text:
(UTC)

 * The same (or something smiliar) prose are in most Michigan road articles and most are above GA, M-51 (Michigan highway).. How about adding a commit over at WT:USRD the wik project that maintain US road articles, instead somewhere else.Detcin (talk) 00:39, 1 March 2013 (UTC).

 * Except that when articles have gone through FAC and later been granted FA status have been reviewed, other editors asked for commentary on the significance of the road and the level of traffic. Since NHS inclusion or exclusion is a mark of significance, that has been added to many, many articles in most states with active editorship by USRD, including the brief statement of explanation.
 * Similar is true of the inclusion of AADT data, which answers one of the Five Ws, "Who" as in "Who uses the road?"
 * Now that we've established why NHS and AADT are included in the articles, we've got the situation where technical information about transportation planning is included in an otherwise non-technical article. A brief explanation of technical details, such as a basic definition of AADT or what the NHS is about, is appropriate in good writing. Forcing readers to jump to another article, just so that they'd understand that "the National Highway System consists of roadways important to the nation's economy, defense, and mobility." is a bad writing practice. It is considered bad at the higher levels of writing standards expected of FAs because we should not send a reader to another article for such a simple explanation that can be offered inline. I would agree that this is tangential if we summarized the NHS as more than "important to the country's economy, defense, and mobility", but a half-sentence is not excessive. Entire details of the Interstate Highway System, STRAHNET, and intermodal connectors, as well as the entire background and legal foundation for the system are left for the larger article, for example.
 * A single sentence explanation of AADT is also not excessive. If the reader wants more information than provided, that's what the wikilink is for, but a reader shipped off to another article may not come back to the subject article to continue reading.  Imzadi 1979  →   01:10, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

End copy --Chaswmsday (talk) 01:09, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

Prior to editing, I researched the WP Help pages and asked a Help desk question since this question would seem widespread, and not specifically Roads-related.

I removed boilerplate prose from several Route articles specifically describing the rationale of the NHS, defining AADT and describing the responsibilities of Ohio DOT. I believe that the basic nature of WP calls for such details to exist within those specific articles, not in articles merely referencing other articles, unless there is a parent-child or general-specific relationship between the articles. I also believe that leaving the articles in this state is a dangerous invitation to massive Template:Sync problems if any of the underlying details would happen to change.

My edit summaries were of the form: "Removed boilerplate prose describing other WP articles, best left to those articles & avoiding future Template:Sync problems."

My edits were reverted by User:Detcin - in a couple of cases, twice.

Please weigh in. Thanks! --Chaswmsday (talk) 01:09, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm left asking the same question: why did you remove the information? It's in California State Route 52 which just passed FA. --Rschen7754 01:10, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Agreed. Several FAs have exactly this information, which has been provided on request. I've replied to both the Help Desk thread and Chaswmsday's talk page, but the case is that these are simple explanations of more complicated topics, provided inline so that a reader doesn't have to read another article to understand the individual highway article. The removed content should be restored. In fact, under WP:BRD, after Chaswmsday was bold in removing it, and that removal was reverted, that should have been the end of the matter until a discussion including Detcin determined a path forward.  Imzadi 1979  →   01:14, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

 * Except that CA SR 52 doesn't have all the prose about AADT, and NHS didn't even have the purpose information from the cite until I added it. --Chaswmsday (talk) 01:28, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
 * You haven't recorded an edit to CA SR 52. – TC N7  JM  01:37, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

 * The CA SR 52 article doesn't have AADT prose; I didn't claim to have touched it. To the NHS article, I added "it" - the purpose information. --Chaswmsday (talk) 06:02, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

 * @Rschen7754, you seem to have been a significant contributor to CA SR 52 and nominated it for Featured Article status yourself. You're hardly a disinterested observer. If my view prevails, that might be seen as diminishing the luster of the FA. Not at all my intent.
 * BTW, per its linked NHS map and, contrary to its current contents, CA SR 52 now appears to be part of NHS. Facts matter too, not just prose and layout. --Chaswmsday (talk) 06:16, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Per, it is not part of the NHS. And invalidating people's opinions by fiat is bad form. --Rschen7754 06:19, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I truly don't understand what you mean here. I'm somehow invalidating others' opinions by force? I'm just stating my own arguments. So yeah, I put a snotty little zinger there about CA SR 52's content, because I'm getting annoyed over your breaches of Talk protocol. But really, the NHS map shows SR 52 as a "MAP-21 Principal Arterial" and the NHS memo talks about principal arterials under MAP-21 becoming part of NHS on October 1, 2012. So I might be correct? Not that I'd ever heard of any of this before a few days ago. --Chaswmsday (talk) 06:43, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
 * You can't just discard people's opinions because they are involved with the topic - that's why you posted here, right? to get our opinions? You may be technically correct, but the sources are not clear enough on whether CA 52 specifically was added to the system. As a tertiary source (an encyclopedia), we are bound by our sources; we have to go by what the sources. Verifiability, not truth. --Rschen7754 06:55, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I didn't say your opinion was necessarily incorrect. Just that you objectively have an interest in the SR 52 article. About the MAP-21/NHS bit, it looks to me just as authoritative as the other NHS member cites I've seen - an official NHS map and a link to the official description of NHS page. And about having to "go by the sources", that will come up in my later points. --Chaswmsday (talk) 07:01, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

I don't think it's all that likely that the underlying details of what NHS is are likely to change all that much. Routes may be added and dropped from it, but what the system is will probably remain static, so I don't really see much of a sync issue. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 01:45, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
 * This seems like a case of someone trying to find a Wikipedia guideline or policy to justify actions based on not liking a set of identical sentences that appear in many article. I do not like the boilerplate "the National Highway System consists of roadways important to the nation's economy, defense, and mobility," but that does not mean I am going to remove the sentences or request they be removed from hundreds of articles. Being one of thousands of editors of an online encyclopedia means we are going to come across material repeated seemingly incessantly in a set of articles that rubs you the wrong way. If it bothers you, step back and consider whether trying to change something quite trivial is worth the effort.  V C  03:00, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Another point that bears mentioning in a slightly different fashion: each article needs to be able to stand on its own to a certain degree. Yes, we can point readers to other articles for detailed explanations, but these half-sentence explanations left inline keep each article fairly self-sufficient.  Imzadi 1979  →   03:35, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

I find it curious that, quoting @Imzadi1979, the mere thought that "a reader shipped off to another article may not come back to the subject article to continue reading" is severely onerous to that reader, who couldn't possibly go back a page in their browser, or open the new article in a separate tab, assuming that a casual reader of a road article is even remotely interested in the details of a linked article, which we must summarily describe in the first article. Yet, @Rschen7754 has repeatedly redirected readers of this thread to the locations of some of the original comments, collapsed them (incorrectly), both of which violate Talk page guidelines and is now entreating me to do so, as some sort of Sync problem, even though the former comment locations have been marked as redirected here. Unlike the reader of the road article, those editors who are interested enough to read this thread in all likelihood would want to read the thread from the beginning. So no. No collapse. --Chaswmsday (talk) 06:33, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

Let me state how I got here. Having driven these roads in real life, I have edited Ohio State Route 444 and Ohio State Route 844. While a cursory examination of @Detcin's edits shows many useful contributions, these I felt were violations of Wikipedia's basic principles and fraught with danger: "National Highway System, a system of routes determined to be the most important for the nation's economy, mobility and defense." No comment for now. "The highway is maintained by the Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) like all other state routes in the state." Really, the state DOT maintains all state routes?? Who'd a thunk it?? Plus, irrelevant to the road article. "The department tracks the traffic volumes along all state highways as a part of its maintenance responsibilities using a metric called average annual daily traffic [sic] (AADT). This measurement is a calculation of the traffic level along a segment of roadway for any average day of the year." Yeah, half-sentences there (irony).

I found these so egregious in over-defining linked terms and assuring Template:Sync problems in the future that I convinced myself that @Detcin was responsible for this solely in his/her edits. That's why I went first to Help and Help Desk. I was certain that over-defining a linked term was an issue that had already long been dealt with by WP in general. It wasn't. When I found agreement in Help Desk, I set about boldly "correcting" @Detcin's road articles, edit-summarying them accordingly. If @Detcin objected, I could sway her/him with the over-defining and Sync arguments. Only to find...that this format was Standard Operating Procedure in the US Roads Project. Astounding!

As to some of the arguments, would it now be OK for me to, after the first reference to Interstate Highway System, mention the "Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways" and/or give a half or full or two sentence description of its transportation and defense rationale? These points may or may not be obvious to Americans, but likely wouldn't be to non-US readers. Should I further describe Wright-Patterson Air Force Base or Wright State University, which are linked w/i the OH SR 844 article? Or myriad and sundry other links within road articles? If not, why not? This definitely is not my first rodeo, so I expect I'll get "of course not, those cases are entirely different" comments, but I've found, unfortunately, that some editors will use any type of "pretzel logic" to justify their own WP:ILIKEITs, while denigrating similar counter-examples ("YOULIKEITs").

