Forum:Valonne/Nemans - Infrastructure

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Railways

Trains

West Station

Nemans is endowed with 3 main historical railway terminals:

1. Gare du Midi - South Station
2. Gare du Levant - Orient/Levant Station
3. Gare du Nord - North Station

Additionally, two lesser stations exist, mainly for suburban services:

1. Embarcadère Saint-Vincent - A former small mid-19^th century station designed to enable the king to travel from the City's château to his domain along the lake and now providing "limited" services to East and NE suburbs.
2. Sainte-Léonie - Across the Yse River in Delautre, serving North and NW suburbs.
3. Potentially a 3^rd small terminus station for western destinations, but likely now destroyed.

Passing station proposal - Gare du Ponant Complex

Due to the lack of a larger station serving western destinations in Valonne and, international destinations such as cities in Kalm, the government decided sometimes in 1960s, to build a large complex combining a train station, a bus station, offices and a shopping centre. The Gare du Ponant (or West Station) was build in the late 1960s/early 1970s, likely in a mixture of brutalist and international styles favouring slabs to divide each function, on the location of a good station, warehouses and working class neighbourhood. The whole area was bulldozed and Nemans railway bypass tracks buried under a concrete slab. In layers, one would find:

1. The Premier Périphérique, access to A01 motorway, branches and branches of underground interchange
2. Railways tracks and Gare du Ponant plateforme, probably the bus station as well
3. Local destination roads/street, car-access to the station + parking lots
4. Station hall, shopping centre, pedestrian concrete slabs with bridges jumping from one slab to its neighbour
5. Office buildings and potentially some residential one.

Here are the questions I have so far:

1. Does the overall plan make sense?
2. If so:
   1. How many tracks should be considered for such a passing station: 6, 8, 10 or else?
   2. Was the project completed with a reshaping of the neighbour or was it just limited to the station?
   3. This kind of shopping centre experienced, in Western Europe, some kind of a slump in the 1980s and 1990s. Should we considered a successful later facelift (e.g. parks on the slab) to be featured on the map?
   4. Should we consider a high-end, Barbican-typed of residential buildings or gloomier type like Créteil or some areas of Paris' La Défense quarter with concrete bars and towers of public housing?
      --Aiki (talk) 09:43, 23 October 2024 (UTC)