"Mr. Governor... There's a major problem with fires over in..." "Shhhh hush now Ed. I've told you not to bother me while I'm out working in the garden."
We need buses to Charity Island and Bailey now. They currently have no public transport at all, which doesn’t make sense with the people who would commute there for work. You could add loops with bus only lanes for the buses to turn around. A bus route could go from Charity Island via the industrial area and Bend to Bailey.
It actually makes a lot of sense. A rural community where basically everyone who lives there works at either the fuel plant, the cargo terminal or the various farms around Bailey. Realistically, there wouldn’t be that many people from bend working at that oil plant. It’s so far away and there wouldn’t be enough demand to justify the cost of a bus system from Bailey to anywhere. An argument could be made for a bus route from bend to charity island but again, realistically the demand likely wouldn’t be there. Also, it doesn’t really make sense to have busses connecting multiple rural Midwest towns. I have never seen such a system in reality
Heh, living in a primarily oil and gas region, my experience is they will always prefer commuting alone in their giant pickups, even if it makes zero practical sense.
My immediate reaction to hearing about the town of Bailey was to smile, because my wife's name is Bailey! Would you mind naming a street Ithaca? That's the place where we met.
You could do some interesting lore work with that too! Bailey is the wife of an executive at the company that built the town, and he leaned on the city planner to get a plot of land at the corner of Ithaca and Main street. The place the main arterial streets 'meet'.
A small town like that would historically have a very active business section on the main street facing the main road. Bars, restaurants, boutiques, etc.
Yeah that's what I was thinking. Town where I grew up looked exactly like it. Main street with sidewalks for businesses and residential behind it on roads without sidewalks
With street parking. In CO, basically all of the two lane road small towns have a "main drag" with small businesses and street parking, not tree lined avenues.
realistically speaking, not many small towns have that. you might see maybe a few towns here and there that might have that, but for the most part, you're not gonna see much in walkability in about 90% of small towns out there. and where theres a lack in walkability, theres a lack of shopping in downtown.
@@Zeakthecat you are thinking as a modern American. Cars are a relatively new phenomenon. Towns that were settled in the 19th or even early 20th century were not designed around cars because they didn't exist or, at the very least, were only affordable to the wealthy few, so by default they were "walkable"... because that was the only means of transport (other than horse and carriage which again the common person did not have).
Hey. Close call on the water tower. Drinking water usually works with gravity. Adding a water tower on the lowest part, while all the farms and oil companies are actually higher than the top of the water tower was really odd. Also, you usually don't see may water towers when there are hills nearby. It's cheaper to build a water basin on the next hill than building and maintaining a huge tower. In addition, (at least here in Austria), it's part of the critical infrastructure. So, ideally, not everybody should know the location to prevent somebody poisoning it or blew it up. This is the reason why I think a basin or underground facility up the next hill would make more sense.
Can confirm it's like that in California too. Up on the tops of our mountains you'll find large water storage, but the mountain is the "tower" part, they're just ground level up there. Also, we have big cisterns up there to store water. If only we could make some lakes up top.
You’re totally right about for the first part. I’ve never seen a water tower on a hill. But almost every western Canadian and mid west town has their water tower in a central location. Bailey is a small town where everyone knows each other, and it’s miles away from the next closest town. Nobody is gonna be poisoning that water tower
Yeah, water *towers* are what you do when nature hasn't provided suitable high terrain - you can build a much bigger reservoir more cheaply if you can built it on solid ground. Here in Auckland NZ, we've got a lot of old volcanic cones dotting the city, and so unsurprisingly, many of them have water storage built on or into them. They're not high-capacity - just local buffers for the much larger sources (dams, rivers) outside of town - but there are quite a lot of them.
This series coming out less than before makes me really appreciate them, when they’re eventually out. Thank you for entertaining both city-planning nerds and gaming enthusiasts all over! ❤️
I appreciate that! Really hoping we see some updates that allow me to put them out faster! Almost back from vacation though, so there will be a flurry of videos soon
You are so spot on with your comment about things like this happening in the real world. Here in Georgia a few days ago they announced that an Alabama company has started the permit process to strip mine near Okefenokee Swamp. Okefenokee is the nation's largest blackwater swamp, and a Wetland of International Importance (RAMSAR Convention - 1971), which also happens to be home to many threatened and endangered species.