It's all kind of a matter of degree: summaries are valid if there is a parent-child article relationship. Sometimes, a little bit of explanatory text about a linked term is helpful. I've always rebelled against those editors who try to enforce hard-and-fast policy regulations on every situation. I see WP primarily as a work of art, with every situation and article having its own set of challenges. However, I believe that in these particular cases, re-describing these links w/i the Road articles has gone too far. True, NHS probably won't change, but unless the editors who claim that work at FHWA and/or can work a crystal ball, that isn't a given. Maybe AADT will be redefined with some better metric. Sure, ODOT currently maintains Ohio State Routes, but what about in the future? I can easily imagine a scenario where, to cut the state budget, Ohio pushes responsibility for traffic counts down to the counties, municipalities and/or townships in an unfunded mandate. They've certainly done that before. With some of these, you still might have to do some editing, but the verbose verbiage currently existing would make that all the more difficult.

The least objectionable of these is the definition of NHS. It truly adds about a half-sentence of prose, and if it had been the only example, I might have left it alone. And yet...wait for it... In OH SRs 444 & 844, we have "a system of routes determined to be the most important for the nation's economy, mobility and defense". In California State Route 52 we have "a network of roadways important to the country's economy, defense, and mobility". Seems like a small quibble, no? But which is it? How many road articles have the first version, how many the second? Is there a third version...or more? I've seen a bunch of road articles stating that a route is part of NHS and I've seen other articles stating that another route is not. Is the goal to include NHS verbiage in every single road article? Has that already been accomplished? From upthread: "we are bound by our sources; we have to go by what the sources [say]. Verifiability, not truth." One of these versions misquotes and thus mischaracterizes how the US National Highway System defines itself. Is this an act of WP:Original research? Or an act of WP:Synthesis? Or was it simply a Template:Sync issue? One of these two versions is correct, at least currently. Which one? How many articles must now be corrected? And that, folks, is my point. Thanks for reading. --Chaswmsday (talk) 09:29, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
 * "a system of routes determined to be the most important for the nation's economy, mobility and defense" and "a network of roadways important to the country's economy, defense, and mobility" say exactly the same thing. In fact, I think I deliberately changed the wording in order to avoid any form of plagiarism. --Rschen7754 09:33, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

 * (Ugh. Copyright issues. But it's the US Federal Govt. I've been down the copyright debate road before. Please don't make me go there again... :) )
 * However, none of those changes bother me - except for the word "most". That one small word substantially alters the characterization of what NHS is. But even assuming that all of the articles are located and edited to remove the word "most" (there, I'll say it, that's the "wrong" version), who's to say that FHWA won't at some point decide that "most important" is a characterization they do want to assert. And that's the general nature of Wikipedia. For the most part, locate an article's description within the article, not within others. A change in description thus causes no problem for articles that link to it.
 * If Wikipedia had more extensive transclusion capabilities, where a single snippet of text could be reused from a parent article, I would take no issue with this. As I've stated, a little bit of explanatory text is sometimes useful. --Chaswmsday (talk) 10:40, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
 * That's not what transclusion is for; we got yelled at for doing that years ago. --Rschen7754 10:44, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
 * There's always somebody yelling about what we can't do or what we must do. But rationales are seldom given. That aside, could a transclusion even accomplish this? Every bit of documentation I've seen suggests that it couldn't. But if it could, it's easier to seek forgiveness than permission...Except in Wikipedia :) --Chaswmsday (talk) 10:57, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

Sorry for opening a can of worms here by not looking into this question more deeply before making my comments at the Help Desk (copied above). I will of course defer to the experts on this WikiProject.--ukexpat (talk) 13:45, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

@Rschen7754: I thought we were having a civil conversation on my talk page, mostly about my past experiences with a few bullying editors on other projects and how I, at first, feared that heavy-handed tactics were going to be used in this discussion. Our conversations had alleviated my fears, but now there's an outside editor involved, carrying this discussion away from here, to her/his user page, at User talk:Dank, where I feel that you mischaracterized the intent of my comments, which I believe I explained were venting about those earlier experiences and my earlier fears, in somewhat of a "WP:A nice cup of tea and a sit down" fashion. If my venting made you think I was trying to make veiled comments about you, or this discussion, please be assured I absolutely was not. Again, just discourse. To wit:

I believe it's generally better practice to leave the definition of a linked term to that term's own article. Unlike the aforementioned bullies, that's certainly not an absolute ("generally" and "better", not "always" and "required"). IMO, if someone is interested enough, they'll visit the link. If they don't come back to the first page, so what? We can't dictate another reader's interests. My current browser will give me a thumbnail of ref's if I hover over them. Maybe in the future (or maybe it already happens in other browsers), WP will give a thumbnail of the "lead" when we hover over a link. So WP's implementation might obsolete the practice as it stands here.

In the specific case of NHS, again, IMO, there is a large distinction between "important roads" and "THE MOST important roads". Equivalent verbiage is totally unobjectionable. But a version that makes a claim not matching the source mischaracterizes the intent of the source and pretty much amounts to WP:Original research. Again, as to NHS, there is a mini-debate within this thread about whether "principal arterials" under "MAP-21" are now included (I believe they are, but that's a separate issue). Government agencies and human nature being what they are, it's likely that the NHS definition wouldn't change. But, it's at least possible that the FHWA could say that NHS roads are important, while the MAP-21 arterials merely connect to important roads. Again, probably not likely, but this is really all about a larger point, anyway. And that's all I intend to say on this subject. No hard feelings intended or taken. --Chaswmsday (talk) 17:12, 4 March 2013 (UTC)
 * A couple of points quick, but if there is a discrepancy in how the description has been paraphrased ("most important" vs. "important"), the better tactic would have been to engage Detcin in a polite discussion about removing the word "most" instead of posting walls of text on this talk page. As for this "mini-debate", that's a false claim as a single posting by a single editor asking for clarification is hardly a "debate" of any kind. In short, leave the NHS description in the articles, clear it up as needed and move along.  Imzadi 1979  →   23:46, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

NHS in Infobox
Note: As mentioned in another section, I've asked the question about NHS principal arterials at Talk:National Highway System (United States).

Because National Highway System (United States) is an important attribute in U.S. Road articles, I'm wondering if that shouldn't also be indicated in an article's Infobox. I played around with populating Template:Infobox road's "System" parameter, but that would involve manual intervention for each article and the result, just below "Highway System", created IMO, a hinky-looking line break just after it.

Within Template:Infobox road/browselinks/USA (I had to edit), NHS exists, so it appears that a proper wikilink might possibly be generated. But I would have to seriously read up on my already limited understanding of template code to figure it out.

Does anyone else think this idea has merit and would know how to implement? Thanks. --Chaswmsday (talk) 19:15, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

 * Would it be better to turn it on only for routes that are on the NHS? By definition, the NHS (not including MAP-21) is 4% of all state highway systems.  So, I'm thinking it could be implemented with yes on articles that are part of the NHS. –Fredddie™ 22:24, 4 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I support the idea of listing what parts of a route are part of the NHS in the infobox in the top part along with the length, dates, tourist routes, and restrictions.  Dough 48  72  23:37, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

 * I'm not convinced that we'd need to list it in the infobox. Yes, there is the browselinks for the NHS for infobox road, but that's because infobox state highway system uses several of the same subtemplates (colors, browselinks) for the infoboxes used on system articles. Important enough to mention in prose, but not something needed in the infobox, IMHO.  Imzadi 1979  →   23:40, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

 * Oh, didn't realize just portions of routes could be NHS... --Chaswmsday (talk) 23:47, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

 * I am somewhat receptive to having an NHS yes-or-no function in the infobox but completely opposed to anything more than that. For the former, we would need to resolve a number of questions, such as:
 * Does the whole route need to be NHS, most of the route, any part of the route? I do not want to see an NHS notation in the infobox for an otherwise moderately notable highway that happens to have a short concurrency with an NHS highway.
 * Interstates should not have the NHS notation displayed because all of them are, by definition, included in NHS.
 * Which subsets of the NHS warrant inclusion? The red system and STRAHNET, surely. Intermodal connectors or those MAP-21 highways, heavy lean no.
 * I see this possibly going somewhere, but there is deliberation to be done.  V C  23:57, 4 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I would be opposed to including NHS in the infobox, because the infobox is supposed to be the most important facts about an article's subject. The average member of the traveling public doesn't know what NHS is, and could see no discernible difference between a NHS route and a non-NHS route. NHS is a planning and funding mechanism, which is not really what most people are interested in. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 01:25, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I agree with Scott: mentioning NHS in the prose is fine as part of the maintenance and traffic details, but not in the infobox.  Imzadi 1979  →   01:59, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
 * If we are not mentioning NHS in the infobox, I see no reason for browselinks either.  Dough 48  72  02:05, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm not a fan of adding NHS to the infobox, per the above. --Rschen7754 02:10, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Dough, the NHS browselinks are used for the NHS article itself at the bottom of the infobox. They shouldn't be in use on any articles at the moment unless someone's manually added them.  Imzadi 1979  →   02:15, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I don't want to see the NHS browselinks used in individual road articles. It should be restricted to the NHS article.  Dough 48  72  02:17, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
 * It appears that NHS is of minor importance? Any problem then if I pull that info from the lead of the couple I've been editing, since WP:FA California State Route 52 doesn't have in its lead? --Chaswmsday (talk) 06:40, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Some articles have it, some don't. Your call, really. – TC N7  JM  06:44, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
 * A comment on removing the factoid from the lead: on some shorter articles, there may not be that many details to summarize into the lead and still present a decent-length lead section. Personally, NHS information is not something I would normally put in the lead, but it may be good to leave those details in a short lead to help "pad" the content.  Imzadi 1979  →   14:54, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

