Wikipedia talk:WikiProject U.S. Roads/Archive 24

Creek Turnpike
Creek Turnpike
Route information
	Maintained by Oklahoma Turnpike Authority
Location
Country	United States
State	Oklahoma
Highway system
	Oklahoma State Highway System; Interstate; US; State; Turnpikes;

Creek Turnpike
Creek Turnpike
Location	Oklahoma

Interstate 80 Business
Interstate 80 Business
Location
Country	United States
Highway system
	Interstate Highway System; Main; Auxiliary; Suffixed; Business; Future;

This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Salem Parkway

Today is the day, and while I am still working on the route description, the rewrite of the article is mostly complete and could really use some proof reading and any corrections before going live. The reason I'm posting here is because I want Interstate 40 Business (North Carolina) (and its talk page) into the history of the new Salem Parkway, currently in sandbox. I'm not good at moving articles, so after you all are comfortable with it, if you could go ahead and do that for me that would be great. Recent editors: @Vchimpanzee:, @Beejayhelper:, @GretaLint: and @Roadsguy:, please also share input. Thank you! --WashuOtaku (talk) 18:42, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

Do you agree with my removing the "travel alert" section and putting the useful information in the lede? I felt like that was sort of a "how to" section and not something Wikipedia does.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 19:03, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

Also, no one is calling it Salem Parkway yet, so I don't feel it's time to move it. I should note that I haven't found a source yet that says the road is closed, which is strange.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 19:04, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

I'm fine with no travel alert in keeping with the standards. As for references, check #30 on the rewrite page and if that doesn't help, then here and here. Please go ahead and make any corrections to the page. --WashuOtaku (talk) 19:31, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

I'll do that but I later remembered that I record the 5:00 newscasts on WGHP because I like "Roy's Folks". Why that means I record every ngiht I don't remember, but it reminded me the TV stations would have been a source.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 19:03, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

I see some capitalization problems in the draft. Don't you capitalize "street" in the name of the street? Also, "The" seems to be needed before "first phase". And "combined", not "combine".— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 19:09, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

One of your sources did mention the road closed, but the other two did not. I have found my source and will change the article now.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 20:07, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

Obviously, Wikipedia guidelines would require that Salem Parkway will no longer be a disambiguation page once the name change happens. The former redirect target will be a hatnote.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 20:52, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

I am hurt that you do not trust my sources. Yea, it would remove the disabiguation page; Oregon Route 99E Business does not seem to focus the fact its also called Salem Parkway like North Carolina is trying to do, surprisingly no other Salem Parkways in the United States. As for my odd capitalization, I tend to capitalize "Street" and lower case "streets," if this is wrong, it can be changed. And responding to people still calling it "Business 40," it is officially the "Salem Parkway;" people will still call it "Business 40" for another two or three decades from now out of habit. --WashuOtaku (talk) 21:31, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

But saying the road will close is not the same as saying it did close. Something could have gone wrong at the last minute. What you tend to do is not what Wikipedia does, and I'm pretty sure "Street" is supposed to be capitalized. Also, I don't recall anyone saying it is officially "Salem Parkway". When the name "Business 40" is no longer used in sources, that's when the name change happens.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 14:51, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

The name is official, they have signs, they did a whole "meet the politicians as they fake shovel" event and I have several sources and pictures in wikimedia (from NCDOT) confirming this. I'll adjust "Streets" accordingly then. --WashuOtaku (talk) 15:17, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

If no one else objects I won't either, but I still say if the name change was official all the sources would be saying "Salem Parkway is closed" rather than "Business 40 is closed".— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 15:36, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

Per WP:NODEADLINE, we should leave this at the current title until the work on the renaming is complete. While it is in process, the old signage is still up, and there's no need to "scoop" the story and beat the actual signage on the ground. According to sources I have found, the signage work is being done in stages and is not anticipated to be complete until 2020 or so. Once we have clear evidence on the ground that the old name is dropped and the new name is in use, there's no rush to move it yet. Though I do agree that, per WP:PRIMARY, once this is completed, we can consider this the primary topic, and include a hatnote to the lesser-used name for the Oregon route. --Jayron 32 17:15, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

You are implying all the work that has been done on creating the Salem Parkway should be shelved now? This hurts me. --WashuOtaku (talk) 17:24, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

No, I'm saying that we shouldn't re-title the article based on future plans to rename the road. Once the road is actually renamed, feel free. Also, any additional content can be moved over now; I would just leave it at Interstate 40 Business until it isn't called that anymore. --Jayron 32 21:21, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

The way I setup the article, similar to the Pennsylvania Turnpike, it still showed I-40 Bus. as being active, but just demoted to secondary now to the "official" name of the freeway; you know, the one the state DOT wants people to start using now. Do others feel strongly about keeping I-40 Bus. until it officially removed by the state? --WashuOtaku (talk) 21:45, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

WP:COMMONNAME and WP:NAMECHANGES (sections of the article title policy) have been implicitly referenced here, and those should be followed. The title of the article should not be changed to "Salem Parkway" until that name reaches common usage in reliable, third-party sources. This does not directly impact the contents of the article, but care should be exercised with regards to how the highway is named in prose, in order to avoid confusing readers. For example, if you want to refer to the highway as "Salem Parkway", make sure readers know that it is the same route as Business 40. -happy 5214 22:20, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

New York US shields

Can someone please fix Template:Infobox road/shield/USA so that 3-digit US routes in New York call "File:US X (NY).svg" as the shield since that style is used by the state? Dough4872 03:08, 23 November 2018 (UTC)

Should be done. Let me know if I missed any. –Fredddie ™ 03:59, 23 November 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, I fixed some of the hardcoded shields. Dough4872 04:00, 23 November 2018 (UTC)

You forgot US 219. Dough4872 04:02, 23 November 2018 (UTC)

Also US 104. Dough4872 12:09, 23 November 2018 (UTC)

Split US 74 Bypass (Monroe Expressway) from Special Routes

Hello, there has been a suggestion to split US 74 Bypass (Monroe Expressway) from Special routes of U.S. Route 74. Please consider sharing your opinion on the matter. Thank you. --WashuOtaku (talk) 03:43, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

Managed lane articles

I recently came across South Metro Express Lanes and my first response was "why does this even exist?" My opinion is that managed lanes should be incorporated in the main route article; but my opinion isn't gospel so what do other editors think about managed lanes, do they deserve their own articles? --WashuOtaku (talk) 15:58, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

I know of no other situation where there is a dedicated article about express lanes/HOT lanes/managed lanes, nor have I ever seen such a lane project I would deem notable enough to merit it's own article. I do know of some article that have sections about express lanes (i.e. California State Route 91 and even then IMHO that is much. I would probably just have the express lanes be included as a couple of sentences in the route description, again baring some notable feat of engineering unique to the express lanes. Dave (talk) 16:07, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

There are other articles describing these managed lanes such as Virginia HOT lanes, which lists all the HOT lanes along Interstate highways throughout the state of Virginia. Generally though I would prefer to include managed lanes (HOT/Express Toll lanes) in the article of the route they are located along and incorporate the information into the route description and exit list along with a separate section describing the HOT/Expresss Toll lanes that includes information such as where there lanes run from to from, access to and from the lanes, and toll rates. See Interstate 95 in Maryland as an example of how Express Toll Lanes are included in the article of the route they are located along. Dough4872 17:45, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

I recently created the article Washuotaku is so concerned about. I created it because there are other pages that are similar to it within the state. We are in a bit of a disagreement because they believe it is against this projects notability standards for the article to exist, while I obviously disagree, having spent some hours doing research on the page and creating it. I believe that the page meets the notability of Wikipedia per Wikipedia:PAGEDECIDE. Opinions aside, I think we need to decide if the notability standards of this project conflict with those of Wikipedia at large. Why do we have pages on interchanges? Why do we have pages on bridges? The managed lane projects are similar in scope to these pieces of engineering. Philosophy aside, if they are deemed to not conflict with the standards, then we should make sure and get rid of all managed lane pages to avoid further confusion. Best, Mccunicano (talk) 09:35, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

Not all "notable" topics deserve their own articles. We merged most of the farm-to-market road articles into lists because there wasn't enough to say about most of them. In addition, the article as written is somewhat misleading. I wouldn't consider the portion of these lanes in the I-675 median to be "part of" I-675, but rather ramps connecting that highway to the express lanes along I-75. Given these two points, this article should probably be merged into Interstate 75 in Georgia. -happy 5214 12:18, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

I have recently setup a merge request for South Metro Express Lanes to go into Interstate 75 in Georgia, the discussion can be found here, please weigh in if you agree or disagree. --WashuOtaku (talk) 13:23, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

Personally, I'd say that managed lanes should normally be part of the parent highway article. Yes, they're worthy of coverage, but I don't think we'll find that they're independently notable enough for individual articles. To address a point above: most interchanges and most bridges will not have individual articles. Those with the most coverage will, so it's possible that specific managed lanes may have enough coverage to warrant a separate article. Imzadi 1979 → 17:33, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

One concern I have with the title of South Metro Express Lanes is that it doesn't tell us very much. WP:NAMINGCRITERIA says that titles of articles should make the subject recognizable to someone who isn't familiar with the subject. Personally, I would move the article to South Metro Atlanta Express Lanes. "Metro Atlanta" seems like the most natural way to say it. –Fredddie ™ 14:44, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

New Jersey Route 179

There is a proposed article renaming at Talk:New Jersey Route 179#Proposed rename: Route 179 (New Jersey – Pennsylvania). Dough4872 18:48, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

Interstate 285

There is a requested move discussion taking place at Talk:Interstate 285 that people here may be interested in following. –Fredddie ™ 03:35, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

Interstate 470 categorization

I have added Category:Interstate 70 to the Interstate 470 disambiguation page. However, another editor keeps removing it. What is the project's stance on such circumstances? Morriswa (Charlotte Allison) (talk) 14:44, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

@Morriswa: the guidelines say that disambiguation pages don't belong in categories. In this case, the individual I-470 articles would all be in that category, so the disambiguation page doesn't need to go there. It would just be redundant. Imzadi 1979 → 15:58, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Georgia SR 540 (Fall Line Freeway) signed

I was out of town on Saturday. On my way back, I took US 1/SR 4 from Tobacco Road to Barton Chapel Road. The entire path was also signed as SR 540, the highway number for the Fall Line Freeway, of which US 1/SR 4 from Wrens, Georgia to Augusta, Georgia is part. I looked online and found a news story that SR 540 is being signed in Columbus, Georgia. I did a Google search and found a picture of a SR 24 shield (didn't see where it was at) that had an SR 540 shield added alongside it. Does anyone know more about this? I tried finding the information on the Georgia Department of Transportation's website, but I couldn't find anything. Morriswa (Charlotte Allison) (talk) 17:21, 10 December 2018 (UTC)

Also, I was thinking that, along with updating the signage, the entire Fall Line Freeway page needs a total re-write or restructuring into a current highway page. I was thinking of possibly starting to do this in one of my sandboxes. Morriswa (Charlotte Allison) (talk) 01:26, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

Split Request: I-885 from NC 147

Hello, there has been a suggestion to split the proposed I-885 from North Carolina Highway 147 to its own page. Please consider sharing your opinion on the matter. Thank you. --WashuOtaku (talk) 06:03, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

I'm the one who proposed the split and wrote the draft. At this point, though no one has commented yet, no one has objected either, I'm going to just go ahead and do it within the next few days unless anyone wants to get in a last-minute objection. Roadsguy (talk) 23:06, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

Interstate 80 Business Routes in Wyoming

A while back I tried to address the issue of material from Interstate 80 in Wyoming#Business routes being moved to Business routes of Interstate 80#Wyoming. I swiped most of the info from that segment in hidden text to each segment on the Business route article, but nobody else has taken the issue in the slightest consideration. So why has this been overlooked? ---------User:DanTD (talk) 14:12, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

We were hoping Wyoming would eliminate all Interstate Business loops since last time, but alas. --WashuOtaku (talk) 16:31, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

I honestly don't remember that, so I would say be BOLD and just take care of it. –Fredddie ™ 16:41, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

Okay, that might require some excessive rewrites, but I'll give it a shot. I just hope it doesn't get tagged for expansion like Interstate 90 in Wyoming#Business routes. That could make the whole effort kind of self defeating. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 17:50, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

Ah, the I-90 article was tagged inappropriately. –Fredddie ™ 18:11, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

Feedback request

I've been working on expanding History sections for Minnesota highway articles and referencing them to official or direct sources, as part of eventually improving them to B-class and beyond. Before I go much further, I'd like some feedback on what I've written thus far. It's difficult to tell whilst in the process of researching and writing how much is too much or too little (although the intricacy of each highway's history dictates much of that anyway).

The articles I've done so far are:

The last one I also expanded the route description as much as it could be. Any feedback on prose quality, if there's too much detail or not enough, or anything else would be appreciated. Thanks! --Sable232 (talk) 23:58, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

I'd say the biggest thing would be seeing if you can find some newspaper articles, etc. that give an idea as to why things happened. You can check your library, if you are local, or see if one of the offerings at Wikipedia:The Wikipedia Library might help. --Rs chen 7754 02:05, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

Yeah I concur with Rschen. Having access to Newspapers.com and Newspaperarchive.com has been instrumental in improving articles for me. –Fredddie ™ 02:09, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

Thanks. Do those sites typically have a good selection of rural newspapers?

Any comments on prose or level of detail? --Sable232 (talk) 23:39, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

Special routes year-specific shields

I noticed that some of the List of special state routes in Georgia (U.S. state) have year-specific shields. However, if I try to change the type parameter to show them, I get a Lua error. What is the correct way to display these shields? Morriswa (Charlotte Allison) (talk) 01:19, 24 December 2018 (UTC)

I don't quite get what you're asking. What types are you trying to use that are giving you errors? –Fredddie ™ 04:39, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

Snow Emergency Route signs

Can anybody think of the proper temporary commons category for "Snow Emergency Route" signs? For those who aren't from north of the Carolinas these are the types of signs I'm talking about. --

If no such category exists, you can create a category for them with a title such as "Category:Snow Emergency Route signs". Dough4872 02:03, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

Maintained by

I'm just testing the waters with this one, but should we have some guidelines for |maint= in {{Infobox road}} with regards to how many agencies should be listed? I was looking at Interstate 295 (Delaware–Pennsylvania), which has four maintaining agencies listed. I feel like 4 is excessive. –Fredddie ™ 22:16, 30 December 2018 (UTC)

I don't have a problem with having all four, but if we remove any of them, we should just omit the field entirely. -happy 5214 23:14, 30 December 2018 (UTC)

I feel that we should include all the maintaining agencies for road articles, except for national-level articles that are split into state-detail pages. Dough4872 23:41, 30 December 2018 (UTC)

It helps if the agencies can be abbreviated to condense the space. I agree that some highway with like two dozen city-maintained segments might warrant some different treatment, but four agencies in abbreviated format shouldn't be an issue. For that hypothetical, maybe "and various cities" at the end after the state/county agencies? Imzadi 1979 → 23:48, 30 December 2018 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Highways/Assessment/A-Class Review/Washington State Route 527

Could an uninvolved editor please close this ACR? Thanks. --Rs chen 7754 22:12, 26 January 2019 (UTC)

Done -happy 5214 23:03, 26 January 2019 (UTC)

Need clarification on the 10-jct limit of the Major intersections section of the infobox

As per WP:USRD/STDS#Major intersections, the major intersections section of the infobox should not list more than 10 intersections. However, I noticed in some of the California road articles recently, someone appears to bypassing this rule by combining all the major intersections in each city onto one line.

For example, currently on Interstate 5 in California,[1] there is the line on the infobox:

I-10 / US 101 / SR 60 / SR 110 / SR 2 in Los Angeles

even though they are actually three separate interchanges. The East Los Angeles Interchange is only I-10, US 101 and SR 60, while SR 110 and SR 2 are each separate junctions.

Similarly on U.S. Route 101 in California,[2] there currently is in the infobox:

I-80 / SR 1 in San Francisco

even though I-80 never even meets with SR 1.

And currently on the infobox of California State Route 1,[3], there is

I-710 / SR 103 / SR 103U / SR 47 / I-110 in Long Beach

even though the are also actually separate interchanges.

So basically instead of literally listing 10 junctions, it really lists 10 cities with major junctions. Is this allowed, or should they be reverted? Zzyzx11 (talk) 05:35, 24 December 2018 (UTC)

I'd say that these should be reverted. The junction list in the infobox is supposed to be a summary, As a summary, we don't need to list everything. More importantly, we shouldn't be implying that separate junctions/interchanges are really merged together; there's nothing wrong with listing two junctions for the same city, assuming other details are being considered. Imzadi 1979 → 06:03, 24 December 2018 (UTC)

You have to admire the ingenuity here, most would ignore the 10-limit. --WashuOtaku (talk) 14:40, 24 December 2018 (UTC)

I would have to agree. (And on a side note, 103U!?) --Rs chen 7754 07:44, 6 January 2019 (UTC)

"To" entries in infoboxes

Some editors keep added "to" entries to junctions in the infobox on the Interstate 87 (New York) page. I have been reverting them, since it is not procedure. Can some consensus from the project be reached about this? Morriswa (Charlotte Allison) (talk) 00:32, 8 January 2019 (UTC)

I would be inclined to leave them out, since the infobox is meant to be a summary only and detail like that is best explained in the junction list. --Sable232 (talk) 00:45, 8 January 2019 (UTC)

Yeah, we do not include "to" entries in the infobox, we only use them in junction/exit lists if indicated by signage. Dough4872 00:55, 8 January 2019 (UTC)

Proposed renaming of Utah list article

Figured I'd post this here to reach more people and get their opinions on this. I think the current title is long and redundant; the new one would be shorter and simpler. Main discussion here: Talk:State highways deleted by the Utah State Legislature in 1969#Requested move 5 January 2019. Roadguy2 (talk) 03:43, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

Routelist template problems

I have been using the routelist templates on my sandbox to be able to add the special routes to the List of U.S. Highways in Georgia page. I have some problems. One, I want to be able to use year-specific shields. Two, I can't correctly add a temporary route. Could someone please fix the code so these work? Thank you. Morriswa (Charlotte Allison) (talk) 09:33, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

Do the shields exist? --WashuOtaku (talk) 13:46, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

@Morriswa: links? It's hard to know what's what without a link to the sandbox in question or without an example of what isn't working or should be changed. Imzadi 1979 → 14:04, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

I'm not done with all of the entries, but I know some of the shield links actually exist, since they are on the redirect target pages. I noticed that, on the List of U.S. Highways in Michigan, there were entries that use parameters such as "US 1948-Bus". I tried using them, but they didn't work.

When I added the temporary route, I got a Lua error that "US-Temp" didn't exist. Morriswa (Charlotte Allison) (talk) 23:07, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

Evidently, the {{Infobox road small}} and {{Routelist row}} templates don't work the same. Morriswa (Charlotte Allison) (talk) 23:41, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

@Morriswa: no, they don't. The routelist and jct templates use the same Lua modules, while the infoboxes do not. I'm sure we've explained that before, if not, well, that's why. Remember, each type, like "US 1948-Bus" needs to be defined in each state's Lua module, or it won't work. If Module:Road data/strings/USA/GA doesn't have "US-Temp", you'll get the Lua error. Imzadi 1979 → 05:29, 8 January 2019 (UTC)

I just looked at that module. Neither the "US-Temp" nor the year-specific entries are listed. I would add them myself, but I don't want to damage the module. Could someone add them, please? Morriswa (Charlotte Allison) (talk) 06:36, 8 January 2019 (UTC)

Well, I tried changing the module, copying and pasting from Module:Road data/strings/USA/MI, but I messed something up. Can someone tell me what I did wrong? When I did a preview of changing the US 17 Alt. (Savannah) entry from "US-Alt" to "US 1948-Alt", I got tons of Lua errors, and nearly all of the entries in the table disappeared. So, I backed out of the edit window. I haven't tried changing the US 41 Temp. (Atlanta–Marietta) entry to see if it works, yet. Morriswa (Charlotte Allison) (talk) 07:11, 8 January 2019 (UTC)

I had to revert my edit, since it messed up code (somewhere!) and thus messed up Georgia pages across the encyclopedia. Here is the diff of what I added. Morriswa (Charlotte Allison) (talk) 08:16, 8 January 2019 (UTC)

A reason for a problem would be "abbr = MI["US-Byp"].abbr," where MI is used instead of GA. Johnuniq (talk) 08:26, 8 January 2019 (UTC)

@Johnuniq: thank you for pointing that out. I thought I had changed all the abbreviations over. I guess I was wrong. I will try again. Morriswa (Charlotte Allison) (talk) 09:35, 8 January 2019 (UTC)

Sadly, that also didn't work. It messed up code. So, I had to revert this edit, too. Morriswa (Charlotte Allison) (talk) 10:08, 8 January 2019 (UTC)

Do it like this [4] and it will work. –Fredddie ™ 00:33, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

Are all of the types that you're trying to add necessary? I feel like US 1926-Temp is overkill. –Fredddie ™ 00:35, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

@Fredddie: thank you for adding the first two entries. I modified the already-added 1948 Alternate and Business entries. However, one entry caused an error (I kept checking the code. I even copy-pasted from a working entry, and that didn't help.): "Lua error in Module:Routelist_row at line 277: Type not in database: US 1948-Alt." I don't know what this error entry is all about. I will wait until I add all known entries to the table before I modify the module, so I know exactly which entries are actually needed. Morriswa (Charlotte Allison) (talk) 07:57, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

As a side question, can you remind me as to exactly which years should be used for each entry? Is is 1926: 1926-1947; 1948: 1948-1960; and 1961: 1961-present? I just want to do this correctly. Thank you. Morriswa (Charlotte Allison) (talk) 08:01, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

For Georgia, I use 1926:1926-1948, 1948: 1948-1961, 1961:1961-2000, regular types for 2000-present. Clear as mud. –Fredddie ™ 13:56, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

@Fredddie: thank you so much for that clarification. Do you know what is causing the Lua error on my page (listed above)? The code is correct, and copied from working entries. Morriswa (Charlotte Allison) (talk) 15:24, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

@Morriswa: you had |country=USA instead of |state=GA for that one row. There's a different Lua module for national-level items, and it wouldn't have all of the fancy vintage stuff in it. Imzadi 1979 → 17:32, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for changing that. I think that, when I first added that entry, the Georgia one didn't work. I see now that it does. However, is there a way for the 1948 Georgia entries to show the Georgia-specific shields? If you follow the U.S. Route 78 Alternate (Alabama–Georgia) redirect link, it uses File:US 78 Georgia 1948.svg, instead of File:US 78 (1948).svg. Morriswa (Charlotte Allison) (talk) 02:47, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

I just added 1961 entries to the page. However, since one is the Alabama–Georgia entry, it is trying to link to "U.S. Route 78 Alternate (Alabama–Georgia, Georgia)", instead of "U.S. Route 78 Alternate (Alabama–Georgia)". How do I fix this? Morriswa (Charlotte Allison) (talk) 03:19, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

Major cities in the article introductions

There are three highways where I have recently seen back-and-forth editing and discussion in the talk pages about which cities should be listed in the intro:

Interstate 25 (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
Interstate 40 (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
Interstate 75 (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

Do we have a project-wide guideline for how many cities should be mentioned in the introductory paragraph of the article? I know there was discussion about the major cities box of the infobox, but I can't find anything about the introduction.

There seems to be a range of possibilities, since I-25 seems to include some smaller cities. Should it be just the biggest of the big? The ones with the most significant junctions? The ones with the largest population? One representative city per state? Obviously, there will be some variation—I mean, the I-90 intro is going to look vastly different from the I-97 one—but I'd like to get a reasonable degree of consistency in the articles—or at least get more eyes on the trouble spots I listed above. —C.Fred (talk) 21:08, 29 January 2019 (UTC)

We really don't have a formal guideline for what cities to mention in the lead. For a cross-country Interstate ending in 0 or 5, I say we limit it to major cities, such as state capitals or the state's largest cities by population along with other cities that can be deemed "major". I say a rough idea for a major city is one with over 100,000 people (not including suburbs of larger cities) or professional sports teams or a significant international airport. For shorter Interstates, more regional cities can be included. A rough idea for regional cities can be cities with over 25,000 people or cities that are big enough to constitute their major metropolitan area. Dough4872 21:18, 29 January 2019 (UTC)

A hard-and-fast rule would likely end up littered with exceptions, but in general I feel it should be limited to major metropolitan areas - one per state would probably work best for most nationwide interstates, maybe two depending on the situation. There's plenty of space in the route description for more. The list on Interstate 25 is right out, in my opinion. Two per state at the most, but I would not oppose limiting it to only Albuquerque, Denver, and Cheyenne. --Sable232 (talk) 22:47, 29 January 2019 (UTC)

I agree with Sable232 that Albquerque, Denver, and Cheyenne should be the only cities included in the lead for I-25, maybe adding in Santa Fe as well since it's a state capital. Dough4872 22:50, 29 January 2019 (UTC)

This seems like a redux of major cities in the infobox in a way. If you remember, we decided as a project to not include them because of the subjectivity. That being said, I don't like the idea of having a sentence that says "Highway X passes through A, B, and C." or a paraphrase thereof in every article just to have it. Any I really don't like the idea of hard-and-fast rules for when we do or don't mention cities. What should be happening since the lead is a preview of the article, any mentions of cities or metro areas should be natural. I would go as far as saying that if a lead would benefit from one of those lists of cities, the whole thing should be rewritten so it comes naturally. –Fredddie ™ 00:50, 30 January 2019 (UTC)

[5] This is a prime example. Scrap the whole thing and start over. –Fredddie ™ 00:55, 30 January 2019 (UTC)

Over 10 years after the 10 junction limit came in for the infobox, we still struggle with editors deciding that they are just going to ignore consensus and explicit HTML comments and put 15 in. I worry about giving them another battlefield to make sure that their favorite cities get into the lead. However, I agree that we shouldn't just ignore cities entirely in the lead per Fredddie. --Rs chen 7754 01:58, 30 January 2019 (UTC)

Thinking out loud for a moment, I'm thinking that the idea of just listing a bunch of cities in a single sentence is just poor writing. There are more creative ways to work in the same information without the monotony of a long list. I've typically been of the opinion that a list of three examples as illustrations is normally plenty, something like "I-98 passes through Midwestern cities such as X, Y and Z", with a qualifying phrase ("such as") to denote that the listing isn't exhaustive, just illustrative. That will only work in a few cases though.

I took a stab at a better concept: expanding the state and city listing in the lead of the I-75 article into a narrative summary of the RD]. There's still room for a bit of expansion there, just so long as people remember that the lead is a summary, not a replacement for the body of the article. As a side note, you can list more cities naturally in such text without turning it into a sentence that will not end. Imzadi 1979 → 15:04, 30 January 2019 (UTC)

And another such edit: [6] --Rs chen 7754 06:14, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

Also thinking out loud, IMHO this goes right along with 2 other USRD infobox practices that I think should be scrapped. First, the 10 most prominent junctions in the info-box. As Rschen states above people just ignore any comment or mention of guideline and cram _their_ hometown in. Second is the state level navigation boxes on U.S. and Interstate highway articles. (i.e. that directs one from U.S. Route 66 to Kansas route 67 as next and 65 as previous) (I have no idea if this example is correct, it illustrates the point even if not). In both cases. these sections have been subject to misuse. In both cases people just add "Hey you forgot that U.S. Route 66 also runs through New Mexico". IMHO they provide little value anyways. The Navbox only saves one mouse click, as the same information is likely in an article category at the bottom or a listicle linked in the infobox. Of course, every article has a junctions list that covers those 10 junctions. IMHO, just get rid of both of them. Now, back to listing cities in the lead. As a reminder the lead is supposed to be a summary of the rest of the article. So certainly if a city is not mentioned in the route description, it does not belong in the lead. I'm inclined to ban all "lists of cities" be it a literal list or a sentence in the lead that is a list with commas and a period at the end. How about the lead should only list a city as part of an actual non-list sentence? (For example, "The largest city served by the route is Springfield" and "In 1990 the highway was re-routed to bypass Springfield" are ok provided they are summarizing information elsewhere in the article.) Again, just thinking out loud. Dave (talk) 06:34, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

I'm not opposed to getting rid of either the junctions or the browse. I think the only reason we do the browses is because the original California routeboxes did them. That being said, we would probably have to disable it similar to how we disable cities in the US, since Infobox road is international. --Rs chen 7754 06:50, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

@Moabdave: that's why I wrote a paragraph summary of the RD for I-75, which actually gives more useful information than a monotonous list of cities, and funny thing, I was able to list more cities than where there before because they just naturally flowed with the rest of the text.

@Hraines46: please join us in this conversation here and please revert your recent edits pushing extra cities into those long, listy sentences in the batch of articles you edited within the last 24 hours. Wikipedia operates on a consensus model, and because this situation applies to more than just one article, we're discussing it in a centralized place. You may not have seen direct replies at the individual article talk pages, but I know C.Fred mentioned on Talk:Interstate 75 that he was going to discuss the situation here. Imzadi 1979 → 14:13, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

Hello? What is it? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hraines46 (talk • contribs) 16:15, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

@Hraines46: we've been discussing general guidelines and best practices to handle the lead sections of these national-level highway articles. In short, many of us agree that a single sentence that's a long listing of cities is very poor writing. We'd like to hear your thoughts on all of this instead of seeing you edit several articles to change the city listings. Please read this as a strong suggestion to engage in conversation and to pause in article editing on this topic until we come to some conclusions on the best way forward. Imzadi 1979 → 17:42, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

So, if we can't use single sentences, what are we gonna do? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hraines46 (talk • contribs) 19:30, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

Well, Hraines46, I've offered the concept of writing out a paragraph instead, as I did on the I-75 article. Remember, the lead is supposed to summarize the body of the article, and every section of the article should be summarized in the lead. So the paragraph I added is intended to summarize the route description section in the body of the I-75 article. Imzadi 1979 → 19:43, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

Yeah, writing it out, like the concept on I-75's page was nice. Will we have to do that for every page? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hraines46 (talk • contribs) 20:10, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

@Hraines46: yes, that would be the better course of action. I know it's a lot easier just to slap additional cities into the sentence when you think they're missing, but you're creating text no one wants to read.

Additionally, you should take a look at WP:OVERLINK; we don't repeatedly link things in close proximity. For I-90, since "Seattle" is linked when it is first mentioned as a terminus, we wouldn't link any additional mentions of it in the lead.

On a side note, it would help a lot if you could do two things to follow proper talk page etiquette. First, indent your replies underneath others. My previous comments were preceded by three colons (:::), each one adding an indentation. Your reply should have been preceded by four colons (::::). You'll notice that my current reply has five (:::::), so if you reply to this, you should use six (::::::) colons to start your comments. Second, please end your comments with four tildes (~~~~). This code will be replaced by your signature. This is important so that we know who is saying what. After your last comment, a bot had to insert a signature for you, but then you edited your comments and removed that, so I had to add it back. As noted on your talk page, you should always sign your posts on talk pages. These are two simple, but very important things to do with any discussion on a talk page.

Thank you, Imzadi 1979 → 05:29, 6 February 2019 (UTC)

I don't understand. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hraines46 (talk • contribs) 17:10, 6 February 2019 (UTC)

Interstate 80 in New Jersey

We are having an issue at Interstate 80 in New Jersey where an editor keeps adding cities to exit lists that are not on signs, which violates MOS:RJL. This editor has been constantly reverting me (See history) by adding the cities that are not on signs. Can someone please take care of this issue? I do not want to revert again. Dough4872 01:15, 17 January 2019 (UTC)

"Extra" parameters in Template:Jct

Is there any way to add multiple "extra" parameters (such as "extra=airport") to a {{Jct}} entry? Morriswa (Charlotte Allison) (talk) 00:22, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

Not in a single call. You can do something like this, though: {{jct|state=TX|extra=airport}}{{jct|state=TX|SH|151|extra=hospital}}

SH 151. -happy 5214 00:55, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

@Happy5214: thank you for the suggestion. I just implemented it on U.S. Route 17 in Georgia. Morriswa (Charlotte Allison) (talk) 01:50, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

I think it looks tacky to have the route marker sandwiched between two extra icons. We should find a way for {{jct}} to be able to call multiple extra parameters, for instance "extra1=" and "extra2=". Dough4872 02:12, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

I think nearly all instances of |extra= look tacky, especially all the hospitals. Instead of trying to shoehorn the template to fit your needs, why not review what you're trying to convey to our readers? –Fredddie ™ 02:16, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

We're trying to convey what signage for exits say, which is what is called for in MOS:RJL, and sometimes exit signage includes hospital or airport icons. Dough4872 03:22, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

These icons really need to be in the string modules, not Module:Jct. We can fix both issues at once. -happy 5214 20:50, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

Last exit before toll

After a discussion at Talk:U.S. Route 301 in Maryland, I noticed we never noted last exits before tolls in junction lists before, as in what is the last exit one would have to get off at before a toll road begins or before coming to a toll bridge or toll tunnel. In some states they note this on the green guide signs, usually in yellow on the bottom. I was wondering if we should start noting the last exit before tolls in junction lists in USRD articles. Dough4872 04:33, 30 January 2019 (UTC)

I think it would be worthwhile to include, especially if it's commonly listed on guide signs. --Sable232 (talk) 22:30, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

I don't think it's needed in most cases, but if it's included, please remember that exit lists can be read from the bottom up for the opposite direction of traffic. Imzadi 1979 → 00:09, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

Perhaps they should be denoted using a column-spanning note similar to the existing "Begin freeway / West end of freeway" notes. Sounder Bruce 00:22, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

If we do include these notes, we can use directions to to reader to make it more clear, such as "last northbound exit before toll". I think it would be better to include in the notes for the exit over a column-spanning note since the note pertains to a specific exit, and the column-spanning note would look more clunky. Dough4872 00:38, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

Agreed in opposition to a column span. That's been reserved for situations where the freeway transition doesn't correspond to an interchange; when it does, it's a note on the appropriate exit instead. Imzadi 1979 → 00:42, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

I think adding this to the notes column is reasonable. IMHO, knowing which exit is the last before a toll barrier is more useful than things we already tolerate in the exit lists.Dave (talk) 06:27, 6 February 2019 (UTC)

Tolls update

Hello everyone, A helpee in IRC help channel suggested that the information on tolls on articles: Florida State Road 408, Florida State Road 417, Florida State Road 429 are very old and need to be updated. Since I am unfamiliar with the information about tolls, could any of you guys have a look? Thanks! ‐‐1997kB (talk) 12:15, 9 February 2019 (UTC)

I don't have time to fix them myself, but this document has the updated toll rates for the Central Florida Expressway Authority tollways (near Orlando). -happy 5214 01:34, 10 February 2019 (UTC)

Pelham Parkway

Some concerns over the neutrality of the above article were raised on my talk page here (I'll leave it when I archive on Friday). The OP's concerns appear, at least to my uninformed eye, to have some merit. I'm asking that any of you with interest or knowledge that would be pertinent to maybe look there with an eye to help. The OP was going to start a talk thread there, but doesn't seem to have done so yet. Thanks. John from Idegon (talk) 01:43, 28 February 2019 (UTC)

My mistake. I was working on other issues on the web, let alone Wikipedia, but the thought of the biased tone of that article never left my mind. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 04:52, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

Natcher parkway in Kentucky is now I-165

As of today, I-165 signs are being placed on the Natcher Parkway in Kentucky.^[1] I just started updating relevant pages. Needforspeed888 (talk) 01:36, 7 March 2019 (UTC)

Please exercise caution, Needforspeed888. First off, not all of the parkway is being resigned as I-165. Additionally, you need to observe the legal technicalities about copying content between articles on Wikipedia, namely linking the right article (not a redirect) in your edit summary. Please slow down and discuss first before jumping the gun on mergers/renames/etc. Imzadi 1979 → 01:45, 7 March 2019 (UTC)

Another thing to note: is the name being totally retired from the I-165 section? If not, it would improper to remove the parkway name from other articles on intersecting highways. Until that question is settled, it's a bit premature to just change articles. Again, we need to exercise caution. Imzadi 1979 → 01:52, 7 March 2019 (UTC)

References

^ https://www.wbko.com/content/news/Natcher-Parkway-officially-changing-to-I-165-506778581.html. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)

It said in the article that it was being renamed, "William H. Natcher Expressway," as I put in the alt name slot.Needforspeed888 (talk) 02:01, 7 March 2019 (UTC)

Watchlist

Just an fyi, my watchlist is getting pretty clogged, I'm going to gradually start unfollowing non-ohio highways and such. Cards84664 (talk) 05:30, 8 March 2019 (UTC)

Cards84664: It's not clogged if you can still remove entries. Nova Crystallis (Talk) 05:32, 8 March 2019 (UTC)

New article for TOTSO?