No disrespect to Phil's amazing lore, but to me Bailey looks more like an industrial era town than something that would spring up to facilitate shale gas extraction in the 21st century. But that's just me.
“Underneath the path, where I guess it can go” shouldn’t have made me laugh as hard as it did. Another great build! Nice to be getting a mix of content from the channel.
A few side deals to make the oil more "attractive" 1. For each disturbed acre, to include roads, rail roads and facilities, the oil producers needs to purchase 5 acres of forest land and dedicate it to a "state" park in perpetuity. 2. Have the new rail build and connect to the Clearwater southern rail and allow Clearwater southern to use the rail facilities lease free.
Would that not be difficult? They already secured the permit and built it out. To them be forced to give access to their competitors AND be forced to buy land for conservation would be a completely blinding deal that could force them to pull out
The island "off of " Bailey would make for an amazing wildlife park, to offset the very heavy industry added with the oil fields and refineries. Limited access to the citizens ( like a fenced off campsite area or something, reserving the lion's share to trees and animals)
Yes that's what I was thinking. A nice like predestination bridge to the small island and then another to the big island. Could have some of the campfire around the outside with paths connecting them and leave the middle alone.
The Texas City explosion was a lesson in safety space around certain industryies. More recently a town called West in Texas had a heavily damaged High School and a cpouple apartments of retirees leveled when a fertilizer plant went all anfo-ish during planting season.
A lot of big oil companies have a fire station where they have specialist equipment. You may want to go with a FULL fire station. With a couple heavy and light units all out of the same station like the original "88's" that squad 51 was dispersed out from.
I would highly recommend doing a few fire breaks between cities and the forests. All it would take is a space roughly the size of the tallest tree nearby. a 10ft break if it is 10ft tall. This might help prevent the fires spreading to the cities at least.
Speaking as someone who sets rules for oil and gas development, you mostly nailed the look with the sections and square pads. One note is that with setbacks, you would usually only see one pad per section. There are also lots of multi-well pads, but CS1 is much better for modeling that. "I drink your milkshake" is the best description of why setbacks exist.
Hey! Watford City! Couple things you may want to consider is when the oil boom hit Watford, the town was small with small lots and houses. Then big developments of duplexes, commercials, and apartments everywhere. Take a close look at Williston and Watford City how it grew from 2009 to now. Definite old and new clashing. Also, oil wells pop up in the middle of fields and all over, including hard to reach places using dirt roads mainly. Great series!
I live in a city called Bendigo in central Victoria, Australia. We have a street called Short Street. Running off this street is another street called Shorter Street. It's good to know that sometime in the past our local councilors had a sense of humour! Love this series, thanks :)
CPP! 14:20 water towers belong on hills! This allows the water to build pressure in the pipes just by using gravity. Water from the tower would not flow uphill. Edit: Fixed later in the video!
The idealized beautification with parks and detailing I wouldn't worry about. Most places don't pay attention to that stuff anymore even though it is good for the soul. Small towns used to focus on that just as much as large cities for that very reason.
I work in the oilfield. To be realistic, you would have lots of leases "the little squares" all over the area, each one of those lease sites is where the wells are drilled. Those would all connect to a bigger gas plants and battery sites via pipeline. They aren't mines they are well sites. And each site would be leveled by cut and fill based on the geography of the area. They are all "temporary" and will be reclamated at some point.
This isn't as necessary as it used to be. With with fracking in oil and natural gas deposits in shale formations and horizontal drilling able to pull resources from as far as about 2 miles away, you don't need as many surface rigs anymore. One drilling site can cover about 12 square miles and as much as 30,000 feet deep.
You still need an industrial zoning in the new area for petrol industry and for forestry industry. You are building in a heavily forested region, and you should take advantage of that. Especially as your existing rail network can transport the goods.
