Crosses

[Lieven]

Hi there,

Just a question, is it possible for a vehicle to reserve a cross earlier than actually ?

I am firstly thinking about the track/canal and road/canal crosses, that are reserved by the ships only when they passes under it, and for the ones that have longer graphics than 1 tile, they enters in collision with the bridge before it ups.

For the railroad crosses, they are reserved by the train a few tiles before it passes the cross, but I often assist to a problem when a slow road vehicule (A bus that leaves a bus stop fr example) crosses a railway, the train arrives, and have to stop because the bus is already on the railroad crossing.
I think that none of that will arrive if the train reserves the crossing a way longer before (Maybe 10/15 tiles ?)

That's all for me !

[prissi]

I tried that, but a 15 tiles, there is almost zero chance for a car crossing a railroad crossing if the line is moderately busy and twoway.

[Lieven]

Yes, you're right, I think that it's actually a 3 tiles-long reservation for the trains, am I right ?
Maybe if we double it, I think that it can soluce the major cases of train stop

For the boats, the majority of long boats have a 2 or 3 tiles graphics, so if the elevating bridge is reserved 3 tiles before the cross, it should be good ?

[prissi]

Trains are special, since they (and planes) can actually reserve way tiles. All other (cars and ships) cannot.  (And train close either three tiles in advance or less, if the last signal before is at closer distance.)

Since a tile is supposed to be 1km^2 any ships should fit on a single tile. I admid that ships are too big but this is true for airplanes as well. But the size of ships is different and thus a ship crossing cannot really know how many tiles ahead is should look like. (Also I think only pak128 has the river /road crossing, I did not include any in pak64 for that reason.

[Lieven]

Okay, so, only the train crossing can be improved. Do you think that it might be possible to extend the tile reservation of the trains ? 5 tiles should be a good compromise between the crossing reservation and the efficiency of a line, think not ?

[prissi]

I many countries, level crossings are forbidden for fast trains. Trains switch signals green mostly three tiles ahead. Thus crossings are handled as signals, with identical decceleration if closed. There should be a big incentive for expensive bridges instead level crossings, like in real life.

[Vladki]

At the moment the crossing can limit the speed of both road (50 km/h) and rail (160 km/h) - that depends on pakset. Also the delays caused to each other may be a good reason to avoid crossings.

[Lieven]

That's right, but in some cases, build a bridge or a tunnel can be very fastidious, principally in an urban environment, where they're lots of road crosses, and build a railway bridge that overpass the road by ascending causes a delay for the train too.
I understand your point of view, an I think that I will continue like I always did, to manage case per case ^^