdam) which is different again to asphalt, the modern road surface often referred to as "tarmac"

ӔO

ah, okay. Sorry, my mistake. Yes, indeed, I do seem to have confused them.
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jamespetts

There is still a live question, then, as to whether we need to distinguish true cobbles from settes, and, if so, what the economic significance of this distinction ought to be.

As for primary and secondary roads, we can re-use the existing code to define defaults in different eras for "primary" and "secondary" default inter-city roads. We can make use of the fact that towns are classified by population into "city" "town" and "village", and, provided that the code for placing the roads between towns on map generation knows which towns are being connected before actually laying down the road, then this can be done without difficulties. I suggest the following protocol:

1. Roads linking cities with other cities: primary road
2. Roads linking cities with towns: primary road
3. Roads linking cities with villages: secondary road
4. Roads linking towns with other towns: secondary road
5. Roads linking towns with villages: secondary road
6. Roads linking villages with other villages: secondary road

We can define a single track version of the MacAdam and tarmac road types, and have this as the default secondary road in the later eras.

Does this seem to make sense?
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kierongreen

Road linking all looks good.

I've checked and current textures are definitely based on cobbles rather than setts. Sett (and brick) roads if implemented should have a higher speed than cobbles. Below is how I think the slower (<50km/h) road types could possibly compare:


WaySpeed LimitRestrictionsMaintenanceCostDates
Dirt Road5km/hNone1010001700-
Bridleway15km/hSingle Track, No vehicles206001700-
Cobblestone Road25km/hNone15050001700-1780
Sett Road35km/hNone18065001780-1920
MacAdam Track35km/hSingle Track12024001820-
MacAdam Road35km/hNone20040001820-
Brick Road35km/hNone16060001920-

While dirt roads and bridleways should remain through all eras I think there needs to be a timeline of Cobbles->Setts->Bricks (if all implemented) to prevent too many menu icons. As these are primarily for urban usage then I don't think single track varients are necessary. As to whether it is necessary to have a chain rather than just grouping them all under Cobbles - I'm not sure, I can't see many people going to the trouble of building brick roads in later eras, and Setts (to me) wouldn't seem to have an obvious advantage over cobbles until motorised vehicles arrived (it doesn't make sense for them to have a lower cost than cobbles as the stone needs more processing).

jamespetts

Interesting. I don't know much about brick roads (apart from the fictional yellow variety); presumably these are different to the trendy paved surfaces in modern pedestrianised areas? Can you find any images/examples of this sort of surface in use?

Also, don't we need to retire the MacAdam road and track when tarmac roads become available? In reality, tarmac was used because motor cars caused downdrafts which scattered dust from the surface of MacAdam roads, so, fairly soon after motor cars became common, MacAdam roads were no longer built, and tarmac roads were built instead.
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kierongreen

There are still MacAdam roads (or similar) around - whether you consider them widespread enough to justify not retiring them is another matter. The low speed limit for MacAdam roads reflects the dust issue - theoretically you can drive along MacAdam roads much faster... I don't know of any widespread use (i.e. not just trendy) of brick, hence why I'm not sure whether it should be added. Although that said it isn't just used in pedestrianised areas.

jamespetts

Hmm - was it used as far back as 1920, though?
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kierongreen

To be honest I don't think you'll be able to find a suitable date for introducing sett or brick paving.

One reason is because the transitions from cobble to sett to brick are not actually going to be clear cut. Paving gradually become more regular, the cost of producing the paving materials gradually fell due to more efficient production methods. Photos from these eras are generally not that helpful as the detail on roads is generally not clear enough to distinguish between setts, MacAdam or tarmac roads - they all appear as a light grey colour, which only gets replaced by black once asphalt becomes commonplace.

Another is that in the middle part of the 20th century everything and everything was being covered in tar. I chose 1920 as a date after which I didn't think setts would have been used widely as a new paving material, however it wasn't really until the 1980s that new (at the time often brick) paving became common as town centres were pedestrianised. Now new setts are as likely to be laid down as bricks and stone paving slabs - not just for fully pedestrianised areas but more widely in town centres to make them more pedestrian friendly by discouraging cars (but not necessarily public transport).

So the question is more what to do in general after 1920 (and especially from the 1980s onwards) for town centre roads - do you ignore paving other than tarmac/asphalt? Do you have bricks as being "modern" or do you offer a variety of materials - setts, cobbles, slabs, bricks?

jamespetts

Interesting points. I think that, given that we do not simulate in Simutrans any of the relevant economic consequences of using modern brick paving (either pedestrianisation or pedestrian friendly town centre roads), we do not need to model the roads that use those surfaces, so we can, I think, eliminate bricks.

We can simply use the existing "city road" (which, incidentally, has had a small anomaly in its graphics for a while, being a break in the continuity of the edging stones) from the 1930s onwards. From the late 1910s/early 1920s (I try to avoid having the introduction/retirement dates for lots of things where we do not know the exact date on exact decade boundaries, as that leads to lots of things changing suddenly at predictable moments; I should rather randomise it slightly, and introduce tarmac, say, in April 1919 or December 1918 or the like, and city roads in, for example, May 1931) we can use the tarmac road, and earlier, we can use the setts, and before that, the cobbles.