It in my opinion has no place in the infobox due to the grand amount these could add up to in infobox length. The problem with adding more stuff to the infobox personally is that it clutters smaller articles, and just looks sloppy really. I also do tend to believe the NHS isn't really a good system to base the country on, but that's what they use. Primarily 1 or 2 sentences in the route description suffices. Mitch 32 (The man most unlikely to drive 25 before 24.) 14:01, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

Category:Temporary_jct_template_category
Hi guys. I was just working on some of the non-existent categories and came across. I've not looked at all of the members but eg U.S. Route 59 in Oklahoma has been in this "temporary" category for nearly 3 years! From that diff it looks like the category is set by a parameter buried deep in jct so I figured it's not for me to meddle with it but I thought I would bring it to your attention. Le Deluge (talk) 21:55, 5 March 2013 (UTC) (edit - another relevant diff in Western Kentucky Parkway on 24 September 2011) Le Deluge (talk) 01:13, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm not actually sure what triggers that category. I've been searching the seedy underbelly of the template and can't find it. –Fredddie™ 23:05, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
 * It shows up in the syntax for Template:Jct/sufblank, which is used in all 3 articles, but I couldn't tell you what it's doing there or why only those 3 articles trigger it. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 23:27, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

Talk:New Jersey Route 55
Some discussion regarding sources. --Rschen7754 20:17, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Junction list content discussion
See Talk:Interstate 90 in Ohio. I feel confident in my responses and actions (WP:BOLD but not overbearing) but would like comments. Mapsax (talk) 14:39, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

Lua
I'm thinking about converting portions of our most used templates (Infobox road, jct, jctint, USRD, etc) to Lua. I hope to be setting up a testing environment at so that we're not making changes go live immediately. We may have to redo some of these templates entirely once Wikidata is fully deployed; however, I'm hoping to convert some of the more complicated parserfunctions to Lua so that they are less computationally expensive and reduce page loading time. --Rschen7754 21:19, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

 * For those of us not technically educated, what will be the influence of WD on this? I have to ask cause I have no intention to get a Wikidata account. Mitch 32 (The man most unlikely to drive 25 before 24.) 22:04, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
 * They will pull some data from Wikidata as a centralized repository, rather than having it spread out across different Wikipedias. Interwiki links are being converted right now, and infoboxes will probably happen over the summer. --Rschen7754 22:10, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
 * I support this change, even before Wikidata happens. Lua looks much easier to code than parserfunctions, so once the Lua conversion happens, I think we might have more people able to maintain the templates (I'll certainly learn Lua), which will help when the Wikidata implementation happens. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 19:12, 23 February 2013 (UTC)
 * +1. I've been looking for an excuse to learn another programming language. Lua looks like it would be pretty easy for me to pick up. -happy5214 08:34, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

I figure I should let everyone know, I'm trying to feel out how Lua works by converting Routelist row to Lua. See Module:Routelist row (Lua code), User:Scott5114/SandboxT (template), User:Scott5114/SandboxU (usage). So far beltway/termini work, and row colors kinda work (decommissioned works but future doesn't yet). —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 08:44, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Fixed the future row color. -happy5214 11:32, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
 * The Lua version of Routelist row is now live. It might be instructional to check it out if you have an interest in template programming. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 01:04, 3 March 2013 (UTC)
 * LegendRJL is now also on Lua. Check for template breakage, etc. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 09:48, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

Wikidata update, again
Important dates:
 * March 6 (tomorrow) - Interwiki links come to all Wikipedias, and String datatype deployed on Wikidata
 * March 27 - Phase 2 of Wikidata (infoboxes) comes to hu, he, it Wikipedias
 * April 3 - Phase 2 of Wikidata comes to the English Wikipedia

My thoughts are to do some sort of switch statement to allow data to come from Wikidata, but to have the possibility of a local override as a lot of stuff isn't on there yet.

As far as work on Wikidata goes, things have slowed down a bit as the bot is currently occupied, but we're still making progress. --Rschen7754 21:22, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Do we know how the coding for Wikidata is going to work? It might be prudent to use the month of March to convert infobox road to use Lua so that the Wikidata coding comes easier. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 21:05, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I just finished creating a module for Infobox road/name/USA. Maybe we should create a page to coordinate all of this conversion work. -happy5214 14:49, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

WikiProject U.S. Roads/Assessment/Connectivity
Check it out! --Rschen7754 08:52, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Maybe that should be a project goal.  Dough 48  72  14:04, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
 * With the exception of M-185, I have a long-term plan to connect Michigan's FAs on the map. I-96 (currently at ACR) would connect M-6 and US 131 on the west with I-696 on the east. I-496 would connect I-96 to the Capitol Loop, and I-75 would connect the UP and LP networks together. That would leave M-26 to connect Brockway Mountain Drive into the rest of the UP network, which except for M-185 already interconnects. If Floydian were to FA Ontario Highway 402, either I-69 or I-94 in Michigan would connect to that, bridging the gap over the international border.  Imzadi 1979  →   15:56, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
 * How about a GA-level version? I'm sure there's still a few lone roads out there that aren't connected to any other GAs.  Sounder Bruce  17:22, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Maybe in a bit, that will take quite a while to generate. --Rschen7754 17:24, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I can work on a list of interlinked FA/A/GA articles tonight.  Dough 48  72  21:00, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
 * There are, in fact, GAs that are isolated from other GAs. I thought of one of my own right off the bat. – T C  N7 JM  21:05, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

How can WikiProject U.S. Roads/Assessment/ω be expanded to other projects?
I wouldn't mind seeing this in several other WikiProjects where I take active part. The idea got some publicity in Wikipedia Signpost/2013-02-25/WikiProject report, but nobody is talking about making ω more widely reported... --<sub style="border:1px solid #228B22;padding:1px;">Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 06:51, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
 * You have several options:
 * The easiest option is probably to put together a "live" table using Parserfunctions. This table would always be up-to-date (as long as the page rendering cache is purged at appropriate times). See WP:USRD/A/L as an example of what you can do. Note that our live table omits the statistics for everything but stubs due to the number of rows causing us to exceed a limit on the number of function calls that can be made; this probably won't be a concern for your project, so you could create a full table if you so desired (or just WikiWork stats). The downside of this is it creates no history, so you can't go back and check your progress, or create line graphs. (You would have to regularly manually record the statistics in a spreadsheet or something to keep such a history.)
 * You could ask the WP:1.0 bot people if they would be willing to have the bot automatically calculate the statistic for you when the bot runs. They were able to add code to generate WP:USRD/A/S for us, so it's probably technically possible for your project. If enough projects request this, it could become a standard feature of the bot for all projects.
 * Worse comes to worst you can use the web tool linked from the Signpost article to calculate the statistic at a regular interval, such as on the first of every month, or every Monday. If you intend to make graphs, it's important to keep a somewhat regular schedule so that you have regularly-spaced data points. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 07:25, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Where could I find those nice "WP:1.0 bot people" you mention? :) --<sub style="border:1px solid #228B22;padding:1px;">Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 11:19, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Try User:Theopolisme. --Rschen7754 11:20, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
 * FYI, the WP:1.0 folks are working on incorporating WikiWork. Check out this list of projects and some discussions about the data. –Mabeenot (talk) 05:37, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