While browsing through the Glossary of road transport terms, (which I added a few terms to), I noticed that we don't currently have an article for Turn-off-to-stay-on (TOTSO), those scenarios where you have to exit to stay on the same highway. I think this would be a great addition to this Wikiproject, as we have a lot of examples here in the US. What do you all think? Needforspeed888 (talk) 19:06, 10 March 2019 (UTC)

It only makes sense to create an article if we can talk about it in depth and not merely list off places where this occurs. I don't think we can, so I do not support creating an article. –Fredddie ™ 02:56, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

I agree, unless we have something like concurrency (road) that is more than just examples. Maybe you can take a stab at Draft:Turn-off-to-stay-on to see what shakes out, Needforspeed888? Imzadi 1979 → 03:09, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

Perhaps make it a separate section of Interchange (road)? Just a thought. Highway 89 (talk) 03:30, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

I think an article and listing examples of this occurrence is trivial and really not needed. Dough4872 04:11, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

Did I do the KML file right?

So, I haven't made a KML file in years, and after reading that you could seemingly easily create great quality KML files from Google Maps, I was interested in helping again. I made one for a small-ish route, Kentucky Route 399, at Template:Attached KML/Kentucky Route 399. In the article, the OSM map looks fine, but the template itself looks like a complete disaster, at least compared to other KML templates I made years prior, like Template:Attached KML/U.S. Virgin Islands Highway 38. Did I do something wrong? --AmaryllisGardener ^talk 01:27, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

AmaryllisGardener: Looks like you did. Nova Crystallis (Talk) 02:09, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

I've gone ahead and removed some of the offending pararmeters to clean up the looks of the code. It still functioned properly, so it should be all good. Sounder Bruce 03:13, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

@SounderBruce: Thank you! --AmaryllisGardener ^talk 04:46, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

Comment: Since Google and Bing removed their ability to show KMLs on their map platforms, I would suggest in addition to creating and placing the KML files to create the "interactive map" for these articles as well. Pennsylvania Route 155 is an article where I created one recently with the code for it located at Wikipedia:Map data/Wikipedia KML/Pennsylvania Route 155. You can almost take the code from there, swap out the new coordinates (making sure each point has enclosed brackets "[x, y], ...") and name and post. The centroid coordinates of the route can easily be found from clicking for WikiMiniAtlas in the top right corner, hitting the fullscreen button, and getting the lat/long from the URL of the popup window. This would then help reduce our maps backlog too. —Mr. Matté (^Talk/_Contrib) 13:43, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

I've made a userscript User:Evad37/kmlToJson you can install to convert Attached KML subpages into JSON map data (the format used bu the "interactive maps") - Evad37 [talk] 23:16, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

Disambiguating locations in top templates

How do we disambiguate locations in the {{Jcttop}} template (and sub templates)? Some of the newly-made Kansas highway articles, using {{KSinttop}}, are entirely within Grand River Township, Sedgwick County, Kansas, but the template links to Grand River Township, Kansas (which doesn't exist). Thank you. Morriswa (Charlotte Allison) (talk) 00:22, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

Is I-95 between I-80 and the GWB part of the New Jersey Turnpike mainline?

The article doesn't seem to make this clear. The intro paragraph and the infobox imply the mainline ends at the GWB, and the RD says the mainline runs to Ridgefield Park where it "continues as I-95". The RD of Interstate 95 in New Jersey is split into "New Jersey Turnpike", covering up to US 46, and "George Wahsington Bridge Approach", continuing from there. I would definitely argue that the road from US 46 to the GWB is part of the turnpike, but is it part of the mainline, or just an extension (like the Pearl Harbor or Newark Bay extensions)? Needforspeed888 (talk) 14:59, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

The traditional north end of the New Jersey Turnpike is at the US 46 interchange in Ridgefield Park. The section of I-95 between US 46 in Ridgefield Park and the George Washington Bridge is maintained by the NJTA but was not originally part of the New Jersey Turnpike; it was transferred from NJDOT to NJTA in 1992. It should also be noted I-95 between US 46 in Ridgefield Park and the George Washington Bridge uses a different exit numbering scheme than the New Jersey Turnpike. On the NJTA website they refer to the George Washington Bridge approach as the "I-95 Extension", so I'm guessing it's considered an extension of the mainline rather than part of the mainline, which ends at US 46 in Ridgefield Park. Dough4872 15:10, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

The segment between I-80/Exit 69 and the GWB was built in the 60s without any connection to the Turnpike, which at that time still terminated at US 46. In the early 1970s, a joint NJDOT/NJTA project simultaneously built the I-95 connection from the I-80 junction south to the turnpike as well as the Western Spur of the turnpike. So, technically, there are two segments north of US 46: the Turnpike connection segment from US 46 to I-80 (a "northern extension") and the I-80 to GWB segment (a segment of the "Bergen-Passaic Expressway", which follows I-80 westward to Paterson). The entire segment north of US 46 was maintained by NJDOT until, as mentioned above, NJTA took it over in 1992. So, it would properly be considered an extension, not the mainline.Famartin (talk) 17:30, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

I just reworked the page to distinguish the I-95 Extension from the mainline. Needforspeed888 (talk) 16:32, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

Merge proposal

See Talk:U.S. Route 50 in Maryland#Merger with Interstate 595 (Maryland). Dough4872 21:03, 15 April 2019 (UTC)

Infobox fix

Can someone please fix the infobox shown here so that the banner shows? (May wanna do this for all banner types for the old SC shields). Dough4872 03:38, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

Got it. I will wait until it's necessary to add coding for the rest. –Fredddie ™ 13:19, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

Thanks! Dough4872 13:19, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

Can you add the coding for the business banner? Found a need for it in South Carolina Highway 9. Dough4872 18:12, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

Done, though we should probably make some shields in the style of

–Fredddie ™ 03:38, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

It's not working in the infobox, and yes SC 9 (and also the SC 151 example I noted above) should use the 1955 shield. Dough4872 16:57, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

"Major" intersections

In Minnesota State Highway 7, Wooddale Avenue in St. Louis Park is listed as a "major" intersection, but Texas Avenue is omitted, as is Louisiana Avenue. Texas seems more "major" than Wooddale by common-sense standards. Are there some standards to determine which ones are "major"? Michael Hardy (talk) 16:17, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

Major intersections tables usually include only other numbered routes as the "major" intersections, along with all interchanges regardless of the status of the intersecting road. In the case of MN 7, Wooddale Avenue is probably listed since it's an interchange. I would also add Louisiana Avenue to the major intersections table since it too is an interchange. It should be mentioned in the notes column of the table that both Louisiana Avenue and Wooddale Avenue are interchanges. However, I would not include Texas Avenue in the list since it is simply an at-grade intersection. Dough4872 18:10, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

Cite NDOT map‎‎

I created {{Cite NDOT map‎‎}} earlier tonight to simplify the addition of Nevada's historic highway maps as citations in articles. Please feel free to start using it as appropriate. In the future, the citation information contained within the template can be updated to add missing details, such as the OCLC numbers for each map, and deploying the template to articles now means they'll be updated as details within the template are updated. Imzadi 1979 → 01:42, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

That is awesome. I will use this moving forward! -- LJ ↗ 14:50, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

US 522 merger

I created a draft earlier this month that combines all of the state-detail articles related to U.S. Route 522 into one article. The entire route is just over 300 miles, so the result isn't that long. I was hoping some people would see the merger request and comment, but that hasn't been the case. –Fredddie ™ 04:16, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

I would like to see the history fully written before I can support the idea of having US 522 in one article. My gut instinct is that we can make it work with one article, but I don't want it bursting at the seams. Dough4872 00:31, 28 April 2019 (UTC)

That's not really a helpful tone to have. None of the state-detail articles really had a history section. What you see in the draft is what was there. –Fredddie ™ 02:31, 28 April 2019 (UTC)

I would support a merge in the state the articles are in as of now. However, if more historical detail is added for the route in VA, WV, and PA and it overwhelms the article, then it should be split back into state-detail pages. Dough4872 02:44, 28 April 2019 (UTC)

Highways serving parks

Hey, the ongoing AFD Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of state trunkline highways in Michigan serving parks is a trainwreck going towards "delete" decision against my own view. If there are any ROADS enthusiasts who wish to pile on and crush the opposition (me) with some bureaucratic push, I guess you are welcome to do so. Perhaps this posting will just get me slammed harder, faster, oh well. :(

However, I happen to think that "highways built to serve parks" is a valid type of topic (and hence list-article). If you could possibly be open to understanding that purpose and type of Wikipedia work, I would surely welcome your participation in the AFD.

And whether the AFD succeeds or not in destroying coverage of the topic for the state of Michigan, I would welcome further discussion and development of the general topic nation-wide. I am not a certified member of WikiProject U.S. Roads, but I think I have some common sense and some general knowledge that is relevant (see the AFD), and IMHO it does seem useful for Wikipedia to cover the general topic area of highways co-evolved with parks. --Doncram (talk) 23:18, 2 May 2019 (UTC)

Such articles are listcruft in cross-categorizing two features. We do not need such lists unless they contain roads that have no independent articles such as State highways serving Virginia state institutions. Allowing these type of articles could open a can of worms and allow for other listcruft articles such has a "List of highways in X serving shopping malls". Dough4872 23:48, 2 May 2019 (UTC)

Doncram, It may be more appropriate as a category, which is easier to maintain. Certain states have such lists because the legislature or DOT has special classifications for short, specialized routes, but the majority don't fit so neatly. Classifying them ourselves could run into original research territory, which is obviously not ideal. Sounder Bruce 01:46, 3 May 2019 (UTC)

Two problems with Puerto Rico road shields that need solving

{Note: I am not posting this at the Shields Page because it isn't exactly a request for shields; but, if it's more appropriate there, feel free to move it - thx.}

So, editors of Puerto Rico road articles have identified 2 problems that merit attention:

[1] There are shields stored in Commons here that would never be shields seen on a Puerto Rico road because they don't derive from the the PR Government official documents (this one (pp. 1,2) and this one p. 1-2, section 1-03.01) that establish the guidelines for route numbering in PR. A sampling of some such "invalid" shields (there are many, many others) are:

this one about PR-100 (PR-100 is a Secondary Network road, so its shield would be the a blue pentagon with a yellow border (as shown in the infobox here), not a light blue shield as stored in Commons),
this one regarding PR-503 (PR-503 is a Tertiary Network road, so its shield would be white circle/oval set against a black square (as shown in the infobox here), not a blue pentagon with a yellow border as found in Commons), and
this one about PR-585 (PR-585 is a Tertiary Network road, so its shield would be white circle/oval set against a black square (as shown in the infobox here), not a light blue shield as stored in Commons).

This creates the problem that editors, having access to using files from Commons, post such invalid shields in Puerto Rico road articles even though such shields don't actually exist in real life, and create road articles that do not inform, but instead confuse, readers.

Proposal: While a temporary solution to this would be to delete all such invalid shields from Commons, a more permanent, more robust approach is needed so that such invalid shields will not be re-created in the future in the first place. We think the best solution is to either (a) for the USRD team to implement internal procedures whereby requests for such shields aren't honored in the future or (b) to integrate logic into the bot (here) that currently aids in the shield-creation process so that it will not allow for the creation of such invalid shields any longer. Then, also, to delete all the invalid shields from Commons. Of course, we are open to your suggestions and advise as to alternate solutions.

[2] Well-intended editors make changes to the Infobox road's "type" field turning what was a correct shield display into an incorrect one. We have traced the culprit in this problem to be the lack of restrictions (i.e., lack of controls) in the Infobox road "type" field. When we say "lack of restrictions" we mean that, in spite of whichever route number is specified in the "route=" field (remember, there is a govt-established correlation between route number and shield design) editors can still enter into the Infobox's "type" field whichever of the 5 road network options that have been defined ("Pri", "Sec", Ter", "Urban" or "PR" [this last one, displays shields for all 4 networks -- which is fine since, in Puerto Rico, a route may change networks and preserve its route number, for example, PR-1]). As long as the shield(s) exist(s) in Commons (again, here), the Infobox will display it (them).

To illustrate, PR-100 is a Secondary Network route, yet it has this primary shield in the Puerto Rico Commons categories, here. This invalid shield exists in the Commons categories even though PR-100 is not a Primary Network route number, but a Secondary Network route number. Now, if were to populate the "type" field for PR-100 with "PR" (the code to display all shields with that route number on it, regardless of their design), the (invalid) Primary Network shield for route 100 would appear next to the valid secondary Network shield, this one. Such display would be incorrect because PR-100 doesn't belong to the primary network, but to the Secondary Network only. To illustrate further, PR-511 is a tertiary Network road, but it has a secondary shield stored in Commons. If we were to populate the "type" field with "PR", the (invalid) Secondary Network shield for route 511 would appear next to the valid tertiary network shield, this one. Again, such display would be incorrect because PR-511 is not part of the Secondary Network, but part of the Tertiary Network.

This creates the problem that editors create Puerto Rico road articles where there is disagreement between the route number and the Road Network shield type.

Proposal: We believe the solution to this second problem is to introduce logic into the Infobox road for cases where state=PR to enforce the following restrictions:

a type=Pri will display the Primary Network road shield only if there is a number 1-99 in the "route=" field

a type=Sec will display the Secondary Network road shield only if there is a number 1-299 in the "route=" field

a type=Ter will display the Tertiary Network road shield for any number 1-9999 in the "route=" field

a type=Urban will display the Urban Network road shield for any number 1-9999 in the "route=" field.

Thanks, Mercy11 (talk) 00:27, 8 May 2019 (UTC)

Assuming it's possible to code Infobox road to do that, I think your second proposal would be a good idea.

I agree with the first proposal as well if the bot can be programmed that way, although I don't know how anyone could be prevented from creating one manually. I know it's nearly impossible to get anything deleted from Commons no matter how unusable it is, so that problem might persist indefinitely. --Sable232 (talk) 01:51, 10 May 2019 (UTC)

Thanks. I agree, the Commons delete requests is a wildcard. Still it's worth attempting, then we will know for sure! That said, what we have done, in the meantime, is to collect and group into this PR roads subfolder in Commons ("Puerto Rico unused highway shields") all the shields we know for sure are "invalid" (as in "nonsense"). Mercy11 (talk) 15:33, 10 May 2019 (UTC)

@Sable232: Sorry, but was tied up with real life. IAE, almost forgot to mention that the behavior of the Template:Infobox-road appears to be that it looks for a shield to display only in the Commons file structure starting from the "Puerto Rico highway shields" level (this level) down to fulfill its "state=/route=/type=" requests in the infobox. As an example, if state=PR, route=107, and type=secondary, it will go out and look for "PR secondary 107.svg" in the "Puerto Rico highway shields" category and all of its subcategories. Since that particular filename exists under that structure (it's at the subcategory "Puerto Rico secondary highway shields" here) it will display it in the infobox. If, however, if it didn't exist under "Puerto Rico highway shields", it won't display anything. We can, I believe, use this behavior to our advantage and bypass having to deal with Commons deletion requests altogether : If it can be proven that this is in fact the way how the infobox road behaves, and Commons admins refused to remove invalid PR shields, then all we would need to do to solve the problem under "[1]" above, is to create a new category (name it something like "Puerto Rico unused highway shields" to make it descriptive) and place it under "Diagrams of road signs of Puerto Rico", that is, at the same level as "Puerto Rico highway shields", not under it. This way, when the template is looking for an invalid shield (like "PR secondary 970.svg", which is a nonsense shield bc secondaries are defined only between 100 and 299), if the shield ("PR secondary 970.svg", in this case) was placed outside the scope of "Puerto Rico highway shields", as would be the case if we placed it in a Cat at the same level as "Puerto Rico highway shields", it won't "see" it and will be forced to display no shield -- which is the desired effect. So this trick could be one way to get around Commons refusing to delete invalid shields, if it came to that. Hope this made sense! Mercy11 (talk) 01:58, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

@Mercy11: you have the idea half right. If |state=PR |type=Sec |route=107 is set, the template will look for File:PR secondary 107.svg. The categorization does not matter. The rest of your post above does not apply. The template coding only looks at the file name and doesn't know about any categorization scheme. It also doesn't matter if the file is on Commons or hosted here locally; if it exists and matches what the template expects, it will display it. Imzadi 1979 → 02:17, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

Imzadi1979 is correct here. The template is agnostic to categories on Commons and treats File:PR secondary 17.svg, File:PR secondary 107.svg, and File:PR secondary 1007.svg equally. If you don't want a secondary shield numbered over 299, simply don't use the Sec type. That being said, the Pri, Sec, Ter, and Urban types have worked for some time. We have been using |type=PR for everything when we really didn't need to. –Fredddie ™ 02:28, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

@Imzadi1979: With that additional light, it would then seem that there are only 2 ways of "deleting" the invalid files from Commons, thus pre-emptying their erroneous use: (1) A Commons admin plays nice and deletes them for us, and (2) the offending files get renamed (i.e., File:PR secondary 107.svg moved to File:PR sec-nonsense 107.svg). Was that a good example? Mercy11 (talk) 03:17, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

@Fredddie:, the problem is not that "If you don't want a secondary shield numbered over 299, simply don't use the Sec type." The problem is dealing with uninformed editors who (unaware that a secondary shield for a highway, say, number 301, is nonsense, bc secondaries are defined only in the range 100-299) will change a perfectly fine "type=Ter" (which is the valid type for highways between 300 and 9999, such as PR-301) into type=Sec. Worse yet, our experience is that editors usually don't make just 1 change to 1 road's type and go away: they will generally stick around and make many similar changes for numerous PR road articles, creating a constant "maintenance job" for editors like Yarfpr‎ and Yours Truly, who want to make these roads' articles a true reflection of reality. Also, Fredddie, it's true the 4 types (5 with type=PR) have worked fine for some time, actually years, perhaps over a decade. The problem is now exponentially more notorious today that the number of PR roads is dramatically larger than the handful of roads back then. It wasn't a problem before; it is now. Also, "type=PR" is necessary, to account for routes that change networks but keep their route number. Thx, Mercy11 (talk) 03:14, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

@Mercy11: if we move a file on Commons, a redirect is normally created. (It takes a special user right on Commons to move a file leaving a redirect behind.) You can still attempt to nominate the erroneous files for deletion and make the case to have them deleted in the result discussion. Imzadi 1979 → 03:22, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

@Imzadi1979: Yeah, I almost forgot about how Commons moves aren't exactly like English WP moves. Nomination may be the only way to go, and then, if the responding admin (who hopefully will have the special right needed to leave no redirect {This one here has it}) suggests the bulk renames under his watch, perfect, we'll be ready for that too. Thx, Mercy11 (talk) 22:04, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

I have a couple ideas that could work.

One thought would be to create an assortment of different types that call for a specific combination of shields.

Extended content
`\|type=Pri-Sec` and `\|route=1` would call `\|type=Pri-Ter` `\|type=Pri-Urb` `\|type=Sec-Ter` `\|type=Sec-Urb` `\|type=Ter-Urb` `\|type=Pri-Sec-Ter` `\|type=Pri-Sec_Urb` `\|type=Pri-Ter-Urb` `\|type=Sec-Ter-Urb`

The other is to hard code shields to their number using |type=PR. We would create Template:Infobox road/shieldmain/USA/PR which would facilitate this. One difficulty with this was is that we'd have to know what classification each highway falls into. –Fredddie ™ 16:03, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

@Fredddie: For some reason the other major (and regular) editor to the Puerto Rico road articles didn't seem to like here the first of your two ideas above ("...We don't necessarily have to complicate with those types that you propose..."), which I had suggested in a fashion similar to yours above. I am going to ping that editor (@Yarfpr:) to see if we can get any additional insight or opinion. Meanwhile, I am not sure I follow at all your 2nd idea ("The other is to hard code shields..."), but I can tell you this much: the classification each highway falls into is given in this official Puerto Rico Govt document here (page 1-2, section 1-03.01). To summarize it,

Highways 1 thru 99 >>> PRImary classification
Highways 100 thru 299 >>> SECondary classification
Highways 300 thru 9999 >>> TERtiary classification
All highways (i.e., 1 thru 9999) also fall into the URBAN primary classification (but only if they connect 2 PRImary highways in an urban area).

I think everything is easy to code except, perhaps, for the Urban primary type. In this case, one idea would be to code just the first 3 above and then use | marker_image = [[Urban shield filename here]] to manually add the Urban primary signs, as needed, into the infobox so the urban will display. Will that work? Mercy11 (talk) 22:04, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

Fredddie's criteria is the same as the one Mercy11 had proposed to me before. I start to analyze it and I think it's viable, but I would make some modifications to those examples. In the same way that Interstate = I, Pri should be P; Urban = U; Sec = S, and Ter = T (both in the infobox road and in the jct template). In this way, the combinations could be the following: PS, PT, PU, PST, PSU, PTU and PSTU for primary highways; ST, SU and STU for secondary highways, and TU for tertiary highways.

On the other hand, the PDF shared by Mercy11 would imply the following: P or PU for roads between 1 and 99, S or SU for roads between 100 and 299, and T or TU for roads between 300 and 9999. At this moment I don't know which one option should be the best, but I still wanted to contribute with my suggestions.

PS: Despite the order used in the letters, the order of the shields must be as follows: PUST (from 1 to 99), UST (from 100 to 299) and UT (from 300 to 9999). Yamil Rivera (talk) 01:51, 16 May 2019 (UTC)

There's a difference of one type; Fredddie has 10 but Yamil has 11. Why? Mercy11 (talk) 01:55, 16 May 2019 (UTC)

@Mercy11: That's because PSTU is the same as PR (all shields together). Yamil Rivera (talk) 02:01, 16 May 2019 (UTC)

Thanks! Yarfpr, I had a math vacuum moment!

IAE, above, you also said,

"On the other hand, the PDF shared by Mercy11 would imply the following: P or PU for roads between 1 and 99, S or SU for roads between 100 and 299, and T or TU for roads between 300 and 9999, [as opposed to P, PS, PT, PU, PST, PSU, PTU and PSTU for roads between 1 and 99; S, ST, SU and STU for roads between 100 and 299, and T, U, and TU for for roads between 300 and 9999]. At this moment I don't know which one option should be the best."

I wanted to make it clear that I do support the Option that allows editors to display, for example, for PR-3, shields from the set of {P, PS, PT, PU, PST, PSU, PTU and PSTU} and not just the shield from the set {P}. IMO, that is the best option. That is, I support the idea that whatever change or enhancement is requested of the Template editors that it will allow us to continue to display for PR-3 this: , and not just this: . I think this way the system accommodates itself to what is a stated government fact in Puerto Rico road design (and a PR road reality) that "a route can change networks and still maintain its route number."

Anyway, I had suggested above that we could submit an Infobox road Template edit request here (which, btw, already has code specific to some other regions, like Canada, Australia, and Mexico), to introduce logic into the Infobox road template for cases where state=PR to enforce the following 4 Restrictions (the last 2 aren't really restrictions, but are there for completeness purposes):

Extended content

a type=P will display the Primary Network road shield only if there is a number 1-99 in the "route=" field
a type=S will display the Secondary Network road shield only if there is a number 1-299 in the "route=" field
a type=T will display the Tertiary Network road shield for any number 1-9999 in the "route=" field
a type=U will display the Urban Network road shield for any number 1-9999 in the "route=" field.

But this added logic is different from Fredddie's/Yamil's New List of 11 new types (the first 4 below are the ones already existing, but the last 11 (7+3+1) are the new ones proposed by Freddie and Yamil):

a type=P will display any shield in Commons named "PR primary X.svg" (where X= the number, any number, in the "route=" field
a type=S will display any shield in Commons named "PR secondary X.svg" (the X= the number, any number, in the "route=" field
a type=T will display any shield in Commons named "PR tertiary X.svg" (the X= the number, any number, in the "route=" field
a type=U will display any shield in Commons named "PR urban X.svg" (the X= the number, any number, in the "route=" field
a type=PS will display any shields in Commons named "PR primary X.svg" and "PR secondary X.svg" (where X= the number, any number, in the "route=" field
a type=PT will display any shields in Commons named "PR primary X.svg" and "PR tertiary X.svg" (where X= the number, any number, in the "route=" field
a type=PU will display any shields in Commons named "PR primary X.svg" and "PR urban X.svg" (where X= the number, any number, in the "route=" field
a type=PST will display any shields in Commons named "PR primary X.svg" and "PR secondary X.svg" and "PR tertiary X.svg" (the X= the number, any number, in the "route=" field
a type=PSU will display any shields in Commons named "PR primary X.svg" and "PR secondary X.svg" and "PR urban X.svg" (the X= the number, any number, in the "route=" field
a type=PTU will display any shields in Commons named "PR primary X.svg" and "PR tertiary X.svg" and "PR urban X.svg" (the X= the number, any number, in the "route=" field
a type=PSTU will display any shields in Commons named "PR primary X.svg" and "PR secondary X.svg" and "PR tertiary X.svg" and "PR urban X.svg" (the X= the number, any number, in the "route=" field
a type=ST will display any shields in Commons named "PR secondary X.svg" and "PR tertiary X.svg" (where X= the number, any number, in the "route=" field
a type=SU will display any shields in Commons named "PR secondary X.svg" and "PR urban X.svg" (where X= the number, any number, in the "route=" field
a type=STU will display any shields in Commons named "PR secondary X.svg" and "PR tertiary X.svg" and "PR urban X.svg" (where X= the number, any number, in the "route=" field
a type=TU will display any shields in Commons named "PR tertiary X.svg" and "PR urban X.svg" (where X= the number, any number, in the "route=" field,

which is equivalent to Fredddie's proposal above, namely this one (I've added Yarfpr's "11th" observation so as to include all 11 cases):

|type=Pri-Sec and |route=1 would call
|type=Pri-Ter and |route=1 would call
|type=Pri-Urb and |route=1 would call
|type=Sec-Ter and |route=1 would call
|type=Sec-Urb and |route=1 would call
|type=Ter-Urb and |route=1 would call
|type=Pri-Sec-Ter and |route=1 would call
|type=Pri-Sec_Urb and |route=1 would call
|type=Pri-Ter-Urb and |route=1 would call
|type=Sec-Ter-Urb and |route=1 would call
|type=PR and |route=1 would call

Point begin, whereas the first set (let's call it Mercy's 4-piece set, for now) enforces a set of Restrictions (which is, I believe, what's really needed in this Puerto Rico road shields "wild, wild West"), the second set of logic (let's call it Fredddie's/Yamil's 11-piece set, for now) doesn't enforce anything; the second set instead states what you want the infobox to display and, as such, the problem of displaying Invalid Shields would continue to be perpetuated. This would be the case because F/Y's approach is only asking for the addition of more types so that an editor (informed or vandal) can control what gets displayed more easily, that is, can control what gets displayed by tweaking the template "type" field as opposed to "playing" the add/remove shields games from the Commons depository. This happens because F/Y's suggestion when implemented would continue to be driven by what is to be available in Commons. Notice that under F/Y's approach the editor (whether the well-intended or the vandal) is still in control by playing around with the 15 types, whereas with the Restrictions approach that I am proposing, much of the ability of the editor has been taken away ("restricted") to what the Govt has said what the look of the shields should be based on the route#. (BTW, we shouldn't confuse this with "Oh, so now PR-1 will only display 1 shield, not 4". That's concept isn't touched at all by the Restrictions. The Restrictions say "for type=P, display the Primary Network road shield only if there is a number 1-99 in the 'route=' field". The Restrictions Do Not say "for type=P, display only the Primary Network road shield existing in Commons that corresponds to the number in the 'route=' field". What to display isn't the job of the Restrictions; that will continue to be the job of the type field. In other words, the type field with the new 15 total shield/shield combo types allow for the display of specified shields, whereas the Restrictions keep Invalid Shields from being displayed (e.g., with Restrictions, the Infobox will not display a Primary shield for PR-500, if an (uninformed or vandal) editor specified type=P for route=500).

That is, Mercy's 4-piece Restriction logic set tells the template to "display from this such-and-such subset only (i.e., the subset "filtered in" by the Restrictions) out of the entire PR road shields universe", but Fredddie's/Yamil's 11-piece logic set tells the template to "display from the entire PR road shields universe, but only the one(s) in the type(s) being specified".

So, under F/Y's approach, if the editor has the parameters populated as follows,
state=PR
route=503
type=ST,
The result would still be the undesirable secondary shield and the desired tertiary .
This is because these are all Puerto Rico shields available in Commons with those route numbers, and this logic just says what to display, and not what not to display. So note there is a Secondary shield bc it was present in Commons, perpetuating the presence of Invalid Shields (Routes 300 thru 9999, like Rt 503 are tertiary, not secondary) in the Infoboxes.

Yet, under Mercy's suggested approach, if an editor has populated the template with the same options as before:
state=PR
route=503
type=ST,
The result would be the tertiary (as desired)
because there would already be logic hardwired into the template to filter out (i.e., to ignore) all Primary shields (bc route#502 isn't in {0<Rt#<100}) and all the Secondary shields (bc the route# isn't in {0<Rt#<300}). Note that there is no Secondary shield displayed even though the type was specified as "ST" (by a uninformed editor or vandal, obviously), bc the Restrictions filtered out the Secondary shield. This means, imo, that if we implement the Restrictions, we can populate Commons with all 9,999 x 4 shields, to include shields for all possible roads 1-9999 for each of the four networks, and then, use only Restrictions and only the current types (Pri, Sec, Ter, Urban, and PR), and by specifying "PR" for any route number and, because Restrictions are in place, roads numbered 1-99 will automatically display all 4 shields (P, S, T, U), roads 100-299 will display 3 shields (Sec, Ter, Urban), roads 300-9999 will display 2 shields (Ter and Urban). Of course, we would still need the availability of P, S, T, and Urban types to account for real-life exceptions (like PR-52 which is only a primary network road in all its length.)

So it seems that what we should really ask for is both, for the addition of the 4 Restrictions and for the addition of the 11 new types. Mercy11 (talk) 04:16, 18 May 2019 (UTC)

@Mercy11: Looking at what you explained, the F / Y proposal avoids the manual placement of shields that was done with the |marker_image=, which is fine. I still like your proposal more because it implements the desired restrictions, which wouldn't necessarily happen with the F / Y proposal. I want to emphasize that, regardless of the order of the letters or types, the order of the shields should always be Pri, Urban, Sec and Ter because Urban is Urban Primary, not Urban only. The PSTU can remain PR so there aren't too many letters together.

In relation to cases such as PR-52, I'm concerned that none of the proposals avoids the inclusion of invalid shields because, in the same way that a highway can belong to more than one network, there are other roads that only belong to one net. In that sense, if a type that doesn't restrict the appearance of invalid shields is used for these cases, we will still have problems. Yamil Rivera (talk) 14:26, 18 May 2019 (UTC)

This is all incredibly wordy and while I have a rough idea of what's going on, I'm not sure anyone else reading this thread does. We need to simplify the discussion. Since we've discussed the ranges ad nauseum, I would like a list of routes that fall outside of their normal ranges. That is, what secondary routes are there outside the 100-299 range. What tertiary routes are there below 300. I have an idea how to code this now, but I need to know the outliers to make it happen. –Fredddie ™ 15:00, 18 May 2019 (UTC)

I started using the shieldmain template I suggested earlier to code out the standard restrictions:

{{Infobox road/shieldmain/USA/PR|route=1}} →

{{Infobox road/shieldmain/USA/PR|route=100}} →

{{Infobox road/shieldmain/USA/PR|route=300}} →

That was really easy for me to throw together. Now I just need the routes that fall outside of the normal ranges to make it work like you two want it to. –Fredddie ™ 15:19, 18 May 2019 (UTC)

@Fredddie: Based on Transit Data by DTOP, PR-1, PR-2, PR-3, PR-5, PR-14 and PR-31 have secondary segments, and PR-1, PR-2R, PR-3, PR-6, PR-14, PR-15, PR-21, PR-24, PR-27, PR-28, PR-29, PR-31, PR-37, PR-39, PR-40, PR-41, PR-47, PR-64, PR-101, PR-102, PR-103, PR-105, PR-109, PR-110, PR-110R, PR-111R, PR-112, PR-113, PR-114, PR-115, PR-117, PR-119, PR-121, PR-123, PR-125, PR-125R, PR-127, PR-128, PR-130, PR-134, PR-139, PR-144, PR-149, PR-154, PR-155, PR-162, PR-165R, PR-169, PR-170, PR-171, PR-174, PR-175, PR-178, PR-179, PR-180, PR-181, PR-182, PR-185, PR-189, PR-190, PR-191, PR-193 and PR-200 have tertiary segments. Yamil Rivera (talk) 16:40, 18 May 2019 (UTC)

This is a good start, but do we have any data that isn't 10 years old? –Fredddie ™ 16:42, 18 May 2019 (UTC)

@Fredddie: Sure! This other link is available and was updated on January 24, 2019. Basically it's still the same information but it also includes the following tertiary segments: PR-14P, PR-116R, PR-140, PR-143, PR-156R, PR-160, PR-164, PR-172, PR-186 and PR-192. Yamil Rivera (talk) 16:49, 18 May 2019 (UTC)

While it's true that any highway between 1 and 9999 can be urban primary, the reality is that not all of them cross a city. The following roads have urban primary segments: PR-1, PR-1P, PR-1R, PR-2, PR-2R, PR-3, PR-5, PR-8, PR-12, PR-14, PR- 14P, PR-15, PR-17, PR-20, PR-21, PR-22, PR-23, PR-25, PR-25R, PR-27, PR-32, PR-33, PR-34, PR-35, PR-40, PR-53, PR-60, PR-63, PR-65, PR-102, PR-105, PR-106, PR-107, PR-110, PR-111, PR-111R, PR-114, PR-122, PR-123, PR-129, PR-132, PR-142, PR-156, PR-163, PR-165, PR-167, PR-168, PR-172, PR-176, PR-177, PR-181, PR-183, PR-187, PR-189, PR-195, PR-196, PR-198, PR-198R, PR-199, PR-204, PR- 205, PR-303, PR-383, PR-411, PR-479, PR-500, PR-505, PR-540, PR-585, PR-730, PR-735, PR-744, PR-748, PR-760, PR-784, PR-837, PR-887, PR-900, PR-4442, PR-5156, PR-5506, PR-5516, PR-5518 and PR-9919. Yamil Rivera (talk) 17:26, 18 May 2019 (UTC)

OK last question before I can feel confident about my coding. Are there any highways that do not fall into the range that they should fall into? For example, it seems PR-9919 is only urban primary. –Fredddie ™ 19:33, 18 May 2019 (UTC)

One more. In what order should the shields be? PSTU? PUST? –Fredddie ™ 19:38, 18 May 2019 (UTC)

@Fredddie: It's fine for me that PR-9919 has both urban primary and tertiary shields because PR-9919 is a tertiary highway in its number. PR-133 and PR-163 are urban primary only, but the secondary shield can appear next to the other without any problem. The idea is that each road has a "standard" shield according to their relation with its main network (Pri=1-99, Sec=100-299 and Ter=300-9999), and then the other shields are added as needed.

