Culture
interchanges in movies, computer games, etc.
Diamond
and other 4-ramp designs
Six-ramp
partial cloverleaf
Trumpet
and other 3-way interchanges
Stack
and other heavy-duty 4-way interchanges
Volleyball
an odd 3-level 4-way treatment
SPUI
Single-Point Urban Interchange
Oddities
Some strange or fictional interchanges
Interchanges in Pop Culture
This page will always be a mishmash of commentary about how people neither in the transportation planning or roadgeek communities portray or talk about interchanges. Let's get started.
SimCity 3000
Maxis' SimCity has offered traffic simulation, with freeways and surface streets,
for the last few versions. The model is very simplified: all streets are
two-way and two lanes, while freeways are six lanes (four lanes in SimCity 3000)
and elevated throughout, even while traversing the desert or scaling hillsides.
The four-way interchange rendering in SimCity 3000
(see screenshot) is a step up from the SC2000 version, but is still missing a few ramps.
The three-way interchange can't be rendered, so SC3000 instead blocks off the roadways
with construction barriers.
Diamond interchanges (you can see a ramp at the lower left of the picture)
look nearly conventional.
Ramps do provide access in the model (they're not just for show; no ramp, no access)
and you can install them individually.
James Kuyper has done some neat stuff with SC3000 highway parts.
SimCity 4
SimCity 4 offers greater interchange detail; above is a preview screenshot from Maxis shown August 2002. You now have a real cloverleaf, though the highways are still elevated instead of built on earth embankments.
Movies
Many movies set in southern California include what seems like stock footage of flyover
ramps to add local color. But a few movies feature specific interchanges in specific ways:
- Blues Brothers: a car falls off the "Evel Knievel ramp" of an incomplete interchange, falling what seems like hundreds of feet to the ground; this was filmed at Interstate 794 in Milwaukee.
- Speed: A city bus rears on its hind legs, er, wheels, and jumps a 150-foot gap on the under-construction Interstate 105-110 interchange in Los Angeles. The physics works out perfectly for this jump in real life (if you ignore gravity). [Thanks to Bob Fischer]