WikiProject overlap
One of your key editors, Rschen7754 (really great work, way beyond my current skill level), made these edits (march 22, "removed" section) to the talk pages of WP:San Francisco Bay Area articles, removing them from the SFBA task force and WP:California. I understand the reasoning given (and won't revert), that since other states' road articles are not also in the state projects, why should California roads be in the California project? My question is the reverse: why aren't other road articles in those other state projects? I can't find any hard and fast rules for avoiding overlap of WikiProjects. The best i can find, with a cursory search, is WikiProject: "WikiProjects are not rule-making organizations. WikiProjects have no special rights or privileges compared to other editors and may not impose their preferences on articles." (somewhat tangential); and WikiProject Council/Guide: "Too much overlap: If the scope is too closely related to an existing project, then having separate projects is usually inefficient and counterproductive, because you wind up dividing the few interested editors across multiple projects.  This approach maximizes administrative hassles and minimizes collaboration.  However, there is no rule that prohibits two separate groups of editors from being interested in the same articles (my emphasis)." We do have other Wikiprojects whose content is almost, or completely, enclosed by the Cali project, such as the University of California (inactive), California State University (inactive) and Stanford projects, and I havent seen a clear pattern of no overlap with them. We also have such issues as whether the California project should somehow be automatically included in the US project, which of course includes some states but not others. I think ive made my concerns clear. Does anyone here know more about how such issues are resolved? i know its not a content issue, so we wont need to find references, etc, and any sort of edit war on this is rather silly. I would especially like to know if there are more guidelines for managing project overlap. i am a somewhat maniacal editor for the SFBA project (the project and the portal were fairly moribund until i came along), but i want to play well with others while doing so. After all, if every time someone takes an action (like a cdrom) using all the Cali project articles and automatically includes the cali road project articles, it really doesnt matter, does it?Mercurywoodrose (talk) 02:22, 23 March 2013 (UTC)
 * It's basically tag clutter, and those other projects rarely edit the related articles. The editors that do frequently don't follow the road project standards and make a mess of the article, sometimes not even following Wikipedia-wide guidelines by adding trivia and non-notable stuff into the articles. We don't tag our articles for WikiProject Highways (our "parent" project) nor WikiProject Transport (parent of that project). I've also seen issues where other projects try to claim our FAs and GAs as their own but not our stubs. This puts an end to all of that nonsense. I'm not trying to strike some sort of WP:OWNership stance here or say that non-project editors can't edit "our" articles, but I'm trying to stop unproductive edits under the guise of other WikiProjects. --Rschen7754 02:36, 23 March 2013 (UTC)
 * The Michigan TF for USRD is considered a TF for the Michigan WP. There's no need to dual-tag, and in fact, I've wanted to update our banner to handle display of the various state-level wikiprojects through our banner to reduce clutter and emphasize the overlap.  Imzadi 1979  →   02:49, 23 March 2013 (UTC)
 * The definition of scope and how it affects an editor who is looking for guidance is important here. State projects are too wide of a scope for an editor looking for specialized assistance with road articles. State projects are great for topics that tie together a wide variety of different disciplines related to a state or for articles on governments or jurisdictions within the state. They are not so great for specialized topics like state highways, universities, sports teams, rivers, and so forth, which are all features that have equivalents in other states and for which it makes more sense to share standards and wikiprojects with those other features. This is a major reason an editor looking for assistance on road articles is unlikely to find guidance in the state wikiproject. The other reason is in most cases, if multiple wikiprojects "claim" or "own" articles, then no one wikiproject really owns the article. Either both wikiprojects try to maintain the article and conflict over standards, no one wikiproject bothers to maintain the article, or one of the listed wikiprojects maintains the article and is available for guidance and the other is missing in action. In conclusion, I argue for tagging articles with the wikiprojects whose scopes suggest their members have the more specialized knowledge of a category of topics.  V C  19:59, 23 March 2013 (UTC)
 * So, would it be appropriate to tag short roads that exist entirely within the Bay Area as in the Bay Area task force, as editors there may actually have specialized knowledge on the subject, such as significant landmarks on the routes? Thanks for all the informative comments, but i still dont see where there is a guideline which says an article can, or can't, be tagged with multiple, sometimes nesting, projects? It sounds like each active project does as it feels best. I know for my part, im not about to start adding trivia to a bay area road article, just because its in "my" project, but if thats happened a lot due directly to articles being included in projects (and not just by curious and inexperienced editors finding an article to their liking), then ok. PS i have added about 1,000 articles, mostly stubs, to the project in the last few months, with some of them GA and FA articles. I don't know which editors, from which, if any, projects, worked to make them FA's and GA's, but does that mean that Flower Drum Song should NOT be in the Bay Area task force because editors not associated with the TF built it up, as no one else should get "credit" for that hard work? Mercurywoodrose (talk) 04:51, 25 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Such tagging causes more problems than it solves, realistically. Also, "significant landmarks on the routes" usually turns out to be the trivial and non-notable information that has to later be removed. --Rschen7754 04:53, 25 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I probably agree that listing landmarks could be detracting from the main point of the articles, but California State Route 92 has unsourced info on habitats it crosses, and California State Route 238 mentions passing by the mission, no source provided. I think the former may be trivia, while the latter is not. Would my tagging these articles as part of the SFBA task force put them at risk? Is my perspective overruled because im not an expert on Road article construction, but am an expert on the Bay Area? Im sorry, this is sounding a little like ownership, even if with excellent intentions.Mercurywoodrose (talk) 05:09, 25 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Anybody can edit any article, regardless of project tagging. --Rschen7754 05:10, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Suggestion to tweak a line of the welcome template
So, I just recently used and decided to read over it for the first time, as normally I just drop the template and leave. I found a line that might need tweaking.

There is a line that reads

I propose changing it to or something similar, since you don't need to live in the United States to be interested in U.S. roads.

Let me know what you guys think. T C  N7 JM  16:23, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

 * I support this.  V C  18:17, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

 * Make it happen. –Fredddie™ 19:34, 23 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I agree too. That way we can encourage international editors who like US roads.  Dough 48  72  19:49, 23 March 2013 (UTC)
 * We already have an Australian user is going through our articles one by one because he wants to. I'm guessing this is the reason behind this proposal. –Fredddie™ 20:10, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

✅ since there were no objections. Thanks for your input! T C  N7 JM  15:21, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

Call for organizers: WLM US 2013 needs you
Hi, I wanted to invite you to help organize the 2013 Wiki Loves Monuments photo contest in the United States. Last year, over 22,000 files were uploaded (90% by new Wikipedia users) to illustrate articles about historic places in the United States. We need all the help we can get, so if you're interested in organizing the contest, please add your username at this page. If you have any questions, please don't post them here - place a new message on User talk:Mono. Thanks, Mono 15:13, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Possible IP vandal
I have been watching List of bannered U.S. Routes (on my watchlist) and have noticed that an IP user is adding lots of code and entries. However, the page is looking as if it is being vandalized. I would like to get this page corrected, but I think more experienced editors should take a look at it and deal with the user. Thanks. Allen (Morriswa) (talk) 00:04, 30 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Nice catch. –Fredddie™ 00:11, 30 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I think they may have had good intentions (sound familiar?), but they were messing up code on the page and making some bogus entries. I just started an attempt to reformat the page on my sandbox. I have added some entries from the actual "Business routes of U.S. Route . . ." articles. I have also started to re-sort the entries by state, and then by location. Some research will have to be done to fix the entries not on those pages, as well as the "Bannered routes of U.S. Route . . ." pages. Let me know what you think. If you, or someone else can do a better job, just let me know, and I will step aside and let you handle it. Allen (Morriswa) (talk) 00:58, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

2008 USRD GA audit
I have audited all the USRD GAs from 2008 and earlier to check for serious issues like SPS use. The results are at User:Rschen7754/2008 USRD GA audit. In a week, I will start the delisting process for articles remaining on the list, but will try and spread out the delistings to give editors time to fix the affected articles. --Rschen7754 02:32, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Elimination of unreliable sources from roadgeek websites
I have been informed that various "roadgeek" websites, like NYCRoads.com, AlpsRoads.net, and MichiganHighways.org, etc. are no longer considered reliable sources since they have not met the criteria for the exception to the SPS section of the verifiabilty policy.

Is there any exception to this policy, such as allowing pictures or maps from these sites?

I have also noticed that these sites are still used in dozens of articles as a reference source for various statements. Is there a reason why there are still some remaining reference sources from these sites?

Please explain if, how, and when all remaining reference sources from NYCRoads.com, AlpsRoads.net, and MichiganHighways.org would be removed.