In relation to PSTU and PUST, the order of the shields must be PUST because 'urban' is the short for urban primary. If you choose the PUST type, you should consider that PSU, PTU, SU, STU and TU types should be changed to PUS, PUT, US, UST and UT, respectively. The reason why I originally chose PSTU, PSU, PTU, SU, STU and TU types in that order was to prevent the U from being sandwiched between the basic primary, secondary and tertiary format when identifying a road with its main network (compare: PSTU, STU, TU vs. PUST, UST, UT), but that order only applies to the types and not to the shields. You can choose the order that seems most logical to you. Any of the options seems fine to me, at least in the types, because in the shields it must be PUST. Yamil Rivera (talk) 20:25, 18 May 2019 (UTC)

I just realized that PR-1 uses File:Ellpise sign 1.svg instead of File:PR tertiary 1.svg. I also want to emphasize that all the changes discussed above should also be implemented in the JCT template: P = 1-99, S = 1-299, T = 1-9999 and U = 1-9999. Yamil Rivera (talk) 20:34, 18 May 2019 (UTC)

I just did that with good reason. The File:PR tertiary 1.svg family should revert back to the circular shields because it's an older standard from the 1979 documents we've discussed previously. There are more ellipse files so we'll have fewer shields to make going forward. –Fredddie ™ 20:38, 18 May 2019 (UTC)

@Fredddie: I get it. I'm very grateful for all your effort. Mercy11 and I aren't easy, LOL! If you need any other help, don't forget to tell me. Thank you a lot! Yamil Rivera (talk) 20:42, 18 May 2019 (UTC)

@Fredddie: Excuse my annoyance again! I saw the changes you made and they are excellent! Could you please add the forest shield to PR-186 and PR-191? That shield must be located to the right of the secondary and tertiary shields. In the Puerto Rico miscellaneous highway shields category are the two svg files that I made a couple of days ago. If you need a blank template, let me know, please. Thanks again! Yamil Rivera (talk) 23:24, 18 May 2019 (UTC)

@Fredddie: I am just catching up with what's been going on here while I was doing some yard work. Yarfpr seems agreeable to whatever you are doing and, whatever Yamil agrees with you is just fine with me. As you can probably see, Yamil is very familiar with the roads/shields/routes/jct/forest/etc/etc and govt docs and I have full confidence that whatever Yamil suggests is the way to go! Besides she has a way with words such that what would take me a mile to state :-( , Yamil can say in just inches :-) , which is great! @Yarfpr: you said above that "I saw the changes you made and they are excellent!" Did you guys decide to implement both the additional types and the Restrictions, or are you going with only the additional 11 or so types? Can you send me an example road or two so I can see, meanwhile, what you were referring to? BTW, thanks for working all the time-consuming nitty-gritty stuff with Fredddie. Your detailed knowledge of the roads has been a blessing! Thanks! Mercy11 (talk) 00:52, 19 May 2019 (UTC)

I went with kind of a hybrid. The base of it all is the restrictions you wanted. Anything that falls outside of those restrictions, as discussed above, were hard coded. It's all at Template:Infobox_road/shieldmain/USA/PR, which is live. Any PR article calling |type=PR is using this code. –Fredddie ™ 00:59, 19 May 2019 (UTC)

@Fredddie:Glad to hear you were able to use some of those tips/concerns. Kudos to you for a great job! Mercy11 (talk) 23:15, 20 May 2019 (UTC)

Highways serving parks

Hey, the ongoing AFD Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of state trunkline highways in Michigan serving parks is a trainwreck going towards "delete" decision against my own view. If there are any ROADS enthusiasts who wish to pile on and crush the opposition (me) with some bureaucratic push, I guess you are welcome to do so. Perhaps this posting will just get me slammed harder, faster, oh well. :(

However, I happen to think that "highways built to serve parks" is a valid type of topic (and hence list-article). If you could possibly be open to understanding that purpose and type of Wikipedia work, I would surely welcome your participation in the AFD.

And whether the AFD succeeds or not in destroying coverage of the topic for the state of Michigan, I would welcome further discussion and development of the general topic nation-wide. I am not a certified member of WikiProject U.S. Roads, but I think I have some common sense and some general knowledge that is relevant (see the AFD), and IMHO it does seem useful for Wikipedia to cover the general topic area of highways co-evolved with parks. --Doncram (talk) 23:18, 2 May 2019 (UTC)

Such articles are listcruft in cross-categorizing two features. We do not need such lists unless they contain roads that have no independent articles such as State highways serving Virginia state institutions. Allowing these type of articles could open a can of worms and allow for other listcruft articles such has a "List of highways in X serving shopping malls". Dough4872 23:48, 2 May 2019 (UTC)

Doncram, It may be more appropriate as a category, which is easier to maintain. Certain states have such lists because the legislature or DOT has special classifications for short, specialized routes, but the majority don't fit so neatly. Classifying them ourselves could run into original research territory, which is obviously not ideal. Sounder Bruce 01:46, 3 May 2019 (UTC)

Quick question

Do you guys have standards as to the ordering of "major junctions" section of the Template road? That is, do they flow (from top to bottom on the web page) from N->S or from S->N? From W->E or from E->W? If the flow is circular, Clockwise/CCW from N to S, or CW/CCW from S to N? Or you have no such standards? Mercy11 (talk) 01:27, 10 May 2019 (UTC)

@Mercy11: The major junctions should almost always be listed south to north, or west to east, to match WP:RJL. The "direction_a" and "terminus_a" parameters help keep it straight. Sounder Bruce 05:27, 10 May 2019 (UTC)

@SounderBruce:, how about CW/CCW as in the infobox here, which is was setup as CW->>CCW? Following your response above, since Ponce is in the South and San Juan in the North, it would seem that the junction list was setup backwards from the standard. So, is there a rule for CW/CCW/CW, or does the S->N standard above still applies? Thanks, Mercy11 (talk) 15:36, 10 May 2019 (UTC)

The general idea for the direction we write articles in is to follow the mileposts, beginning with mile zero. For most roads, mileposts start at zero in the south and increase as it goes north or start at zero in the west and increase as it goes east. For beltways, I would generally start at mile zero and follow the mileposts as they increase, whether its CW or CCW. For example, Interstate 695 (Maryland) starts at mile zero and follows the mileposts as they increase clockwise. In the case of PR 2, I would follow the mileposts in increasing order. Dough4872 00:47, 11 May 2019 (UTC)

Great! Thanks, Mercy11 (talk) 01:09, 11 May 2019 (UTC)

@Mercy11: another thing you can do instead of CW/CCW is leave |direction_a= and |direction_b= blank and it'll say From: Point A; To: Point B. –Fredddie ™ 03:09, 11 May 2019 (UTC)

Great tip! Thanks, I'll use that! Mercy11 (talk) 03:13, 11 May 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Highways/Assessment/A-Class Review

Just a reminder that we do have 2 open A-Class reviews. Our A-Class review helps to prepare an article for the featured article process. With the shortage of nominations from our project recently, we will run out of articles that can be run on the Main Page in about 2 years. --Rs chen 7754 16:57, 11 May 2019 (UTC)

Terminus names for highways with inconsistent or nonexistent posted cardinal directions

This is pretty straightforward for highways like Interstate 287, where we call the terminus at the NJTP the "South end", being geographically south of the other terminus. Likewise, the terminus in NY is called the "East end", which is in fact east of the other terminus. But Interstate 295 (Delaware–Pennsylvania) is not as straightforward. The "West end" is geographically east of the "South end". Is there any guideline for naming the termini of highways that change cardinal directions along the route? One highway, Arizona State Route 101 uses "CW" (clockwise) and "CCW" (counterclockwise). I'm not sure where the guideline specifying that is, but it somehow stuck. On the other hand, Interstate 295 (Virginia) labels the terminus at I-64 as the "North end", despite the segment geographically west of I-95 not being signed with cardinal directions. What is the best way to go about all of these scenarios? Needforspeed888 (talk) 21:00, 27 April 2019 (UTC)

If it's ambiguous, you can simply leave off the directions. The rarely-used default for Infobox road is From: and To: for |terminus_a= and |terminus_b=, respectively. –Fredddie ™ 22:31, 27 April 2019 (UTC)

Hawaii Route 72 still has "clockwise" and "counterclockwise" as the terminus directions. These labels seem very confusing. Shouldn't it just use the "From" and "To" directions? Needforspeed888 (talk) 01:36, 22 May 2019 (UTC)

HI 72 forms a fairly recognizable circle, so using CW/CCW is intuitive and accurately describes the general shape. Again, "From" and "To" are rarely used in the terminus field...we'll find some way to describe the endpoints. Sounder Bruce 02:41, 22 May 2019 (UTC)

And as for U.S. Route 101, is it really correct to call its terminus at I-5 in Washington, the "northern" terminus? 101 forms a cane around Olympic National Forest, where for 80 miles, you go south to reach the "northern terminus". Should it take on the CW, CCW nomenclature? Or should we just take out the directions, as Fredddie suggested above? Needforspeed888 (talk) 22:33, 24 May 2019 (UTC)

US 101 is clearly a north-south route, not a loop road. Even if it goes a little out of that direction in Washington, the Olympia terminus is still the overall north end of the highway. Highway 89 (talk) 22:43, 24 May 2019 (UTC)

2019 AASHTO Spring Meeting Minutes

The "2019 Spring Meeting Report to the Council on Highways and Streets" by the Special Committee on U.S. Route Numbering at AASHTO has been located online. They approved 33 items, and we've got them listed at WP:USRD/AASHTO. The report has been added to {{AASHTO minutes}}, but they haven't published the report on their website; it is still being hosted through the auspices of a third-party conference website at the moment.

Also, I'd like to remind editors that we could use some eyes over on Wikisource to complete validation of the transcriptions of old AASHO/AASHTO minutes. If you look at {{AASHTO minutes/testcases}}, any of the citations up to 1988^[a] that link to a PDF on Commons still need validation on Wikisource so that we can switch the citation over.

Validation is easy. I've written up a set of instructions here. If you have any questions, please let me know. Imzadi 1979 → 19:20, 3 June 2019 (UTC)

References

^ 1989 and newer are not on Commons/Wikisource for copyright-related reasons.

See PR Highway talk page

FYI, see Talk:Puerto_Rico_Highway_103. --The Eloquent Peasant (talk) 04:26, 11 June 2019 (UTC)

Time for an old fashioned audit

Do you remember the last time we had an assessment audit? Hint: it was early in this decade. So it's time that we do it again. I'm not saying we should drop everything and go audit-crazy like we did back then, but I think it's a good idea to shine a light on some of the states that don't (or didn't) have a regular editor. –Fredddie ™ 02:06, 24 May 2019 (UTC)

Link to the tracking page: Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Roads/Assessment/By-state audits --Rs chen 7754 13:04, 16 June 2019 (UTC)

Draft:List of state highways serving Utah state parks and institutions

@Moabdave and Highway 89 and any other Utah editors I missed:

I created a draft to replace List of state highways serving Utah state parks and institutions and I wanted your opinions before I take it live. I replaced the table with WP:USRD/RCS entries and then added a routelist table to the top in order to keep the sorting that the previous table had. –Fredddie ™ 02:08, 16 June 2019 (UTC)

I like it, especially the routelist table. (Maybe we should consider rewriting the List of state highways in Utah article to use {{routelist row}}?) One thing I'm wondering about is the U-xx notation for some of the older highways, since I don't think that's used anywhere else on Wikipedia and might be confusing. Also, do we have an exact date for when they switched from the older beehive to the modern outlined one? I'm not sure I totally like the idea of differentiating between the two beehives for decommissioned/current routes given that a ton of the older ones still stand, but I certainly don't mind. I'm also curious why the routes below the table are divided up into seemingly arbitrary sections, which makes them harder to find when looking for a certain route number and you don't know what region it's in. Highway 89 (talk) 03:58, 16 June 2019 (UTC)

Section-wise, I didn't change anything. That's how it is currently and I am not married to it. The U-nn designation I saw somewhere in my research. I will try to hunt it down again. –Fredddie ™ 04:29, 16 June 2019 (UTC)

IIRC, when this page was first created the highways were listed numerically. Sometime later someone went and grouped them by area. I'm not sure how I feel about that. The groupings aren't controversial, but I'm not sure I've ever heard "Northeastern Utah" for that region. To my ears that section is a merging of what I've heard called Eastern Utah, Uintah Basin and the Wasatch Back. But I have no opinion if the regional groupings should stay or if we should revert back to a simple numerical listing. I have seen the U-xx nomenclature referring to the era of the U shaped route marker but not common. That most likely came from Dan Stober's now defunct Utah Highways page. I have no objections to using the "new" beehive style for current routes and the "old" style for decommissioned routes. I agree, currently there is a mix and match of "old" and "new" styles in the field. But the general trend seems to be as signs are replaced they are changing the style of the beehive. It's enough to convince me that UDOT is migrating to the new style and this isn't an anomolie with a batch of signs made by a contractor who didn't follow specs. As a tangent, can I just say, that during the late 70's/early 80's Utah did experiment with cutouts and I wish they would have kept them. I thought they looked much better than the "cloud beehive" they used during the button copy era or the modern beehives.

But getting back to what Fredddie changed, I fully support breaking out the paragraphs of text from the table. I never liked that and think separating text from table is an improvement. Dave (talk) 16:48, 20 June 2019 (UTC)

County road terminology

I don't recall this having been discussed before, and if it was it probably wasn't recently. In any case, it's Minnesota-specific.

Should county state-aid highways be referred to in text as "CSAH" or "County Road"? I've been seeing a lot of recent edits like this which have me wondering. "CSAH" ("see-saw"?) is not common vernacular and the vast majority of people would say simply "County Road x", so I'd lean towards using that outside of junction lists, but I know that specificity is sometimes preferred instead. Thoughts? --Sable232 (talk) 00:22, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

I am not familiar with the term, but then again not every state has a county road program (or at least where I edit). If you were to use CSAH, you'll have to spell out the acronym each time (at least once per article). --WashuOtaku (talk) 00:28, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

County State-Aid Highway is just a classification of county roads for funding purposes. If you and I were talking, we'd say County Road X or maybe County X, which is how county roads are displayed on guide signs in Minnesota. The Jct module used to output "County X" but it was changed a couple years ago. –Fredddie ™ 00:52, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

Personally, I'd spell out "County State-Aid Highway 1 (CSAH 1)" on first usage and then continue with the abbreviation conventions from there. If needed I'd also use a "County Road 2 (CR 2)" in text as well. While I could support the idea of consolidating them all to just "County Road"/"CR" nomenclature, there is the issue of the counties that use the blue pentagons for CSAHs and white squares for CRs. In those cases, it's confusing to see both marker types used in the article without any indication why. I trust our readers to be smart enough to take in the distinction if we use it appropriately. So by the principle of least astonishment, I'd rather give a little more information than less and potentially confuse people. Imzadi 1979 → 01:44, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

Interstates 102, 106, 109 and 113

Redirects Interstate 102, Interstate 106 (California), Interstate 109 and Interstate 113 have been nominated for deletion, the discussions are all listed at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2019 July 19. You are invited to leave your comments there. Thryduulf (talk) 10:21, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

Merge proposal

See Talk:Interstate 87 (New York)#Major Deegan merge Needforspeed888 (talk) 00:25, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

USRD banner attention flag

I've been monitoring Category:U.S. road articles needing attention for some time and realized that it had become sort of a catch-all for articles that nobody wants to work on. Quite a few articles were in decent shape, so I made the BOLD decision to empty the category and start over. I tried make the attention flags and categories more intuitive. I started by editing the banner to no longer sort pages needing attention by state or topic. I also placed some maintenance categories under the attention category. As it is now, the attention category lists categories with articles that need a pair of eyes to look at them. You can still add the attention flag to articles, but if possible, I would use the other parameters listed on {{WikiProject U.S. Roads}} first. –Fredddie ™ 03:18, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

US Route 70 Business (Beaufort, North Carolina)

US 70 routing changed last year in Beaufort, North Carolina and a business loop was signed. However, NCDOT documentation doesn't correlate with the business route signing. I contacted NCDOT and after a few weeks got a response that the business route was incorrectly signed and gave documentation of its correct SR designations.

So the question is how go about updating the article: do we remove it completely, leave as is, update as discontinued, update as proposed or other? --WashuOtaku (talk) 13:34, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

Without looking into it, are you saying the NCDOT and AASHTO documents about the same route don't agree? –Fredddie ™ 13:37, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

Both NCDOT and AASHTO documents do not have a Business loop in Beaufort, North Carolina; signage of a business loop was physically placed nonetheless (you can use Google Streetview to see business 70 signs). --WashuOtaku (talk) 13:41, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

New York City Street Name Signs

I already posted this issue in the commons, but I really need a clear definition of all the types of street name signs used in some of the more specific sections of New York City in order to diffuse that category. The pre-1984 borough-specific colors would've been much easier to deal with by comparison. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 03:28, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

Should browsing include redlinks?

Interstate 295 (Delaware–Pennsylvania) has the previous route for the PA browse as PA 294; similar situations exist for "neighboring" routes. Having redlinks in browsing seems to defeat the purpose of browsing. What should be done here? Needforspeed888 (talk) 01:36, 20 August 2019 (UTC)

All redlinks should be created as articles or redirects eventually. I don't think routes should be removed from the browse simply because an article or redirect hasn't been made yet. I should note that some states omit former routes from the browse such as Maryland, while others like Pennsylvania include them. Dough4872 01:56, 20 August 2019 (UTC)

Merge proposal

See Talk:Interstate 69 in Indiana#Merger proposal Needforspeed888 (talk) 00:05, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

Texas loop and spur RCS list scope discussion

A discussion is ongoing at Talk:List of state highway loops in Texas (1–99)#Name change on whether the RCS lists of Texas state highway loops and spurs (pursuant to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject U.S. Roads/Archive 23#Texas loops and spurs) should be separated into separate loop and spur list series or combined into one series for both. -happy 5214 01:37, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

U.S. Route 44

Merge proposal being discussed at Talk:U.S. Route 44#Proposed merge with U.S. Route 44 in New York has been rumbling on for a year; any able to help finish it off? Klbrain (talk) 05:04, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

Template:Jct updates

Where did the directional and "To" banners in the "Major intersections" and "Exit list" tables disappear to? Morriswa (Charlotte Allison) (talk) 06:05, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

@Morriswa: Do you have an example? --Rs chen 7754 06:52, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

The banner update to {{jct}} was rolled back after we discovered issues in the implementation. See Template talk:Jct/Archive/2019 for details. Imzadi 1979 → 06:57, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

@Imzadi1979: I looked at that page, but I didn't understand what was wrong? Will this be re-implemented eventually? I thought it was pretty cool, and I knew that you were excited when you pointed it out to me in IRC. Morriswa (Charlotte Allison) (talk) 11:01, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

@Morriswa: Long story short, there was not enough testing done on the new code. I have not been active enough recently to make sense of Chinissai's new code, and I doubt it will be fixed or redeployed until I or someone else with deep knowledge of the HWY Lua module structure can go through and understand all of the issues. -happy 5214 19:13, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for clearing that up a little. Please, keep us informed as to any updates. Morriswa (Charlotte Allison) (talk) 00:02, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

Routelist templates calling local street names

I was wondering. The Routelist templates have the capability to call the local street names for highways, using the "local" parameter. Should that be only for names that are on the entire path, like the "alternate_name" parameter in the infobox, or every single local name? With long highways, that could be a lot of names. Also, exactly how does that parameter get used? Morriswa (Charlotte Allison) (talk) 16:28, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

The intent behind that option was to list local road names for county roads. It wasn't really intended for use on state highway lists for reasons similar to what you mention, but in a list of county roads in a single county, it's probable that some roads are better known by other names than a numeric designation. Imzadi 1979 → 23:30, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for clarifying that. The documentation wasn't entirely clear on that point. It's too bad, as I was going to add the local names for the highway lists for Georgia. Morriswa (Charlotte Allison) (talk) 00:07, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

Yeah that's not really what the local parameter is supposed to be used for. It would be a bit unwieldy if you listed every street name a road had along the way. Where I live, only two of the DOT-maintained highways has one name throughout the area. One is really short, the other follows the one straight line in that goes all the way through. –Fredddie ™ 02:24, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

If it were allowed to be used on non-county route lists, I would only have used the names that applied to the entire length. US 19, US 27/SR 1, US 41, SR 3, and SR 11 would undoubtedly have so many names, so only one name per highway would make much more sense. That brings up another question: would the local name be actual signed names or honorary names? Morriswa (Charlotte Allison) (talk) 14:51, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

When the colloquial name is just the last word of the full name

Should the lead include the colloquial names of highways when it is just the last word of the full name? We see this for ones like the Garden State Parkway (the Parkway), the New Jersey Turnpike (the Turnpike) and the New York State Thruway (the Thruway). While these definitely are the colloquial names for these highways, is it worth including these in the lead? I'm sure the Pennsylvania and Ohio Turnpikes are referred to by locals as "the Turnpike" but it is not indicated in those articles, presumably because the writers figured those should be implied. Mentioning colloquial names that can't be assumed from the full name (e.g. the Mid-County Expressway as "the Blue Route" or Penn-Lincoln Parkway as "Parkway West/East") I fully understand. But as for the more obvious ones?... Needforspeed888 (talk) 23:52, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

Similar issues for "the 405" in California, when certain IP addresses insist on edit warring that in. --Rs chen 7754 00:28, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

IMHO, no, it's obvious, and not helpful. But sadly it's not uncommon to see "State Route 123, also known as State Highway 123, Route 123, Highway 123, the 123,123 and one-two-three". Dave (talk) 00:06, 1 October 2019 (UTC)

Alabama State Route 14

Not sure if it is related to changes made by Fredddie (shown at the top of related changes) but Alabama State Route 14 is now broken showing "The time allocated for running scripts has expired" everywhere. Frietjes (talk) 22:31, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

same for Heartland Expressway and Interstate 84 in Oregon. Frietjes (talk) 22:40, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

looks like it's related to the KML (commenting that out fixes the problem). Frietjes (talk) 22:43, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

It's related to the maps using {{Mapframe}}. There must have been a glitch in the Matrix because these just popped up recently. –Fredddie ™ 03:41, 1 October 2019 (UTC)

Fredddie, I was able to get Interstate 84 in Oregon and Wisconsin Highway 13 to work again, but Alabama State Route 14, U.S. Route 20 in Illinois, and Heartland Expressway aren't showing the route? Frietjes (talk) 12:50, 1 October 2019 (UTC)

I edited the Map Data files for AL 14 and US 20 (IL), the old file sizes were 88,613 bytes and 86,689 bytes respectively. Using QGIS to simplify the geometries of the files (converting the points into a KML then using a tolerance of 0.00013 under Vector>Geometry tools>Simplify), I got the files down to 13,506 and 36,336 respectively. Upon bringing back the old formatting of the interactive maps in the articles' infoboxes, the maps displayed normally. Maybe this is an issue of the Map Data file sizes? —Mr. Matté (^Talk/_Contrib) 17:03, 1 October 2019 (UTC)

Mr. Matté, thank you but not sure why Wikipedia:Map data/Wikipedia KML/Interstate 84 in Oregon works at 156,313 bytes. the Module:Mapframe KML still should load faster since it doesn't require sending the entire KML through the template interface, and instead has the module load it directly. Frietjes (talk) 18:30, 1 October 2019 (UTC)

Due to off-wiki stuff I won't be able to think about anything for another week or two. Ping me later if wanted. Re the discussion at WP:VPT, I haven't looked but I wondered if the (rewritten) module could be invoked manually once after the data is edited. The module would output a page of wikitext which an editor would manually copy into a template (it would consist of <mapframe>...</mapframe>) and that template would be transcluded where needed. I don't know if that would be practical but it might avoid Kartographer's time being debited to the module. Johnuniq (talk) 23:26, 1 October 2019 (UTC)

New article Bayfront Parkway

Please help give this whatever adornments it needs. Mapsax (talk) 14:03, 5 October 2019 (UTC)

Arizona Major Intersection Tables

I've been having numerous editing conflicts with another user in regards to tge major intersections tables on U.S. Route 70 in Arizona and U.S. Route 95 in Arizona. I put the mileage down in respects to the official posted mileposts along each highway and said user keeps removing those changes on the US 95 article to reflect the total mileage of US 95. I prefer the official mileposts as ADOT data and logs generally use those over mileage totals or make the mileposts dominant. Another issue on both articles is the other user keeps removing the Gila River crossings from the tables. The Gila River is a major tributary in Arizona, is a major geographic landmark and has historical significance in the form of serving as multiple geopolitical boundaries. Arguably, the Gila River is to southern Arizona what the Red River is to northern Louisiana. Another recurring issue is the constant removal of Imperial Dam Road from the US 95 major intersections table. That road serves as the main access road to the Yuma Proving Grounds, GM test track, is the main road across the Laguna Dam and is the Arizona continuation of CR S24 from California. Lastly, the largest issue is the removal of the concurrency northbound US 95 has with US 95 Truck in San Luis. ADOT GIS data, field signage and Google Street View clearly show US 95 northbound has been moved off Main Street south of Juan Sanchez Boulevard and onto US 95 Truck/William Brooks Avenue. US 95 Southbound now uses Archibald Street ajd Urtuzuastegui Street south of Juan Sanchez Boulevard. I'm tired of having these constant conflicts and would like to settle the matter. I would like to discuss this issue here so we may set or decide on a definitive standard for how the major intersections table should look on Arizona highways. — MatthewAnderson707 (talk|sandbox) 07:28, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

@MatthewAnderson707: Before I address the content issues, I'll note that one can argue these articles currently or will soon violate GA criterion 5 (on edit warring/content disputes). I'll also ping @Greggens:, the other involved editor, to get his input.

Regarding the Gila River crossings, IMO bridges should only be included in the RJL if the crossing itself, not just what it crosses, is notable. Most of the high-quality USRD articles I've read only include notable crossings in the RJL, and not all crossings of notable waterways, etc. While the Gila River is undoubtedly noteworthy, I doubt the bridge itself is.

As for US 95, I think Imperial Dam Road should be included, at least to note its continuation as a signed California county route. Field signage is hard to cite, but a recent-enough Street View photo, and certainly state GIS data, would generally be authoritative on alignment matters. I invite @Greggens: to explain his reasoning on this.

Mileposts can be tricky. I semi-randomly checked articles for rural and urban AZ state highways, and there were several with mileposts not starting with 0. California articles use postmiles (the rough CA equivalent) as a general rule, including on FAs. I'm neutral on this matter, but I think AZ highway articles should be consistent when possible.

I hope all of this input helps. -happy 5214 08:46, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

Thanks. I wanted to open this discussion to prevent any further dispute/edit warring as well as to prevent the chance of these articles losing their GA status. I worked extremely hard to get them to this point and would really hate to lose that distinction on both of them. These are the first GA articles I've ever written and it's a big deal to me. — MatthewAnderson707 (talk|sandbox) 12:35, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

@Happy5214: I'd like to add a further comment saying after reading your interpretation of the Gila River situation, I'm going to drop my argument for it on US 70 and go with Greggens' interpretation on the Major intersection table there. I seriously do not want either article to lose its GA status and I feel this is the best way to remove US 70 from this dispute. That article is no longer part of this issue as far as I'm concerned and I am more than fine with the format Greggens wants for that major intersection table. However, I still dispute his version of the US 95 table and think that the issue should be discussed further. I await his comments so we may reach a mutually beneficial solution. Again, I put countless hours and effort as well as personal financing into writing both articles and trying hard to have them reach GA status, not to mention had multiple users lend me advice on how to write WP:USRD GA standard articles. It would be awful if all that work went to waste over edit warring/disputing over a small area such as the major intersection table. Also, Greggens, if you see this, I hope you know I don't mean any disrespect and I'm not trying to pick a fight with you. I know you are just trying to do your job and help improve Arizona highway articles too and I really respect that. I'm sorry for all the conflicts we've had in recent times. I'm putting this discussion together in hopes we can prevent future conflicts and agree to a mutual standard we both like. My apologies if using posted mileposts isn't your cup of tea. I just felt it would make more sense to people looking at ADOT maps or driving the highways in the field to have the tables represent the visible mileposts along each route. — MatthewAnderson707 (talk|sandbox)

Finally, I have time to weigh in on this. Regarding the mileage numbers, I'm not overly concerned with the way the mileage stats should be presented. I may have a certain opinion that is reflected in the way I edit the mileage tables, but personally that's all small potatoes. As for the intersection with Imperial Dam Rd., generally speaking, unnumbered roads like that are omitted from major intersection tables. There are a few allowable exceptions (such as interchanges, termini, etc.), but leading to a minor county road in California is not sufficient cause for including it in a major intersection table. Otherwise, we'd have to include, on the junction list, intersections with numerous other unnamed roads that might be considered important to somebody, somewhere.

As far as the official routing of US 95 goes, I was not aware that ADOT had a website that detailed the official routing of various Arizona highways, nor did I have reason in the past to believe that such a website actually existed. Now that I've seen that website and have been made aware that it basically represents an online version of a "highway log," I believe that MatthewAnderson707 is right; we should follow the routing as shown on the website. That would mean that US 95 follows Main Street through San Luis, as the map clearly shows (zoom in on San Luis for more detail). It also shows US 95 Truck as running mostly along 1st Avenue northbound, and Archibald Avenue southbound, with both termini at US 95 (at/near Urtuzuastegui Street on the south end, at/near D Street on the north end). Now it may be true that Main St. south of D St. has been relinquished by ADOT back to the city of San Luis, but this doesn't accurately describe that routing of US 95 as far as drivers are concerned. All the maps and logs that I've seen, and most drivers see, still describe US 95 as being on Main Street all the way. One little technicality isn't going to change the minds of drivers who rely on maps for accurate routing.

As an example, motorists who get off US 60 in Mesa to get onto Country Club Drive southbound are told that they are getting onto SR 87. But if they were to drive south on SR 87 all the way into Chandler and then the Gila River Indian Community, these drivers would technically no longer be on SR 87 for a while, and then eventually, they'd be on SR 87 again. But in the minds of the motorists themselves, they will have been on SR 87 the entire time.

Now since the reassurance signage on US 95 in San Luis seems to be confusing, it's best to assume, for our purposes, that US 95 still runs all the way along Main St., ADOT relinquishments notwithstanding; and US 95 Truck runs apart from its parent on separate northbound and southbound carriageways. That seems to reflect what is shown on ADOT's State Highway System map. Besides, it's unlikely that US 95 Truck is concurrent with US 95 itself, as it would be redundant for a Truck route to be concurrent with its own parent route for the entire length of the Truck route.

In closing, MatthewAnderson707, I'll go ahead and leave the mileposts alone and adjust the descriptions of US 95 and US 95 Truck, if you agree to leave Imperial Dam Dr. off the junction list. Greggens (talk) 03:27, 10 October 2019 (UTC)

P.S.– FWIW, 1st Avenue in San Luis (see above) is also known as William Brooks Avenue. Greggens (talk) 03:31, 10 October 2019 (UTC)

@Greggens: Done deal. Sorry for all the trouble. ADOT should have done a better job with their GIS files and signage in the field to avoid this confusion. I remember having a hell of a hard time trying to decipher San Luis when I originally wrote the article. — MatthewAnderson707 (talk|sandbox) 04:14, 10 October 2019 (UTC)

As a few general comments, route descriptions and junction tables should reflect the routing given in the state logs/laws. That being said, if you can find maps that are published by reliable sources that have a different routing, it might be appropriate to add something like "Some maps, however, show US 95 as going..." to the RD.

Speaking about California, it uses postmiles only because at the time most of the junction lists were written that was the only thing available. We did later find more normal mileposts but never got around to changing all the junction lists. If it is possible to make accurate calculations (i.e. not Google Maps estimates), it might be preferable to go with those because the average reader would understand those more (and sorry MatthewAnderson707 if it sounds like I'm contradicting what I said earlier, I forgot that AZ does something weird with their mileages by having it reflect the milepost of the route at the southern/western terminus).

About choosing what junctions should go in the list, ultimately it is just one part of the article and not something to spend too much time worrying about (and unfortunately, there are many editors, some of them IPs, who edit war their favorite junctions into that table as well as the infobox). --Rs chen 7754 04:05, 10 October 2019 (UTC)

@Rschen7754: So in other words, you'd recommend me using the distance from the primary terminus starting at mile 0 rather than the posted mileposts used by ADOT? — MatthewAnderson707 (talk|sandbox) 04:20, 10 October 2019 (UTC)

Yes, though you might have to use the posted mileposts to do the calculations. --Rs chen 7754 04:22, 10 October 2019 (UTC)

@Rschen7754: That's a shame. I enjoy using the official Arizona mileposts. I wish there was a way we could use both the distance and posted mileposts at the same time. — MatthewAnderson707 (talk|sandbox) 04:57, 11 October 2019 (UTC)

Draft:Interstate 880 (Iowa)

Someone made the Draft:Interstate 880 (Iowa) page. Can someone verify if this is a real proposal? I would have tagged it for deletion, but I wanted your input. Morriswa (Charlotte Allison) (talk) 23:27, 5 October 2019 (UTC)

@Morriswa: two quick comments. First, there is a "someone" if you look at the draft's history, and I would like to think that Fredddie's reputation is good enough not to be questioned on a draft like this. Second, see AASHTO SCURN's ballot for the 2019 Annual Meeting. So yes, it's a real proposal. Imzadi 1979 → 23:35, 5 October 2019 (UTC)

Sorry. I didn't look at the history to see who worked on it. Also, most, if not all, of the references seem to apply to previous designations. I will take a look at the reference that you posted here. Thanks. Morriswa (Charlotte Allison) (talk) 23:49, 5 October 2019 (UTC)

Facepalm –Fredddie ™ 03:02, 6 October 2019 (UTC)

On a related note, when possible, the references to the old number at Interstate 80 in Iowa and Interstate 29 in Iowa need to be updated to reflect the change. --Kinu ^t/_c 05:33, 11 October 2019 (UTC)

List of temporary Interstate Highways

The article List of temporary Interstate Highways has been unsourced since creation in 2005 and hasn't gotten an iota of TLC. Some of these are so short-lived that they probably didn't even appear on any maps. What should be done with this list? Does anyone want to clean it up? Should it be deleted? Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 18:22, 6 October 2019 (UTC)

Bump. Paging @MatthewAnderson707:, @Imzadi1979:, @Morriswa:, @Certes:, @Fredddie:, @NE2:. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 19:07, 12 October 2019 (UTC)

Since this is a list article, I can't say I'm the best at dealing with this kind of situation. I hope the advice I gave to you on my talk page was at least some help. The others would know how to handle this better, as I don't fully understand the standards or sourcing standards behind list pages. — MatthewAnderson707 (talk|sandbox) 00:35, 13 October 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for thinking of me but I'm afraid this isn't my area of expertise either; my edit was just updating an outdated link. Certes (talk) 09:08, 13 October 2019 (UTC)

Request for information on WP1.0 web tool

Hello and greetings from the maintainers of the WP 1.0 Bot! As you may or may not know, we are currently involved in an overhaul of the bot, in order to make it more modern and maintainable. As part of this process, we will be rewriting the web tool that is part of the project. You might have noticed this tool if you click through the links on the project assessment summary tables.

We'd like to collect information on how the current tool is used by....you! How do you yourself and the other maintainers of your project use the web tool? Which of its features do you need? How frequently do you use these features? And what features is the tool missing that would be useful to you? We have collected all of these questions at this Google form where you can leave your response. Walkerma (talk) 04:25, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

Florida State Road 113 map

A map was added to the Florida State Road 113 (SR 113) page. It's incorrect, however. The approximate 0.4 miles (0.64 km) at the southern end is not part of SR 113. It is actually part of SR 115. Morriswa (Charlotte Allison) (talk) 08:52, 8 November 2019 (UTC)

Fixed —Mr. Matté (^Talk/_Contrib) 13:22, 8 November 2019 (UTC)

@Morriswa: it's not necessary to define your abbreviations and convert units on a talk page. This isn't an article. –Fredddie ™ 13:37, 8 November 2019 (UTC)

@Mr. Matté: thank you for fixing the map. I have no idea how to use the new map feature, so thank you for taking care of it.