You know you can use the curve tools when laying pipes and cables, and with fewer nodes in between. It's much easier and faster to trace a road this way.
Coming from a pretty fire prone area in Australia, I would recommend adding some considerable fire breaks along each Jeffersonian grid definition to help break up, slow and stop any wild fires. It is a pretty consistent thing that gets done over here along most roadways and several dirt road sections built in more rural areas to help the SES here in containing bush fires. Without them we would be looking at some pretty serious body counts due to fires as well and I think this would help your build out greatly with the abundance of trees there.
You should add a bike trail between the towns. Example being a scenic trail along the river. I think this would be extremely valuable to the residents of the county and possibly attract some regional tourism.
For the small drilling rigs those plots of land are always surrounded by low berms. I don't know how well you could recrate that in CS2 but if you could include them it would surely make them look great! In small townships like Bailey you almost always have a "Main Street" which is usually made up of older style buildings which are typically businesses, bars, restaurants, motels, with at least a couple modern gas stations mixed in. I think next video you should construct some kind of memorial for the ~3000 people who died as that would surely be pretty severely etched into the memory of the county (the whole country really) I mean for comparison about 300 people died in the Chicago Fire and kicked off the "Great Rebuilding" so it could also serve as a way to go back in and modernize small parts of the city to reflect that! I love when you can go back into areas and add detail to smaller areas since it truly gives the city the feeling that it wasn't all built at once. Places grow, parts grow faster than others while some parts fall down prompting reconstruction. City Planners and civil engineers and architects are artists in my eyes, their works reflect the growth and advancement of mankind on the pristine tapestry that is our home Earth.
Thanks to you, I am now realizing that SimCity on the SNES kind of locked me into an "efficiency overload," leave no map square un-developed, "Right angles are the only angles!!" kind of mindset
A quick point related to volume of parking spaces. Consider the type of building you are providing additional spaces for. A large portion of industry these days are at least 24 hours, 5 days a week. For 900 work spaces, we could assume 30% per shift (3 shifts) and remaining 90 daily office staff, you will have 360 staff at most. Obviously the more public transport in place the lower the spaces required but directionally correct. I used this calculation more in CS1.
I’m behind on the series, but even in a small company town like Bailey, I think you could reasonably add a one or two small offices, there would probably be an insurance agency, payroll or billing processing company, a lawyer, etc. Even the dying former factory town I grew up where almost everyone had worked for the one company that had left and most people only had a high school education had 2 small office buildings for these types of things.
As part of the expansion of a local quarry, the county required the company to pay for road improvements, which has ultimately included turning intersections in the middle of nowhere (except for the quarry) into something you'd expect to see in an industrial zone instead of surrounded by corn fields with very, very wide turns to accommodate semis. Perhaps the paved road for the shale extraction should be similar, with dirt roads still indicating the old USPLSS grid? Unrelated and as someone who can't play CS2 for spec reasons; I love the changes to farms that allow for rural areas to look like (ish) the rural areas I grew up around. Field everywhere instead of just a couple like CS1. Also, my only critique of the nice new ethanol plant is the parking lots are paved. All of the ethanol facilites I've done work at just had a ~massive~ gravel lot.
If you build roads straight up hills and concentrate row houses on those it looks really nice with no terrain work! Looks like the old steel town I lived in.
Hey Phil! Happy belated birthday! I know you weren't thrilled about adding the high school to Bailey so early, but I wanted to say that this actually reminds me of where I went to college. It's in the middle of nowhere really, but it had one of the major community colleges. I think it would make sense to add a community College here as sort of one of the driving factors of the community and to get people to come work and live there. To me, students from the university may not want to come all the way out to work at the fuel plant and have to relocate, but the community College would be attractive to students moving out of high school and looking to get away from home, and then after they graduate, the fuel plant would be the perfect way to retain them within the community
As a former BNSF employee, your mainline should’ve run through the rail yard on the double track mainline. Sticking as close to 1-2% should be a more realistic goal to try and achieve. One thing to remember is the railroads plan rail lines with the least amount of resistance in mind curving along the edges of hills to climb.