If alternate source that provides duplicate referenced details in an article statement based on the original road geek site cannot be found, will the referenced details in specific article statements also be removed?Wondering55 (talk) 19:30, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
 * The short answer is that we're still working on it.
 * The longer answer is that yes, we should remove citations to those cites when we have something to replace it with. But, any article that has attained Good Article or Featured Article status cannot have any SPS citations in them, as that is part of the definition of a Good Article or Featured Article. If SPS citations are readded to a GA or FA, that is grounds for removing the GA or FA status. We also discourage people adding SPS citations to any article, because then we will have to go back and fix it later when we bring that article to GA or FA status (and our goal is to bring all articles to GA or FA status). A citation to a SPS is a temporary fix that will not hold forever; think of it like duct-taping a hole in your boat.
 * We generally do allow maps from those sites, if and only if they were published professionally by someone else (say, Rand McNally) and are only hosted on that site for convenience (i.e. someone had a scanner). --Rschen7754 19:40, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

 * We've typically been fairly liberal in dealing with the replacement of these citations in "lower-tier" articles (Stub-, Start-, C- and B-Class articles). For example, michiganhighways.org is not used in any capacity in any of the 200 "upper-tier" articles (FA-, A-, or GA-Class) from Michigan as a source, and as the remaining 14 articles at B- and C-Class are expanded and updated for nomination as GAs, the remaining footnotes will be replaced. The Wikipedia has no deadline, and with around 10,000 articles in the US Roads project and a core group of editors around a dozen or so, we've focused our efforts complying with the criteria for assessment at the upper levels for now. See the thread above about an audit of articles promoted to GA status back in 2008 that includes SPS replacement as one of the items mentioned.  Imzadi 1979  →   19:44, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

A-Class review proposed changes
There are proposed changes for the A-Class review for WP:HWY, to deal with situations where there are several opposes, and when the nominator has failed to respond to the comments. Your input is welcome at WT:HWY/ACR. --Rschen7754 05:48, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Categories for highways
I have observed that some categories mostly for interstate and U.S. Routes are disorganized. For example, some pages in Category:Interstate 95 are not in any particular order. They are somewhat scattered all over the place. Shouldn't Interstate 95 in Virginia be under the primary list? They include Interstate 95 in New York, Interstate 95 in New Hampshire, etc etc with the states in alphabetical order. Shouldn't all pages that start with Interstate 395 be under the "3"? Also, Category:Interstate 65 has two pages are under "A", which have no relevance to the two, them being Interstate 165 and Interstate 565. Thoughts on this matter? Category:U.S. Route 1 seems to be in decent shape. Tinton5 (talk) 23:05, 14 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Part of the issue has to do with the sort key used with each entry. At some point, these seemed mostly standardized, but this is an issue that likely hasn't received much attention over the years with other project standards/revisions taking precedence. I think someone mentioned a little while ago about doing some category cleanup, but I don't recall where that conversation was or what actions were decided on. --  LJ  ↗  00:05, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

Wikidata guidelines
You're invited to help in drafting guidelines for U.S. highway items on Wikidata! The current draft guidelines are at d:WD:USRD/GL. Input is needed, so help today! -happy5214 10:11, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

List of bannered U.S. Routes
I have been reformatting the List of bannered U.S. Routes page in my sandbox. I have resorted each section by location, and then by route type. I also added entries that weren't on the page. Most of those entries I got from the "Bannered routes of U.S. . . ." pages, the "U.S. Route . . ." pages, the "U.S. Route . . . in . . ." pages, or (as in the case of U.S. Route 87) Loops of U.S. Route 87 in Texas. Also, I used the 2013 Large Scale Rand McNally road atlas, Rand McNally's online mapping service, and Google Maps to find others that aren't on those Wikipedia pages. I listed some by how they are signed (for example, US 67B vice BUS US 67 in Arkansas). I want to make the pages on the actual list page, but I thought I should ask you guys first. Do you think there are any other changes I should make? Allen (Morriswa) (talk) 10:24, 20 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Normally such lists are sorted in geographic order, from south to north or west to east, regardless of "type".  Imzadi 1979  →   11:49, 20 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I can go back and re-sort the list. It will take some time, though. Also, all of the existing bannered route lists (Interstates, as well as U.S. routes) need to be reformatted, and all of the routes need an article (or at least a redirect). Allen (Morriswa) (talk) 11:54, 20 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I have re-sorted the sections of the page. What other changes should I make? Today, I start my 10AM-10PM schedule, so I won't reply to you guys until after that. Allen (Morriswa) (talk) 12:21, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

WikiProject Highways/Assessment/A-Class Review/Pennsylvania Route 652
Providing notice that I've recommended this article for demotion at ACR. --Rschen7754 10:58, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

California State Route 52 et al
Had a discussion with Rschen at User talk:Rschen7754 concerning original research and ownership. Per Rschen's blanket refusal to consider either issue, I'm going to boldly edit California State Route 52. --Chaswmsday (talk) 20:29, 20 April 2013 (UTC)
 * All you did was change two or three words. The new words are synonyms or close to synonyms of the old words. I do not understand how this improved the article at all. The fact that you advertised your boldness here makes your course of action seem pointy to me.  V C  21:33, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

 * No, "important" means "worthy of note", while "essential" means "required". Use of "essential" got away from the meaning in the cited source. As for "highway" vs "road", Rschen's stated concern was to avoid plagiarizing the source. The source had "roadway"; I chose "road" over "highway" since a non-subject matter expert reading the article might misconstrue "highway" as "freeway" or as "multi-lane divided". I've seen other articles with "network" or "system" of "routes". "Roads", "roadways" or "routes" are not as likely to be misconstrued as "highways".

 * And I stated my intention to be "bold" in this forum strictly because there seems to be a sense of article ownership by frequent contributors to this Project. My, IMHO, good faith effort to improve WP is not "pointy"/disruptive at all. --Chaswmsday (talk) 21:49, 20 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Chaswmsday, I don't want you to feel like that sentence is required in every USRD featured article because it's not. I can think of at least two FAs that specifically do not include it. –Fredddie™ 01:56, 21 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Just a quick thought, but I think there's a bit of fatigue setting in regarding a single sentence of articles. This was discussed recently in the #wikipedia-en-roads IRC channel, and it's been debated multiple times. Where Chaswmsday is seeing "ownership" in a comment made by rschen, I see a general "why are still still discussing this yet?" type of malaise and a certain level of "hey, I put a lot of thought and work into this article, and someone comes along an wikilawyers it over a single word?". Anyway, I'd switch back to the word "important" over "essential" because there are varying degrees of interpretation, but as for "highways" vs. "roadways", in the US, I don't see where someone would confuse that with "freeway", but to each their own. And yes, drawing attention here, Chaswmsday, smacks me of sticking a thumb in rschen's eye for the sake of getting "one up on him".  Imzadi 1979  →   02:30, 21 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Were it not for WP:POINT I would be tempted to just delete the NHS information from all of the articles. The amount of energy that's been expended upon this is ludicrous when you consider how important NHS is. (Which is to say, not important at all for your average reader or road user.) —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 06:06, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Is Missouri Route 350 to become a new US 350
Can someone take a look at Missouri Route 350 to see if the recent edits are accurate or not? The editor says that is is slated to become a new US 350. Allen (Morriswa) (talk) 20:18, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm going to say no, since US 350 exists in Colorado now. There have been a bunch so similar weird claims on other Missouri articles lately, like upgrades from state routes to Interstates.  Imzadi 1979  →   20:24, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Feel free to revert the edits if an editor makes such a significant or controversial edit and the editor does not provide sources.  V C  20:33, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

California Incline
For anyone familiar with California roads, the newly created page California Incline, says it is a road and bridge in the lead. Should it be reworded to say "road bridge" or something else? I am not 100% sure if the entire street is a bridge. Tinton5 (talk) 23:43, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Road yes, incline yes, bridge no. (map) –Fredddie™ 23:53, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
 * On the map you provided, it looks like it is held up by a few columns, near the intersection with Ocean Ave. This article states the "bridge part" will be reconstructed. Tinton5 (talk) 00:02, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
 * It is not a state highway, and does not fall in our scope. --Rschen7754 00:35, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

Avenues v boulevards
If anyone can help in this CfD discussion please join in. While not restricted to the US, I'm sure someone here can provide some good guidance. Vegaswikian (talk) 23:58, 29 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I think you're looking for WikiProject U.S. Streets. This isn't in our scope. T  C  N7 JM  00:03, 30 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Vegaswikian (talk) 00:26, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

Mass user renaming coming
I know a lot of people have requested renames in the past on the English Wikipedia, but have not globally, or have not unified their accounts. If you have not done so, it may be a good idea to do so soon, before May 27 - otherwise it may be a huge mess to clean up aftewards. Feel free to drop me a note on my talk page if you have any questions - I'm familiar enough with the process. --Rschen7754 06:54, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

Proposed rename
Well, because Morriswa couldn't link it, I will. Mitch 32 (It is very likely this guy doesn't have a girlfriend.) 00:19, 4 May 2013 (UTC)
 * I also nominated Washington's two lists for requested moves right here.  Sounder Bruce  23:36, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

Volume (carrying capacity)
I would think that articles should mention maximum carrying capacity of a limited access highway. For example, at 50 mph, allowing 3 second interval and a 17 foot vehicle (arbitrary), the capacity for a single lane should be nearly 3,000 vehicles per hour. The "per hour" is important because when the editor specifies that the road carries 6,000 vehicles per hour during peak conditions, the reader might reasonably conclude that the traffic will slow to (say) 25 mph, roughly.

This should be modeled/outlined with a usable citation. Okay, this isn't a very good one: http://books.google.com/books?id=8O4Th52zjssC&pg=PA37&lpg=PA37&dq=carrying+capacity+of+highways&source=bl&ots=O1gkiwnPT2&sig=hX0acaf58qSg1NOqrwKRFGJ72mA&hl=en&sa=X&ei=W058UbvFJYuE9QSD24DAAg&ved=0CDEQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=carrying%20capacity%20of%20highways&f=false. It assumes a 1.8 second distance which seems short IMO. This one, at least, appears neutral, but is not really the ultimate available: http://ntl.bts.gov/lib/29000/29200/29208/2001WZSnapshot_final_.pdf. The beauty of a real study, is it allows for correct sizing, including an average mix of larger vehicles, like trucks, and a 3 second delay between vehicles.