@Fredddie: I understand that. I just wanted to clarify what I meant for those who weren't familiar with Florida state highways. Morriswa (Charlotte Allison) (talk) 00:46, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

Source for rail line names

FYI, I'll be adding this link to our resources section [7] It's a Federal Railroad Administration GIS data that features rail track owners and subdivisions. This information is more easily obtained from Open Street Map, but here's a reliable source that meets Wikipedia's standards for names of specific railroad tracks. This isn't perfect as it lists the subdivision of the line, not the line's name itself. Some subdivisions have articles (i.e. Lakeside Subdivision), some have redirects to the name of the line (i.e. Sharp Subdivision ) but most are still red links. But at least that's better than what many USRD articles do in their descriptions with generic descriptions like "the highway crosses the Union Pacific Railroad", which is about as helpful as saying "crosses a state route".Dave (talk) 18:56, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

I've used that FRA source myself when mapping rail lines in OSM. It's a gold mine of information. -happy 5214 20:35, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

MfD nomination of Portal:Maryland roads

Portal:Maryland roads, a page which you created or substantially contributed to, has been nominated for deletion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; you may participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Maryland roads and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~). You are free to edit the content of Portal:Maryland roads during the discussion but should not remove the miscellany for deletion template from the top of the page; such a removal will not end the deletion discussion. Thank you. Guilherme Burn (talk) 17:08, 14 November 2019 (UTC)

Interstate 335 disambiguation page

User:Georgia guy turned the Interstate 335 disambiguation page into a redirect to Kansas Turnpike#Emporia to Topeka. I reverted his edit, but he reverted it back. I don't want to cause an edit war. What is the project's opinion on this? Interstate 335 (Minnesota) was a proposed highway, so there could be a disambiguation page. If not, put a hatnote on each page. Morriswa (Charlotte Allison) (talk) 11:12, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

In contrast, Interstate 335 in Kansas is a current, official, and signed highway. Georgia guy (talk) 11:18, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

Precedent can be found with Interstate 494 and Interstate 494 (disambiguation). –Fredddie ™ 21:50, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

Deletion discussions on Commons

In case anyone here has any comments, see commons:Commons:Deletion requests/File:County 15.png 2 and commons:Commons:Deletion requests/File:County 20.png 2. --Sable232 (talk) 00:01, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

U.S. Route 422

The U.S. Route 422 article is showing an error message “The time allocated for running scripts has expired” all over the article in place of the infobox and major intersections. Dough4872 02:46, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

likely a syntax error introduced with recent edits, as older versions display properly [8]. I'd comb through the history between this revision and now and see if there's any malformed syntax introduced. Dave (talk) 03:01, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

Apparently I did a null edit and it looks fine now. Dough4872 03:02, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

Auxiliary route parameter for Pennsylvania state routes

I know we use the auxiliary route parameter in the infobox for three-digit Interstate and US routes to indicate what route they are an auxiliary route of. For example, U.S. Route 113 indicates that it is an US 13 in the infobox. In Pennsylvania, there are several three-digit state routes that are auxiliary routes of two-digit state routes both past and present. For example, Pennsylvania Route 332 is related to Pennsylvania Route 32 and Pennsylvania Route 662 is related to the former Pennsylvania Route 62 (now Pennsylvania Route 100). Not all three-digit Pennsylvania state routes are related to a two-digit route. For example, Pennsylvania Route 863 was numbered to provide a connection to I-78 and is not related to Pennsylvania Route 63. Should we use the auxiliary route parameter for three-digit Pennsylvania state routes that are related to a two-digit route? Dough4872 01:55, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

Peer review request for Atlantic City–Brigantine Connector

Hello fellow editors! I have requested a peer review for Atlantic City–Brigantine Connector, which is currently a good article. I hope to nominate it as a featured article once I get some feedback on the article. I would appreciate any comments for review! Thank you. –Dream out loud (talk) 12:15, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

Numbered list item

Glendora Curve

Hello! I just removed what seemed like a grossly invalid CSD tag (the subject was invented/coined/discovered by the article's creator or someone they know personally, and does not credibly indicate why its subject is important or significant) from Glendora Curve given there is a clear place name notability claim; it's even linked from California State Route 57. I also improved the stub a bit while there...don't know much about roads, but I hope I did the right thing! Thanks, PK650 (talk) 03:27, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

That does not look like that notable enough of an interchange to sustain its own article. The details can easily be covered in the I-210 and CA 57 articles. Dough4872 04:13, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

+1. It's officially designated somewhere, but California has hundreds of these such names. Google doesn't come up with a lot of results either. --Rs chen 7754 07:55, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

I know what the Glendora curve was (it no longer exists), but to me its no more notable than the Durango Curve (a similar situation in the Phoenix Freeway System, except the history is reversed. While the Glendora curve was eliminated and made into a fly-over ramp when a connecting freeway was built, the Durango curve started as a fly-over ramp and was converted to a curve when its connecting freeway segment was cancelled) or any number of unnamed similar examples, including a very similar situation to the Glendora curve at the intersection of I-215 (Utah) and SR-67 in Salt Lake City, and the similar in function but different history I-280/I-680 transition in San Jose. To my knowledge the Glendora curve is the only such instance to have a Wikipedia article, despite numerous examples existing in the USA, much less the world. IMHO, it merits a mention in the history section of the I-210 and/or CA-57 articles and nothing more. Dave (talk) 13:52, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

Whatever you think is best! I just wanted to know if my withdrawal of the CSD tag was justified, as it seemed to me that being an actual place was, in fact, a notability claim. Pedantic, perhaps... PK650 (talk) 01:29, 12 December 2019 (UTC)

So now that this has sat for a couple of weeks, what should we do about it? IMHO, it's not a controversial decision to just delete the darn thing. In addition to my comments above, I'll point out that there are only 2 sources in the article, the one numbered 2 is completely worthless, it only mentions the subject of the article in passing, and does not verify the statements attributed to it. Any objections to a deletion? I'll also point out the Glendora Curve is bolded in the CA 210 article, implying it at one time redirected there. Dave (talk) 04:27, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

I like the idea of merging it (back) into I-210/SR 210. The SR 210 through road was always there, but the ramps to SR 57 lessened in importance after SR 210 was built the rest of the way. That's worthy of a paragraph or two, on I-210/SR 210 of course. –Fredddie ™ 04:56, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

List of highways bypassed by Interstate Highways

I have restored List of highways bypassed by Interstate Highways to Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Roads/List of highways bypassed by Interstate Highways as requested by User:WikiWarrior9919 and suggested by others. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 21:23, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

What is the intended purpose of this list? Pretty hard to make this into an encyclopedia article when the transition from US Highways to Interstate Highways took 30 years with numerous interim changes during that time. To make this list manageable, we'd have to pick an arbitrary day. (For example for decommissioned highways most USRD articles use the definition of the highway on the day it was decommissioned, unless otherwise stated). Dave (talk) 03:16, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

I think it's useful not as a future encyclopedia article but as a useful starting point for USRD history sections, especially since the list concentrates a lot of information into one place. Highway 89 (talk) 17:45, 7 January 2020 (UTC)

ACR is failing

After 8 months of no comments at ACR, Washington State Route 504 was then nominated at FAC and failed. It seems that our ACR process is failing because nobody is reviewing. Do we want an ACR process anymore? Forgive me for being blunt, but do we care? --Rs chen 7754 21:22, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

I think at this point, most of the main project editors are burned out and/or busy with other real-life commitments. It’s not just ACR, many other aspects of the project have quieted down over the past years, such as the portal, newsletter, and overall improvement of articles. It would be nice to get some editors to review articles at ACR again so we can make sure articles are prepared for FAC. However, at this point I’m not sure we can find enough editors willing to review at ACR in addition to there not being many articles sent to ACR. If this is the case, we may have to consider shutting ACR down if we don’t have the resources to run it. It would be a shame to shut down a useful review process to prepare articles to FAC but we may have to if we can’t revive interest in it. Dough4872 22:51, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

Although this won't fix the bigger problem. Pester me, but give me a week. I've been more active in Wikipedialand the past 2 months, though I haven't been working on USRD articles. Even before this post I had a goal of doing some sort of peer review/ACR/GAC review/FAC review this month. That is in part because I want to be more active, and in part completely selfish as I need some help making a map with some KML files I have for the article Uinta Basin Rail, and would like to re-establish credibility with the project to ask for that help. Dave (talk) 23:14, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

To add - I think that there is a market for the sort of help that ACR provides (see the thread by @Dream out loud: above, in fact). I know I've seen @MatthewAnderson707: make similar inquiries on user talk pages. It would really be a shame if ACR went away entirely. I think it may be worth considering how we can keep some form of the process running while dealing with the reality of more limited editor resources. --Rs chen 7754 19:34, 7 January 2020 (UTC)

I can only speak for myself, but my life isn't the same as it as five years ago when ACR was most-active. It takes a lot for me to review articles the way they need to be reviewed at ACR; I just don't have the energy when I get home or have a day off to dedicate myself to it. That doesn't mean that I'll never do it, @MatthewAnderson707: has asked me to review some articles, and I've tried to accommodate his requests. Matthew, if I've pledged to review something and I haven't I swear my forgetting isn't intentional, just leave a note on my talk page and I'll get to it eventually. Anyway, yes there is a market for thorough reviews and we should make an effort to help out the people who seek them. Should we scrap ACR? I don't think that's a good idea as there is a clear need. Should there be changes to the process? Maybe, but I think that's a discussion that should take place on WT:HWY. Is ACR failing? Not at all. –Fredddie ™ 01:40, 8 January 2020 (UTC)

"Milestone" article vs. "Highway location marker" article

As the Milestone and Highway location marker articles have evolved, they've taken on overlapping information. This appears mostly to have been influenced by the different countries involved. I've seen this issue before with other similar article pairings, such as those using MUTCD terms vs. Vienna Convention ones, but this example seems especially complicated. I'm not going so far as to make a merge request because I don't believe that either article needs to go away completely. What to do? Mapsax (talk) 02:29, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

Oh Oh Oh, can we have another petrol/gasoline war and end up on WP:Lame again? ;) On the more serious side, in addition to those two titles, we also have California postmile (which despite the title of the Wikipedia aritcle is not unique to California, Nevada and Ohio use them too), Milepost equation,Driver location sign and Kilometre zero. All of those articles partially overlap. Ideally I'd like to see them pruned down to a smaller number, but have no idea how to do it. The way the lead of Highway location marker is worded, that author intended for that article to be used for the modern standards, and the Milestone to be used for the historical standards. I'm ok with that, but the Kilometer zero also focuses on historical usage. There may be justification for having seperate articles, for the "American style" and "European style" just due to the nature that most modern US style markers include more information (like the highway's number). The two things I am certain is the the article for California postmile needs to be re-written and/or merged into a different article, and the Milepost zero article will probably have to be separate as many of these are specific monuments in older cities, no longer in practical use for measuring distances anymore. Dave (talk) 20:05, 12 January 2020 (UTC)

Category:Roads in Savannah, Georgia

The name of Category:Roads in Savannah, Georgia would seem to indicate that it contains roads only in Savannah itself, but the category has a "lead" that says that it is supposed to contain highways in the metropolitan area, including areas in South Carolina. However, all pages are on the Georgia side, and only in Savannah. Morriswa (Charlotte Allison) (talk) 17:22, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

Naming convention

In Category:Jefferson Davis Highway, the pages there have differently-formatted names. What is the proper format of highway marker names? Morriswa (Charlotte Allison) (talk) 17:20, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

It appears the contents of that category are all entries on the National Register of Historic Places. I've found that most Wikipedia articles on NRHP listings use the title exactly as it appears on the original NRHP nomination (including punctuation and capitalization), and don't follow specific naming conventions. -- LJ ↗ 14:48, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

Google maps for mileposts?

Another editor claimed in an edit summary recently that using Google Maps for distances violates WP:OR. I've seen it in use across many articles (plus there's an entire template for it) so I've been using it to add mileages when official resources either do not exist or do not have data for a specific intersection/exit, and have been under the impression that this is acceptable. — C16SH (speak up) 14:50, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

I seem to remember this being discussed recently. The gist was that Google Maps has been used as a milepost source in several FAs without issue, so your use should be fine. Someone else can provide more detail (I can't find the discussion right now), and maybe they can link it on WP:USRD/P. -happy 5214

For what its worth, I posed a similar question here and got a good response from User:Imzadi1979. He said that "I would say that a good highway article should have citations for the route description, and they're very easy. For mine, I cite the official state DOT map along with the Google Maps driving directions in satellite view. For some things, I've needed to add in other maps (railroad names, national forest boundaries). That will cover the basic content describing the route a highway takes. Some additional information will need different citations, of course". 108.21.182.146 (talk) 16:18, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

I don't know whether that's directly relevant here, since that's more about route descriptions that junction lists. To expand on my earlier point on USRD FAs using Google Maps for mileposts, see Interstate 470 (Ohio–West Virginia) and Creek Turnpike, just to name a few. -happy 5214 18:30, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

Happy5214, subsequent to my comment here, Freddie added in his thoughts that "Really any section of prose or figures (like junction lists, especially the mileposts) should be cited to a reliable source. What User:Imzadi1979 mentioned about citing Google Maps and a paper map is a current best practice for an RD." That is relevant for the specific question here. My initial comment was more generalized about the legitimacy of using Google Maps as a source, as I have encountered editors who have stated that Google Maps cannot be cited (indeed, there's one such statement on my talk page as we speak). Its good to get that squared away as well. Thank you!108.21.182.146 (talk) 18:46, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

For mileposts: It is acceptable when there are no other sources available - but using Google Maps to cite down to a hundredth or thousandth of a mile would definitely be OR. When you do this the precision that you get is limited, which is why DOT sources are preferred. --Rs chen 7754 19:45, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

I believe what you are referring to is a fight back when U.S. Route 50 in Nevada was on the main page as Today's featured article a few years ago. The mileposts for that article were a mess at the time and only slightly better now. This article did, and still does, partially rely on Google Maps as a source, and passed FAC without issue (admittedly over 10 years ago, though). However, at least in that case, what caused the argument is the lack of consistency in the mileage figures, which I admit makes the article look bad. The problem in that case was, and is, that NevadaDOT has a partial junction list accurate to 3 decimal places, but only for a few select junctions. There are other sources listed (mostly county maps) that have figures to 2 decimal places, that allowed us to infer more junctions. For the rest, we had to resort to Google Maps and those are only reported with .1 mile accuracy. I freely admit the junction list looks bad with those figures of inconsistent accuracy, and if your situation is similar you may want to consider rounding all figures to .1 miles to avoid that controversy in your article. Dave (talk) 04:05, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

Question about mileage tables

Is it considered standard practice to add service, rest, and parking areas to mileage tables? I have seen them on some articles, but not others. HighwayTyper (talk) 00:08, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

It is worth noting, too, that the talk page of this article contains a notice about the mileage table, reading: "This article's junction list has been marked as needing attention." HighwayTyper (talk) 00:31, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

@HighwayTyper: I assume you're referring to Interstate 684? The junction list styling rules say to include Service areas; if multiple exist, limit those displayed to those of historical or other significance or notability.

As for your notice template about NYSDOT not renumbering exits, unless it'll be used on many articles, the contents can simply be pasted into the article. -happy 5214 02:16, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

Should the Garden State Parkway be included in infoboxes for I-87, I-287, and the Thruway?

Many times in the past year or so, the Garden State Parkway has been included as a major junction in the infoboxes for Interstate 87 (New York), Interstate 287, and the New York State Thruway. When I have seen this, I have generally removed it because, as we all know, the Garden State Parkway ends at the NJ-NY state line, where it becomes the Garden State Parkway Connector, which is a component of the Thruway. That said, we seem to have no problem including I-81 and I-99 in the infobox for the Pennsylvania Turnpike, even though the turnpike does not directly connect with those roadways, because, as @Dough4872: pointed out, "even if connection is indirect, both are signed from the turnpike." Does this mean it's okay to include the GSP in the infoboxes for the three aforementioned roads, being that the signs say "Garden State Parkway"? Needforspeed888 (talk) 22:29, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

The signs on the New York State Thruway for Exit 14A say “Garden State Pkwy - New Jersey”. The exit list presents the exits as they are listed on signs. Therefore it should be listed that way, with a note that access is provided via the Garden State Parkway Connector. The way Exit 14A is currently formatted in the exit list in the New York State Thruway article is perfectly fine. Dough4872 13:14, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

@Dough4872: Note that I'm referring to the infobox, not the exit list. Needforspeed888 (talk) 13:53, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

Oops, misread that. In that case, I would still include the Garden State Parkway in the infobox since that’s what included on signs. Although, I would think there are many more major junctions in New York that should be in the infobox for the Thruway over the Garden State Parkway. Dough4872 14:23, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

Category:Redirects from route numbers and Template:R from route number have been nominated for discussion

Category:Redirects from route numbers and Template:R from route number, which involve US roads, have been nominated for possible deletion. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 10:16, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

Ontario Highway 418

Not sure how many of you are watching the Canada project, but the above article could cause Canada to lose a Good Topic if it is not brought to GA soon. --Rs chen 7754 19:46, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

California State Route 1 (Big Sur)

@Btphelps: started the California State Route 1 (Big Sur) page. This is not proper practice. Shouldn't it be merged into California State Route 1? Morriswa (Charlotte Allison) (talk) 08:48, 7 January 2020 (UTC)

Um, yes! We don't split highway articles by segment unless the segment has a notable distinct identity (e.g. a state-detail or named freeway). Please merge into the parent highway article. It could use the detail (more than half of it is RJL and below). -happy 5214 11:12, 7 January 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, this should be merged into the CA 1 article. Dough4872 13:42, 7 January 2020 (UTC)

That is the point, the Big Sur region of Highway 1 has a distinct identity. — btphelps ^{(talk to me) (what I've done)} 16:39, 7 January 2020 (UTC)

It really doesn't. I think this is an example of how everyone thinks that their hometown is unique and should be covered differently than every other city, whereas I've learned that the more I travel, the more things are really the same. --Rs chen 7754 19:36, 7 January 2020 (UTC)

I would argue the article is good, and has a place in Wikipedia, but it is mistitled. Using the title of "CA-1 in Big Sur" will always be problematic. Just to name a few problems with it, it's not a official, or recognized title, and therefore impossible to define (length, termini, etc.) However, there is a place for the content in this article on Wikipedia, especially given the length of CA-1, it's long enough to consider breaking into sub-articles. Per the FWHA's website,[9] this section had been designated as part of the National Scenic Byways Program as an All American Road (covered in the NSB article) titled "Route 1 - Big Sur Coast Highway". IMHO, that should be the title of this article, and it should hook into that system of articles. Of course with a summary paragraph and "see also" mention in the main CA-1 article. Dave (talk) 19:46, 7 January 2020 (UTC)

Hmm. If we look at it from this angle, a separate article might be justifiable (and wouldn't come with the baggage of opening the door to all kinds of other article splits). --Rs chen 7754 19:55, 7 January 2020 (UTC)

Agree with Dave, article should be moved to Route 1 - Big Sur Coast Highway and be refocused as a scenic byway article, with a hatnote and summarized mention in the California State Route 1 article. Dough4872 19:59, 7 January 2020 (UTC)

Before actually moving the page, I'd advise to check what is the Wikipedia policy this week on an emdash verses and endash. It's changed so many times I honestly don't know which we're supposed to use anymore. I did a quick skim of WP:DASH and I'm still not sure which to use ;) Dave (talk) 20:37, 7 January 2020 (UTC)

What if we just called it Big Sur Coast Highway? That would eliminate the awkward endash. –Fredddie ™ 01:47, 8 January 2020 (UTC)

+1, but I was more thinking about under common name (I don't think anyone would consider something with a dash as a common name). --Rs chen 7754 01:55, 8 January 2020 (UTC)

Yeah I would call BSCH the common name and move on. –Fredddie ™ 01:59, 8 January 2020 (UTC)

Fine by me, although we should have a redirect from the "official" FHWA title which apparently uses a hyphen. The only thing I do know about weather we should use a hyphen, endash, emdash or no dash is whichever you pick, you picked wrong.Dave (talk) 02:16, 8 January 2020 (UTC)

The closest thing I could find to use as precedent is Utah State Route 12 which has an emdash as part of the alternate title, but with redirects from multiple options.Dave (talk) 02:43, 8 January 2020 (UTC)

I've always abided by WP:REDIRECTSARECHEAP. –Fredddie ™ 03:43, 8 January 2020 (UTC)

How about Pacific Coast Highway Big Sur as a title? — btphelps ^{(talk to me) (what I've done)} 05:37, 12 January 2020 (UTC)

If the article is going to be in the family of articles about National Scenic Byways, the title should reasonable conform to its official name in the system. I understand the policy about use common names, but problem here is what name is the most common? There's dozens of names in common use for this road, from PCH and all it's derivatives, to the incredibly vagues highway 1, to the ones already mentioned in this thread, so I wouldn't deviate too far from it's name in the NSB program.Dave (talk) 19:47, 12 January 2020 (UTC)

The American Scenic Road website names the road "Route 1 - Big Sur Coast Highway". The California Scenic Highway website does not provide a specific name for the Big Sur section of highway. — btphelps ^{(talk to me) (what I've done)} 03:43, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

Now done. --Rs chen 7754 00:19, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

Was US-25 never officially decommisioned on its north end?

I was looking at the chart at WP:USRD/AASHTO to find when US-25 in Ohio and Michigan was eliminated by AASHTO and didn't see anything, so assuming an oversight I checked the minutes from 1972 to 1974 myself and saw nothing. The U.S. Route 25 in Michigan article uses a newspaper article as a reference, and U.S. Route 25 in Ohio uses the official map archive. Could it have been an agreement between Michigan and Ohio that slipped under AASHTO's radar? Did I just not look far enough in the archives because perhaps AASHTO had a delayed ruling? Mapsax (talk) 02:40, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Highways#Length citations in road infoboxes

See discussion above. --Rs chen 7754 04:13, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

Discussing other routes in an article page

Hello, I need some interjection here because I'm currently in a edit war with an IP address. At center is Interstate 40 in North Carolina; the IP address keeps adding a paragraph regarding the route changes for US 70, Business 85 and other routes that happen to overlap with I-40. I keep removing it because that is going off-topic as each route has their own article explains it, I do not see the value of the redundancy for a route not impacted. So who's right, who's wrong... can someone please weigh in on this? Thank you. --WashuOtaku (talk) 19:16, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

I think that information is worth mentioning, as it pertains to routes that are concurrent with a stretch of I-40 and has an impact on signage and traffic along I-40. Do not need to go into details on any routing changes beyond I-40 though. Dough4872 22:12, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

Maryland HLR template

The MDSHA recently released the 2018 edition of the Highway Location Reference. The links for the 2018 edition of the HLR follow a different scheme than the 1999-2016 editions (see here for the links). Can someone who is good with templates please make changes to the {{Maryland HLR}} template so it can call the links for the 2018 HLR properly? Dough4872 15:38, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

@Dough4872: can you test out {{Maryland HLR/sandbox}} and see how it works? –Fredddie ™ 02:31, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

I tested out the sandbox version of the template and it appears to be displaying the links correctly. Dough4872 19:51, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Roads/Assessment/Visual aids

If someone wanted something to do, Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Roads/Assessment/Visual aids needs some updating. The FA/A/GA route maps haven’t been updated since 2017 and the assessment maps haven’t been updated since 2017/2018. Dough4872 02:33, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

Template link fixes

Per the discussion at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2020 April 3#County Routes (%county% County, New Jersey), these malformed redirects which really should be deleted exist due to limitations in Module:Road data/strings/USA/NJ and {{routelist row}} that require links from them to display CR 524A, 527A, and 536A. Can someone please fix this so we can delete the redirects? Dough4872 22:06, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

Newsletter

We have not published a Newsletter in three years and I don’t anticipate one being published soon. Does anyone else think we should just mark this as historical? Dough4872 02:19, 8 April 2020 (UTC)

Don't see an advantage in marking it as historical. I would just let it be. Nova Crystallis (Talk) 02:44, 8 April 2020 (UTC)

At grade intersections in junction list

Should at-grade intersections with ordinary streets be included in junction lists? I found these on New York State Route 895, I removed them, but they were added back. Needforspeed888 (talk) 19:14, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

Typically, we would not include those junctions unless they are a terminus point or an at-grade intersection along an otherwise limited-access stretch of road. In the case of NY 895, I would say the three junctions you removed should not be in the junction list since they are just city street junctions along an at-grade boulevard. Dough4872 20:02, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

I disagree because the entire point of the Sheridan Boulevard project was to add those three intersections. It seems extremely misleading to not include them because it suggests that the Sheridan Expressway is still intact. Smith0124 (talk) 00:08, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

Articles about roads that are at-grade generally only include at-grade intersections with US and state routes (with county routes sometimes included based on the circumstances), interchanges with any type of road (I, US, state, county, unnumbered), and the terminal intersections regardless of type of road. The three streets you added to the junction list of NY 895 should not be included in the table. Dough4872 01:08, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

I concur. They should instead be covered using prose in the History and RD sections. -happy 5214 02:11, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

Multiple sections

I know that {{Infobox road}} has the ability to add multiple sections of a highway. Does {{Infobox street}} have the same ability? If so, how do I do it? Morriswa (Charlotte Allison) (talk) 10:33, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

@Morriswa: it does not have that option. Imzadi 1979 → 13:06, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

Well, thank you for letting me know. Morriswa (Charlotte Allison) (talk) 22:45, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

I probably should have mentioned that there are some street articles that had the road infobox. I was going to swap the infoboxes, but I saw that there wasn't a multiple-section option in the street one. Morriswa (Charlotte Allison) (talk) 11:16, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

Destinations in the road junction lists

I'm having a disagreement with another editor over the destinations that should be shown in road junction lists, with the edits occurring primarily in southern New England. I want to make sure that I'm interpreting the "Destinations" bullet in WP:RJL correctly. In my reading, we use the destinations that are shown on the signs in the field, and I interpret that to include what we can see on a Streetview-type application. It appears that the other editor wants to put in the ultimate destinations that the numbered highways lead to, often at the expense of what are actually signed. I've been attempting to engage with the editor about the guidelines, but with little success, and I haven't seen anyone else jump in. So, could someone take a look at the histories of some of the highway articles in question and offer some input? Examples abound; my most recent exchange with the editor is on Massachusetts Route 2A. I've invited the editor to join this discussion. --Ken Gallager (talk) 12:49, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

Usuallly I would include whatever cities are listed on green signs at the junction, using Google Street View to verify. I don’t think we should just decide on our own what cities to list as this is something that people will constantly fight about. If there are no signs at the junction listing cities, then we don’t include cities. Maybe we should make it more clear in MOS:RJL that cities listed in the destinations column should reflect what is shown in signage. Dough4872 14:28, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

The original post and first reply above are mis-framing the situation a bit.
MOS:RJL says for the destinations column

Locations and roads as presented on guide signs for the junction. Other locations should not be listed unless that location is extremely notable and well known; an entry in the notes column such as "Serves Missouri State University" can be used. Routes not indicated on the guide signs may be included in parentheses.

Ken Gallager raised concerns with Oliver Wendell 2009 that the latter is not applying this standard in continuously changing the cities in the destinations columns of RJLs in New England articles. Wendell has not engaged in attempts to discuss this one-on-one. Gallager needs confirmation of the standard and support for a next step to resolve this situation amicably; notices that Wendell could be blocked have gone unheeded, and Gallagher can't issue any such block. Imzadi 1979 → 17:50, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

Wendell should be discussing this situation. There may be details the support the edits. If so, why the radio silence at attempts to discuss? If the situation can't be resolved, we may have to appeal to the appropriate authority to use other tools for resolution, if the project feels that's warranted. Imzadi 1979 → 17:57, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

Thank you Dough4872 for reinforcing the stance that project contributors should be following, and I think it's already clearly written in the guide. And thank you Imzadi1979 for clarifying the intent of my request, which as you described was aimed at seeking support for the steps I am trying to take, making sure I wasn't overdoing things, and for giving Wendell another opportunity to speak up. I will seek out an administrator if I see more changes that are in conflict with the guidelines. --Ken Gallager (talk) 12:51, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

Template:WikiProject U.S. Roads edit for county highway task forces

On {{WikiProject U.S. Roads}}, we can use the "state=FL-CRTF" parameter for Florida's county roads. Is there any similar parameter(s) for other states with county highways, especially New Jersey and New York? Morriswa (Charlotte Allison) (talk) 11:53, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

No, there isn't. In fact, long term though, the |state=FL-CRTF option should not be used in favor of |state=FL and |type=CR. The latter categorizes the page as part of the national County Road TF in addition to the state TF. Imzadi 1979 → 13:28, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

Indeed, this is a holdover from when there were subprojects/task forces for county roads. --Rs chen 7754 18:10, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

It's still done, partially, because we use the respective blank state highway markers as icons for each state task force, yet county roads use a different marker. Imzadi 1979 → 03:24, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

Let me try to understand you, we should use |state=XX and |type=CR for all articles that are assessed for county routes? Should the pages be changed now or later on? I have been correcting the assessment using the setup that Imzadi mentioned above. From now on, I plan to use the new setup, unless there are any objections. Morriswa (Charlotte Allison) (talk) 07:21, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

Yes. We have the newer task force for county-maintained roads that should be added wherever appropriate. Using |state=FL or |state=FL-CRTF makes no difference other than displaying a different graphic; both still assess the article for the Florida task force. Imzadi 1979 → 12:29, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

Maryland Route 341 infobox

I noticed an error in the infobox for Maryland Route 341 that may have been caused by recent edits to Module:Infobox. Is there a way these errors can be fixed? Dough4872 23:03, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

@Dough4872: Probably should ask the module talk page. Nova Crystallis (Talk) 23:19, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

Seems like it just got fixed. Nova Crystallis (Talk) 23:21, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

Interstate 11 rewrite?

On the Interstate 11 page's "Route description" and "Current status" sections, there is quite a bit of information that should be moved into a "Future" section instead. Also, the "Route description" section should actually describe the current route of the highway. Morriswa (Charlotte Allison) (talk) 11:14, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

Be my guest. That article suffered from bloat when the Boulder city Bypass portion was under construction. I think a completely new designation in a major corridor in a major tourism area was just too much of a temptation for John Q. Public to not add their favorite tidbits. Things have calmed down now, but I fully expect a repeat if/when construction of the next phase begins, especially if that next phase happens to be the route through the Las Vegas Valley. I went through and purged quite a bit of content, but I'll admit I focused on out of date, trivial, and duplicate content, and more needs to be done. The only thing I would say is if you do exclude all proposed route content from the Route description it will be very short, essentially "it bypasses Boulder City, Nevada". The only way you can milk more than a paragraph in the Route description section is to include proposed route content. Aside from that I agree that the proposed route discussion dominates the article, and is scattered throughout, making it a difficult read. Dave (talk) 07:42, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

Texas state highway spur listicle moved to draft space

This is just a note that the final Texas spur listicle, List of state highway spurs in Texas (500–9999), was moved to the draft space due to a lack of content. This wasn't a problem with similar list templates previously (I'm too lazy to actually fill everything in), but if someone could fill out Draft:List of state highway spurs in Texas (500–9999) and get it back into the mainspace, that would be great. As it stands, the lone article merged into the list (Spur 502) now redirects to a redlink. -happy 5214 11:07, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

I've undone this since it was really premature in my opinion. --Rs chen 7754 18:35, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

Hospitals in junction lists

How in love with these are we as a project? I can do without them. I won't actively remove them, but I will intentionally not include them when I'm editing a junction list. Can someone explain to me how these don't fail WP:NOTTRAVEL? –Fredddie ™ 01:07, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

I generally only include them if the symbol is present on the BGS and the hospital is explicitly named. Sounder Bruce 01:36, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

I usually add it in the junction list when it's on the BGS, and I sometimes mention it in the route description. Nova Crystallis (Talk) 01:59, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

I only include hospitals if they are on the BGS for the exit. Same goes for airports/train stations/etc. Dough4872 19:39, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

I am not in love with hospitals in RJLs at all. Airports and train stations are connecting forms of transport and, in a few cases, attractions in themselves, so mentions of them are relevant in RJLs. Hospitals are only attractions for a narrow subset of people; for everyone else, you only go there if you need to. V C 22:40, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

Route junction lists in Rockland County Scenario lists

Do we have some kind of consensus on creating road junction lists (RJLs) in Rockland County Scenario lists? I did not see anything in the project precedents, but maybe we have never had a discussion about this. I bring this up because some of the Kentucky lists of supplemental roads and rural secondary highways have RJLs (e.g., List of Kentucky supplemental roads and rural secondary highways (600–699)) but others do not (e.g., List of Kentucky supplemental roads and rural secondary highways (400–499)). V C 22:35, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

There was a school of thought that RJLs weren't needed in the RCS lists if the RJLs were only going to list the termini. Personally, I've come around to including them in my work just as a matter of being compete; the merged sections each have some RD and history prose and an RJL. Imzadi 1979 → 00:39, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

I would say that if there are only two junctions, the beginning and the end, then a junction list is unnecessary for RCS lists. If there were any intermediate intersections, a junction list could be added but not necessarily required. But I would not go through the effort of adding one for each entry in the list just to have one. –Fredddie ™ 17:17, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

Local knowledge much appreciated

In my sandbox there is a draft article for Sonny Scott. In the 'Biography' section, at the end of the third paragraph, there is a referenced sentence (from AllMusic) about the location of "Highway No. 2". I have tried using Google Maps to find the modern day equivalent, and think it is here. This then means it is now possibly Alabama State Route 156, although location-wise, the Wikipedia article's description does not seem to quite fit the bill. Interestingly, vaguely, at the easternmost end of Route 156, it becomes Romulus Road which carries the Highway No. 2 designation. This research is perhaps bordering on the original, but if it does pan out, I thought I might insert in Scott's article something along the lines of ... "which possibly accords with the present day Alabama State Route 156". Are there any editors reasonably local to Choctaw County, Alabama, who could assist me ? I am English and hail from the East Riding of Yorkshire, so Alabama is a long, long way from me. Many thanks,

Derek R Bullamore (talk) 13:17, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

@Derek R Bullamore: It's definitely not State Route 156, though OpenStreetMap does list it as County Road 156. But [10] does show a Highway 2 crossing a bridge fitting the description in your draft. I don't know if that helps. -happy 5214 14:12, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

@Happy5214: Excellent - thank you, although it took me about 15 minutes to find the river (I had looked everywhere, except right at the top of the map) ! I will now have to decide what to do with the article's wording. Nevertheless, your prompt and courteous reply is much appreciated. - Derek R Bullamore (talk) 14:55, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

Proposed route network Wikidata properties

I've proposed the following properties to be added to Wikidata so that some of the information that's currently stored in individual infoboxes or Module:Road data/strings modules can be reused more easily:

Note that these properties assume that bare route numbers would be inserted into the format string or SVG image. Unfortunately, the road number (P1824) property tends to store the full abbreviation. Presumably the bare number can already be stored in series ordinal (P1545).

– Minh Nguyễn ^💬 00:34, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

Requested move

There is an RM on New York State Route 99. Needforspeed888 (talk) 14:17, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

Portal

It's becoming clear that while the portal still has value, it is not being updated as much as it used to be (especially since Dough retired). Any objections to removing the code in the portal to auto update the DYK, Selected article and selected picture on the 1st of the month? The problem is if no one has new content ready at least every 2 months, the portal breaks. If we go with static links, the portal will still display the most recent update. When someone updates teh content, time they can manually increment the dates on the portal page. Objections?Dave (talk) 19:25, 23 August 2020 (UTC)

I’m not retired (I still edit Wikipedia every day), I’m just tired of updating the portal when nobody suggests any content (other than the pictures that Fredddie did). I think it’s time to seriously consider reformatting the portal so it randomly rotates between articles, pictures, and DYK hooks every time it’s reloaded. P:MDRD already does that for pictures and DYK hooks (I should implement it for the articles as well). I think this is the best way to go forward with our portals for the future in order to minimize maintenance, as there are other things I would rather do with my editing time. Dough4872 20:11, 23 August 2020 (UTC)

I would agree, especially with the sitewide devaluation of portals and the removal of the featured portal process. --Rs chen 7754 21:27, 23 August 2020 (UTC)

Personally, I'd mothball it. I've never been convinced that they get a lot of external traffic. P:USRD gets about 100 visits per day, but there's no way to know how much of that is USRD people clicking through. –Fredddie ™ 01:27, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

For me, I enjoy checking the portal from time to time to see what else is going on in the project. For some reason I got more out of the portal, than say the newsletter. Maybe resurrect the newsletter and include the portal content with it? I'm not a fan of the random content, per Fredddie's rational, it's really us that watches it, not the outside world. Once we've cycled through the 7 (or whatever) randomly selected articles, it's no longer worth visiting. Dave (talk) 03:36, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

The problem is that it's been a struggle to get people to write stuff for the newsletter, unfortunately. I think it's just a casualty of where our editors are in life and not being as active due to real-life stress. --Rs chen 7754 05:02, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

@Dave, if it's just us looking at the portal, we could put a box (akin to a to-do page) at the top of this page and achieve the same thing. –Fredddie ™ 02:45, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

Proposal: merge Iway with Interstate 195 (Rhode Island–Massachusetts)

See the talk page of the former. ♫ Hurricanehink (talk) 20:53, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

Inclusion of protests on road articles

I have noticed a few additions to the history sections of road articles, such as Interstate 676, information regarding events that occurred on such roads, primary regarding the George Floyd protests. I feel like this info does not really belong, given that the history section is supposed to be for the road itself. Should I remove this info or is it acceptable? Needforspeed888 (talk) 03:41, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

I would remove it since the protest has nothing to do with the road, it just happened to be used for it. Dough4872 04:49, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

It would be best to roll it into other events on the highway and only if they are highly notable. For example, I included the protester deaths on Interstate 5 in Washington in a section with other protests and incidents. Sounder Bruce 07:37, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

If I might think out loud for a moment, I tend to agree that if events don't instigate changes to the physical footprint of the roadway then they don't belong in the history of that roadway. I also agree that highly notable events warrant inclusion. So how to strike a balance?

