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)

It could be an area that has gotten recent urban renewal, it's a relatively important location to be left rotting for long. Probably not for a central business district area, but for some kind of dense walkable housing quarter with cultural and art facilities alike many urban renewal projects in Europe.
Likewise I believe that not the entire area should be renewed but some older structures could be mapped as ready for demolition. ⸺ Bixelkoven (talk) (West Uletha Admin) 12:29, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

It does make sense. A few blocks destroyed to make room for the core of a project that was never completed: the station was built with some overground buildings built on the central slabs, but large chunks of the original neighbourhood were left untouched. The whole thing being renovated in the last 15-20 years. There are some smaller examples I can think of in Paris: Olympiades, Paris "Chinatown" that once had a goods railway station under the slab, and higher-end Beaugrenelle. In terms of layer:, that means we may have something like:

• -4 and below: A01 motorway and its accesses/interchange
• -3 Railway tracks, Bus Station
• -1/-2 Parking lots access to bus station plateforms
• 0 Local destination roads/street: car access to the stations and parking lots
• 1 Station hall, shopping centre & pedestrian slab(s)
• 2 and above: any building built on the slab(s).
  --Aiki (talk) 03:35, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Waterways

River Port

I think Nemans should have two major river ports. The main one on the lake and a smaller but equally important river port on the Yse, which would allow ships from the south (Rivador, the Mesembric Sea) to unload their cargo earlier without the need for them to go through the city, clogging the river with barge and ship traffic. Reminder that this river is an important route between the Mesembric and the Great Rift area. ⸺ Bixelkoven (talk) (West Uletha Admin) 12:29, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Likewise, I think most of the older bridges in Nemans should be drawbridges of some sorts, to allow ships to pass. ⸺ Bixelkoven (talk) (West Uletha Admin) 12:29, 26 October 2024 (UTC)