Unfortunately, for this project, most articles are aimed at mass transportation and are pov on road traffic, which renders them undesirable for a road article. But this is a simple calculation. "All" that needs to be done, is to find an online (for credibility) text which contains it. If I could have, I would have!

For a unlimited access (not a TP), the editor is forced to use engineers design specs or measured volume, if s/he can find them. No "mechanical" table-punching recourse as there would be for limited access roads. We would make that clear in the "outline." Student7 (talk) 22:42, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

 * Not to sound outwardly contrarian, but why would we say how many a highway could carry when we can say how many it does carry. –Fredddie™ 22:53, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
 * And to go along with that, these sorts of technical details probably should be in articles on controlled-access highways or highway engineering.  Imzadi 1979  →   22:54, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
 * If the maximum carrying capacity of a highway is notable enough to be mentioned in a newspaper article, then it can be included. Often newspaper articles will mention Highway X is designed to carry 65000 vehicles per day or similar statements when talking about the need for improvements or plans for improvement. Otherwise, this information should not be included. Using the above sources to calculate the maximum carrying capacity is original research or involves point of view issues.  V C  00:19, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
 * The original point, of course, was to find a Transport 101 text (which I do not have) that would contain this information and would be useable by all. The capacity would be speed oriented, and the table listed by speed. The turnpike would hold more at slower speed limits. This would allow table punching by an editor who would also use the identical citation. This would seem more appropriate to local state or city sections that say, the entire I-95 or I-80. It is rather basic to the article. Why else have an road if not to carry vehicles? Student7 (talk) 14:50, 1 May 2013 (UTC)
 * We're not transportation engineers, and such calculations, if the results are not repeated in reliable sources are original research. Sorry, I don't support the idea outside of an article on highway engineering.  Imzadi 1979  →   14:57, 1 May 2013 (UTC)
 * I am not an engineer, but comments that I've read from registered PEs on forums make me believe that there is considerable disagreement as to what the "acceptable" capacity of a road is, and it differs from agency to agency. Furthermore, what level of service are we talking here? A road will have much lower capacity if you constrain it to be operating at LOS A than it will at LOS F. Then you get things like latent demand involved, and it all gets extremely complicated really quickly. (If further exposition on this point is needed, I can contact a PE registered in New Jersey and ask him about it.) This type of question is the sort of thing people get paid six figures to figure out, and I doubt it's a good idea for us to even attempt to come up with, especially since it's trivia most people either wouldn't understand or wouldn't care about. More to the point, it lands pretty squarely in original research territory. AADT is much easier to source, doesn't have the original research problems, and is more useful, so let's stick to that. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 21:31, 1 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Furthermore to the above, let me give a practical example from what I'm currently looking at. Here is FDOT's Straight-Line Diagram of a portion of FL SR 826, a.k.a. the Palmetto Expressway, and here is the surface road portion of SR 826. The road that the article covers ranges from a busy multi-laned expressway to a city street. How would you incorporate "potential capacity" into this article when the road varies in its function? One way I could see it done is to look at the lane average widths (those numbers directly beneath the diagram) and calculate from there; but, if you think that it would be practical to take every single lane, every milepost the width changes on every highway, Interstate and notable road (and what of states that don't have this information available?), and calculate it and throw it into a table or something...mate, it ain't happenin'. -DyluckTRocket (talk) 03:19, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

GAR notice
Pennsylvania Route 51, an article that you or your project may be interested in, has been nominated for an individual good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. --Rschen7754 20:00, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

By-county highway navboxes
Do we have anything anywhere that strongly urges against making more of them? I noticed this morning that they are being created en masse for Georgia, but they do not appear to be deployed as of yet. I guess my biggest problem with them is that the states that have this style of navbox (Georgia and Texas, specifically) have bigger problems than needing navboxes. –Fredddie™ 11:44, 26 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I have a number of issues with these boxes as a concept, but I won't get into them now. However, emphasis should be on improving the content of the articles instead of cluttering them with navboxes. A two-paragraph stub that isn't longer than the infobox in the article doesn't need more templates at the bottom of the article. Also, the creation of these boxes encourages the creation of "List of highways in Foo County, Bar" type articles, a concept that that has pretty much been deprecated. A simple list of the highways in a county can be added to the article on the county itself in most cases to prevent forking issues.  Imzadi 1979  →   11:48, 26 April 2013 (UTC)
 * What if someone were to go to a highway's page and wanted to know what other highways are in the same county/counties as the "original" highway. If they went to the actual county's page, sometimes the list of highways is not listed. Shouldn't there be some kind of navigational boxes that would help with a situation like this. Also, if someone is in a hurry, they could quickly glance at the boxes to get the same information.
 * The reason that the boxes for Georgia haven't been "deployed", yet is that the user is waiting until all of them were made, proofread, corrected (if need be), and had their talk pages started. Allen (Morriswa) (talk) 12:22, 26 April 2013 (UTC)
 * The "Transportation in Foo County, Bar" categories will link to them. Categories, btw, take up much less space than navboxes, even collapsed navboxes. Remember that we have to consider highways like Interstate 75 in Michigan that pass through 15 counties as well as ones like M-553 (Michigan highway) that exist in only one.  Imzadi 1979  →   12:25, 26 April 2013 (UTC)
 * First, you are talking about the "Transportation in xxx County, xxx State" categories? Second, what should I do with the county navigational boxes that have already been started for Georgia? It seemed like such a good idea (especially after seeing the ones in Texas) to have them, per my "arguments" above. Allen (Morriswa) (talk) 12:30, 26 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, those categories. Second, not everything Texas does is right, nor is everything that state does applicable to other states. They have 254 counties, and not all of their templates are created. Think of it this way, if every county or equivalent in the US had a navbox, there would be 3,143 or so templates for the project to maintain, and it would prompt the potential creation of nearly that many "List of highways in Foo County, Bar" articles.
 * As for what you should do with the existing templates you've created, tag them with db-g7 and let them get deleted by an administrator in due course.  Imzadi 1979  →   12:37, 26 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Personally, I do not see the need for by-county navboxes when categories do the same thing. Also, if a route passes through several counties the navboxes add a lot of clutter.  Dough 48  72  20:56, 26 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Can someone explain how creation of county route navboxen encourages creation of county route articles? This seems like a farfetched argument against county navboxen. It is along the same lines as "don't create any more articles about state highways because the editors who do that don't know what they are doing and are going to ruin everything."  V C  00:58, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
 * This is about county routes? I thought this was about state routes in a certain county. T  C  N7 JM  01:07, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Not county route articles, lists of highways for each county. Such lists are being created in Texas because the templates link to them in the heading of the navbox.  Imzadi 1979  →   02:07, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

By-county highway navboxes should die. --Rschen7754 01:08, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Are you guys trying to ruin my fun? Are there any easy and quick edits I can do to help USRD on my nights after work (like tonight)? On my 10AM-10PM schedule, I don't have much time to edit until I have a day off (won't have one until Monday). I want to help, but -- aside from just plain article editing -- I keep getting denied. Allen (Morriswa) (talk) 02:36, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
 * The simplest solution is to write! You've proven you know how to improve articles in Georgia from Stub to C. That is the main priority in the project, getting rid of stubs. T  C  N7 JM  02:38, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Allen, if you need something "quick and easy" to work on, click this link . It will open a new window with a random article related to USRD.  If you don't like what you see, close the window and try again.  More often than not, though, you're going to find something easy to fix. –Fredddie™ 02:47, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Note, that link I just provided seems to be flaky. If you get a Bad Gateway error, just refresh the page until it works. –Fredddie™ 02:53, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Morriswa, please stop hijacking these threads by complaining about how your schedule does not leave you time to edit. Almost all of us have obligations in our lives that prevent us from editing Wikipedia as much as we would like. These availability statements are relevant in specific cases in which a user is expected to be responsive, such as GAN, FAC, or dispute resolution. A project talk page is not one of those specific cases.  V C  17:54, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

Getting back on topic: The point about a link in the navbox to an article like List of state highways in Glasscock County, Texas is good; however, would not that be solved by removing such a link from the header of the navbox? The category point is good. The county article point is very good.