Phil, your storytelling is tabletop RPG level S-class! I can't wait to see what Chuckles does to counter this! (maybe a nature preserve? green energy plant? Who knows!)
When you added the health clinic in Bailey, I noticed that the average health of the citizens isnt great. 65%. With all the dead bodies, it may be a good opportunity for the county to invest in healthcare in general and add a large regional hospital. You could look at Charlottesville VA as an example of a relatively small area (about 30k) with a large hospital and university centered around it (UVA). Love the builds as always!
Totally unrelated thought, but they really should've just called Internet in the game Cell Coverage instead, because that's really what it is. Most internet is served to homes via cables underground, not via radio towers like cell phones are.
I'm not sure that's universally true. Here in Finland, mobile internet is very common, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if it was more common than cable.
I'm going for the oil!, i used to build a city with a large oil deposit underneath. I started to invest in the infrastructures needed to extract the oil and overtime my city becomes filthy rich haha. And at some point i have to diversify that income and i built semiconductor and financial services industry out of that money and even expand the city to have more workforce for the new industry.. so many good memories and this series reminds me of that
Love a lot of this build, it might even be too little parking at the plant! BUT that bridge over the rails makes me so sad! It feels wildly out of place for a community of this size, and the rails company would fight such a bridge with everything they got.
On those small islands, like in Bailey Lake or on the river bend, might I suggest a couple of props, like a rowboat (do they exist?) or a small tent. Surely there must be an adventurous citizen (not necessarily named Shirley) who'd sneak in a small trespass every now and then.
I'm really curious why you created that viaduct over the train lines rather than sending a road under the train bridge and up the hill to the mines/farms from Bailey? Seems like it would be a lot cheaper and easier to build a road with some terraforming rather than that long bridge. It would have also connected Bailey to the outside with the same external connection from the mines and the new external connection that paralleled the trains was therefore unnecessary. (Or you could remove the mines external connection and use the parallel connection which would make a lot of sense also). Good episode and interesting politics shown. Thanks for the update!
🔥 series! If I may recommend a plot point: maybe have someone from Magnolia become a state representative and try and advocate for the citizens instead of more self serving interests like the governor seems to be doing Or maybe have more local politics like a mayor or city council interact with things like zoning and roads😊
This series brings me so much hope for this game! I have dropped it, but watching such a fantastic build makes me root for the game to raise from the ashes!
The surface painting tool is so simple yet adds so much - particularly when paired with the tree line tool. It helps make cities unique, which is kinda the whole point of the game.
i started watching your channel with the clearwater county build and I've gotten very into city planning because of it. Since then I've started my own study in 'Built Environment' in the Netherlands! You have been a huge inspiration for why i chose the study and I'm thoroughly enjoying my time at school!
I really like the perspective of being able to fix this imperfect town in the future! It gives me hope that real cities will (continue to) improve their infrastructure in the future!
Love this story. It seems so realistic and impacts all the main characters. Controversial builds are part of this series as much as anything and I find it superb. Keep it up!
With the map and the semi-rural locations, I think Magnolia County would benefit from an Air Ambulance service. I work for a company now that carries out maintenance for a local air ambulance, and it’s completely life changing. A 50 minute ride to the nearest hospital is cut down to just 9 minutes. Plus it frees up a lot of the land ambulances, and allows for people to be rescued from more precarious situations. Biggest thing is that the Air Ambulance is a trust and entirely publicly funded. Thoughts?
Coming from someone who's spent the majority of his life in the oil & gas industry, there's very, very few paved roads. Especially in the Permian Basin. There's a few in the Utica/Marcellus basin. If you want any "real world" examples, I go back to work in a couple of days. I can get you some pictures if you need them.
That’s probably my biggest pet peeve about this build. Being around small towns and rural areas for most my life, only the highways and the roads in the town are paved. All those farms he made right at the start of the series should not have a paved grid. No way an unincorporated community is having a paved country mile grid system
I’m really loving the builds! I can’t play as much as I want too seeing your builds helps a little of my sanity on building. Hope you and your family are doing well Phill.
