As my network grows, I find preventing track, road, and runways from degrading over time into something unusable to be tougher and tougher. Is there any current method of maintaining ways aside from manually dragging new road or rail over the old?
Are the ways not upgrading automatic? I think they are supposed to upgrade automatically to the most similar (if not the same type is available) way when they reach a certain percent.
In the development builds there are/were planned to be mechanics to help maintain ways.
Specifically the intention was that ways get automatically upgraded over time as they require renewal, with some sort of option to manage the process.
By default, ways will be renewed automatically before they degrade, unless you cannot afford the replacement. You can disable auto-renewal for a section of way, however, by SHIFT+dragging the remove way tool over the way. Similarly, you can choose the type of way to which a way renews (for example, choosing an upgrade) by SHIFT+dragging that way over the old way. Unless you have disabled way renewal manually or cannot afford a replacement, ways will automatically renew before becoming degraded to any extent. Ways will not renew to an obsolete type, but will instead choose the closest current type to the old way, meaning that renewal will automatically upgrade in many cases (although only to the cheapest way that has at least as good a minimum speed and maximum weight as the previous way; so it may be wise to choose an upgrade manually for important trunk routes that should always have the latest way types).
Maybe change the behaviour of shift+drag over existing ways so that it follows the way path? Kind of like dragging signals or remove way. This would let you drag from start to end of a way section, even if it changes direction multiple times. On the server A big problem with upgrading ways was that you had to drag upgrade them in straight sections bit by bit, time consuming error prone and frustrating.
SHIFT+dragging already follows the path of the way and need not be done in straight lines.