I admit, I am on the fence about these navboxen, so I am playing devil's advocate. It seems the consensus is pointing toward that we should deprecate these navboxen. However, WP:IDONTLIKEIT is not an appropriate way of supporting that. I want to see some more good reasons why these navboxen should be deprecated. I also want to see some supported examples of when similar navboxen are appropriate.  V C  17:54, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Transportation in X county, state categories do the job better, without the need to be manually updated, and take up less screen space. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 18:45, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I agree that the the by-county categories are better than the navboxes and the list articles.  Dough 48  72  18:57, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
 * To answer the second question, I'm not sure we should ever use the by-county navboxes when a category could be used instead. They just take up space. T  C  N7 JM  19:54, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I know that we have the categories, but the navigational boxes give a quick-glance glimpse into the highways in the county/counties that the "original" highway runs in. Most casual users don't understand categories, so the boxes serve the same purpose (also, any users that are in a hurry, but still want to find the information). Allen (Morriswa) (talk) 20:04, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
 * But the information seems kinda trivial. Not all readers really care, more or less, if the highway they looked up is in the same county as whatever other highways are in the navbox. T  C  N7 JM  20:08, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
 * And the infobox has the counties parameter for that summary. Ditto a properly formatted junction list table that includes every county along the route of a specific highway.  Imzadi 1979  →   20:09, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

So are we going to take any kind of action on these? A couple users are going around creating a bunch for Texas, and if we don't want them, we should probably act soon. T C  N7 JM  21:55, 1 May 2013 (UTC)
 * The easiest course of action is for Morriswa to tag all the Georgia navboxes for speedy deletion by placing at the top of every Georgia template that he created.  But since I'm posting explicit instructions here, he won't understand what to do and we'll be forced TfD. –Fredddie™ 22:11, 1 May 2013 (UTC)
 * If he just posts a message confirming he wants them all deleted, that will be sufficient enough for me to delete them. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 23:39, 1 May 2013 (UTC)
 * It's been five days and still nothing. Are we ready for a massive TfD? –Fredddie™ 03:23, 7 May 2013 (UTC)
 * To be totally honest, I don't want these boxes deleted. In fact, if someone hadn't complained, I had planned to finish making Georgia's (along with the talk pages), added each box to the appropriate highway articles, and possibly moved on to some other state and started the process all over again. Unfortunately (in my opinion), that is frowned upon. Therefore, I guess all of the ones that I made for Georgia (not even halfway through the counties), all of the current ones for Texas, and any others that exist are being considered (too polite a word?) for deletion. Allen (Morriswa) (talk) 03:39, 7 May 2013 (UTC)
 * The templates and category have now been nominating for deletion at Templates for discussion/Log/2013 May 7.  Imzadi 1979  →   05:44, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Blue Ridge Parkway
Is there anyway that the Blue Ridge Parkway can be added to Jct/doc/type/USA? Allen (Morriswa) (talk) 00:40, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Why? There is no shield for the parkway, so you don't gain any functionality by being able to call it from .  You'd actually have to type more with Jct.   instead of  . –Fredddie™ 01:08, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
 * For one thing, I had no idea that there wasn't a shield for it. Couldn't you just type  (or the "VA" version)? I know it would be more typing, but it would be formatted correctly. Allen (Morriswa) (talk) 01:53, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Just because it does not use does not mean it is incorrectly formatted. It is fine as it is now.  T  C  N7 JM  02:01, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
 * If there were a shield for it (which, again, I had no idea that one didn't exist), some users would add varying sizes for that shield. The template would format both the shield and link correctly for the articles that it could be used on. Allen (Morriswa) (talk) 12:10, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

Interstate 395 Alternate
I was in Washington, DC in September 2011, and I took some pictures of signs for "Interstate 395 Alternate", and. Do any of you have any idea what that road is, any of its history, etc.? I was confused when I first saw it. Thanks. Allen (Morriswa) (talk) 12:37, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Could be a detour route to get around traffic jams, etc. Did you see whether it was on local streets or was it on a freeway? —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 19:00, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
 * I-395 Alternate is an alternate route for vehicles whose heights exceed those of the tunnels I-395 uses between US 50 (New York Avenue) and the Southwest Freeway south of the U.S. Capitol. I do not know anything else beyond that, and what I do know is original research or a well-educated guess.  V C  20:50, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
 * The highway was on local streets. I had never heard of it until I saw it in person. Is there any way that someone could research it and add it to the Interstate 395 article? Thanks in advance. Allen (Morriswa) (talk) 03:05, 7 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Feel free to do it yourself. There is kind of an unwritten rule among us that says if you bring something up, you work on it.  You don't bring up a topic and then ask someone else to work on it.  That's just rude.  Coincidentally, I have been dragging my feet on a couple of threads above this one.  –Fredddie™ 03:19, 7 May 2013 (UTC)
 * I guess I should have "kept my mouth shut". What I said was not rude. I just know that there are lots of people here who are much better at editing than I am, so I asked nicely if someone would be willing to add any information to the article. Allen (Morriswa) (talk) 03:31, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

New infobox parameter for "Component highways"
We've exported a concept from Australia again for the infobox. Now on named highways like the St. Joseph Valley Parkway or the Ohio Turnpike, the numerical highway designations that follow the named roadway can be notated. There are several benefits:
 * 1) If the highway has its own specific marker, like the Ohio Turnpike or the Kansas Turnpike, that marker is given prominence at the top of the infobox.
 * 2) This setup should mean that we never list a marker graphic without the corresponding text next to it, a plus for accessibility reasons.
 * 3) It should actually discourage previous minor edit disagreements (I wouldn't say they rise to the level of edit wars) over whether or not to list all of the markers/shields for the highways at the top of the infobox or not. Now they can be listed in their own dedicated section.

This is the second parameter we've added and partially implemented based on feedback from Australia. The other is restrictions which has been used on Brockway Mountain Drive and Interstate 696 among others to note roads that have traffic restrictions. The tourist parameter came from discussions with editors in New Zealand and has been used to mark major tourist routes that follow highways in the US and Canada.  Imzadi 1979  →   23:54, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Oh, I forgot to mention, this new parameter will be quite useful in Alaska since segments of each named highway have different numbers. This way Richardson Highway will note that it carries parts of three different highway designations and help to deal with the fact that Alaska's highways are known by name more than by number.  Imzadi 1979   →   00:07, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Requested articles
FWIW, all the newly created Alt US 1 redirects in CT have been re-targeted to U.S. Route 1A where there is some information already present. --Polaron | Talk 05:33, 7 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks for letting us know. I usually don't add redirects to my watchlist, so I probably wouldn't have seen that. However, none of the redirects I made have any information on the US 1A page. Allen (Morriswa) (talk) 11:18, 7 May 2013 (UTC)
 * It's all there under "Former routes". --Polaron | Talk 12:47, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Standardization of route lists
I've been thinking about this for a while, and I think now might be the time to act. We need to come up with a standard format for route lists—you know, those lists of all of the routes in the state, like List of Oklahoma numbered highways. Why? Because there is no reason that, with a standard, MOS-compliant format, the majority of them could not be Featured Lists, since for every state we at least have a source of length data, and most states have a history source now. With a standard format, you would just have to follow standards, build the list, send to FL, done.

Questions to discuss:
 * 1) What is a good model to follow? (Do we have any FLs that would make a good template)?
 * 2) Should the list be broken up by system or all routes listed on one page? What naming conventions should be used?
 * 3) What columns should be present?
 * 4) Should the table be sortable? If so, how do we handle references to ensure that they are with the data they need to be, but don't break sorting? How do we handle sorting where different routes have different levels of precision in their data (e.g. different levels of decimal precision in lengths, some articles having a "circa 1965" creation date while some have "May 25, 1965")?
 * 5) Once we've decided what a standard list should look like, can a template set be created to make creation of standard lists easier?

Let me know what you all think. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 19:01, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

 * I agree that it is time to figure out what to do with this.
 * We obviously have the List of Interstate Highways in Texas as a FL. I personally like List of Arizona State Routes, but that's probably personal bias, because that sortable table is my work.
 * This should depend on how many of a certain type of route exists in a state. North Dakota only has two interstates (three if you count, the unsigned I-194), so putting them in a separate list is pointless.
 * The highway, its location, its length, and its date are must-haves. In the Arizona one I did, I had termini, but on second thought, that's probably not the best idea.
 * The table should be sortable if possible. Honestly, I think just the year is enough for dates, and lengths should go to however many decimal places the DOT lists them as in their log.
 * I'm not a template artist. Someone else take this one.
 * That's what I think, personally. – TC N7  JM  19:52, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

