Good job JayJay. I applaud you on many levels with your Generation 5oor so projects. Problem is my computer can't handle your objects much.
I may have adressed this before. i may have not
I understand your concern with the highly detailed objects resulting in lowering your computer's performance but there's no way he can make it more "frame-rate friendly" without it looking like the older generation routes (unless he has hidden/unnecessary polygons which he can remove). This is because performance is directly correlated with the complexity of the models, textures, etc.
Higher quality models/textures = lower performance
Now I don't think you want the routes to always look the same (never improve) do you? The only way to solve your problem is to get a better/faster computer.
It's also not fair for the guys who has a faster computers to operate very undetailed routes.