Maybe an imperfect analogy is along the lines of how we approach vehicle accidents. If a highway gains a reputation for being accident-prone, we cover it. If there's one that prompts design changes (proposed or actualized), we cover it in that context. If an accident receives significant coverage on its own, we include it. So if a highway has a reputation for protests, those protests are about the road itself, or the protests garner their own significant coverage, we include them. Imzadi 1979 → 19:51, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

My opinion is that we should leave it out since it has no overall impact to the road itself. --WashuOtaku (talk) 20:52, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

I would say proceed with caution. A 50 year old highway that is one of the primary thoroughfares of a major city, will naturally be tangentially related to dozens if not hundreds of shootings, protests, robberies, riots, accidents and the like through the years. It would be impractical to include them all, it would cause the article to be a wiley mess of news stories. There is a place for some of them, Mousetrap (Denver), I-70 Killer are two news stories listed in highway articles I work with. However, these were national news events (not just local) where the media itself noted the connection to the highway, not just that they happened to occur along the highway. As an absurd example, that SounderBruce touched on above, Can you imagine if we listed every protest that has ever occurred along the I-5 corridor in Seattle? Dave (talk) 02:21, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

The George Floyd protests and other protests related to racial inequality are very important for Wikipedia to cover as a whole and we should be careful to not exclude those just because they don't fit the usual mold of a road article. That being said - we also don't want the articles to become a lengthy verbose list of every single protest that ever happened on the road, so we do need to be selective in what gets covered. So I would be in favor of the balanced approach above. --Rs chen 7754 07:02, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

I wrote WP:CARCRASH a while ago and I think the racial protests fall in the same vein as Imzadi1979 mentioned. –Fredddie ™ 22:59, 6 September 2020 (UTC)
I would include a mention if they generated large quantities of media coverage. --Guerillero | Parlez Moi 23:00, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

US 1 Connector

On the South Carolina Department of Transportation's Aiken County map (look at Sheet 6), there is a US 1 Connector shown just north of the Jefferson Davis Highway bridge over the Savannah River. However, Georgia Department of Transportation doesn't show the connector at all on any of its Richmond County maps. Is this highway real, is it current, and how do I find its exact route? Thank you. Morriswa (Charlotte Allison) (talk) 12:36, 12 September 2020 (UTC)

You also tried to add a US 25 connector that won't show up, which is on Sheet 3. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 14:27, 12 September 2020 (UTC)

I fixed my errors with the US 25 Connector.

The navigation system in my car, a 2006 Infiniti G35, is just a DVD loaded in a drive in the dashboard, has not been updated since the car was new. It shows the US 1 Connector on Bay Street, Reynolds Street, and 5th Street in downtown Augusta. I know this is not proof, but it is further information toward the existence of the highway. Morriswa (Charlotte Allison) (talk) 03:15, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

@Morriswa: are you sure these are bona fide connectors and not just streets named "US 1 Connector" or "US 25 Connector"? –Fredddie ™ 23:08, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

That's a good point. It's not that uncommon for towns (especially those that depend on highway traveler revenue) to sign streets as business loops and spurs on their own volition, without authorization from the state or AASHTO. There's a few of those out west. Dave (talk) 23:43, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

US 1 Connector is an actual highway, according to the above-posted link. As I said, GDOT mentions nothing about it on the current or former Richmond County maps.

On a related note, I see that my edits on Interstate 520, U.S. Route 25 in South Carolina, and South Carolina Highway 121 were reverted. One, the overhead sign (on the traffic light wire) indicates that the street name is "US 25 Connector". According to the above-posted link, it is actually a special route that is a US 25 Connector. It's just not signed. My edits should not have been reverted. Someone could have "corrected" them to what is seen as the best option. Morriswa (Charlotte Allison) (talk) 01:55, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

I'm an adult, I can handle criticism. Your edits made it really confusing for the reader. This is what was there previously: "

US 25 Connector east (US 25 Conn. south) to I-520". Now having looked at this for the last couple days, contextually, I get that US 25 Connector (the street) heads east to I-520 while carrying northbound US 25 Conn. (the connector route). But will the casual reader get that? Probably not. Here's my gripe: the street and the connector route are essentially the same, there's no reason to repeat it with a parenthetical. The directions are WP:OR at best because there is no directional signage, so it's best to leave them out. The signage that is there, says To I-520 and the street name is US 25 Connector, that's why I kept changing it to "

To I-520 (US 25 Connector)". I will have no problem if you want it to say "

To I-520 (US 25 Connector)". –Fredddie ™ 02:45, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

South Carolina highway shields

I want to put in a request for new shields for the List of state highways in South Carolina page, but I need to verify what years each version of the shields belong to. For example, I was told that for Georgia, the highways from years 1920-1947 use the 1920-specific shield, those from years 1948-1959 use the 1948-specific shield, and those from years 1960-2000 use the 1960-specific shield. I'm still compiling a list of years for all of the former state highways I can find, so it may take a while for me to make my request. Morriswa (Charlotte Allison) (talk) 21:27, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

Did you review this page: South Carolina State Highway System --WashuOtaku (talk) 21:44, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for pointing that out. I quickly glanced at it, but I didn't read it in-depth until just now. It helped. Morriswa (Charlotte Allison) (talk) 02:00, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

AASHTO document archive

Someone on AARoads was able to get access to the AASHTO document archive that contains a treasure trove of AASHTO route designation applications and relevant correspondence between AASHTO and the state highway departments. Lots of fun stuff in there—search for US-200, for instance...

Question is, what's the best way to cite this stuff? —Scott5114 ↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 23:25, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

I would imagine they would classify as federal documents/reports like the MUTCD - Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices which looks to have some citations from AASHTO as well. Cite report or journal. – The Grid (talk) 00:05, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

See U.S. Route 77#History for one possibility. Since at least some of these are a collection of separate documents, citing the cover sheet is probably the best option. The titles are cumbersome, but as they appear on the document. --Sable232 (talk) 00:15, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

So far, I have noticed the following "weirdness":

Interstate 255 in Tennessee is listed as "225".

Interstate 785's proposed portion in Virginia is listed as "784".

Interstate 270 in Missouri is listed as "2710".

Many US Highways are listed as "Interstate" Highways. Morriswa (Charlotte Allison) (talk) 16:54, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

It's not perfect, of course. There's a number of documents listed under Minnesota related to highways that never even came near the state, probably due to the fact that some of the correspondence within was with someone in Minnesota. And I wouldn't discount the possibility of typos or a computerized document reader making errors, so there may be some sleuthing involved to fully take advantage of what's there. It's unfortunate that older documents seem to be sparse, but still, what's there is invaluable. --Sable232 (talk) 21:46, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

@Sable232: we probably should cite the AASHO/AASHTO minutes approving those changes over the specific application files. First, we have those minutes on Commons/Wikisource, which means they're accessible to readers who don't know to search the archive first before clicking those links. Second, it makes it simpler to cite because we aren't citing an entire file of documents to get the nature of the change and final disposition but titling that file by a single document. Word is that the archive is a continuing work in progress, so there will hopefully be more committee minutes added to Commons/Wikisource in the future. Imzadi 1979 → 09:03, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

Something else that just came to mind: let's refrain from creating crazy redirects to existing articles for numbers only ever proposed in correspondence to and from AASHO. According to one posting on AARoads, Colorado had an A25 designation in some correspondence for what became I-225. Many of these were placeholders in the early days of the Interstate System, and they don't merit mention in articles, let alone the creation of a redirect that no one will ever use. The same goes for typos. Imzadi 1979 → 01:35, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

Linking issues

Something to note: the URLs aren't reusable. The links in the footnotes in U.S. Route 77#History all return 404 errors, meaning I'd have to search the archive all over again to find those documents to read them. So as useful as the archive is, it isn't very citable.

That said, when citing, we shouldn't credit AASHO/AASHTO as the publisher, per se on applications. We should credit the official signing the application as the author and his department as the publisher. AASHO/AASHTO could then be credited as the republisher using |via= in the citation template. For now, I'd link to the archive search page in |url= instead of trying to link to the specific document because those URLs will error out.

I'd love to propose uploading copies of these documents to Commons for the same copyright reasons that allowed me to upload the 1967–1988 AASHO/AASHTO SCURN minutes, but I'm feeling unsure if we can use that loophole for this. Imzadi 1979 → 01:28, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

Let's not be so quick to dismiss linking to the URLs. I did not get 404 errors when I clicked on the URLs in U.S. Route 77#History. V C 01:53, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

@Viridiscalculus: apparently they only work if you've done a search in the archive yourself recently, otherwise they 404. Imzadi 1979 → 05:28, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

WP:USRD/AASHTO

There are some more of the minutes from the U.S. Route Numbering Committee in the archive. I'm uploading the ones from the late 1950s and the rest of the 1960s to commons: Category:Minutes from the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials in just a moment. I invite others to help update the table at WP:USRD/AASHTO. When I get some time, I'll start transcribing them to Wikisource and describing them on Wikidata, but they should all be listed in {{AASHTO minutes}} soon. Imzadi 1979 → 06:43, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

They're all uploaded, so we have 1957–1988 on Commons, 1967–1988 on Wikisource, 1989–2019 on AASHTO's website, and 1957–2020 in the citation template. Again, if someone would like to start adding 1957–1966 to our index, that would be great. Imzadi 1979 → 08:16, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

South Carolina shield alignments

Can anyone help? The SC 1948-Alt and SC 1948-Bus "banners" for two-digit highways are not centered above the highway shield. Also, some of the current special route "banners" don't quite look centered to me, like maybe a pixel or two (or so) off. Thanks. Morriswa (Charlotte Allison) (talk) 13:41, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

Also, I change the connector route shield to match what is actually in the field, but it doesn't seem to change the actual usage. Can someone help me there, too? Morriswa (Charlotte Allison) (talk) 17:56, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

I realize what was wrong with my edit to the connector "banner". The actual "Connector" plate file is not in the https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Diagrams_of_route_sign_auxiliaries_of_South_Carolina category on Commons. Can a Connector plate like those be made? Thanks. Morriswa (Charlotte Allison) (talk) 23:20, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

@Fredddie: thank you for correcting some of the alignments. I noticed that the "ALT" plate for SC 151 Alt. is not centered. Also, can a blue sign for the connector routes in South Carolina be made? Every connector route I have seen so far uses a plate that has "CONNECTOR" on a white plate with blue font, like the other plates in the category above. Thank you for your help. Morriswa (Charlotte Allison) (talk) 05:40, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

New editor mapping question

Hello! I'm a new editor to USRD who's mainly been doing counter-vandalism in recent months. I seem to be confused on maps and KML files for articles. Does an article need both a map and KML file, or one or the other? From what I understand now, a map is just a graphic, so if a KML file is present, that can be used for an interactive route map without the need for a map graphic. Of course, I could be completely wrong, so please correct me if I am. One other thing – I'm not sure if this can go here or if it needs to be at WP:PR once in mainspace, but I would greatly appreciate if someone could take a look at my userspace draft for my first WP article, let alone my first USRD article. I would just appreciate if someone makes sure that there are no obvious USRD-specific issues (minus the map/KML) before I move it to mainspace for a NPP review. Thank you in advance! PlanetJuice ^{(talk • contribs)} 00:40, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

The KML file is something that can be downloaded and used in whatever GIS/mapping software you like. The map is for the reader who is at your article right now. It helps answer probably the biggest question with regards to roads - where is it? We draw the line over the interactive map by converting from the KML format to GeoJSON. –Fredddie ™ 03:42, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

Thank you very much for your help! PlanetJuice ^{(talk • contribs)} 10:31, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

Atlantic City–Brigantine Connector

Atlantic City–Brigantine Connector is currently an A-Class article and I am looking to have it promoted to FA after improvements made within the last year and a half. A peer review took place last year in December. I am looking for input and feedback on the article, and would greatly appreciate any help getting it ready for FAC. Thanks. –Dream out loud (talk) 19:51, 9 October 2020 (UTC)

Kansas: dashes in US highway name links

While reviewing K-156 (Kansas highway) for Good Article status, I thought I was fixing a style error by converting most links piped to "US-55" or similar to "US 55" (no space), per WP:USRD/STDS, until 420Traveler told me that was the style used in articles in Kansas. I noticed that KDOT does not do this now in their own communications. As someone unfamiliar with this surprise, is there a particular reason Kansas has this hyphenation thing going on that's not mentioned in the US road standards? (Is it to match, say, "K-156" or "I-70"?) Raymie (t • c) 07:23, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

Personally, I'd standardize nationally on a single scheme. We may follow the sources for information, but we should follow common and reputable style guides on matters of style/formatting such as this. The Chicago Manual of Style, which is a leading guide on matters of style/formatting in the US, uses a space. To wit:

US Route 41 (or US 41)
Interstate 90 (or I-90),
Illinois Route 50 (or Illinois 50; IL 50); Route 50

AP Stylebook also uses a spaced version, not a hyphenated version. Most states use the spaced abbreviation, so taking that with the two style guides, I think we should standardize the same way, regardless of state. Imzadi 1979 → 23:47, 9 October 2020 (UTC)

@Imzadi1979: That makes sense, though there might need to be some variation (e.g. Texas with its "IH-" scheme for interstates). Wikipedia:Naming conventions (U.S. state and territory highways) offers the cryptic footnote of "Hyphenation varies by state at this time", which apparently you had added in 2016; Template:Jct/testcases/shield7 suggests hyphenation is used for US routes in Kansas and Utah and only those states. Raymie (t • c) 06:52, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

Except that outside of appropriate passing references, even Texas is standardized on "I-X" instead of "IH X" in running prose. Imzadi 1979 → 07:16, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

Kentucky Route 8

The current article on Kentucky Route 8 is outdated. In 2018, it was rerouted in Campbell County due to infrastructure issues along a more rural portion (see this link for more details). 3 things happened: 1. The routing was changed to follow US 27 from Newport (York Street) to Cold Spring (Pooles Creek Road/Industrial Road). At that point, it turns north over Industrial Road (formerly part of Kentucky Route 1998) to the river and continues its normal route from there. 2. The section from York Street in Newport to Dodd Street in Dayton was changed to Kentucky Route 8 Business. 3. The remaining section was split into two - from Dodd Drive to River Road, it was changed to Kentucky 6365. From River Road to Industrial, route 445 was extended.

I have updated the articles for US 27 and KY 445, but am not quite sure how to handle the concurrency over US 27 in Newport because part of it follows a section of US 27 that's one-way south (York between 3rd and 11th, then 11th between York and Monmouth), which is listed separately in the milepoint log (Eastbound 8 follows southbound 27). I can add the section about the business route as well. Oldiesmann (talk) 02:00, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

Module:Road data/strings/USA/SC

I think I messed up something when I edited the Module:Road data/strings/USA/SC page. The current South Carolina Highway shields appear. Could someone tell me what I did wrong? Morriswa (Charlotte Allison) (talk) 17:53, 20 September 2020 (UTC)

@Morriswa: In the infobox or the RJL? The shield at the top of the infobox doesn't use the string modules. The shields in {{jct}} are broken right now. -happy 5214 18:25, 20 September 2020 (UTC)

I think its the RJL. I copied part of the code from the Module:Road data/strings/USA/GA page and modified them for SC. Maybe part of it is incompatible. Morriswa (Charlotte Allison) (talk) 18:31, 20 September 2020 (UTC)

Fixed it wasn't calling the SC shields correctly. If you mess up like that (I do it all the time), the best thing to do is to revert yourself first and then ask questions. –Fredddie ™ 03:18, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

@Fredddie and Imzadi1979:, thank you for correcting the mistakes in my bold editing. The expensive parser function calls is what caused me to split the List of state highways in South Carolina page to have a List of former state highways in South Carolina page, but that was reverted. Can the former page still actually exist? Morriswa (Charlotte Allison) (talk) 05:23, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

@Morriswa: This is probably not the place, but if you are curious I attempted to modify the SC list similar as I did with the NC list, but never got around to actually finishing and implementing it. Might give you some ideas perhaps. --WashuOtaku (talk) 12:06, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

I will whole-heartedly support Washuotaku's mockup list. –Fredddie ™ 14:32, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

@Washuotaku: thank you for suggesting your infobox's list. Do you mind if I take the list and "run with it"?

Should I integrate all the special routes together, or keep them separated. Also, should all the former highways be in the mainline highway list or split into a separate list (or even on a separate page, as I tried before)? Thank you for all your help. I lived in the Charleston area for approximately 25 years, so I like the fact that my state's list is getting attention now. Morriswa (Charlotte Allison) (talk) 16:13, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

Please feel free to go with it. I'm open in regards to special routes, but in the NC list we broke-out Alternate routes and Business loops because there was a good number of them. I believe a single list with all routes is probably best, can quickly shade it to proposed or decommissioned without moving it between lists. The reason I stopped was because after I organized the list, I saw how much fill-in-the-blank I would need to do and simply got disinterested. I'm happy to help though if you want to take lead on this project. --WashuOtaku (talk) 16:38, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

@Washuotaku: I copied and pasted the information into one of my sandboxes. I began revamping what I can. Please, provide any help you can. Do you know if South Carolina has any kind of route log? I know that South Carolina has fewer highways (current, special, and former) than Georgia, which has List of state routes in Georgia (U.S. state), List of special state routes in Georgia (U.S. state), and List of former state routes in Georgia (U.S. state); however, I still was wondering if the former highways of SC should be split off. Do the routelist templates count toward the expensive parser function limit? Also, I haven't tried using the "dab" parameter in any of the former entries, but do they actually work? Sometimes, I have tried, but they don't work. I just want each entry to point to the proper link. It's good to actually be productive and really active in the project again (besides the county highway work I have been doing lately). Morriswa (Charlotte Allison) (talk) 02:40, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

@Morriswa: I reached out to SCDOT in the past asking if they did and showed them how North Carolina kept a centralized system of route changes and such... they do not. Using SCDOT highway maps is so far the only way to track the routes, which is tedious. --WashuOtaku (talk) 02:51, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

That sucks. Believe me, revamping most of the state routes in Georgia, using only the state maps was a long and tedious task. I thank you for your help. Morriswa (Charlotte Allison) (talk) 03:21, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

@Washuotaku: do you know if SCDOT has a list of former state maps? What about former county maps? Thanks. Morriswa (Charlotte Allison) (talk) 06:17, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

@Morriswa: Yes, the University of South Carolina keeps digital copies of old SCDOT county maps. I'm sure they, or someone else, holds the state highway maps too, but they didn't setup a special page for those. --WashuOtaku (talk) 12:38, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

@Morriswa: @Washuotaku: Been browsing this site, I've been out of the loop for quite a while! Just been busy with other non-Wikipedia projects. A suggestion? Would using a DeLorme® Atlas & Gazetteer help any? The company publishes one for each US State. I use one for my travels around Florida; it is VERY detailed, showing just about every road and highway in the State, including most county roads. I am including a link at Amazon for the South Carolina Gazetteer in case you want to take a look (https://www.amazon.com/DeLorme%C2%AE-Carolina-Gazetteer-Delorme-Gazeteer/dp/1946494070). The latest version appears to be 2017. They are generally updated every two to three years as necessary. I hope this will be a good source of information for you. Something to consider, anyway. Erzahler (talk) 06:33, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

Gerald Desmond Bridge (2020-present)

This article recently got split away from Gerald Desmond Bridge (1968-2020), and it has no ratings from this group. Can someone here please rate it, because I don't know how to mark it so it can be rated. Because of this split, Gerald Desmond Bridge (1968-2020) may need to be reassessed. Thank you. Interstate 11 (talk) 19:48, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

@Interstate 11: bridges fall outside the scope of USRD, so we would not rate them for the project. Imzadi 1979 → 22:58, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

@Imzadi1979: Thank you. I didn't understand that. I thought they fell under your scope because Gerald Desmond Bridge (1968-2020) has a rating, but I didn't realize that it was a different group. I'll go back and contact Wikipedia:WikiProject Bridges and Tunnels about this. Interstate 11 (talk) 00:50, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

I did not realize the bridges project expanded to tunnels, too! I totally missed that 2 or 3 years ago! V C 18:59, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

U.S. Route 10 Alternate (Washington–Montana) map

Is the map recently added to U.S. Route 10 Alternate (Washington–Montana) actually valid? Or is it a violation of some kind? I don't know how to add the interactive maps, so I will have to leave that for someone else. Morriswa (Charlotte Allison) (talk) 01:21, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Considering that there is a copyright notice right in the map clipping, I removed it and nominated the image for deletion. If you can make a KML for a highway, you can get the interactive map up and running with just a few more steps. Imzadi 1979 → 04:00, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

U.S. Route 12 Business in Wisconsin

Someone made the U.S. Route 12 Business in Wisconsin page. Should that page be redirected to the Draft:Special routes of U.S. Route 12 draft page? Or should it be renamed "Business routes of U.S. Route 12 in Wisconsin"? Morriswa (Charlotte Allison) (talk) 03:59, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

According to page histories, they don't seem to be related. We as a project should prioritize getting the draftspace article in good shape, take it live, and then redirect the U.S. Route 12 Business in Wisconsin page to it. –Fredddie ™ 04:25, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

Junction lists in RCS sections

Checking the project watchlist, I noticed a disagreement between a couple editors on U.S. Route 601. Morriswa added some junction lists to a related route section and Washuotaku commented them out. I think this would be a good time to hash out some best practices for WP:USRD/RCS and/or related route sections. Personally, I don't like the RCS entries on US 601 at all. As a reader, they really don't tell me anything besides "the highway went from Point A to Point B and became US 601 in Year X." The same thing can be accomplished more efficiently by creating a {{Routelist row}} entry on the List of state highways in South Carolina. I think an RCS entry should explain to the reader why the RCS section is relevant to the main article. –Fredddie ™ 16:03, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

While we're at it, that page needs to be renamed. RCS is a "cute" allegation to some old-school editors and squabbles held years ago, but the name frankly is not going to be understood by newcomers to the project. May I suggest something like "combined articles?" Dave (talk) 16:28, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

I like "listicle" when talking about something like Business routes of U.S. Route 131, but that portmanteau doesn't translate as well to Interstate 196#Business routes ("listicle section", maybe?).

As for the US 601 article, I don't like the inclusion of a listicle subsection in the middle of the history. In U.S. Route 16 in Michigan, the history section covers the former M-126 that US 16 subsumed in 1940 without trying to make it an RCS section. I get the impulse to have a defined target for a redirect, but this chunkiness just doesn't work. Imzadi 1979 → 00:29, 4 November 2020 (UTC)

Also worth noting that Rockland County is no longer using the Rockland County Scenario (the entries redirect to a table instead), so the namesake of the guideline is no longer illustrative. I've updated WP:USRD/RCS accordingly.

As for US 601, I concur that the use of RCS style there probably could have been better handled in prose and through notes in the SC route table. LJ ↗ 20:00, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

List of U.S. Highways in South Carolina error

I added U.S. Route 17 Alternate Truck (Summerville, South Carolina) to the List of U.S. Highways in South Carolina page, but it produced an error. Could someone correct it for me? Thanks. Morriswa (Charlotte Allison) (talk) 09:42, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for what was done to fix this error, but can you also make alternate truck routes display with the {{Infobox road small}} template? It displays correctly on U.S. Route 17 Alternate (South Carolina)#Summerville truck route, but doesn't on Special routes of U.S. Route 17#Summerville alternate truck route. Thank you. Morriswa (Charlotte Allison) (talk) 01:30, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

Organization of "Special Routes of X" articles

While browsing this morning, I decided to post about an inconsistency I've noticed for some time now. Our "Special routes of U.S. Route X" articles/listicles seem to use a few different organizational formats across the project:

By Route - The article uses a level 1 heading for each specific special route. Examples: Special routes of U.S. Route 6, Special routes of U.S. Route 101
By State - The article has a level 1 heading for each state that has a special route, then level 2 headings for each specific special route in the state. Examples: Special routes of U.S. Route 50, Special routes of U.S. Route 80
By Type - The article uses a level 1 heading for each type of special route (alternate, business, truck, etc.), then level 2 headings for each specific special route of that type. Examples: Special routes of U.S. Route 2,
Existing/Former - The article has level 1 headings for existing active routes as well as former routes, which are each subdivided into level 2 headings for each specific special route listed. Examples: Special routes of U.S. Route 13, Special routes of U.S. Route 95, Special routes of U.S. Route 221 (which has no former routes section)
Combinations:
- By Route method but has a separate level 1 header for former routes. Examples: Special routes of U.S. Route 27, Special routes of U.S. Route 40
- By State method but has a separate level 1 header for former routes. Examples: Special routes of U.S. Route 17, Special routes of U.S. Route 70
- By Type method but has a separate level 1 header for former routes. Example: Special routes of U.S. Route 1

A random sampling of pages seems to suggest that the Existing/Former model may be the most prevalent format. The same issue arises with our "Business routes of Interstate X" articles, although my random sampling indicates the By Route or By State methods are most commonly used for these.

Similar "Rockland County Scenario" listicles for the various state and county route systems seem to almost always use the By Route method (if not condensed down to just a table). But it's pretty inconsistent on the national articles, except that the routes are almost always presented in west-to-east or south-to-north order as appropriate. Surprisingly, USRD doesn't appear to have a standard on this. Should there be, and if so, what organizational method should be used? LJ ↗ 19:47, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

Personally, I would organize the special routes in south-to-north or east-to-west order and split existing and former routes into separate sections, as is seen in Special routes of U.S. Route 13. Dough4872 20:33, 5 December 2020 (UTC)
I would prefer that we don't separate by current/former. Then if one of these is decommissioned, it's just a matter of editing the one section and not reorganizing to move that route's content elsewhere. I think they should all be by route in geographic order, full stop. There's no need for state headings normally, but especially when you have bi-state special routes out there. Imzadi 1979 → 23:15, 5 December 2020 (UTC)
Yeah I agree with Imzadi here with regards to not separating by current/former and being in geographic order. I don't know if it's necessary to split by special route type - maybe only in the cases where there is a list of business routes of a route in a state (like the US 12 in Wisconsin list above). I could be swayed on this part. –Fredddie™ 01:32, 6 December 2020 (UTC)
- I rearranged Special routes of U.S. Route 52 to by location, without regard for current/former and I'm not sure I like it. Then again, it's late and I'll revisit once I've had some sleep. –Fredddie ™ 09:46, 8 December 2020 (UTC)
I don't like having level 1 headings for each paragraph in the article. IMHO that many level 1 headings looks unprofessional. So I think there should be a grouping of some kind to reduce the number of level 1 headings. I don't think the grouping by type is helpful to the average reader either (There's really no practical difference between an alternate route and a truck route or a business route, the two latter are really just special cases of the former). So that leaves us with grouping by state or by current/former. I'm not sure which I'd prefer of those two. I disagree that it's inconvenient to move a subsection from current to former, that's a 4 keystroke move, and one I've done many times. However, my beef with a current/former split is on the former side, grouping all the former routes together groups an alternate route that is no longer viable along side those that are still viable alternate routes, just no longer signed a such. So I'm leaning towards states, but that has two problems as well. First is how to handle the multi-state special routes (There's a few on Special routes of U.S. Route 30 if you want an example). Also, I'm sure there are some examples where a heading per state yields little or no difference from a level 1 heading for each paragraph in the article, to which I've already expressed opposition. So I guess pick your poison from those two? Dave (talk) 17:51, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Thinking about this a bit more how about a sliding scale where where states that have only one or two special routes are grouped together, but states that have several have their own heading. For example the headings in a listicle could be California, Western US, Midwestern US, Pennsylvania, New York, New England. Opinions? Dave (talk) 18:03, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

I don’t like the idea of grouping by state due to the issue that some special routes cross state lines. And I think it would look tacky and inconsistent to have some states grouped together as a region while other states have their own section. Therefore, I think the idea of splitting by current and former is the best way to go as that separates the present from the past. And if a route gets decommissioned, it shouldn’t be that hard to make it from the current section to the former section. Dough4872 19:13, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Special routes of U.S. Route 50 uses state groupings, and currently has a couple instances of special routes crossing state lines that are handled with a separate level 1 heading. What do we think of this? -- LJ ↗ 16:41, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

Dough, yeah the idea of a sliding scale is not really workable. I was just doing the wikipedia talk page equivalent of thinking out loud. I'm leaning towards having one massive blob of geographically organized listicles, as Fredddie and Imzadi endorse, for shorter articles. For longer articles, where we need to break it up to make it manageable, have state level headings. The US-50 example works for me and is a good example of why we need to at least have some groupings, otherwise that article would be a spaghetti mess of listicles.Dave (talk) 16:49, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

If we were to split by state, I think the US 50 example is a good way to handle it because it accounts for special routes that cross state lines by giving them their own section. Dough4872 19:28, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

FWIW, I'm leaning towards state headings or each route having a level 1 heading. Current/former doesn't make as much sense to me because most articles and other lists tend to be organized geographically (when we can't use an alphanumeric scheme as most other RCS-style lists would do). -- LJ ↗ 16:41, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

I think I stated my logic poorly above, but current/former would be logical if the former were all ripped up, bridges blown out, or otherwise no longer driveable. And having them all grouped together makes that implication, which is my issue with a current/former grouping. But most of them are still in existence, and even still used as alternate routes, just no longer signed as such. Dave (talk) 17:19, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

U.S. Route 1A article break-up attempt

An editor has recently made the first move in breaking-up U.S. Route 1A by moving out one of the two North Carolina US 1A routes into its own article. I don't support this move because it will become a domino effect of eventually transforming the article into a disambiguation page. Now I could be wrong and other editors may feel it is time to break-up the article once and for all, so please share your opinions at Talk:U.S. Route 1A#U.S. Route 1A (Wake Forest–Youngsville, North Carolina) Merge Request. --WashuOtaku (talk) 09:37, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

Question

I've seen both popping up on numerous New Jersey articles, and was wondering if there was consensus on whether to use US 1 / US 9 or US 1-9. I personally prefer the latter, but before I change all of the US 1/US 9's to US 1-9's I would like to know which is the one that should be used. Mattx8y (talk); idiot from planet earf 14:23, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

My advice is to go what is signed. If they are using US 1-9, then so be it. --WashuOtaku (talk) 14:57, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

The signage along the concurrency varies between US 1/9 in one shield and separate US 1 and US 9 shields. I had used US 1/9 in the articles but another editor changed it to US 1/US 9 and I didn’t want to fight the issue. My preference would be to use US 1/9 since we have a separate article for the concurrency. Dough4872 15:13, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

I would normally say use US1/9, as that's how all the other concurrences I'm familiar with are listed. However, the US1-9 notation for this specific concurrency is fairly well known, both among roadgeeks and among local residents. So I'm not opposed to making an exception in this case. Dave (talk) 20:50, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

Eh, kind of support the first one, despite the article about the concurrency(unless there is signage to support the second one, in which case I'll switch sides in a heartbeat) --Hurricane Tracker 495 20:36, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

As I have mentioned, there is mixed signage, with some signs having US 1-9 in one shield and other signs having separate US 1 and US 9 shields. The images in the U.S. Route 1/9 article demonstrate the mixed signage. Dough4872 22:08, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

Then I would say spread them both out evenly across the artcles. I'm in New York, so I often don't travel on US 1-9. I only really do on the concurrencies with US Route 46 and Interstate 95, tbh. --Hurricane Tracker 495 23:32, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

As a New Jerseyan, I often see the second signage. It's what is signed near the Newark Airport, Pulaski Skyway, Tonnelle Circle (new signage), and elsewhere. The US 1 / US 9 is outdated, and NJDOT replace them with US 1-9 on the Tonnelle Circle interchange. Thus, I suggest using the second one. ~ Destroyer 🌀🌀 00:05, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

Interstate 73 Merge

Discussion has started on possible merging of state level I-73 pages to the parent I-73 pages. At moment it is for just Talk:Interstate 73 in North Carolina, but I would assume any merger would also incorporate existing Virginia and South Carolina too. Please provide feedback on the proposal, thank you. --WashuOtaku (talk) 21:04, 25 December 2020 (UTC)

"Parkway" vs. "Pkwy" in infobox road type parameter

Merry Christmas all! I noticed that the infoboxes in articles for many parkways in the NYC area use "|type=Parkway" as opposed to "|type=Pkwy", with the former producing a green color scheme and the latter producing a brown color scheme. I changed several of the Parkways to Pkwys to produce the brown color, which seems standard for parkways, but I figured I better discuss before I change any more of them. Needforspeed888 (talk) 18:23, 25 December 2020 (UTC)

@Dough4872, Fredddie, and Imzadi1979: Would you happen to know when we are supposed to use type=parkway as opposed to type=pkwy in infoboxes? Needforspeed888 (talk) 06:52, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

I'm the one who added it, so I suppose I should speak. Pkwy was added because Palisades Interstate Parkway had previously used brown headers set by |header_type= and adding Pkwy would get remove the article from a tracking category that I monitor. Generally speaking though, if guide signs on the highway are green, the infobox headers are green. –Fredddie ™ 07:16, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

Virginia State Route Resources

Hey everyone. I have been working on a potential breakout article for U.S. Route 17-1 on my page User:Ncchild/US 17-1. I usually edit for North Carolina, and I have been able to find both county and statewide maps to support US 17-1 in North Carolina. However, I cannot really find many for Virginia. I have been able to get by with some limited resources (VARoads, some extended portions of NC maps) but not much on its own. I checked the University of Alabama page but really didn't find anything in the 1930ish timeframe that would support a coherent route description. Does anyone have any ideas of websites I should check to find these maps. I know they exist because VARoads has pictures of them.--Ncchild (talk) 03:24, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

Jct template produces incorrect links for Texas US-Alt and US-Bus routes

When used for an Alternate or Business U.S. route in Texas, the {{jct}} template seems to be generate extra periods in the link target, creating broken hyperlinks in junction lists. For example,

US 90 Alt.

Bus. US 87

presently link to U.S. Route 90 Alternate .. (Texas) and U.S. Route 87 Business .. (Texas), respectively, rather than to the correct U.S. Route 90 Alternate (Texas) and U.S. Route 87 Business (Texas), respectively. I haven't dug deeper and am not certain if this is the case for any other class of route or for any state other than Texas. I'd rather not mess with the template directly, so if someone who is more savvy can take a look, it would be appreciated. --Kinu ^t/_c 05:35, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

@Kinu: Someone mistakenly left the Lua string concatenation syntax on when they copied the suffix string from elsewhere in the file. It was an easy fix. -happy 5214 07:26, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

@Happy5214: Great, thanks! --Kinu ^t/_c 13:34, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

Facepalm that was me. –Fredddie ™ 21:18, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

Problems with Illinois Highways

I've noticed an odd issue with some of the pages on highways that are broken into sections by state. For some strange reason, the Infobox links for the terminus of several roads goes to the page for the entire route, not for the route section in Illinois, and only Illinois. I've fiddled with the formatting a few different ways and nothing seems to work. Look for instance on the pages for US Route 14 in Wisconsin or US Route 20 in Indiana and you'll see what I mean. I'm rather perplexed. Anybody have any ideas? Kalmbach (talk) 17:59, 21 January 2021 (UTC)

I broke that, too. It's fixed now. –Fredddie ™ 19:48, 21 January 2021 (UTC)

Nevada BL templates producing redlinks

Hello all. While looking something up just now, I'm seeing that links for Interstate business routes in Nevada created using {{jct}} and {{routelist row}} are redlinked where they weren't before. For example, {{jct|state=NV|BL|80|dab1=Reno–Sparks}} is producing: I-80 BL – it appears the state is not being appended to the disambiguator. The same issue appears with the links in the second table on List of Interstate Highways in Nevada. I'm seeing this both on an old desktop and my phone. I'm not savvy enough with the module coding to know if something has changed, so I'd appreciate if someone could take a look. Thanks! LJ ↗ 08:34, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

Oops! That happened when I "updated" the module a while back. The BL/BS types are mostly defined on Module:Road data/strings/USA but you have to add a line on Module:Road data/strings/USA/NV if you don't want default links. It's fixed now. –Fredddie ™ 09:49, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for fixing that! LJ ↗ 06:40, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

State MUTCDs

I've started an article about the Ohio Manual of [sic] Uniform Traffic Control Devices that hopefully contains enough state-specific content to stand on its own. It would be neat to see a series of articles about each of the ten state editions of the MUTCD (but probably not for the other states' supplements). – Minh Nguyễn ^💬 22:47, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

Articles with no TOC

I don't edit in your area but noticed some of your articles have no table of contents. insource:NOTOC intitle:highways currently gives 69 results. A few have a custom TOC or aren't in your project but some of them are long lists. I think there should be TOC's. {{Horizontal TOC|limit=2}} will take up less space. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:47, 21 January 2021 (UTC)

Color-coded destinations

I noticed some road articles such as New Jersey Route 87, New Jersey Route 187, and Atlantic City–Brigantine Connector are using color-coded shading for destinations in the junction lists to mimic the color-coded wayfinding system for sections of Atlantic City, New Jersey. Should our junction lists really be using this color-coded shading or should it be removed? Dough4872 23:12, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

Hard no. here is what it looks like in greyscale. - Floydian ^τ _¢ 00:15, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

Agreed, they should not. Using color that way does not comply with the MOS, so I have removed it. Imzadi 1979 → 01:05, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

Interstate 70 in Colorado

Interstate 70 in Colorado is a possible WP:TFA for March, but the "Future" section is not current. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:55, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

Sheild for Kentucky Route 6087

Could you create 6087. Thank you TheGs2007 (talk) 01:35, 25 April 2021 (UTC)

Misnested tags, missing end tags, stripped tags

Please see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject U.S. Roads/Redirects#Misnested tags, missing end tags, stripped tags and continue discussion there. —Anomalocaris (talk) 19:21, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

Any Phoenix area roadgeeks can help out?

