Random milestone, I don't mine anymore so any diamonds I get is from digging cargo rail tunnels now.
While I never intended to really use the above horse road, I did some statistics and it's actually quicker to travel by horse Spawntown to Aahrus than nether. The new ladder is quite the pain, increasing travel times from as low as 14 seconds to 32 seconds (going down) to 45 seconds (going up). Whereas I can get to Spawntown on the incomplete horse road in 36 seconds with speed 2, 38 seconds with speed 1 and 46 seconds with no speed potions.
Problems: Splash potions aren't the cheapest as I don't have more than a few stacks of gunpowder. Horses can be very laggy and the lag with speed 2 is pretty unbearable (which is why it's barely faster than speed 1). If I were to use speed 2 potions I'd probably have to rebuild the entire road to be much straighter so I don't have to try so hard steering. The costs of rebuilding it all for speed 2 (likely underground) would make the project seem like
this... The nether was a farther distance traveled since I didnt include the time it would take to travel through both Spawntown and Capital with all the buildings (not that it's really a huge difference considering most of Spawntown is on the Aahrus side of the nether portal)