The Alberta mines were likely shaped due to the Alberta Township System which covers the whole province. The lots are either one section, quarter-section or some combination or further breakdown that make smaller and smaller squares in a 6x6 grid within. Further the roads off main highways follow the edges of the sections.
I’m from the u.p. So it’s really cool hearing all this, when you mentioned iron mountain I woke up my wife just to tell her. It’s super cool and neat that it’s being talked about
Please add fire breaks around Bend. With very common wildfires that have destroyed bend, I believe the county would invest in fire breaks to better protect the towns.
I thought the bridge was perfect as it was. I regularly go over that exact bridge here is eastern Wa state. I-90 Vantage bridge, please take a look. It was so cool to see a bridge that I’ve been using my whole life come to life in one your builds. I never really comment but I love the content Phil!
Watching you build cities always makes me happy. Very real and I wish I could build like you. 😁 My game crashed and I don't know if I could recover it after the last updates. 😮💨 As for this new part of the city, it needs transportation to bring in those educated workers. That fire was brutal ......
Hey Phil, love your content! You've given me a lot of perspective to the organization behind the roads I drive every day, and I find myself thinking "how would Phil fix this road" all the time. I live in East Lansing Michigan, which has some horribly laid out roads that make my head scratch as to how they got past the planning phase. I was thinking that you should do a "city review" of East Lansing where you recreate small chunks in Cities 2 and then talk about how you would fix them! The east side of highway 127 where it diffuses into Saginaw and Grand River is the part that I think would make great content, and the amount of satisfaction I would get from seeing you fix this stretch of road that makes my life miserable can not be understated! Keep up the good work! Luv u bud
The railroad around the 6 minute mark makes me think of the Altoona Horseshoe Curve - a railroad the respects the topography and curves around a mountain range so they didn't have to build a bridge. It was a field trip location in elementary school
Lots of industrial places (Oil refineries, Paper Mills, etc) of that size will have a private fire brigade or office I feel like you need a really tiny single or 2 engine fire department for just the refinery.
The moment you said you needed a bridge, i thought that a slightly curved (or at least not a straight) bridge would look really good over the river from the "mainland" to Bailey.
Sorry my friend, canadian, albertan, and retired from the construction side of oilsands. What you saw in thise pictures of AB and BC were more likely natural gas site. Albertan doesnt produce shale oil, the shale production we have is SE of Edmonton and that's for natural gas. The closest we come to what you're looking for is SAGD ( Sream Assisted Gravity Drained) oilsands recovery, those look like the pictures you found for Alberta. We also mine oilsands for processing, and that looks like a extra dirty version of open pit copper mining. If you need visuals look up "oilsands production, Fort Macmurray, Woodbuffalo region, Alberta". Great series though, keep up the good work.
I mentioned in an earlier episode of naming a road on chairity Island for the stevedors. You could also name a road in Bailey for the roughnecks (oil workers), making it a theme for every industry to name a road as sort of a nod to the workers.
Currently, the steepest mainline railroad grade in the US is the 3.5% Raton Pass grade in New Mexico, with the original steepest being the 4.7% Saluda Grade in North Carolina, which was taken out of service in 2001.
Hey Phil, I think you should establish a train route between the main part of the county and Bailey! It would improve public transport for all of those people commuting to work in the new facilities! Love the series!
One thing I'd like to see them add to the game is a 1-way alley maybe the size of the path, maybe with no zoning so you could run thin alleys through towns just like you did with the paths
The most extreme railroad grade was the Saluda Grade in Western North Carolina, running from Asheville North Carolina down to Spartanburg South Carolina. It had a grade of 4.7%. It was built in the 1870s and eventually bought by Norfolk Southern, who operated it until 2001. It is now slated to become a walking trail. ETA: Love your content BTW. I'm hoping Paradox can fix the problems with the game and their marketing department.