Howdy, there have been a recent spat of IP editors messing with the junction lists (and future sections) for several articles in the greater Phoenix area, probably about 6-10 affected articles. Most of these are related to the planned extension of Arizona State Route 303 to connect to Interstate 8 somewhere in the vicinity of Gila Bend, Arizona. I'm familiar with the area, but haven't been that way in years. I can vouch that the conversion of AZ-303 from a rural 2 lane road to a freeway belt route and bypass around the west side of the Phoenix Metro Area has been in the works since the 1990s, but plans have changed many times. In fact when I first saw the plans for AZ-303 they more resembled what AZ-202 now looks like with it's most recent addition. So clearly the specifics have changed. But someone is adding to the exit list with specific exit numbers and mile locations, implying the route has been finalized. Furthermore ADOT's website is shockingly empty on the expansion plans for AZ-303, in fact at the current projects, the only thing mentioned as ongoing is the conversion some at-grade intersections into interchanges on the opposite corner of the Phoenix metro area [11]. There's a couple of us that have been reverting these additions as we seen them on the grounds of unsourced or speculative. But can anybody who follows the news in Arizona comment if we are doing the right thing? Or in fact have the plans for AZ-303 been finalized to the point it is safe to start making these additions? Dave (talk) 21:04, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

Honestly I'd revert until they can prove it. –Fredddie ™ 00:52, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

So I did some digging and here's what I found:

Loop 303 is the Estrella Freeway and it's the Bob Stump Memorial Parkway.
Loop 303 is programmed to end at SR 30 (the I-10 Reliever Route) south-southwest of where it ends at I-10 now.
SR 30 is programmed to go from SR 85 to I-17 by 2040, but the section from Loop 303 to Loop 202 should open around 2025.
The IP's idea that Loop 303 is going to go to I-8 does not line up with AZDOT's freeway plan.
The maps and KML for Loop 303 and SR 30 have been updated to reflect AZDOT's freeway plan.
If I had to use my crystal ball, given how Loop 303 is supposed to connect to SR 30, I'd say SR 85 would be expanded to a freeway to I-8 long before Loop 303.

That all being said, I would still revert the IP. Our articles on Loop 303 and SR 30 reflect what we actually know. –Fredddie ™ 08:19, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

Yep, your research aligns with mine. ADOT, does have plans to connect AZ-303 with the unbuilt SR-30 in or near Goodyear, AZ. While the drawings make it clear the interchange will be built with a future extension of AZ-303 in mind, ADOT has announced nothing about when or what that future extension will look like. Thanks. I was hoping someone familiar with the situation knew of an "unofficial site" that has more information and could be used to prove/disprove these additions. The good news is the ip editor seems to have either lost interest or is taking a hiatus.

But while we're on the topic of Wikipedia being used for a roadgeek fantasy website, we still have longstanding controversial sentences in Wikipedia articles about "quazi fantasy/quazi actual proposals" in California. Specifically about the future upgrade of California State Route 58 to a future extension of I-40, and re-designations of SR-210 and SR-15 as extensions of their similarly named Interstate counterparts. I frankly got tired of deleting them, and while they are often sourced, the sources used are often SPS, roadgeek fantasy sites, or if official Caltrans pages, it's to long finished, but never fully implements, or abandoned projects, and in the case of SR-210 and SR-15 the "it will be re-designated when project X is completed" has long come and gone, and at least in one case the claim is still on wikipedia with a moved goalpost. Not sure what to do about those either. Dave (talk) 21:42, 19 April 2021 (UTC)

OSM Map not working

In the U.S. Bicycle Route 66 article, the OSM map of Missouri is showing, but nothing is highlighted. What's going on with it?--Molandfreak (talk, contribs, email) 01:19, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, I’ve noticed glitches in other road articles too, where sometimes it shows a world map instead of the map of the route. Dough4872 02:43, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

In order to use the Wikidata method (which I'm not entirely sure works at the moment), you have to have a KML. Since there's no KML, there's no line. –Fredddie ™ 00:47, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

@Fredddie: Wikipedia:Creating route maps from OpenStreetMap data#Method 1: Using Wikidata details a method that does not require KML but does require OpenStreetMap to link to Wikidata. That said, I've seen mapframe default to the whole world rather inconsistently; I'm pretty sure it's a bug in Kartographer or one of the related components. (It happens to {{Interactive COVID-19 maps/Per capita confirmed cases/San Francisco Bay Area}} about every other day. Currently, it happens on the template page but not when you expand the map full-screen or see it embedded in an article.) – Minh Nguyễn ^💬 20:09, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

@Mxn: I am loath to use OSM data because it's not always as accurate as when we make the KML/JSON ourselves. –Fredddie ™ 04:37, 21 April 2021 (UTC)

@Fredddie: The original question was about OSM data, so I figured that was relevant. Of course it's up to folks in this project as to what to use on each article. The guide above does outline an alternative method to source the route geometry from OSM statically and host it at Commons, which gives us an opportunity to review the geometry and ensure stability. Commons map data accepts GeoJSON; it doesn't have to be KML. – Minh Nguyễn ^💬 04:22, 22 April 2021 (UTC)

U.S. Route 340

The article U.S. Route 340 looks very messy, with a bunch of script errors. Can someone better than me at Wikipedia please help fix this? Thanks! --Rockin (Talk) 16:26, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

@RockinJack18: I commented out the coding for the interactive map. Usually that situation is because the KML/GeoJSON file is too large to be parsed before timing out, or takes so much time that other templates time out. If that file can be simplified appropriately, it will render properly without script errors. Imzadi 1979 → 22:21, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

Thank you! Rockin (Talk) 01:18, 21 April 2021 (UTC)

I simplified the JSON file from 80k bytes to about 20k and I believe this fixed it. —Mr. Matté (^Talk/_Contrib) 01:42, 21 April 2021 (UTC)

Call to action

Errors like these are happening with a lot more frequency than they did in months past. We need to migrate our map data to Commons and Wikidata. For one, it's going to make our mapping available to other Wikipedias. It's also going to prevent errors like these from happening in the future. It's most important to get the national or auxiliary Interstate and U.S. Highways migrated first before we worry about state highways. I've already started working on Interstates a few months ago, but I never really made it public. I'll keep going on it and if you know how to create maps on Commons, I urge you to do the same. If you don't know how, but would like to, you can either ping me or talk to me on WP:DISCORD. –Fredddie ™ 04:34, 21 April 2021 (UTC)

If you add it to Wikidata, use the geoshape (P3896) property. –Fredddie ™ 05:40, 21 April 2021 (UTC)

You're touching on a point of frustration for me. Back in about January/February I created my first, and so far only, but hoping to change that soon, map/KML file. You helped me with it, and thank you. There's several tutorials on how to do this, well written and all helped me get 2/3rds of the work done, but were outdated and impossible to follow all the way through. Specifically all the ones I was trying to follow were for a local upload to the English Wikipedia. And I'd go to the repository on the English site and there would be a note saying exactly that "hey, you really shouldn't put new KML/map files here anymore, these should go on wikidata/commons", but with no further instructions on how to do it, and simply following those same instructions on the wikidata or commons website didn't work. There's clearly some other steps involved. So I gave up and kept the files on the English Wikipedia site, further compounding the problem (sorry!) with the intent of once I learned how to port to commons I would. But I never found that tutorial. Is there a good tutorial of how to port out there? Also, have our tutorials since been updated or do they still show how to use the English Wikipedia only repositories and templates? It would help those of us who have only dabbled with KML and know enough to be dangerous. Dave (talk) 16:35, 21 April 2021 (UTC)

@Moabdave: Wikipedia:Creating route maps from OpenStreetMap data was written from the perspective of authoring a bus route article, but it should cover your needs too if you're planning to use OSM as a source. If you're starting from a different source, some of the steps related to Commons may still be relevant, but the license for example would probably differ. – Minh Nguyễn ^💬 04:25, 22 April 2021 (UTC)

Using the parent interstate route shield in the infoboxes on the general business interstate highways articles

This is in response to this reversion of my edit by User:Imzadi1979. Why is it the standard to use the parent interstate shield on Business routes of Interstate 84 and the other general business interstate highways articles? If I was a casual reader, I would be expecting the business loop shield and "Business" in the name header. Like I would with any other US highway article. I'm I missing something? Zzyzx11 (talk) 00:19, 29 April 2021 (UTC)

Interestingly, this "standard" seems to contradict other articles such as Business routes of Interstate 5, Business routes of Interstate 10, Business routes of Interstate 20 in Texas, Business routes of Interstate 35, etc. If there is not an established consensus, I would say that using the business route shield makes sense. --Kinu ^t/_c 00:39, 29 April 2021 (UTC)

Update: I now see that it's because you changed those articles as well, but those were not reverted. I still agree with your logic, but think a discussion is warranted here. --Kinu ^t/_c 00:42, 29 April 2021 (UTC)

I think using the Business Interstate shield in the lead infobox for lists of Business Interstates makes sense since that’s what the article is about, as opposed to being about the mainline and using the red, white, and blue interstate shield. However, some routes have both Business Loops and Business Spurs and in those cases we should probably include both shields in the lead infobox. Dough4872 00:54, 29 April 2021 (UTC)

In the scenario you mentioned, would it contravene anything to include a "neutered" shield that includes only the word "BUSINESS" and neither "LOOP" nor "SPUR"? --Kinu ^t/_c 01:05, 29 April 2021 (UTC)

I'll say it's easy to create a special type with both shields for articles where both shields are warranted. –Fredddie ™ 01:13, 29 April 2021 (UTC)

Either the special type or the neutered shield would work, I really don’t have a preference of which option we go with. Dough4872 01:15, 29 April 2021 (UTC)

You can now use |type=BLBS in Infobox road to get both shields. It should work with or without a state. –Fredddie ™ 18:04, 29 April 2021 (UTC)

I think that will work well for our Business Interstate lists. Dough4872 03:18, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

Excellent. --Kinu ^t/_c 21:51, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

Change "Route description" header to "Route"

I propose changing the "Route description" header to "Route" across all the articles. Besides the unnecessary extra word, quite often people capitalize Description, which is a violation of MOS. --Rs chen 7754 02:53, 15 May 2021 (UTC)

Neutral - I see the justification of this proposal, but there is really nothing wrong with the current section header. Editors can easily fix sloppy edits that get the capitalization wrong. Personally, I feel we don’t need to waste the time changing all these headers, but I don’t feel enough opposition to stand in the way as it is merely a cosmetic issue. Dough4872 04:13, 15 May 2021 (UTC)
- I would anticipate that the headers would be changed with a tool en masse rather than manually. --Rs chen 7754 04:15, 15 May 2021 (UTC)
Comment I agree with the logic behind the proposal; but don't have strong feelings either way. The one thing I would ask, is have we broached this subject with non-native English speakers? I wonder if they perceive one as being more clear or confusing than the other. A quick test came up trumps, The Spanish article for Interstate 80 has "Route Description" but the Italian version just has "Description".Dave (talk) 04:53, 15 May 2021 (UTC)
Make both names acceptable – Kind of like the Major junctions/Major intersections/Junction list/Exit list situation Needforspeed888 (talk) 15:23, 15 May 2021 (UTC)
Leave alone—the current heading is fine, and the few times any more that we have to change capitalization is an educational opportunity for new editors to learn that the MOS prescribes sentence case for headings. I certainly wouldn't allow both as options because that breeds further inconsistency between articles. Imzadi 1979 → 17:08, 15 May 2021 (UTC)

Leave alone. Like Imzadi1979, I just don't think this is necessary. –Fredddie ™ 20:25, 15 May 2021 (UTC)

Leave alone per Imzadi1979. JackFromWisconsin (talk | contribs) 23:08, 15 May 2021 (UTC)

Oppose - editors deviating from the MOS should be educated; after all, they will have to learn sometime, so changing terminology just to accommodate inexperience is unproductive on the whole. I think "Route description" is more clear as to the content of the section (after all, the whole article is about a "route"). --Sable232 (talk) 16:07, 16 May 2021 (UTC)

Kentucky reorganization

I would like to get rid of the row of articles called "State highway lists" and open up the supplemental road and rural secondary highway lists to all routes. Viridiscalculus did a great job of making the SU/RS and I think the RCS format is best suited for Kentucky. The state highway lists don't have a consistent format, nor do they seem to be useful to our readers. There is no article that explains Kentucky's state highway system, so that could be improved as well. Currently, between Starts and Stubs, there are 541 Kentucky highway articles that could potentially be merged into the lists. Also, the Kentucky articles that have been created recently seem to flaunt a 'loophole' that since they're not rural secondary or supplemental roads they are inherently notable for an article. –Fredddie ™ 20:32, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

Note that there remain about 36 route articles that need to be redirected and, if necessary, content merged into the RCS articles. Once that is done, the number of stubs and starts that could plausibly be merged, if we go that direction, would be about 505.

I agree about getting rid of the segmented list articles that have different formats. There should be one list article, with a table for all 3500+ state highways no matter their classification and an explanation of the Kentucky state-numbered highway system, in accordance with the guidelines for state list articles and the Michigan Plan. Are there any technical reasons not to create such a big list for Kentucky?

For background, I created RCS articles for Kentucky because the state created a classification system we could adapt for our article and list organization. They are based on state decisions, not our arbitrary decisions to merge articles into RCS lists based on length (less than a mile) or perceived minor status.

Can you point to some articles created recently that are exploiting the non-RS/SR loophole?

I ask this because there might be a can of worms here. Merging all articles into the RCS articles that are now only for the RS and SR routes violates established project notability guidelines that say state routes are almost always notable and deserving of their own article. I do not necessarily oppose merging into RCS lists state articles that up to now met notability guidelines. But I do oppose deciding to do this for Kentucky articles but not doing it for articles in other states. This requires a separate national-scope notability discussion. V C 13:44, 14 May 2021 (UTC)

Kentucky Route 2121 and Kentucky Route 3716 are a couple of the offending Kentucky articles. As far as the list with 3500+ highways go, I think eventually we would hit the limit where we get the great script time expiring errors that we see for mapframe maps.

I am perfectly happy to help craft a guideline for creating RCS lists for perma-stub articles. New Mexico, Puerto Rico, and Tennessee would all benefit in addition to Kentucky just for destubbing. New York, Texas, and Ohio could also benefit from having fewer articles to maintain. –Fredddie ™ 22:11, 14 May 2021 (UTC)

If you would like to craft a guideline, go for it. It will make a good starting point for a discussion. V C 00:45, 17 May 2021 (UTC)

Proposal to eliminate major intersections from the infobox

Major intersections will not be eliminated from the infobox. –Fredddie ™

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

I thought about proposing this on {{Infobox road}} but I thought better to leave other WP/TFs to decide for themselves (lol), but I'd like to propose eliminating major intersections altogether from the infobox and just leave the two endpoints. As seen above, there is some support already for this, but I want to get an opinion from everyone who sees this. We can also hash out details like what to call the section, or if we just merge it into Route information, and what to do with beltways. –Fredddie ™ 04:53, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

Support. A discussion here would only affect the US, but that's okay as this is mostly a local issue. USRD already prohibits various parameters for the US like photo=. It's just a timesink with editors warring over which junctions to include. I'd rather just get rid of it entirely and get editors to focus on the rest of the article. If people want more details, they can look at the RJL - I think that at the time the 10 junction limit was put in place, there were a lot fewer RJLs in USRD articles, which was likely a factor in why they weren't done away with entirely. --Rs chen 7754 06:21, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
Neutral - I’m okay with eliminating major intersections from the infobox if it will end the constant edit warring over which 10 junctions to include. However, I am also okay with leaving things as is. Dough4872 11:35, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
Oppose: Sometimes, I want to know what highway meets another highway. A quick glance at the infobox helps me know if I have the right page. If I'm in a hurry, I don't have time to go to the junction list, especially if it is a very long article. Morriswa (Charlotte Allison) (talk) 19:02, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
Weak oppose - The junctions lists are pretty useful to readers, but I agree that the edit warring is far too common. Perhaps for non-state-detail Interstate/USH articles, there should be a set list generated by a single template that is under semi-protection? Sounder Bruce 21:44, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
- That is an interesting idea - or some other way to technically enforce the 10 jct limit. --Rs chen 7754 00:13, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
  - I also would support a means to make the infobox more difficult for newbies to edit as opposed to removing it. Also, as a reminder the 10 box hard limit is arbitrary and came about because of the need to enforce a draconian limit. I.E. if we said, "ok 11 is ok on this one really long article" suddenly all articles would have 11 junctions and someone would push for 12. However, if we had a newbieproof junction box, suddenly the need for a hard numerical limit goes away. Dave (talk) 15:09, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
    - We could change junction= to be junction1=, junction2=, etc. and then just not have any over 10. It would require us to update every article though, and we would also have to accommodate non-US articles differently. --Rs chen 7754 18:07, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
      - That won’t eliminate the problem with edit warring, as people will still argue over what 10 junctions to include. What would probably be the best idea is for our national Interstate and US Route articles to have a semi-protected or (if really needed) full-protected template transcluded into the infobox so people can’t easily change the junctions in the infobox. It might be hard to do this for every USRD article but definitely should be done for the national-level articles since they appear to have the most issues with edit warring over what junctions to include in the infobox. Dough4872 00:47, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
        I don't think this would work for USRD, but I'll throw this out as a means to maybe inspiring an idea, but what is becoming more common on rail articles is to have the entire "junctions list" appear in the infobox and not even have a major intersections section. However, this portion of the infobox is collapsable, and in some cases nested with collapsed sections. Some examples Feather River Route (has nested collapses),Southern Transcon, Lakeside Subdivision among many others. Dave (talk) 17:11, 11 May 2021 (UTC)
        I don’t think I like the idea of an expanded list of junctions in the infobox replacing the major intersections table as the tables display more information. The idea of having a collapsed section in the infobox listing all junctions sounds like a good thought to end the constant edit warring however this could become problematic for longer routes. Therefore, this doesn’t sound like it will work. Dough4872 01:29, 12 May 2021 (UTC)
Oppose—the lead of an article, which includes the infobox, should serve as a summary of the content of the article. Unless the RJL table is going to be summarized another way, the summary list in the infobox is the only way that section is summarized in the lead. Edit warring is bad, but I feel like this proposal would eliminate something good to prevent something that's already forbidden. Imzadi 1979 → 22:10, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
Oppose - The summarized list in the infobox is helpful to have, and while there are issues related to it, I think that removal would be an extreme step to take to resolve those issues. If edit warring over which ones to include is the problem, it would be preferable to try finding solutions to that first. --Sable232 (talk) 23:16, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
Oppose – As described in WP:USRD/STDS, and as a general convention across all of Wikipedia, all sections of the article are supposed to be summarized in the lead. Simply including the start and end points would not serve as an adequate summary of a section titled “Major intersections” or “Exit list”. Needforspeed888 (talk) 14:46, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
The infobox is not the lead. Does this mean you don't mention cities and junctions in the lead? –Fredddie ™ 11:47, 7 May 2021 (UTC)
- @Fredddie:: WP:USRD/STDS says, “Because the infobox (see the next section of these guidelines) is technically part of the lead, its junction list serves as a summary of that article section.” Needforspeed888 (talk) 17:43, 12 May 2021 (UTC)
Support - but with a heavy heart. I like having those junctions there, but we've wasted more than enough time fixing stray additions to this section and I've given up. Above Sounder Bruce proposes an alternate solution. I may change my mind if an alternate solution results from this discussion. Also, I suspect this is mainly a USA specific problem, though I also suspect there are some highways in Russia, China and Brazil that have this problem. Can anybody speak as to if those countries have this problem, and how to they handle it? Dave (talk) 14:57, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

A request, can we leave this discussion open for a while? While I'm for now voting support. I'd rather an alternate solution is found. This problem is bigger than just USRD infoboxes and I think it's more important to find ways to manage the bigger issue than just a quick fix for USRD infoboxes. I'm fighting similar battles with hat notes. Specifically when there are two similarly titled articles. If article A has a hatnote pointing to the article B, and for good reason, for some reason people insist on inserting a reciprocal hatnote on article B back to article A, even if not needed. But still people insert that hatnote almost as if it's a religious necessity or discrimination not to have a reciprocal hatnote. There's also a couple of places where this shows up with navboxes. So I'm more interested in any good article management ideas that come out of this, rather than the outcome itself.Dave (talk) 16:14, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

I could be wrong on this but I don't think there is a 10 jct limit outside the US. --Rs chen 7754 18:02, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

Strong Neutral. "Major Junctions" isn't the most essential in an infobox, but its presence alone doesn't often degrade the article. Edit wars should be fixed primarily with harsher punishments to the ones at war. JackFromWisconsin (talk | contribs) 18:26, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
- I would like that too, but unfortunately due to WP:INVOLVED even those of us who are admins don't necessarily have a say in the matter. --Rs chen 7754 18:53, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
Oppose. Roads connect people and places. They are more than their endpoints, or their mileage. They carry people from place to place, often at major intersections. "Major" will be different for route to route, and whether it is a county/state/national level highway, whether the roads they intersect have articles. I disagree that the infoboxes need semi-protection, as Wikipedia should be able to be edited by anyone. I agree with the cap of around 10. Perhaps rather than removing them, there need to be tighter standards? Also, if the issue is making sure that new content is accurate, perhaps get people to volunteer to watch certain states/area articles. Sure, there are some 13,000 road articles in USRD, so that's going to be a lot of pages watched/patrolled. If there aren't enough editors, then I suggest you reach out to road forums (AARoads, I'm sure there are roadgeek groups on Facebook) and ask for volunteers. Just a few thoughts from a relative outsider to the project. ♫ Hurricanehink (talk) 18:59, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
People in the roadgeek forums enjoy watching us from their ivory tower. They think their word is golden and don't like that anybody can change what they've written nor do they like WP:V or WP:RS. –Fredddie ™ 11:43, 7 May 2021 (UTC)

Weak Oppose. I like having these in the infoboxes, but I won't be incredibly heartbroken to see them go. I am somewhat intrigued by the ideas upthread to either have some sort of semi-protection for the national articles or have |junction1 through |junction10 parameters... -- LJ ↗ 19:54, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

Question: I don't see a whole lot of edit warring and random inclusion of junctions in the infoboxes. But admittedly, I really only watch the Nevada articles and the national route articles which pass through it. (Although I have had some occasional frustrations with an IP editor who wants to put future I-11 junctions on infoboxes & junction lists when that expansion is likely still decades out...) But is the edit warring and all really that common or frequent nowadays? -- LJ ↗ 19:54, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

Oppose In terms of what gets implemented into the infobox, the major junctions continue to be a useful summary of the main junction table. From my perspective, the amount of vandalism and edit warring has drastically decreased on Ohio road articles as an example. Those editors come and go, so a removal seems unjustified. Cards84664 16:32, 7 May 2021 (UTC)

Comment - I focus on Canadian roads, so I won't directly !vote here. However, the concept of putting portions of the infobox into proactive semi-protection goes against one of the core pillars of Wikipedia. This issue should be dealt with where it is a problem, but not proactively rolled out to every article (or every article in a certain category). - Floydian ^τ _¢ 16:55, 7 May 2021 (UTC)

@Floydian:, There's really only a handful of countries that could have this problem, and Canada is one of them. (Not many 3000 mile long highways with a thousand junctions in Panama ;) ). How do you handle excessively long infoboxes on Canadian highway articles? Or does the stronger provincial influence make this a non-issue there? If you've found a better way, I'd love to hear it.Dave (talk) 19:24, 9 May 2021 (UTC)

Doing a bit of research on my own, the trans-Canadian highways don't even have articles, only an article for the system Trans-Canada Highway, and articles for the provincial component highways contributing to the system. So that's one way, don't create the articles in the first place ;) However, some of the provincial highways have quite a few British Columbia Highway 97 has 18, the most I could find with a quick scan. However, it currently works for the article, because it has lots of prose and few photographs. I suspect should someone upload 2-3 more pictures to this article, it would start to have the problems that led to the 10 highway limit on US highway articles. Dave (talk) 19:49, 9 May 2021 (UTC)

Yeah... I can't speak for that article. The provincial delineation of roads, otherwise, certainly makes the number of junctions easy. However, Ontario Highway 17, Ontario Highway 11, and Highway 401 are examples where the limit is pushed, and perhaps broken. But those are straws. My Canadian connection was merely a recusion; the points regarding reducing the ability for anyone to edit the junction lists within infoboxes stands. - Floydian ^τ _¢ 03:43, 10 May 2021 (UTC)

Oppose: Having the junctions in the infobox also shows the cities of the junctions. The cities are not always terribly important, but they provide a secondary source of quick-scan information that is easier to gain than from needing to learn them from the body of the article. V C 14:50, 8 May 2021 (UTC)

Interstate 80 in Iowa

Legend

MP

continues into Nebraska

Missouri River

0.000

Nebraska–Iowa state line

I-80 express begins

0.719

I-29 north / US 6 west – Sioux City

I-80 local begins

1.680

S. 24th Street – Council Bluffs, Mid-America Center

3.133

South Expressway –

Council Bluffs, Business

District, Lake Manawa

I-80 express ends

I-80 local ends

I-29 south –

Kansas

City

3.837

5.174

Madison Avenue

US 6 east – Oakland

8.548

Kanesville Boulevard – Council Bluffs

17.540

CR G30 – Underwood

23.228

CR L55 – Neola

27.520

I-880 west – North Omaha, Sioux City

Comment This is a reply to Dave's comment above. I don't really like the idea of creating Routemaps for all of our articles. I did this mockup of the first few miles of I-80 (IA) and it was...hard. The Routemap stuff is a whole other level of esoteric. –Fredddie ™ 01:34, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

I really like the graphics, but I agree its unnecessary. Highway junctions really require a higher level of detail and care, which is why we have the ==Major junctions== section. JackFromWisconsin (talk | contribs) 02:09, 12 May 2021 (UTC)
Yeah, those rail diagrams are complicated, just making a minor change to them requires either being intimately familiar with how that template works, or a lot of trial and error. Yeah literally implementing this is not practical for road articles (though your example with I-80 is massive overkill, cool but overkill) ;). But on the flip side, it appears to be a way to solve the problem. None of the rail line articles on my watchlist are flooded with "hey you forgot this junction in the infobox", even though most of the rail articles I watch have incomplete diagrams, if they have any at all. I suspect that is due to complexity required to make changes, combined with the fact that you can't just use Google Maps as a guide to creating them. You have to go to FRA's website and it's a pain to use. So while I don't think we can practically implement this on road articles, it might be an idea of another way to solve the problem. Dave (talk) 15:31, 12 May 2021 (UTC)
I think we would fail the latest accessibility guidelines as well, which would cause a problem at FAC. --Rs chen 7754 18:03, 12 May 2021 (UTC)
To that end, does the Trains WP care about accessibility? I'd have to think that something would have been said about the accessibility of routemap diagrams by now. –Fredddie ™ 22:04, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Examples of the problem?

I don't see any of this edit warring on anything in my watchlist, so I'm not familiar with the details of the problem. What articles have had this trouble recently? I'm wondering if there is a more-targeted way that this could be resolved. --Sable232 (talk) 22:03, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

Pick any of the really long Interstate or US Highway articles. Using Interstate 80 as an example: In the first page of the article history, I picked 5 historical versions that were undone at random. 4 of the 5 were reverted additions to that infobox, including at 2 that were adding I-69. None of the 4 were adding I-71 to the infobox, but I know that one has been problematic, I've reverted that addition multiple times. [12][13],[14],[15]. Dave (talk) 23:33, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

If the issue is deciding what 10 intersections to include, perhaps use traffic counts to show what truly are the most significant interchanges? Hurricanehink mobile (talk) 00:00, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

On paper using traffic counts sounds good, but then you have to create guidelines for where you take the traffic count. Is it where there's the most traffic on that road? By that logic on Interstate 235 (Iowa) the 31st Street and MLK exits would be included because that's the busiest stretch of highway in the whole state. –Fredddie ™ 20:37, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

If the core of the problem is that there are some national Interstate or US Highway articles where there are more than 10 major interstates intersecting it, could we simply allow that single exception to the 10-junction limit? That is, if there are 12 of them, rather than try to judge which two are the least worthy of inclusion, allow more than 10 as the exception in that particular situation. --Sable232 (talk) 16:00, 16 May 2021 (UTC)

I feel that if we allow one exception, we have to allow several - which is the problem. --Rs chen 7754 00:57, 17 May 2021 (UTC)

20 junction limit?

Can we have 10 more junctions for every highway in the US and rename it to the "20-Junction Limit" for each Highway in the US? Because some junctions are major and they are omitted from the major intersection box.

I was thinking is this was OK that if we can expand the major junction limit up to 20 and rename it to "The 20-Junction Limit"? And after that, the USRD allows the doubling more junctions to be listed to further these goals and no more than 20 junctions. The junction list is limited ONLY to Interstates, US Highways and major state-routes. It will say | on every highway in the US.

BenjaminTheTrainGuy (talk) 04:54, 28 March 2021 (UTC) Benjamin Lew

No. The limit was set as it is to keep the infobox from getting too long. This came from feedback at one of the earliest Featured Article Candidacies for an American highway article, and that critique is still valid. Imzadi 1979 → 05:20, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

No. –Fredddie ™ 05:44, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

No, I think 10 is a good enough limit to keep the infobox from getting too long. Dough4872 12:15, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

No, we do not want the infobox longer than the actual article; the limited range forces editors to pick the 10 best or busiest junctions worth noting, otherwise we are just duplicating the junction list. --WashuOtaku (talk) 13:48, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

No. And quite frankly, too many editors obsess over adding in junction #11 to the infobox when the rest of the article is trash. --Rs chen 7754 16:44, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

Please, no. With the data in the infobox, including shield and map, the infoboxes are already quite long...we don't need them to be longer. Remember the infobox is a summary of the article/route attributes...we have a whole section dedicated to the junctions. -- LJ ↗ 02:26, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

No, and if anything, it should be shortened rather than expanded. That's my two cents anyway. JackFromReedsburg (talk | contribs) 02:42, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

I think 20 is probably excessive, but I also don't think 10 should be a hard limit. Interstate 90 is a good example where 10 might not be enough. If we're listing I-87 in its infobox, why not list I-93? -- Calidum 02:55, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

Because even allowing 11 on certain articles results in more edit wars than we already have. We would have people literally begging for an exception just so the closest Interstate to them can get 11 junctions. If it were up to me, I would do away with the section entirely. --Rs chen 7754 03:40, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

My personal opinion is the "top 10 junctions" in the infobox is more trouble than it's worth. Adjusting the limit to 8 or 12 or 20 or whatever is a band-aid where surgery is needed. No matter the limit, we have the 'newbie' editors who say "hey you forgot one" not seeming to understand this is not supposed to be an inclusive list. That tells me the whole ideal is flawed and needs to be reworked. While we're on the subject of "good ideas that have backfired horrible in road articles" Though it seems to be less of a big deal now verses a few years ago I'd also vote to get rid of, or seriously reform, the state level browseboxes at the bottom of main US and Interstate highway articles for which there are not state detail articles for all states. That also suffers from the same problem, with people adding new entries for browseboxes where a separate article already exists. I understand why both of those templates were added to US road articles, but given they've been problems for years, and nobody seems to have found a way to fix the problem. I'm resigned to the opinion of "just get rid of them" and be done with it. Dave (talk) 22:52, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

Broken New York State Shields

What happened to all the route shields in the infoboxes and junction charts associated with New York State Route articles? They've all turned into "Invalid type:" redlinks. Even roads that begin and end at the New York State Line like New Jersey State Route 17 have this problem. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 15:11, 18 May 2021 (UTC)

@DanTD: they work for me. Perhaps the edit made to Module:Road data/strings/USA/NY that was reverted after you posted was the cause. Imzadi 1979 → 16:27, 18 May 2021 (UTC)

I believe it was. I never even knew it was changed. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 17:28, 18 May 2021 (UTC)

Template:Jct special route links "broken"

On some states (the only one I can remember right now being Montana), when you use {{jct|state=MT|US-Byp|87|dab1=Lewistown}}, it produces the redlink:

US 87 Byp.. You have to add the state name (i.e., {{jct|state=MT|US-Byp|87|dab1=Lewistown}}) to produce the correct link:

US 87 Byp.. The other special route types need to be checked as well. Please, feel free to tweak the proper wiki markup for this section. Morriswa (Charlotte Allison) (talk) 16:34, 18 May 2021 (UTC)

It's fixed now. –Fredddie ™ 00:24, 19 May 2021 (UTC)

Thank you. Also, I noticed in Colorado there's a space not in links. See U.S. Route 36 in Colorado for an example. Morriswa (Charlotte Allison) (talk) 01:41, 19 May 2021 (UTC)

Speaking of broken stuff in the Rocky Mountain region, I noticed that the exit list, referenced and external links chapter of Interstate 15 in Montana has a series of repeats of the message "The time allocated for running scripts has expired.." What templates were broken there? ---------User:DanTD (talk) 04:39, 19 May 2021 (UTC)

@DanTD: nothing's broken there. Sometimes the servers time out processing the templates. Normally the culprits are complicated interactive maps (the KML file is too big/too complicated), long junction lists with lots of {{jct}} calls, or lots of citation templates. None of those apply to that article, so maybe it was a temporary glitch in the matrix. Imzadi 1979 → 14:38, 19 May 2021 (UTC)

IRC

[Reposting this to make sure everyone is aware]

The IRC channel #wikipedia-en-roads has been shut down due to the situation with Freenode. Many other Wikimedia-related channels are going to be migrated other places. While most Wikimedia channels are going to another IRC server, most of the road editors have migrated to WP:DISCORD instead. --Rs chen 7754 07:12, 20 May 2021 (UTC)

What "situation with Freenode" are you talking about? I have been doing job search and preparing for my possible move to Jacksonville, Florida, so I keep forgetting to open Discord. Morriswa (Charlotte Allison) (talk) 14:11, 20 May 2021 (UTC)

Please see meta:Wikimedia Forum#Freenode (IRC) for the relevant discussion. JackFromWisconsin (talk | contribs) 14:28, 20 May 2021 (UTC)

I've updated for the interim the IRC link to the channel with the same name on Liberia as Freenode has started hostile takeovers of the channels. Dreamy Jazz ^{talk to me | my contributions} 19:45, 2 June 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, but I've changed it to Discord since the IRC channel is not used anymore. --Rs chen 7754 00:14, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

request on Indian Route 9, etc

Moved from WT:HWY § request on Indian Route 9, etc

– Imzadi 1979 → 05:22, 5 June 2021 (UTC)

Hey, I'm kinda shocked to find no list-article of Indian route (United States) roads, and no category for them either. I would like to link to coverage somewhere of "Indian Route 9" from article Black River Bridge (Carrizo, Arizona) (about the NRHP-listed deck truss bridge in Gila County, Arizona, coming to mainspace soon from Draft:Black River Bridge (Carrizo, Arizona)). And the road shows as "R-9" in Google maps, but there is no mention of it at R-9 or R9 disambiguation page, nor is it mentioned in List of highways numbered 9. What gives, wp:ROADsters? :) There does exist an Indian Reservation Roads Inventory linked from the Indian Reservation Roads Program article, which might provide the raw data needed, but it has counties numbered rather than named and is otherwise gibberish to me. Maybe there are IRR numbered roadss and BIA numbered roads? Or maybe everything about "IRR" needs to be updated to be "Tribal Transportation Improvement Program (TTIP)" instead, per this 2017 guide? WP:NRHP editors and others need for you to provide this kind of stuff! Please! --Doncram (talk) 15:11, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

I feel your pain, but sadly don't have a solution for you. The documentation on American Indian tribal roads is hit or miss (more often miss) and having quality articles about them on Wikipedia has long been a challenge and I've yet to find a solution. Some are easier than others. For example, the Navajo Nation has a webpage for their department of transportation and it is of some help. At least it has a maps section useful to confirm the tribe maintains a given road, its termini and general route. But sadly their published maps uses the Federal aid designations to identify roads in their jurisdiction, not the route number visible to and used by the public. So those maps, by themselves, aren't enough to do anything towards creating a Wikipedia article. It kinda helps for the roads that cross into Utah, as UDOT publishes these federal aid designations in their Straight-line diagrams, but even then it's a pain to cross reference, and only helps on the select few Navajo routes that intersect a UDOT maintained route. Many other tribes don't even publish that much information on the web. For example the Ute tribe doesn't even acknowledge having a highway dept. on their webpages. But I would say there is hope. Again some tribes are putting more information on the web and that helps. 10 years ago rail lines were much in the same position, even worse as they were all privately owned and so the routes were treated by some almost as a trade secret despite being viewable on any satellite image or map. But a few years ago someone lit a fire under the FRA's butt and now their website has a lot more information useful for Wikipedia articles, and it shows. Just in the last 2-3 years Wikipedia's coverage of individual rail lines has dramatically increased and getting better by the day. That shows the will is there, we just need the reliable sources. Dave (talk) 17:41, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

Connecticut state roads vandal

For the last several months, an IP vandal has been vandalizing articles about Connecticut state highways by changing the endpoints. A typical set of edits has obvious vandalism, followed by a null edit to make vandalism detection harder. On a number of articles, they've made multiple rounds of vandalism. They tend to hop between IPs (see below), which has made getting them blocked rather difficult. I would greatly appreciate additional eyes on these articles to help control the vandalism. Thanks, Pi.1415926535 (talk) 20:12, 7 June 2021 (UTC)

IPs used

2601:182:4202:3880::/64 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RBLs · block user · block log) (currently blocked)

Sorted 2 IPv4 addresses:

174.192.10.41

174.192.17.9

Total affected	Affected addresses	Given addresses	Range	Contribs

8192	8192	2	174.192.0.0/19	contribs

2	1	1	174.192.10.41	contribs
2	1	1	174.192.17.9	contribs

Sorted 6 IPv6 addresses:

2600:1000:b112:85:a9ce:1f9f:f938:e433

2600:1000:b11c:300:a445:de63:a538:2344

2600:1000:b145:172c:f84d:c62a:c901:ca27

2600:1000:b14b:69e:c464:6a4a:a62f:3c7d

2600:1000:b162:d7e2:8d9e:224c:c5db:fcc2

2600:1000:b168:7f37:a56a:abe9:2f24:602b

Total affected	Affected addresses	Given addresses	Range	Contribs

8M /64	8M /64	6	2600:1000:b100::/41	contribs

5M /64	1M /64	2	2600:1000:b110::/44	contribs
5M /64	4M /64	4	2600:1000:b140::/42	contribs

2M /64	1 /64	1	2600:1000:b112:85::/64	contribs
	1 /64	1	2600:1000:b11c:300::/64	contribs
	1M /64	2	2600:1000:b140::/44	contribs
	1M /64	2	2600:1000:b160::/44	contribs

6 /64	1 /64	1	2600:1000:b112:85::/64	contribs
	1 /64	1	2600:1000:b11c:300::/64	contribs
	1 /64	1	2600:1000:b145:172c::/64	contribs
	1 /64	1	2600:1000:b14b:69e::/64	contribs
	1 /64	1	2600:1000:b162:d7e2::/64	contribs
	1 /64	1	2600:1000:b168:7f37::/64	contribs

I'd also file a report at WP:AIV. This sort of thing is what they do. –Fredddie ™ 05:27, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

I have been filing AIV reports; however, there's often a backlog and the reports are closed as stale. Because of the length of time and the number of different IPs, I wanted to editors who might already be watching these articles aware of the vandal. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 16:02, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

And meanwhile WMF thinks this is a good idea. --Rs chen 7754 05:36, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

It appears that the same vandal has arrived in California. I've blocked the /64 whenever I've seen it, but the IP hopping keeps happening. --Rs chen 7754 03:42, 10 June 2021 (UTC)

Splitting Special Routes When They are Identical/Near Identical

Hey everyone,

In my GA review of U.S. Route 117 the reviewer has brought up the redundancy of some of the special routes. These are routes that are formerly US 117A or US 117 Alternate routes but in 1960, NCDOT decided to switch many of them to business routes. The question was whether or not they should be consolidated into one special route under the present banner instead of keeping two for essentially the same route. I know this is something frequent across North Carolina but I'm not really sure what the policy is. Should they be split or combined with a mention to the former name in the "history paragraph".

