Southside Ithaca – WIP OMSI Map

Southside Ithaca
Route 15 – Southside Shopper

Introduction to Southside Ithaca

Ithaca is Gorges! Welcome to Ithaca. A very lively town in upstate New York with one of the simplest bus systems in the country. A fleet of 51 buses operates on several lines. This map will be focusing on route 15, which operates on the Southside of Ithaca, providing access from downtown to the Titus Towers, Wegmans, and TOPS.

Origins

As mentioned in the “what are you working on” thread, I created sort of a sandbox map which basically allowed me to play around with object placement. What ended up happening was a pretty accurate 1:1 recreation of Ithaca, NY. At least, the South Side anyway. If this map ends up looking as good as I would like, I will expand to the full city.

Southside Ithaca Routes

As it stands now, only route 15 will be a drivable route. It is a rather scenic route, going from the hustle and bustle of Downtown Ithaca to a peaceful drive down the nature ridden Plain Street, with a side stop into Titus Towers. This route also provides access to Wegmans, Tops, and Walmart along Meadow Street.

Progress

As of right now, the road layout is 70% complete, with scenery lagging slightly behind at 50% complete. There is also no AI bus traffic as of yet. It may not be until late October that a stable release is out. There will be no beta/alpha releases with this map, as it is my 4th big project, by now I basically know what I’m doing so it will be complete looking upon release. Also, no payware add-ons will be required to run this map (including Chicago) which is a first for this site.

Update: January 23rd, 2021

Update: 1/23/2021

This map has been canceled and merged into the Saratoga County map. The street layout is similar to the past version, and route 15 was retained.

About the author: Dash

I have been with Virtual Transit Center since it's conception as the "Dash Forums" back in 2008. Since then, I have been writing and doing YouTube side by side, focusing both on Transportation and Gaming. Most of my knowledge comes from SEPTA as I lived in Philadelphia for most of my life. As of 2021, I am on YouTube as DashTransit, Dash5155, and TheDashOfficial.

As for the name DashTransit itself, it actually stems from my YouTube channel.

DashTransit was originally called "njt5329" and the channel was just clips of buses. Mostly SEPTA and NJT. A Fujifilm Finepix was used in this era.

Starting in July 2011, the Canon SX130IS camera became the camera of the channel, bringing HD documentary-style videos much like my buddy (trainman1971) did for DVD for many years past. This is when the channel became known as "Transit Action Series"

In May 2012, the original Canon SX130IS retired, and then all videos were recorded off a mobile phone until eventually uploaded proved too difficult due to hardships IRL

Starting in 2017, I used a Canon SX200IS from Bastranz to reboot the channel that otherwise was dead for a whole year prior.

Between April 19th, 2019, and January 21st, 2021, all videos were recorded by a Canon SX710 HS camera. The channel was renamed DashTransit 4/19/19.