In cases where there is no exact date, we can just pick a sensible date somewhere in the middle of the range of dates that we know is correct and modify it later to a different date in that range if gameplay experience shows that more desirable economic consequences would result from having a different date.

Another question is what to do with town roads. A number of pictures that I have seen seems to show a great many town roads being unpaved, rather than cobbled. Currently, the pakset has the "dirt road" (called "unsurfaced road" in the Experimental version) as the default city road in the period before about 1780, I think. If cobblestones are available earlier, then it would make sense for this to be the default city road; yet what of those pictures of unpaved town roads? Do we need to distinguish between roads in major and minor towns; or between major and minor roads in towns (I cannot currently think of a satisfactory way of doing the latter)? Or are these unpaved roads in the photographs actually proper MacAdam roads which might have replaced cobbled streets in some cases? Or something else, perhaps...?
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kierongreen

This is the same problem I have found with pictures of town roads - you simply cannot tell what the surface is in many cases! From what I have seen in cities however the surviving road surface under modern asphalt (or in rare cases still the main surface) tends to be setts. Maybe this is because a MacAdam road wouldn't leave the same trace however? This does suggests though that setts immediately preceded tarmac, therefore that that dirt -> cobbles -> setts -> tarmac -> city roads would be a reasonable timeline for urban roads. Smaller towns (and the outskirts of larger towns) could  be somewhat behind in this timeline from the centres of major cities. Dirt roads wouldn't have been uncommon in villages at the turn of the 1900s (although they might well have been MacAdamised then rather than cobbled or laid with setts). This might mean that you have 3 parallel timelines:
Large town: cobbles->(1850) setts->(1910) tarmac->(1930) city roads
Medium town/Edge of Large town: dirt->(1800) cobbles->(1880) setts->(1920) tarmac->(1940) city roads
Small town/Edge of Medium Town: dirt->(1900) macadam->(1930) tarmac->(1950) city roads

Dates of course suitably randomised to your liking, and noting that unpaved city roads shouldn't take over paved generated intercity or player roads...

Incidentally while standard simutrans scale isn't really detailed enough to make it worthwhile simulating pedestrianised city centres in experimental might well be. After all, it is a major feature of many towns now....

jamespetts

Hmm, it is not so much the scale as the economic consequences of pedestrianisation that is not immediately clear how to simulate, so I am not sure that this would be useful even in Experimental.

It would be fairly easy in principle, I suppose, to have different timelines for different sizes of towns using the three town classification system already in use. It would be much harder, I think, to define "edge(s) of" towns. Can you think of a computationally satisfactory way of doing this?
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kierongreen

Define the centre as being a fixed ratio of the overall size of the town borders - say 25%, so for a town 16 by 16 tiles the centre would be the middle 4 by 4 tile area.

jamespetts

I see - a simple distance based algorithm? Hmm - I foresee two difficulties. Firstly, the built up part of the town might not actually be the geographical centre (if centre is based on equidistance from the edge, or proximity to the town hall). Secondly, this would mean that, until 1880, there would be an inferior dirt road segment between the superior MacAdam roads and setts/cobbles on inter-town roads and in the centre of towns, which I don't think makes a great deal of sense.

Would it not perhaps be more sensible just to have the simpler system of grading uniformly by town type?
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kierongreen

As I said:
Quotenoting that unpaved city roads shouldn't take over paved generated intercity or player roads...

Personally I think it makes more sense for roads in the centre of a large town to be of a higher standard than those on the outskirts.

wlindley

Looks like the suggestions here have generally been implemented.  One problem, though, is that under the new system, coverage in the early days is problematic.

In 1750 for example we have staging posts and staging inns; because both are listed as handling goods, their collection radius is a single tile.  Perhaps the staging post should simply not handle goods?

jamespetts

The behaviour of a stop that handles both goods and passengers is that the passenger coverage radius is effective for passengers and mail, and the goods coverage radius (which should now be 3 tiles) is effective for goods.
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wlindley

The last commit in git, seems to resolve this, and is all-round excellent.  Cheers.

jamespetts

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neroden

Comfort level of the stagecoach needs to be dropped.

Stagecoaches are *very* uncomfortable to ride in, even on the inside and even at the best of times.  There's a reason there's a staging inn near every horse-change point -- people get sick of riding on the stagecoaches and get off to take a break and recover.  Stages are maximum 15 miles -- around here, there's one stage which was only 6 miles long

People generally considered any fully enclosed, compartment train to be superior in comfort to a stagecoach.  (The compartments were modelled on stagecoaches, but they had a smoother ride because they were on rails.)  The trains displaced the stagecoaches as soon as they appeared, and not just because of speed.  *Horse trolleys* displaced stagecoaches in the places where long-enough trolley routes were constructed.

I advise dropping the stagecoach comfort to around 38, to make sure it isn't more comfortable than a 4-wheeled 1850s carriage.   It should *certainly* have a lower comfort than the Market Narrowboat; having been in both, the bumpiness of the ride is really the deciding factor.  At the moment it is rated at 75 like a LBSCR suburban carriage, which is simply wrong.

jamespetts

Thank you, that is very helpful. I have never ridden in a stage coach, so have no idea how comfortable that it is: I could only judge by looking at pictures of one, which seemed to have comfortable seats. I have now adjusted the comfort to 38 as you suggest.
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