Also, I apologize for bringing something relatively North Carolina-centric up in the main talk thread, but I felt like it could have larger implications so I wanted to consult with everyone. --Ncchild (talk) 19:03, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

We consolidated all of the state TF talk pages here, so you're fine. I would combine the sections and just have two instances of {{Infobox road small}} under the current iteration's heading. A sentence about why the designation changed would also be beneficial. –Fredddie ™ 03:37, 15 June 2021 (UTC)

Take a look at Ontario Highway 40#Suffixed routes for an example of dealing with minor alternate/business routes. - Floydian ^τ _¢ 05:30, 16 June 2021 (UTC)

The 10 most-viewed, worst-quality articles according to this Wikiproject

102 Natchez Trace Parkway 4,456 143 Stub Mid
299 Cherohala Skyway 2,036 65 Stub Mid
476 High Road to Taos 1,423 45 Stub Low
39 Overseas Highway 7,995 257 Start Mid
42 Dalton Highway 7,494 241 Start Mid
75 Hana Highway 5,303 171 Start Mid
77 Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956 5,247 169 Start Mid
81 National Maximum Speed Law 5,103 164 Start Mid
83 Interstate 65 5,039 162 Start Mid
93 Las Vegas Boulevard 4,680 150 Start Mid

Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Roads/Popular pages--Coin945 (talk) 06:49, 19 June 2021 (UTC)

Discussion on Template talk:U.S. Routes

An editor has proposed removing the parentless three-digit U.S. Highways from {{U.S. Routes}}. Your input is welcomed. –Fredddie ™ 17:10, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

Revisiting Importance

WP:USRD has 11,036 Mid-importance articles and 2,236 Low-importance articles, according to the data table. On the ground, there are significantly more highways that have absolutely no national importance than highways with at least a little national importance, whereas the Wikipedia importance data suggests the opposite. As it is, the Mid category runs the gamut between transcontinental Interstate highways and 3-mile rural state highways that serve boat ramps. So I suggest we revisit our guidelines for importance. The last comprehensive change appears to have been in 2007, shortly after the system was set up. I propose we come up with a delineation between Mid and Low. Then we can gradually shift articles between categories. This will inform our efforts to reduce the number of stubs, which has remained around 1,500 since 2014. V C 22:47, 7 June 2021 (UTC)

Crickets, so I am going to lay out a proposal for a Low–Mid importance split. There will be further discussion about the Mid–High split and some kind of split of the Low category. V C 00:07, 12 June 2021 (UTC)

Low–Mid split

Interstates and U.S. Highways are Mid or High by default.
State, county, and municipal highways are Low by default. (This is the major change. Most state highways are currently Mid regardless of how important they are. This accounts for the high ratio of Mid to Low articles.)
Other types of articles that are Low by default are Interstate and U.S. Highway business and alternate routes.
Articles that are Low-class by default can be promoted to Mid-class based on Federal Highway Administration functional classification. That is, if a highway has at least one non-concurrent section that is an Other Freeway or Expressway or is a Principal Arterial, that highway can be Mid-Class. Note that this includes the vast majority of the National Highway System but not all of it.
Questions:
1. Should Intermodal Connectors be eligible for Mid-class if they do not qualify by functional classification?
2. Should STRAHNET Connectors be eligible for Mid-class if they do not qualify by functional classification?
3. How should unnumbered principal arterials in urban areas be classified?

I would like to propose a branch off of VC's proposal also using NHS and FHWA classifications –Fredddie ™ 05:34, 12 June 2021 (UTC)

All federal highway articles (IH and USH) default to Mid-Class.
All state highway articles default to Low-Class
All former, county, and secondary highway and otherwise unsigned highway articles default to Bottom-Class (which we would have to add)
Highways on the National Highway System get bumped up a level
- That means Interstates are High by default
Then using the FHWA functional classifications, we can adjust accordingly
- Freeways/expressways, principal arterials get bumped up a level
- Minor arterials receive no bump
- Major/minor collectors and local roads get bumped down a level

One caveat I want to add is that NHS and FHWA classifications should be statistically significant (over 5%). That is, if a highway is classified as a minor arterial for 200 miles and a freeway for its last mile, that would not be enough to bump it up. But a 5-mile minor arterial except for the last mile would be enough to bump.

This would allow an article to potentially receive two bumps, so a state highway on the NHS that's mostly a principal arterial would be High-Class.

Almost all of the NHS correlates with functional classification—all Interstates, Other Freeways and Expressways, and Other Principal Arterials are included—so we should not be double bumping. There are enough examples of freeways that are not U.S. or primary state highways that I prefer making functional classification the primary criterion for rating NHS highways that are not U.S. or state highways. But using Low and Bottom for non-NHS highways is a good idea, and I look forward to hashing that out later.

I am not a fan of bumping down. It feels like needless complexity.

I like the statistically significant concept. We could make use of both 5% and 95% thresholds for various determinations. V C 01:59, 13 June 2021 (UTC)

I was thinking about the case of County Road 17 (Elkhart County, Indiana) for double bumps. Originally I thought it was on the NHS, which would make it Mid-Class since it's a primary arterial as well. But from what I can tell, it's not on the new NHS maps that came out not too long ago, but it used to be. –Fredddie ™ 05:58, 15 June 2021 (UTC)

The Elkhart situation is strange. The 2015 Indiana county functional classification map shows a bunch of principal arterials in Elkhart, including CR 17, but the current federal maps (October 2020) show next to nothing that is not freeway in Elkhart and in South Bend.

My main concern with how we treat county highways is the ones that are principal arterials are in a federally approved system based on suggestions from the states. There is a large variety in how the states assign state routes in urban and suburban areas. But I don't think we should be bound to that state-level distinction between state and county highways when assigning importance. Often whether a highway is a state highway or county highway comes down to local politics, such as the state and county being unable to come to an agreement on transferring a highway between their systems or state law having a cap on state highway mileage or required decommissioning of highways entirely within a city. V C 03:28, 16 June 2021 (UTC)

I'm a bit confused as to why having most articles fall under Mid-importance is a problem. Granted, major national highways should be of higher importance, but logically there should be a lot of articles that "fill in more minor details" and/or are "only notable within its particular field or subject and has achieved notability in a particular place or area." But if that assessment system has been in place since 2007, before all the state-level projects were merged into USRD, would some articles be rated higher than would be expected as an artifact of having been assessed for a state project?

We should keep in mind that the purpose of importance assessment is to evaluate how critical the information in the article is relative to the rest of the topic, mostly for purposes of prioritizing work. The general guidelines for that (and the alternate version) don't quite fit with the structure of USRD but are worth noting.

I'd hesitate to add another importance class. I don't think it's necessary, don't think it would help us as editors, and don't think the project would be well served by assessing something as "Subject has no real significance to the project" - one would question the need for the article at all at that point.

The rating system should be reasonably simple and straightforward - too many caveats and if/then items will make it unwieldy and could cause confusion for some editors. I would propose a simpler system:

Roads that are part of the NHS are High by default assuming the NHS designation is statistically significant.
Current U.S. highways that cross multiple states are High.
Current primary state highways and U.S. highways within a single state are Mid unless they're covered by the above.
State highways that are considered secondary or have other attributes that make them clearly less significant (e.g. Minnesota's very short highways that serve state institutions) are Low.
Decommissioned highways are Low unless they have special significance.
County roads are Low.

I admit, this will likely miss some special cases, but I'd rather err on the side of simplicity. I'm unsure on how state-level articles for High-importance U.S. highways should be assessed - I'm leaning towards High but would like to see other input. --Sable232 (talk) 15:04, 13 June 2021 (UTC)

Your connecting the glut of Mid-importance ratings with the former state-based WikiProjects is a good point. Those state-based WikiProjects were replaced by task forces more than 5 years ago, and reassessing our importance system is the back-end work of reassigning the importance of those highways on a national scale to replace what was likely assessed on a state-level scale. The problem with most articles falling under Mid-importance is that the category includes the whole range of what would be considered important at various levels, from transcontinental Interstates that connect metropolitan areas comprising tens of millions of people to very short state highways that pass through sparsely populated areas and that are only relevant to the few people there. By defining criteria to better reflect the importance hierarchy of the highways of the United States, by which most of those articles about highways relevant only locally would likely be transferred to Low-importance, we can both better direct attention to the more important articles on highways that more people use and care about and build better structures to maintain the information about the highways much less important at the national level. The more locally relevant highways might be better organized in well-structured lists instead of an array of stubs. The potential addition of Bottom-class would give us additional granularity to better let us separate (1) those highways that are worth their own article, (2) those highways that are better organized within a list, and (3) those highways that are not worth including information about at all. V C 01:48, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

What seems imperative to me is that the importance levels are defined in relation to the overall scope of the project and it's articles. Our current project scope really just says we maintain articles related to the highways and major roads of the U.S. Given the above discussion, perhaps the scope might be further refined as "maintaining articles of national, regional, local and historical significance to road and highway travel in the United States." With that in mind, here's my thoughts on an importance system:

High: Articles about routes of national significance

Interstate highways (including their state-detail articles)
US highways traversing multiple states (including their state-detail articles)

Mid: Articles about routes of statewide or major regional significance

US highways serving only one state
Current primary state highways providing regional/inter-city connectivity (e.g. routes connecting population centers/towns, some urban routes). Routes with a significant portion on the NHS can go here.
Freeways in urban areas and tolled highways not already in high importance

Low: Articles about routes of local significance

Current primary state highways providing local connectivity (e.g. most remaining urban routes, routes connecting a rural locale to the state's highway system)
Current secondary and tertiary state highways
Most special routes
Interchanges

Bottom: Remaining articles about numbered highways and routes of historical significance

County routes
Decommissioned routes (unless they have other significance)

If it's felt necessary to include, maybe adopt a provision that articles initially in low or bottom importance could potentially be bumped up a level based on an NHS or similar criterion
We might also have to carve out some special provisions for things like the auto routes and US 66, and for other non-highway articles like Speed limits in the United States (which I don't think we really have now), but those are a bit more fringe compared to the vast majority of articles

I'm not married to this—I'm largely indifferent to reclassification of importance. But I'd agree with Sable232 that a simpler system is better, and wouldn't want to see a bunch of caveats that make things overly complex for some editors to interpret. And I realize some of the definitions and classifications at the mid and low levels might be a bit subjective too, but it's a starting point in the context of national importance... Such a classification scheme would likely move a lot of Nevada state highway articles from mid to low or bottom. -- LJ ↗ 21:41, 19 June 2021 (UTC)

I am having trouble seeing how using the National Highway System as the basis of the project's importance system is too complex, particularly as a split between High and Mid importance on one side and Low (and Bottom) importance on the other side. I agree that we need to incorporate concepts like "national significance," "regional significance," and "local significance," but the National Highway System always captures those concepts, delineates highways based on those concepts better at a high level for highways below the Interstates than the types of routes, and is easy to reference for supporting the importance of a highway in an article. V C 18:55, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

I don't see a big issue with NHS usage in principle. But there are instances where states may include roads on the NHS that, given other criteria, I don't think we as a project would place into high importance. For example, would we really classify I-80 Business in Elko, NV (parts of which are also NV 535) in the highest importance tier, given it stays within 1 mile of I-80 at all times?

More of my concern on this getting too complicated is looking additional criteria beyond NHS—especially things like functional classification for an extra bump—that begins to get more complex and harder to quickly reference. -- LJ ↗ 06:54, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

I think that we're forgetting that this will likely be a one-and-done kind of event. We're not going to be going around and constantly reassessing for importance like we do quality. We can gather and organize NHS and functional classifications once, do the reassessments, and then we're done.

In a completely different thought, the banner does have the capability for us to assign state importance independently of national importance. –Fredddie ™ 17:28, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

Does it help to think in terms of a flowchart? The first box is whether a highway is part of the National Highway System. If yes, the article should be Mid or High. If no, the article should be Low or Bottom. Once we develop our first box, we develop subsequent boxes to determine whether a highway on the Mid/High path is Mid or High or whether a highway on the Low/Bottom path is Low or Bottom.

Over time, we will refine the flowchart to address problems or to streamline steps in the flowchart. For instance, every Interstate is on the NHS, and almost every U.S. Highway has a significant portion of their route on the NHS, so for those articles, we can skip the first box and go to the next box on the Mid/High side.

There might be exceptions, such as I-80 Business Elko, but we can address those later and not hold up classification of the 98% of the system that does not break the flowchart. V C 18:15, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

Proposed change to notability rules

Hello. In the sub-articles section of the notability guidelines, it says "do not create sub-articles for jurisdictions with short and/or unnotable spans without good reason." I understand that the argument could be made that not every state segment of a highway is notable enough to have its own article, but I think at least every U.S. Route should have such articles, because if the most in-depth the reader can go is only by reading the parent page that covers the whole highway rather than state-by-state, than the reader does not have access to things such as road junction lists or infoboxes.

For example, U.S. Route 191 does not have a separate page for the segment of US 191 in Wyoming, which denies the reader the ability to look at a road junction list for this section of US 191. This is because U.S. Routes come in one of two forms on Wikipedia:

One page that encompasses the entire route in detail (from the notability guidelines: "A highway should have sizable and notable spans in at least 3 jurisdictions before creating sub-articles".). This means that such an article has detailed route descriptions and road junction lists for the entire length of the highway.
A parent page for an overview of the entire highway as well as sub-articles for each state the highway passes through (from the notability guidelines: "If the main article is long, to the point of being difficult to maintain, it may be easier to maintain a series of sub-articles."). This means that the parent page will have a good overview of the highway, but the detailed route descriptions are found in each state sub-article. Additionally, the road junction lists are accounted for not in the parent page but rather in each state sub-article, as the parent page only has a very concise and sub-standard list in its place (it would be too difficult to maintain a page like the one for US 191 if all 1,600+ miles of it were detailed with road junction lists and detailed descriptions, that's why it is split up).

One might notice that in order for all miles of the U.S. Highway system to be accounted for in terms of having road junction lists, it must be ensured that each U.S. Route is either the first type or the second type listed above, rather than a mix of each, as seen in the aforementioned U.S. Route 191 article, which along with its sub-articles, only provides road junction lists for U.S. Route 191 in Arizona, Utah, and Montana, but not Wyoming. If U.S. Route 191 only existed in Wyoming, said segment would surely have these details, but since it is longer, it doesn't get them? Also, state highways that are both shorter and less relevant than these types of U.S. Route segments always get articles with these details, but since a road is only a segment, despite being more important (U.S. Routes > State Highways), one has to defer to the less detailed parent page? An example is when I recently attempted to create the U.S. Route 2 in New Hampshire page, but it was reverted to a redirect. At first, I figured that a rural 35 mile stretch of highway probably isn't relevant to have its own page, but then I realized that there are numerous articles for nearby New Hampshire state routes that are, again, shorter and less relevant, such as New Hampshire Route 110 and even New Hampshire Route 115A! Think about that, under the notability guidelines set up for highways, New Hampshire Route 115A has a road junction list on Wikipedia, but a reader searching for a road junction list for longer and more important U.S. Route 2 in New Hampshire has to settle for a measly "major intersections list", a.k.a. glorified bullet points! This seems very unuseful and backward and was the main reason that I created the U.S. Route 191 in Arizona page about a year ago, which I guess has been deemed relevant due to it not being deleted for more than a year, proving that these guidelines can cause relevant such information to be left out.

To solve these problems, I propose that the notability guidelines for sub-articles be changed, specifically in the introduction to the sub-articles section that says "However, just because a highway spans multiple jurisdictions does not justify multiple articles... Similarly, just because one jurisdiction has a sub-article does not mean all jurisdictions are entitled to have sub-articles" could be changed by removing the part about how not every jurisdiction is entitled to have sub-articles. This would keep the part about how multi-state routes don't always need to be split up (e.g. while Interstate 66 passes through Virginia and DC, a page titled "Interstate 66 in the District of Columbia" would be very silly), while removing the part that causes the problems I have written about here.

Additionally, the second bullet point in the sub-article guidelines ("do not create sub-articles for jurisdictions with short and/or unnotable spans without good reason") could possibly be removed, and to combat the then theoretically-allowed creation of articles for multi-state Interstate Business Routes, it could be specified that you still shouldn't create sub-articles for those types of things, only that it's all or nothing when splitting up a U.S. Route or an Interstate (either you split a U.S. Route into ALL the states it passes through, or you leave it as one article, but either way, the reader should have access to the same level of detail, including road junction lists, for the entire highway).

I apologize if any of this sounded confrontational or rude, but with all due respect, I was upset that a page I spent hours working on (U.S. Route 2 in New Hampshire) was promptly deleted due to it not being notable enough, while if it was a page about an obscure state highway in the same state, it would somehow be more notable. Thank you. Azmjc02 (talk) 19:57, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

@Azmjc02: I'm not going to read the wall of text above, and surely most of the project's members won't either. Please concisely summarize your points; 6K of text is too much. Imzadi 1979 → 21:48, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

I don't have a problem with there being a US 2 NH article, but it has to be better than this. In the meantime, I have draftified your article so it can improve. Take the time to flesh out a decent paragraph instead of proposing changes to core project guidelines. –Fredddie ™ 22:00, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

Indeed, I don't mean to be flippant, but the text Azmjc02 wrote above was longer than the article was itself. I don't see any reason why the article would be nonnotable if it was well-done. --Rs chen 7754 00:10, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

Infobox road small

I made a big update to {{Infobox road small}} starting very early this morning. About 860 pages needed to be updated because they used |subtype=. Now, syntax for special routes is the same as {{Jct}}. There may be a bug here or there that pops up, but I think everything's working how we want it to be working. Some of you have already let me know of a few problems and those have all been resolved. –Fredddie ™ 23:37, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

I forgot to note that {{Infobox road}} has not changed. You still need to use |subtype= for special routes with the big infobox. –Fredddie ™ 23:40, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

So what do we have as a subestitute for the subtypes parameter? Because nothing shows up on any of the "special routes" for County Roads in Pasco County, Florida anymore. I've been trying to reformat that list for years, and I just discovered they don't show up. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 03:44, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

If you read the thread, you'd have seen it's literally the same as {{Jct}}. CR, CR-Alt, CR-Byp, CR-Old, etc. –Fredddie ™ 05:06, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

Also, if it wasn't commented away, it would have been picked up and fixed when I made an 800+-article sweep the other day. Sandboxes and the draft space exist for that purpose. –Fredddie ™ 05:32, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

Yes, I looked at {{Jct}}, and I didn't see that there. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 14:12, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

UPDATE: Okay, I looked at it, and I saw the connection afterwards. I was about to fix the Pasco County CR list, when I saw you did it yourself already. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 14:24, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

STOP ADDING I-94 to the I-35 MAJOR JUNCTION LIST!

I wanted to start this conversation to complain that everyone should stop adding I-94 to the I-35 junction list. The reason is because I-35 as a whole does not interact I-94 in the Minneapolis Multiplex. Just like how I 35 as a whole does not intersect interstate 20 and Interstate 30 in the Dallas-Fort Worth multiplex. I-35E and I-35W are treated as two different highways, even though they’re basically parts of I-35, but we don’t count interstate 94 and the junction of I-35 because it’s only intersected by I-35E and I-35W. We can always find a tenth junction of the Highway, but for now this doesn’t count. I tried to edit it like how I want to by being BOLD but a week later someone change the edit and now I feel like it’s necessary to create this talk page. Christopher Thompson (talk) 15:20, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

I must fight the urge to add I-94 to I-35 in major junction list. --WashuOtaku (talk) 16:03, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

I reverted the edit in question. Even without I-94, there are 11 major junctions in the infobox including the termini - and if I interpret the guideline correctly, termini count towards the 10-junction limit so it should be left out regardless. --Sable232 (talk) 16:13, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

This is a better discussion for the article's talk page than a project page --Guerillero ^{Parlez Moi} 16:15, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

Maplink-road issues

There seems to be some issues with the {{maplink-road}} template as of late where only a blank map of the world is showing up as an article's infobox interactive map. It seems to be only affecting random articles with no readily apparent rhyme or reason behind why some work and others don't; examples are NJ 27 (not working) and NJ 28 (working). Are there any updates to what is going on with this or things we should do in the meantime (at least maybe when editing articles for other reasons, not solely to fix the map)? —Mr. Matté (^Talk/_Contrib) 21:07, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

What happened was that these articles were switched to a blank instance of {{Maplink-road}} without checking to see if it was going to work. I've already fixed these two examples. Blank instances of that template rely on OSM data, which I don't consider to be very accurate. I've seen far too many examples of roads that don't line up with the maps at all. Anyway, you can add |raw= or |from= to {{Maplink-road}} just like you can to {{Maplink}} and it will work just fine. –Fredddie ™ 16:51, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

Oklahoma turnpike redesignations

Oklahoma went ahead and added numbers to the remainder of their unnumbered turnpikes this morning. I've already changed the text and uploaded new shields where appropriate, but could someone update the {{infobox road}}/{{jct}} machinery to display the numeric designations? We may also want to update the main infobox shields to display the appropriate meat cleavers, since they seem to have completely replaced the OTA-logo shields, on the Creek Turnpike and Muskogee Turnpike at least. I would {{sofixit}} myself, but it's been long enough since I tinkered with infobox road that I forget how it works, and there's featured articles involved... —Scott5114 ↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 18:06, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

Scott, I only added secondary shields at this point to Jct/Infobox road small and Infobox road:

Creek Turnpike

Is there anything else you wanted? –Fredddie ™ 01:10, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

I'm not sure that the non-numeric Creek and Muskogee turnpike shields are used at all anymore; anywhere I look on Google Street View shows just 351 and 364 shields for those two turnpikes. Is it possible to make just those two routes display cleavers only? Obviously, 301 and 375 are new enough that they probably don't have the blanks printed yet, much less installed, so the double-shield treatment works well for those routes until they get changed over. —Scott5114 ↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 00:14, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

Now that the jct call for turnpikes also includes the shields, we have situations in which duplicate shields are presented, e.g. {{jct|state=OK|I|44|Turnpike|Turner}} now displays as

I-44 / Turner Turnpike. (For the record, in case the behavior is changed later, I-44 shields are generated by both designation calls and display both before and after the Turner Turnpike logo.) If anyone has a handy script/bot that can add the appropriate noshield parameter(s) as needed, that would be helpful. --Kinu ^t/_c 00:38, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

A few instances that I saw, I deleted the |I|44 before the turnpike. An A/JWB run would take care of the rest however we want to do it. –Fredddie ™ 01:07, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

Odd coding error, Capital Beltway in North Carolina

So I recently noticed on Interstate 87 (North Carolina) that the historic I-495 section is now sporting the VA-MD Capital Beltway sign along with it. This appears to be an internal coding error that hopefully someone can fix. Thank you! --WashuOtaku (talk) 03:19, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

Citation/reference and OR concerns on I-85 article

Please comment at Talk:Interstate 85#Recent edits to avoid splitting the discussion. Imzadi 1979 → 18:38, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The I-85 article used to read While most interstates that end in a "5" are cross-country routes, I-85 is mainly a regional route, serving five southeastern states. with no citation. I requested a citation by adding the CN tag, but it was removed. The statement was then revised to read I-85 serves five southeastern states: Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama. This is still a violation of OR because there should be a RS to be able to state that those states are indeed in a "Southeastern" region. Regions in the US are subjective, plus even the US Census' region designation does not use the name "Southeastern" for a region.

The immediately preceding statement is also OR: It is nominally north–south hence the number is odd, but it is physically oriented northeast–southwest and covers a larger east-west span than north-south. I tagged it as CN also, but that tag was also removed.

It should be noted that Wikipedia does not have any provision that allows "obvious" statements to remain uncited. (WP:DOCITEBLUE)

17:39, 11 August 2021 (UTC) TOA The owner of all ☑️

I get what you're saying, but why not attempt to cite it yourself? All the energy wasted on this pissing match could have been used to find a source and cite it. Personally, I don't tag anything I'm not willing to work on myself. –Fredddie ™ 15:11, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Are truck routes notable?

When I was messing around with {{Infobox road small}} last week, I edited a lot of truck routes. For a lot of them, particularly with the double-bannered types in Pennsylvania, the text was a boilerplate. To paraphrase, "Route X Alternate Truck was designated when Y Bridge over Z Creek along Route X was posted with a weight limit in Year A. The bridge was replaced in Year B and Route X Alternate Truck was decommissioned." Is that notable enough for a related route entry? –Fredddie ™ 01:40, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

PennDOT designated a lot of these “truck” and “alternate truck” routes within the last 10 years when weight restrictions were posted on several bridges across the state. These truck routes are signed as long as the weight restrictions are in place and are decommissioned when the bridges are repaired to remove the weight restrictions. PennDOT does not include these truck routes on county or state maps and Google Street View is often the only way to verify these truck routes exist. Since sourcing and verifiability appear to be issues for these truck routes, I would be okay with removing entries for these truck routes. However, we should keep more permanent truck routes, such as those bypassing low clearances and steep hills, as these truck routes are marked on PennDOT maps and can be verified beyond Google Street View. Dough4872 01:47, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

Bypassing low clearances and steep hills; how is that different from weight-posted bridges? –Fredddie ™ 02:05, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

The difference is how permanent the truck route is, the ones bypassing weight-restricted bridges are only needed as long as the bridge has a weight restriction, once the restriction is fixed the truck route is removed. In essence these truck routes are long-term detour routes but are marked as truck routes and not truck detours. The truck routes bypassing low clearances and hills are more permanent as those deficiencies are harder or more impossible to be fixed. The main rationale is the truck routes bypassing low clearances and hills are signed in PennDOT maps and can be verified there whereas the truck routes bypassing weight restricted bridges are not signed in maps and cannot easily be verified besides Google Street View. I don’t think we should omit coverage of truck routes that are marked on maps, and in all honesty I would be in full support of including the ones bypassing weight restricted bridges if better sources were available. The reason I’m okay for removing the truck routes bypassing weight restricted bridges is because of the sourcing issues. If we wanna remove all truck routes then we are omitting coverage of a type of special route, what’s next, removing alternate and business routes? I don’t think we should cherry pick omitting truck routes that can be verified through maps or route logs. Dough4872 02:14, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

Facepalm –Fredddie ™ 19:12, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

So are these detour routes which are posted annually during the spring thaw (perhaps with permanent fold-down signs) to indicate "Max X Tons per axle", or are they responses to issues that didn't previously exist (e.g. a bridge gets washed away in a storm)? More importantly, are these simply marked on maps, or are they in the mileage/AADT tables for PennDot? - Floydian ^τ _¢ 03:32, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

I'm still trying to add extensions of the Truck Routes of Gainesville, Florida. I've got a sandbox for them, but instead of adding the list into a separate article, my intention is to add each section to the individual routes (FL 24, FL 26, FL 121, US 441, and anything else needed). The main problem is I can't find any resources on them (or their origins) other than the occasional random photograph, and possibly the Google Street View links. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 10:38, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

@Floydian: These truck routes in Pennsylvania around weight restricted bridges are signed year round. The bridges received weight restrictions due to structural deficiencies (Pennnsylvania has a lot of structurally deficient bridges). These truck routes are not mentioned in PennDOT logs or maps, which makes verification tricky as the only way to verify these routes exist is through Google Street View. Dough4872 12:30, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

In Ontario, weight and truck restrictions are in the same highway traffic regulation as speed limits. There has to be a list somewhere. the other question is, are these truck routes detours from signed highways? If so they certainly warrant mention in those articles... but I'm not sure a standalone article is necessary (at least until you find a legit list). RCS-style might work though. - Floydian ^τ _¢ 13:32, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

PennDOT does have a list of the weight restricted bridges, but does not have a list of the truck routes. These are signed as regular truck routes and not detours. These truck routes are not covered in standalone articles but rather RCS-style in the article about the main route. Dough4872 15:35, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

So what exactly are you asking here? If you have a source, it's surely notable to note official detours on the appropriate articles. Also, they absolutely have a list; you just haven't found it! They don't do this honky dorey. Try emailing PennDOT saying you're a trucker looking for an official list of detours for your deliveries to the Hicksville General Store. Try the counties if they have a role. Anything engineering has a list. - Floydian ^τ _¢ 21:07, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

My original concern with Dough's reply is that there is no such thing as a permanent truck route; long-term maybe, but not permanent. As we saw with the alternate truck routes, it just takes removing the restriction (by fixing a bridge) to remove a truck route. If PennDOT were to rebuild an overpass or reroute a highway around a town, those events would likely result in removing the truck route because the restriction was removed. There is no difference. –Fredddie ™ 05:43, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

If that’s the case then, then I say we keep covering truck routes because they are a type of special route, a variant of a bypass route that is specifically designated for trucks. We cover alternate, business, and bypass routes, so for consistency sake we should cover truck routes as well since it would be awkward to leave out one type of special route. It just happens that PennDOT has recently designated an excessive amount of truck routes around weight restricted bridges in recent years and is not doing a good job making information about these new truck routes easily available. Dough4872 16:27, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

Does AASHTO regulate the designation of U.S. Highway truck routes? If not, then we should not lump them in with alternate routes, business routes, and bypass routes. Bypass routes might have a truck route component, but I don't think we can equate bypass and truck routes based on that flimsy and possibly out-of-date connection. Instead, we should try to objectively distinguish the importance of truck routes, such as how important the truck restriction choke point is. At one end of a scale, you have U.S. Route 1/9 Truck bypassing the Pulaski Skyway, a historically significant bridge that is never going to be improved to allow truck traffic. At the other end are truck bypasses for weight-restricted bridges that cross creeks in small towns in which the bypass is along roads that would not otherwise be part of a state highway. In the middle is U.S. Route 219 Truck (Ridgway, Pennsylvania), which bypasses a steep hill and which (like US 1/9 Truck) the bypass is part of the National Highway System. Where should we draw the line? V C 01:44, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

Agreed. Too often we get so worked up in the what and the where because they're the easiest questions to answers that we have trouble answering the why.. –Fredddie ™ 04:50, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

@Dough4872, Viridiscalculus, and Fredddie: Sorry to bring an old topic to attention, but while I agree it would be awkward to leave truck routes out, there might be a way to mention some special routes that aren't sanctioned by AASHTO, yet are verifiably signed. Perhaps in the lede sections of these articles, or even under the "current routes" headings, there could be a single sentence stating "In addition to the officially-sanctioned routes below, an alternate truck route is posted in the community of x in order to bypass a weight-restricted bridge(reference)." That would acknowledge they exist while not treating them the same as the routes that are posted for a more permanent purpose or actual state highways.--Molandfreak (talk, contribs, email) 06:45, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

I don't necessarily like that just because that definition has changed over time (see Optional routes). –Fredddie ™ 00:06, 26 August 2021 (UTC)

North Dakota special routes

All three special routes of North Dakota Highway 23 have their own articles. I get that they're all state-maintained, but do each of these really have enough independent coverage to justify not covering them in a list?--Molandfreak (talk, contribs, email) 06:28, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

No, the ND 23 special routes do not have enough independent coverage, and it is unlikely they ever will. I suggest they be merged into the ND 23 article. V C 15:33, 26 August 2021 (UTC)

I've boldly merged them. Imzadi 1979 → 17:16, 26 August 2021 (UTC)

route shows up just fine on commons but not on wikipedia when embedded in article?

I added | map = {{maplink-road|from=Shoal Creek (Central Texas).map}} to an infobox for Shoal Creek, Austin, Texas, which corresponds to https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Data:Shoal_Creek_(Central_Texas).map BUT it's not showing up in the article. It shows up just fine on commons but not when embedded in the wikipedia article. It even shows up just fine on wikipedia when I edit the article and then preview the edit. It just doesn't show up when the wikipedia article is published. I don't understand! TerraFrost (talk) 21:19, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

See discussion above titled "Broken maps" – The Grid (talk) 21:21, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

For those who are wondering why this question was asked here, I said that since we use mapframes a lot he could ask any questions here. Regardless, it's working now. –Fredddie ™ 02:48, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

Special routes of U.S. Route 51

I've created a draft at Draft:Special routes of U.S. Route 51. I'm wondering how I should interpret the major intersections of the route through Wausau since the northbound and southbound routes scatter across a bunch of one-way streets, and the northbound route is probably 1/2 mile longer than the southbound route. Any tips or publicly-accessible route logs?--Molandfreak (talk, contribs, email) 03:29, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

I'd take a look at Capitol Loop. It has separate junction lists for each direction. –Fredddie ™ 18:53, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

Missing shield files at List of state highways in North Carolina and List of suffixed Arkansas state highways

There are missing shield files at List of state highways in North Carolina and List of suffixed Arkansas state highways. I poked around a couple of modules but did not find an easy way to make them appear. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:28, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

An old error resurfaces

"The time allocated for running scripts has expired" has resurfaced to mess up intersection lists again. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 11:56, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

Care to be more specific? –Fredddie ™ 20:51, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

It was all fairly random, but now another error has turned up on the Special routes of U.S. Route 17 list. Specifically U.S. Route 17-1 where the shield has been replaced by Lua error in Module:Infobox_road/route at line 42: attempt to compare two nil values. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 16:42, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

Fixed –Fredddie ™ 23:25, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

Request

I am about ready to deploy a Lua module for browselinks (you know, the Interstate Highway system links, state highway links, etc). If you could help me out by spot checking some articles by replacing {{Infobox road}} with {{Infobox road/sandbox}} (but not saving!) and then reporting back if you see anything strange, I would really appreciate it. –Fredddie ™ 06:48, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Insider information on U.S. Route 264

Hello, so here's a question, I recently contacted NCDOT in regards of I-587 and what will happen with US 264. I got a response today that they plan to submit to the AASHTO Fall meeting a rerouting of US 264 and elimination a part of US 264 Alt; and they were even kind enough to provide me the draft files they intend to use in the submission. They hope to have this all done in 2022. So, how do I update this insider information on the article that meets referencing guidelines, should I upload the drafts someplace or would you all suggest another method? --WashuOtaku (talk) 02:21, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Technically speaking, you can't upload the drafts as NCDOT would have a copyright in them, and since they haven't uploaded them someplace or published them to the public, they fail WP:V. There's also the idea that until they submit the application, they could change their mind on the idea. I'd just wait until the AASHTO meeting to make updates to the article. Imzadi 1979 → 04:24, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

That was what I was kind of expecting, but was hoping there was another way, it is frustrating to know what is the expected next steps but cannot add that to the articles until a third party posts it first. --WashuOtaku (talk) 12:22, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Nobody else wants to speak up on it. Can I at least mention that I-587 is tentitive to being established in 2022? --WashuOtaku (talk) 17:51, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

So I'm definitely a little late on this, but I do have a few comments. I think it would be beneficial to start working on draft pages based on that insider info, but not posting anything to the main wiki. The only exception, in my opinion, could be some vague language about how I-587 signage is expected in the future. That could be placed at the end of the I-587 subarticle. As for U.S. 264, I'm happy to host a draft linked to me, like I have User:Ncchild/U.S. Route 220 in North Carolina. I have been dabbling with some U.S. routes in NC and trying to upgrade them to GA status, and US 264 was one of those on my list. My life has just gotten pretty busy, which is why I've fallen flat on my US 220 work.--Ncchild (talk) 03:56, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

Discussion at Template talk:Infobox road/shieldmain/USA

Your input is requested to resolve a disagreement. –Fredddie ™ 02:42, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

Workshop at WikiConference North America 2021

This coming Friday afternoon, I'll be giving an online workshop at WikiConference North America on how to draw a basic SVG road sign diagram. The workshop will not be recorded, but I'll try to make some of the materials accessible on Commons for those who can't make it. Registration is free; please spread the word. Minh Nguyễn ^💬 04:59, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

I wrote up my presentation and workflow in this Etherpad. If there's interest, I can make a screen recording of the workflow and upload it to Commons, but hopefully this is a decent starting point for interested contributors. Minh Nguyễn ^💬 03:56, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

Broken maps

Recently BMACS1002 (talk · contribs) has made new maps for many highways. 100s of them are broken, such as: New York State Route 29, New York State Route 28A, New York State Route 10, New York State Route 5, New York State Route 7, etc. What should be done? -420Traveler (talk) 17:18, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

They're supposed to be utilizing OSM data, but it's not working unless you click on the map. Personally, I don't think the OSM data is very good and I'd rather have us make interactive maps at commons, like commons:Data:New York State Route 22.map, that can be used by other wikis. That being said, I would be comfortable reverting. –Fredddie ™ 18:20, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

I agree with that. The interactive maps at commons always worked. They were also more accurate to follow the route, versus the OSM maps. -420Traveler (talk) 19:43, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

@Fredddie:,BMACS1002 (talk · contribs) How do we go about reverting them, is there a way to mass-revert them? -420Traveler (talk) 16:58, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

It seems to be mainly New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Does that sound about right? –Fredddie ™ 23:20, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

This problem is happening regardless of the data. There's a relevant discussion here. It seems to be something with the server backend. – The Grid (talk) 23:46, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

I even see it in Florida (US 17 but other roads I can't think of right now). Although speaking of New York, the map for NY 25 only shows a former reference route near Cross Island Parkway, although that's obviously a better subject for the Maps Task Force. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 23:57, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

Here are some lists of articles to check and revert:

New Jersey 188 results
New York 607 results
Pennsylvania 507 results.

This compares articles that have {{Infobox road}} and {{Maplink-road}} from each state. –Fredddie ™ 00:26, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

The Bronx River Parkway, Henry Hudson Parkway and Park Avenue Viaduct still have broken maps. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 11:08, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for your suggestion. When you believe an article needs improvement, please feel free to change it. We encourage you to be bold in updating pages, since wikis like ours develop faster when everybody edits. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes—they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. You can always preview your edits before you publish them or test them out in the sandbox. If you need additional help, check out our getting started page or ask the friendly folks at the Teahouse. –Fredddie ™ 15:36, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

Seriously, though. Just look for the edit(s) BMACS1002 made around February or March and undo it. –Fredddie ™ 15:37, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

I found another Manhattan Street with a broken map; Astor Place. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 14:02, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

There's also Nassau Street (Manhattan) and Broadway (Manhattan). I have reverted them for now, as a map of the world doesn't help anyone. DDFoster96 (talk) 17:39, 5 November 2021 (UTC)

U.S. Route 17 in Florida still has a broken map, and User:BMACS1002 didn't even touch that one. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 12:09, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

November OSM data redux

Other reference threads from December 2016, April 2021, Aug.-Sept. 2021 (WP:Graphics Lab)

Can we in the community decide on what type of maps to use as the interactive map to be displayed on roads' infoboxes? BMACS1002 (talk · contribs) is keen on using OpenStreetMap (OSM) data for these articles but I feel that there have been lots of issues in the past, mostly with linework not displaying at seemingly random times. I have concerns about using an external source for direct displaying of Wikipedia data since OSM's editing/sourcing standards may be different than the WP:RS standards here. When the maps do work, the linework tends to be more blocky, often includes random segments (e.g. interchange ramps, potential old alignments), and often include divided highway segments when not necessarily needed. The main disadvantages of the Commons data from what I see is that it's not dynamic if new segment(s) of a route opens/gets decommissioned, also that once a map is initially added, the map doesn't appear for about an hour, which may confuse editors. BMACS cites a statement on their userpage about Kartographer (but provides no link to a WP-level page here) and includes a concern about redundancy/size of having both Commons and OSM data. Considering in the end the linework is just ones and zeros, with some reasonable manipulation of the data (reducing decimal precision to 5 places and/or generalization of the line itself), the data files can be brought down a couple thousand bytes (I-90's .map file is 52,000 bytes for a 3000-mile-long route). —Mr. Matté (^Talk/_Contrib) 17:54, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

@BMACS1002: any thoughts? --Rs chen 7754 01:05, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for pinging me! So now that I'm in the loop on this conversation, I see the points that Mr. Matte has brought up, and I do recognize that historically (and to some extent still), using the link between OSM and Wikimedia to create maps has been a buggy solution. To address some earlier concerns, I realize now that in recent months a lot of what I've been doing has been bombastic and with not too much regard for whether it's useful (sorry about that! Y'all can change things back as you see fit if they're still broke); however, I will note that most of the changes that I've added predate the issues with the imposm3 handling of lines, and only became problems in time.

But with that out of the way, I personally think the long term benefits outweigh the short-term bugs in using Wikimedia's link to OSM. To state a few more points in its favor, I know that updating maps in the case of a realignment isn't a top priority for this WikiProject, but it sure is a priority for OSM editors. Since they usually take care of updates quickly, that change can filter into Wikimedia's systems quicker than waiting from someone to notice the change on this site. Mr. Matte also brought up that some extraneous elements are sometimes included and others inherent to the route are missing, but I see this not as a hindrance but instead a good thing for OSM! If we see something on our end that needs fixing, then that also means that there's an issue with OSM's inclusion of elements within the route relation on their end, and we can either fix it in OSM ourselves or we can ask someone else on their end to fix it. That way, not only we can kill two birds with one stone, but we can also find problems OSM didn't even know they had!

On the point of bugginess in the imposm3 function, the short-term solution would be to use Commons data as a fallback, but we should also focus some attention on the long-term solution of making sure that the system is reliable. It frustrates me that the system works effectively for polygons and points (or at least usually does), but not for lines and route relations (for context, New Jersey has for some time had reliable interactive maps featuring county and municipal divisions on their respective pages), and us road enthusiasts have been left in wont for a reliable implementation. So let's be the force to make that happen! I think we need to include the engineers that maintain Kartographer and the imposm3 function in this conversation, but let's focus some attention to making that work. Mr. Matte also addressed differences in editing/sourcing standards, so if that becomes a serious issue (although I can't imagine anyone would've implemented this feature in the first place if that was actually an issue), or if this WikiProject concludes for whatever reason this is not something worth pursuing in the long run, then let's decide it now, and forevermore abandon our relationship with OSM. But I would be sad to see this happen- this is a good idea for a feature, and if I've learned anything in this time on the planet, it's much better to work out the bugs in a good if still incomplete idea, than to call it a lost cause and abandon the project.

But, I wonder if there might be a workaround in the meantime? I don't know how to actually implement this, but could we modify the existing Maplink-road template to check if there's any data sent from Wikimedia to the map, and if not default to a Commons map? I'd see the front end adding a tag that looks like |defaultFrom="Example.map". Or would that be too much...? Also, can we agree on a color to label these roads? Maplink-road defaults to #ff0000, but I've been seeing a trend where people are liking a darker color. I don't care either way, but some consensus there would be nice. Looking forward to y'alls' thoughts! BMACS1002 (talk) 02:13, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

I started using #cc0000instead of #ff0000for aesthetics, really. I think the darker red looks like it matches rest of the map better than #ff0000. I first saw that color used on Japanese road articles with interactive maps and tried it out on USRD articles. It's by no means official, though we can make it that way if there's some sort of agreement here. –Fredddie ™ 04:38, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

Opportunity Corridor article issues

Edited 2021-11-10 With the Opportunity Corridor opening a week from Friday (12) and the ribbon cutting just having happened, the article needs to be rewritten. I was going to start, but there are some issues to be addressed and I wanted to share them here first before I did any work on it.

The "History" and "Active project" sections need to be merged, but only the piece of information involving the construction designations 10F and 10P appears to be expendable since those were intentionally temporary.
The "Opposition" section should probably stay as-is; it appears to be NPOV.
The name of the road is ambiguous. The project has been called "Opportunity Corridor" from the beginning but that includes the area of development along the road as well as the road itself. The RS that I linked above calls it "Opportunity Corridor Boulevard" but that may be that source's own name for it. The signs in the media that I've seen all say "Opportunity Corridor" but the signs at Kinsman Road just say "Kinsman" so it might be that on the signs they just drop the designator (AKA the "generic" as identified on the Street or road name article). One of the speakers at the ribbon cutting (video available if needed) also called it "the Opportunity Corridor Boulevard" but that could also be small "b" meaning that it's not part of the name but just a description, and that could be where the source above got that "name".
Since the whole thing appears to be a part of SR-10 now, a merger to Ohio State Route 10 is on the surface the thing to do, but I have WP:UNDUE concerns, even with an expansion of the SR-10 history section, which is why I haven't proposed the merge there yet.
- Incidentally, there isn't really a good RS to prove that 10 now runs between its up-to-now eastern terminus and the Opportunity Corridor. Those were the plans, but there is no confirmation that it happened, so there might be a gap. Even if signage alone could be considered a RS, it might not be there since I don't see it being signed along Ontario St./Orange Ave. with the five routes that are there already (US-422/SR-8/14/43/87), not to mention that one of those (43) is already not signed (there is also the side issue of where Ontario St. becomes Orange Ave.), nor do I see it being signed along I-77 or US-422/SR-8/87 because of how short the concurrencies are/would be. Granted, I haven't been there in person since the ribbon cutting so I can't say for sure; also WP:CRYSTAL. We can probably say in confidence, though, that I-490 has been truncated to I-77. In any case, the map on the SR-10 article needs to be updated.

Mapsax (talk) 22:43, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

The SR 10 article is so short that a merger would probably be the way to go. The content can be reforked if the history section on SR 10 ever gets overwhelmingly large. Sounder Bruce 03:48, 5 November 2021 (UTC)

It's not about 10's history, it's about the Opportunity Corridor. I'm concerned about the latter dominating the 10 article and then saying "Oh, yeah, here's some other stuff about SR-10". Merger has just been proposed, though. Mapsax (talk) 21:46, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

Couple of press releases

Nov. 3

This uses the phrases "the new Opportunity Corridor Blvd.", "the Opportunity Corridor Blvd.", and "Opportunity Corridor Blvd.", no "the". It's still a bit vague but I guess that this is enough evidence to be able to use the last of the three, as I just have in the infobox.

Nov. 12

I'd like to use this as a ref (primary source, I know) but perhaps I should use one from tomorrow or later that says it already opened.

Also, the infobox says "Maintained by ODOT". If this goes the way of other like roads in Ohio, it will be a road built by ODOT on the ODOT system but maintained by the city of Cleveland, so that line should probably be removed.

Mapsax (talk) 00:45, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

With the consistency now of "Opportunity Corridor Blvd.", I'm now leaning against a merger because of the distinction of the Opportunity Corridor as a development versus the road itself. The infobox and junction list should be merged, but not the article as a whole. Mapsax (talk) 01:39, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

I would change the scope of the article to the construction project itself (basically add changes to 105th Street), and mention a bit on SR 10's route description and history. I don't think the corridor itself is notable to have its own article. Nova Crystallis (Talk) 02:53, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

The road and the corridor as a whole are essentially inseparable; the former was specifically not built as a freeway in order potentially to spur growth. So without a merge but with road content moved to the SR-10 article, there'd be a shell of an article dependent on another; with the merger, there would be a notable amount of non-road content on a road article, which could be objectionable. Mapsax (talk) 18:55, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

I never said the road content should be removed from the article itself. Nova Crystallis (Talk) 23:01, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

That would set up redundancy between the two articles; I don't see that as a major problem, but it could get repetitive, plus there'd be the issue of maintaining the consistency between the two. Mapsax (talk) 23:14, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

I say merge it Ronncoll (talk) 02:02, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

After mulling this over for a couple of months, I'm leaning towards keeping both articles, putting an "Opportunity Corridor Boulevard" section on one then mirroring it on the other using the {{excerpt}} template. Thoughts? [Courtesy reminder that I'm still posting this here rather than on one of the two articles' talk pages because it could influence other articles besides those two.] Mapsax (talk) 00:31, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

Are toll road authorities within USRD scope?

New Jersey Turnpike Authority, Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission, Florida's Turnpike Enterprise, Central Florida Expressway Authority, Miami-Dade Expressway Authority, and Kansas Turnpike Authority, among others, have long been marked as within USRD scope, but @Fredddie: recently de-marked New York State Thruway Authority on the basis that it is out of scope. So are toll road authorities within USRD scope or are they not. Needforspeed888 (talk) 23:31, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

I would say they fall within our scope since these agencies exclusively deal with roads. However, state departments of transportation such as the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation fall outside our scope since they deal with more transportation aspects besides roads. Dough4872 00:15, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

It was decided a while back that they weren't but I don't remember the context. I did find this discussion in the archives. --Rs chen 7754 01:31, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

New York State Thruway Authority was recently tagged as falling under USRD, shortly before I untagged it. The wording makes it seem like it always has been under USRD since its creation in 2019. It hasn't. I'm of the thinking that the toll road enterprises are private departments of transportation and thus are not within the scope.

Anyway, the line in the project scope was added in December 2013, probably as a result of the discussion Rschen linked. I guess the question we should be asking is, "is the toll road enterprise really notable enough for its own article or should it be a section in the toll road's article?" –Fredddie ™ 04:46, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

Many of these toll road agencies, such as the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission, are responsible for multiple toll roads so a separate article is needed. However, if a toll road agency only maintains one road then it can be covered in the article about the toll road. Dough4872 04:50, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

What constitutes "one road"? NYSTA presently only maintains the Thruway, but the Thruway is defined as a system of roads (mainline, New England Thruway, Cross-Westchester, etc.). Similarly, all PTC highways to my knowledge have "PA Turnpike" or "Pennsylvania Turnpike" in their names. Needforspeed888 (talk) 18:13, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

In the case of the PTC and the NYSTA, I would consider those agencies in charge of multiple roads (the mainline and the extensions). Dough4872 19:07, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

Interstate 182 at FAC

It's been a few weeks since I-182 was nominated, and reviews would be appreciated! I'm hoping to tie this into a featured topic about Interstate 82 (currently a Good topic candidate), so anything would help. Sounder Bruce 11:45, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

Edit-a-thon on Discord

What does the group think about doing an interactive edit-a-thon where a group of us collaborate on Discord to work on an article. Voice chat, sharing screens, and good ole text chat are some of ways we can communicate. If it's successful, we could schedule an evening once a month or more often.

US 66 is the idea I had for the first article. –Fredddie ™ 07:05, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

Sounds like a fun idea. Would be especially useful for national-level articles. Sounder Bruce 04:26, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

Minnesota Digital Library Trunk Highway maps

Official highway maps are available from the Minnesota Digital Library. Anyone want to have a crack at creating a template to cite them like Template:Cite WisDOT map?--Molandfreak (talk, contribs, email) 00:14, 31 January 2022 (UTC)

@Molandfreak: {{cite MnDOT map}}. Imzadi 1979 → 01:51, 31 January 2022 (UTC)

Avenue of the Saints Jct parameter

Would it be possible to add a parameter to the junction template like Jct|state=MO|US-AOTS|61 to {{Jct}} in order to display the Avenue of the Saints graphic over the US 61 graphic for Missouri intersections? A parameter would be needed for Route 27 if U.S. Route 61 in Missouri and U.S. Route 136 in Missouri ever get their own articles as well.--Molandfreak (talk, contribs, email) 00:26, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

It already does. {{Jct|state=MO|AOTS|27|AOTS|61}}

Route 27 / US 61 –Fredddie ™ 04:37, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

For what it's worth, Iowa doesn't really need this much functionality because it's all Iowa 27. {{Jct|state=IA|AOTS||AOTS|27}}

Iowa 27 / Iowa 27 –Fredddie ™ 04:43, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

Thanks. None of the Missouri intersections include the function, so I wasn't sure if it was set up yet. I'll add it to relevant pages.--Molandfreak (talk, contribs, email) 15:07, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

In popular culture

Under what circumstances, if any, is it acceptable to have an "In popular culture" section in a road article? Needforspeed888 (talk) 23:29, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

I don't think there's a threshold that makes an in popular culture section appropriate, but I'd look for significant coverage just like WP:GNG says to do. –Fredddie ™ 08:10, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

I won't include a pop culture section unless the road forms a part of the story in a well known pop-culture work. As some specific examples: In the Back to the Future trilogy, the 1950's version courthouse square has visible US highway shields for U.S. Route 395 (which is appropriate) and US 8 (likely an anachronism, and erroneous reference to Interstate 8). I have argued against mentioning this in the highway articles, because highway shields are just props to decorate a scene. US 395 is not part of the actual story. I make a similar argument where an Arizona State Route 64 shield is visible in Thelma and Louise, which is appropriate for the setting for that scene, despite that scene actually being filmed along Utah State Route 313. (they likely just patched the sign while filming) That fact is not mentioned in the article for either highway. Again, just a prop, not directly related to the story. However, I have written an "in pop culture" section for U.S. Route 50 in Nevada and assisted with the one on U.S. Route 66. The difference there is are movies, songs, books, etc. that are not only set along US 66 and the Nevada portion of US 50, the road itself forms a significant part of the story for those works. In both of those cases I have removed entries in the "in pop culture" section for those articles where someone has said "it was also (only casually) mentioned in an episode of Family Guy/The Simpsons/some video game". Dave (talk) 19:34, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

AASHTO Fall 2021

It's finally posted, [16]. --Rs chen 7754 22:10, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

The link to the results shows Spring 2021 in the report and not Fall 2021 as per the URL. 😔 Imzadi 1979 → 22:47, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

It is a typo, the information is the Fall 2021 results. --WashuOtaku (talk) 01:40, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

Interstates in Washington at FLC

Another heads up: this FLC for List of Interstate Highways in Washington needs a source review and another prose review or two. It'd be great to have a new FL for the project to start the year. Sounder Bruce 07:33, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

Hate to be that guy, but road articles have serious SYNTH problems

Hello. Not a project member, but I was sifting through some of the GA-level North Carolina-related highway articles and I can't help but notice that most are built in their near-entirety off of maps, which are basically WP:PRIMARY sources, and are woven together via WP:SYNTH. Examples:

U.S. Route 76 in North Carolina (promoted in 2021)
- Exiting Fair Bluff to the east, US 76 runs parallel to a former Atlantic Coast Line Railroad,[9] currently operated by the R.J. Corman Railroad Group. There is no secondary source pointing to the significance of this; the source provided are railway maps, an old one and a new one.
- The highway meets Hallsboro Road at a diamond interchange north of Hallsboro. Continuing east, US 76 passes north of Lake Waccamaw. Sourced to Google Maps. Google maps does not tell you what kind of interchange there is; that's interpretation of the map.
- The highway meets NC 211 at an interchange northwest of the downtown area of Bolton. Making a gradual turn to the southeast, the highway meets the eastern terminus of NC 214 at an at-grade intersection. US 74 and US 76 continues east along a rather straight alignment before meeting the southern terminus of NC 11 at an at-grade intersection. After crossing Livingston Creek, US 74 and US 76 enter the community of Delco from the east, running through the central business area. These maps don't indicate what areas are "downtown" or "central business areas". "Rather straight" is also a judgement call.
- In 1936, US 74 and US 76 were adjusted in Leland, using a curve along Village Road to avoid an intersection with Lincoln Road and Post Office Road. The maps do not say that the DOT deliberately sought to "avoid an intersection". It may appear that way, but assigning intent is going beyond what the sources say.
- Accordingly, the highway follows the original alignment of US 76 through Chadbourn and Whiteville. A roundabout intersection with US 701 Business surrounds the Columbus County Courthouse which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Google Maps says nothing about an "original alignment". Nor does it say that the Columbus County Courthouse is on the National Register of Historic Places.
North Carolina Highway 2A (promoted in 2013)
- This article is sourced entirely to DOT/State Highway Commission maps. No evidence it even passes GNG due to the lack of secondary RS.
North Carolina Highway 102 (promoted in 2014)
- Same as above.
Interstate 440 (North Carolina) (promoted in 2020)
- A mixture of good secondary RS (mostly news articles pertaining to construction projects) and a bunch of maps.

I am not disputing the factual accuracy of these articles per se, I am suggesting that they rely too heavily on primary sources that have to be woven together. There is a difference between having a newspaper article which directly says "In 1955 the highway was extended one mile" and having a map of the road in 1954 and another map from 1955 from which a Wikipedia editor calculates the difference in route length. Please remember WP:OR and WP:Verifiability, not truth. I hope my breakdown of the U.S. Route 76 article explains my points. Lots of assumptions are being made here, and even if they are good ones, they are still just assumptions and interpretations. -Indy beetle (talk) 05:44, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

Maps are not primary sources; the GIS data is considered the primary source and maps are a secondary source since editorial decisions are made as to what to include on the map. That being said, there are some limitations with the use of maps as sources and admittedly some of the examples you point to above fall below that standard. --Rs chen 7754 05:50, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

@Ncchild: --Rs chen 7754 05:50, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

@Indy beetle: Just take those articles to WP:GAR. –Fredddie ™ 17:46, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

I do believe that this is a rather unfair assessment. With that being said: the first issue you bring up is maps. Just as Rschen said, maps are a secondary source and often (especially in the 1940s-1970s) were done by outside cartographers. That is at least true in North Carolina. The only primary sources that North Carolina roads generally have are the route changelogs that come about in the 1960s and are used through today.

As per the Atlantic Coast Line comment, that can be removed easily. I think what you're saying is excessive because one could trace every map from start to today and see that same line, but I'm not willing to fight it out. I would argue that the interchanges are not an example of SYNTH because Google Maps physically shows the interchange. It is not implying an interchange is such, it's just a label.

WP:CALC says that editors can make arthimetic calculations (of which subtraction or addition is one of them). Subtracting two distances, from two maps is a fair assessment.

The last thing that I want to say is that my articles (albeit 2A is not mine) are not unique among these issues because I upgrade my articles using the example of others. K-181 (Kansas highway) uses the same idea regarding interchanges, M-211 (Michigan highway) uses the concept of highway maps in the history. If my articles go to WP:GAR then all articles who uses these methods need to.--Ncchild (talk) 19:17, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

The reason why I brought this here is because I figured this was common practice across several road articles; I was not trying to target one user and I didn't go straight to GAR because I figured that these wouldn't have passed unless these were the sourcing norms that the project normally uses. I went here to understand what was up.

Maps are editorial creations, yes, but if we treated historical articles the same way with the same sourcing standards I think we'd be in trouble (using sparsely labeled photos instead of, you know, books). Summarizing an image is more subjective than summarizing a text. Specifically for example, you say Google Maps physically shows the interchange. Google Maps did not label this a "diamond interchange". You saw what looked like a diamond interchange so that's what you decided to call it. It almost certainly is a diamond interchange, but that's not what GMaps called it. I could see an at-grade intersection, a Spaghetti junction, the Illuminati, or a Picasso sketch; there's no text to say I'm wrong. -Indy beetle (talk) 19:49, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

I will certainly say that this is not the standard practice across all U.S. road articles and you won't find deficient map sourcing practices in states where the editors are different i.e. California, Michigan, Washington. Unfortunately, the GA process is broken and while I would like to think we as a project are good at catching these issues at the FA and A-Class levels, there are too many GANs and too many bad reviewers (many from outside the WikiProject) and we unfortunately don't catch everything. --Rs chen 7754 03:45, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

While agreeing that this wikiproject has it's fair share of sub-par articles along with all the others, I disagree with the pretext, nor the insinuation that the project is systematically using subpar sourcing or methods. Any source can be misinterpreted, and maps are not different than say citing a chart, graph, poll or any source where data is presented to the reader, without the explicit intended meaning of the data stated by the author. Let's continue with the example of citing the words "diamond interchange" to a Google map. Diamond interchange, along with SPUI, Cloverleaf, stack, and any number of interchange types have formal definitions by the USDOT, and those definitions have been adopted by numerous other English speaking countries. Even a user casually familiar with those interchange types and their USDOT definitions has enough qualifications to make the determination that is indeed a diamond interchange, without needing it to be explicitly labeled. It's no more original research, or synthesis, than a Wikipedia article about a US election that sources a statement to a published chart with red and blue figures,but not a legend explicitly stating red is Republican figures and blue Democratic. And I'd rebut any accusation of that being synthesis with the same logic. Red and Blue have been used as the de-facto colors in U.S. election charts and reports for decades, and anybody even moderately familiar with US politics knows this. In fact arguably that is more likely to be synthesis than an interchange, as to my knowledge no federal agency has decreed an official color coding for election statistics, the news agencies did that on their own with no central authority. Dave (talk) 05:23, 24 February 2022 (UTC)

P.S. Now if you want to argue why would a reader on the other side of the globe care this highway has diamond interchanges, then I'll agree with your point ;) Dave (talk) 19:18, 24 February 2022 (UTC)

I will also add the link that I couldn't find last night: Wikipedia:Using maps and similar sources in Wikipedia articles --Rs chen 7754 03:41, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

The naming of interchange types usually is WP:SYNTH, but comparing consecutive maps for changes "between xxxx and yyyy", when they are official DOT maps, is hardly synthesizing information. Half the interchange names I come across are terms from community forums for SimCity and Cities:Skyline that don't ever get used in the real world nomenclature... e.x. "semi-directional T" or "cloverstack". - Floydian ^τ _¢ 20:54, 24 February 2022 (UTC)

Fair enough, good point. I'll amend my statement. While interchange names are sadly subject to Fancruft issues, and the project has been dealing with that for a long time, the basic types, including Diamond (the case in question), SPUI, Cloverleaf and Stack, have formal definitions by the US DOT and are easily recognizable by even novices in the field. Granted many hybrid designs have been given unofficial names by roadgeeks and/or CimCity gamers. Dave (talk) 21:25, 24 February 2022 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:Interstate 110 and State Route 110 (California)#Requested move 17 March 2022

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Interstate 110 and State Route 110 (California)#Requested move 17 March 2022 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. It has been proposed to move Interstate 110 and State Route 110 (California) to Route 110 (California), as well as the similarly titled 238 and 710 articles to Route 238 (California) and Route 710 (California), respectively. Zzyzx11 (talk) 08:09, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

New interstate designated (I-42)

FYI, it may be time to start the Interstate 42 article. Two sections of the future route have been formally accepted into the system, though signage is not yet installed. See Here. --Jayron 32 12:50, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

There are at least two talk pages discussing it: Talk:U.S. Route 70 in North Carolina#Proposed split, Talk:U.S. Route 70 Bypass (Goldsboro, North Carolina)#Requested move 20 March 2022. The current consensus is that we are to wait till signage is on the ground, this is the same for Interstate 587. --WashuOtaku (talk) 13:16, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

Sounds good! --Jayron 32 13:29, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

What maybe could occur is working on a draft so that it is ready to go when the signage is installed. The weird thing about I-42 is that I'm not sure if one section will go up before the other because of the 540 project. I did the same for I-587, complete with a map and all the sections you would expect. That way, we are prepared.--Ncchild (talk) 03:42, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

Signage means nothing. It means a contractor hasn't gone out to change the signs (and you may be hard pressed for an article down the road saying "the signs are up now"). Follow the official FHA decision. - Floydian ^τ _¢ 12:18, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

I agree, but others feel that it needs to be signed, despite the fact hidden Interstates also exist and we have had sites updated with official sources in the past without physical confirmation. --WashuOtaku (talk) 12:26, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

Others aren't following WP:V nor WP:NOR. Signs are not published works, and again are put up by independent contractors without "editorial" oversight. I'm sure we all have a list of incorrect signage in our area. Floydian ^τ _¢ 13:04, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

I understand your point about sources, but it's not quite that bad. Yes you can find sign errors in every city, but sprinkled around. I couldn't name a single instance where every sign along a 20 mile highway is wrong. I view the presence of signs in the field as confirmation, not a source. There are thousands of highways that have been proposed by one legislative body or another, and are well documented in the government's paperwork, but with no funding attached, their chance of becoming reality is near zero. We've all similarly had to clean up highway articles that are full of such additions. Some of these even have entire Wikipedia articles _cough_ Interstate 3,Interstate 7, Interstate 14, _cough_. It's a tough spot because there's sources for the claim that the highway will someday be extended to the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, so it's not speculation, but it is truth be told either wild eyed politicians dreams without any plan or knowledge of how to make it reality, or worse pandering for votes. Waiting for physical signs to go up is, admittedly an arbitrary milestone, one could just as easily choose funding approved or bulldozers show up to grade the road, but a milestone that works to show this proposal is for real. I personally like it as even projects in mid construction have been cancelled, but once the signs are up, there's no going back.Dave (talk) 15:32, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

Discussion at Talk:Interstate 84 (Pennsylvania–Massachusetts) § Distribution link

You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Interstate 84 (Pennsylvania–Massachusetts) § Distribution link. Treyhazard2001 (talk) 06:16, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

Source for images

The North Carolina Department of Transportation Flickr account has been using CC-2.0 license for its photos for the past few years, good source of images for highway construction, bridge dedications, etc. -Indy beetle (talk) 01:50, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

[1] ttps://www.wbko.com/content/news/Natcher-Parkway-officially-changing-to-I-165-506778581.html. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)

[2] 1989 and newer are not on Commons/Wikisource for copyright-related reasons.

[1]

[a]

v t e Roads and highways in Kentucky
Highway systems	Interstates U.S. Routes State Parkways
State highway lists	Primary 1–999 1000–1999 2000–2999 3000–5999 6000–6999 Special Former
Supplemental roads and rural secondary highways	1–199 200–299 300–399 400–499 500–599 600–699 700–799 800–899 900–999 1000–1499 1500–1999 2000–2499 2500–2999 3000–3499 3500–6999
Highway agency	Kentucky Transportation Cabinet
See also	Kentucky portal

Salem Parkway

New York US shields

Managed lane articles

New Jersey Route 179

Interstate 285

Interstate 470 categorization

Georgia SR 540 (Fall Line Freeway) signed

Interstate 80 Business Routes in Wyoming

Feedback request

Special routes year-specific shields

Snow Emergency Route signs

Maintained by

Need clarification on the 10-jct limit of the Major intersections section of the infobox

"To" entries in infoboxes

Proposed renaming of Utah list article

Routelist template problems

Major cities in the article introductions

Interstate 80 in New Jersey

"Extra" parameters in Template:Jct

Categories

Last exit before toll

Tolls update

Natcher parkway in Kentucky is now I-165

Watchlist

New article for TOTSO?

Did I do the KML file right?

Disambiguating locations in top templates

Is I-95 between I-80 and the GWB part of the New Jersey Turnpike mainline?

Merge proposal

Infobox fix

"Major" intersections

Cite NDOT map‎‎

US 522 merger

Highways serving parks

Two problems with Puerto Rico road shields that need solving

Highways serving parks

Quick question

Terminus names for highways with inconsistent or nonexistent posted cardinal directions

2019 AASHTO Spring Meeting Minutes

See PR Highway talk page

Time for an old fashioned audit

Other document validations

County road terminology

Interstates 102, 106, 109 and 113

Merge proposal

USRD banner attention flag

New York City Street Name Signs

Should browsing include redlinks?

Merge proposal

Texas loop and spur RCS list scope discussion

U.S. Route 44

Template:Jct updates

Routelist templates calling local street names

When the colloquial name is just the last word of the full name

Alabama State Route 14

New article Bayfront Parkway

Arizona Major Intersection Tables

Draft:Interstate 880 (Iowa)

List of temporary Interstate Highways

Request for information on WP1.0 web tool

Florida State Road 113 map

Source for rail line names

MfD nomination of Portal:Maryland roads

Interstate 335 disambiguation page

Deletion discussions on Commons

U.S. Route 422

Auxiliary route parameter for Pennsylvania state routes

Peer review request for Atlantic City–Brigantine Connector

Glendora Curve

List of highways bypassed by Interstate Highways

ACR is failing

"Milestone" article vs. "Highway location marker" article

Category:Roads in Savannah, Georgia

Naming convention

Google maps for mileposts?

Question about mileage tables

Should the Garden State Parkway be included in infoboxes for I-87, I-287, and the Thruway?

Category:Redirects from route numbers and Template:R from route number have been nominated for discussion

California State Route 1 (Big Sur)

Was US-25 never officially decommisioned on its north end?