 * This is a very timely posting for me, because as I mentioned on IRC a little bit ago, the state of affairs with the articles in Michigan means before long only the lists will be left to improve and nominate in a Wikipedia-wide assessment process.
 * Personally, I prefer the concept of having a parent article on the system with lists for each subsystem/classification type. It just looks good to have them as links at the bottom of the infobox.
 * For states that lack the requisite numbers of list items (the FL criteria suggest that 10 is a minimum) I would say that a "List of numbered highways in X" is appropriate, combining the separate subsystems into the one list article. Otherwise I'd suggest using "List of Interstate Highways in X", "List of U.S. Highways in X" and "List of in X", altering the last one as needed to reflect official nomenclature. (Additional types should have their own lists; for business routes in Michigan, I added tables to the parent system lists.) For Michigan, we also have the Michigan Heritage Routes list at Michigan Heritage Route since the list also has to define what such a designation is as well.
 * As a side note, I'm not opposed to dropping the "List of" from the names and going with "Interstate Highways in X"; list articles don't actually require that prefix, but if we dropped it, we should move the existing lists for consistency..
 * At a minimum, we need
 * A column for the number
 * One for the length
 * Some system for time period the designation was or is still in use (I used two columns for List of state highways in Marquette County, Michigan so that readers could sort by either number.)
 * Some column for location, either separate columns by termini or a single column with a brief description.
 * A column for miscellaneous notes
 * A column for the references.
 * Yes, certain columns (numbers, lengths, years) should be sortable. The current system to deal with references is to either place one reference for the column's data in the header, much like we do with lengths in RJL tables now, or to place any references in a column on the rightmost edge. I'd say we could drop the length reference in the header and run the other references related to years and any comments in the notes needing citation in the references column.
 * I would agree that a template, much like what we've done with jctint for RJLs would probably simplify the formatting and maintenance of the list articles greatly.
 * As a side note, the discography listings have been standardized in terms of formatting using some templates, and those templates have been upgraded over time to account for accessibility. Just like we're doing with the RJLs in the US, I think we could do well to do the same with these lists.  Imzadi 1979  →   20:48, 10 February 2013 (UTC)
 * I am generally in agreement with Imzadi, except for the last two columns. I am rarely impressed with the miscellany I see in those columns.  I think that if the snippet isn't worth mentioning in the first paragraph of the article in question, it probably isn't fit to be included in the table.  I hate, hate, hate the reference columns in our featured lists.  I would prefer the references be in the cell of the fact they were citing.
 * If we create a template for building these lists, it would be possible to cite facts without the reference interfering with the sortkeys. The only other thing I would mandate is that we don't use shields in the endpoint columns.  The focus should be on the routes in the list. –Fredddie™ 23:44, 10 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Some comments regarding the state of affairs in Oklahoma: because of the way that Oklahoma inventories its routes, only certain routes have mileage available to two decimal places. For all other routes, we only have one decimal place, sourced from Google Maps. So we need to have the ability to put the references either at the top, or in a reference column or in the cell itself. Will this mean that we have to round all decimals to one place to ensure the sort works, or will it be acceptable to mix lengths with one and two decimal places? Also, Oklahoma has its decommissioned routes (of all types) in a separate list. I think this is a good idea, since it reduces possible confusion between several routes that have held the same number (most people are probably only interested in current routes), makes the list shorter, and you can include what happened to it in a special column (did it become another route, get turned over to the county, or what). —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 23:47, 10 February 2013 (UTC)
 * What are our technical or practical limitations? Technical limitations are things like being unable to create an exit list for I-10 Texas due to template limits. Practical limitations are things like avoiding 150K pages because they take forever to load for viewing or editing. Once we know our limits, we can figure out what works best within those limits. Most states seem to have 100 to 200 state-numbered highways, but some have 2 or 3 times that number. In the latter situation, putting all routes in one table could be problematic.  V C  01:28, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

No. 7 mentioned the Arizona list as what he'd like to see in a list. I agree that the state route portion of the list seems like a good starting point for a discussion on list formatting. What do other people think of the Arizona list? What should be added or removed, if anything? —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 03:34, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Initial template attempt
I made a preliminary stab at creating these templates, using the Arizona list as a guide and adding some stuff that had been discussed above and on IRC: Routelist top, Routelist row, Routelist bottom. Example:

Things still to do

 * The number column needs content. I will leave this to someone else to implement, since I am notoriously bad at grokking infobox road's innards, and we can't just fill it with jcts because that will cause the template processor to barf all over the place with as many transclusions as we need to do.
 * –Fredddie™ 05:52, 14 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Currently the template requires people to specify sortkeys manually. Should we continue this, or have the template generate the sortkeys itself? Will the required logic be too expensive?
 * The sortkey is " ". –Fredddie™ 05:52, 14 February 2013 (UTC)
 * What sortkey will we use to handle suffixed routes, such as SH-412P or NY-20SY?
 * ❌ –Fredddie™ 05:52, 14 February 2013 (UTC)
 * This is fixed with the creation of sortkey and . It still uses the  format, but the number is now padded with zeros to make it a four-digit number (25→0025).  So for SH-412P, you would use SH0412-P as the sortkey. –Fredddie™ 04:03, 24 February 2013 (UTC)
 * For now, the templates assume references and lengths will be supplied in miles. For internationalization purposes it would be nice to allow km to be specified too.
 * –Fredddie™ 05:52, 14 February 2013 (UTC)
 * References in individual cells are currently not implemented, if that is something we do want to support.
 * Some sort of logic for the decommissioned field would be nice. If blank, assume "current". If not blank, have the whole row in the "closed" shade of gray.
 * Do we want the hover text that Jctint has? –Fredddie™ 23:52, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes! We will also need to add a color legend to routelist bottom, of course, if that hasn't been done yet. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 07:39, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
 * OK, hover text added. I was given the suggestion of shading future routes orange, not unlike a junction list, so I added that as well. –Fredddie™ 00:53, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Thoughts? —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 21:21, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
 * I can work on the the name and shield part, which really shouldn't be that hard. As far as sortkeys go, for 99% of routes, we should be good to go with using number and type.  We may want to keep the manual sortkey door open for the suffixes, though.  We can discuss this further but, for simplicity's sake, I prefer "From" and "To" instead of "Southern or western terminus" and "Northern and eastern terminus", respectively. –Fredddie™ 00:11, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
 * I agree with Fredddie's last point. "From" and "To" are much simpler. – TC N7  JM  07:27, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure about this - we already get so many complaints about people not knowing from what end the articles start. --Rschen7754 07:34, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
 * I prefer the current usage to To and From, which are too simple. We should program for exceptions to when a route goes from point A to point B, such as a beltway or a route number with multiple segments; in these exceptions, there should be one cell spanning the two columns.  V C  13:15, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Rschen: Who is complaining about what end the articles start?! I've also thought about using "Mile zero" for the western/southern end, but I have no idea what we'd use for the eastern/northern column. –Fredddie™ 13:38, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm pretty sure I've seen this at a few USRD GANs. I'm sure FLC will bring it up too. --Rschen7754 22:56, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
 * As wordy as it is, I'd prefer using the directions, with the ability to span the two columns for beltways, highways that don't exit a single municipality, etc. We may look into line wrapping the headers, however on widescreen displays the columns will scale wider, so I'm not exactly in favor of that.  Imzadi 1979  →   23:49, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Beltways are supported by Your text here. –Fredddie™ 04:41, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Most everything listed is done. I haven't put any cell references in yet, but that won't take much at all. Most importantly, the template is live! A couple things to note:
 * The established and decommissioned columns will take a date in any format and spit out just the year. Sorting will still work for the dates, though.
 * The gray color is triggered by a decommissioning date being present.
 * The orange color is triggered by the established date being after the current date, so if you know the year but not the exact day, specify December 31.

I just implemented it in List of Interstate Highways in Iowa. If things break, three people who want to see the list will be inconvenienced. –Fredddie™ 05:52, 14 February 2013 (UTC)
 * The default value for the established field is 2013 (using CURRENTDATE?). I do not think that is appropriate; it will be obvious the research has not been done to determine the established date. Can we use something else as the default value for the established field, such as a blank or N/A?  V C  06:04, 14 February 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm also concerned about routes where we do not have an "established" date yet. --Rschen7754 06:13, 14 February 2013 (UTC)
 * I never said they were finished. I'm merely demonstrating that they will work when you have all the information.  It is using CURRENTDATE at the moment so it won't throw errors when you look at it. –Fredddie™ 12:16, 14 February 2013 (UTC)
 * A pair of thoughts:
 * Some states have four-digit highway numbers. Specifically I'm thinking of Texas and their FM/RM roads, but they aren't the only one. If the sort key is being generated automatically, we'll need to pad it out to four digits consistently, I think. (I noticed that the sorting by number isn't working quite as desired on the Iowa list, btw.)
 * We may want to change the "current" to "present" to match what infobox road displays.
 * Otherwise, I may transition one of the Michigan lists over as a proof of concept in a sandbox as well later today.  Imzadi 1979  →   14:43, 14 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Following up on my comments above, the sorting for the designations doesn't work correctly at all. If there any any non-numeric content in the cells, the tables sort alphabetically. So for our numbers, at current, it's sorting 1, 10, 100, 11, 110, 111, etc. It might be easiest to add sort and manually specify a sort key for each row of the table, which would also allow things like 004-1 vs. 004-2 to sort the two M-4s by year of creation, streamline other suffixes, etc.  Imzadi 1979  →   17:06, 14 February 2013 (UTC)
 * I was told earlier that there are roads like M-62 and M-94 that have a southern terminus and a western terminus. Seeing as that doesn't fit the template, what should be done for those highways? Footnotes? – TC N7  JM  17:25, 14 February 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm wondering about roads like this too. U.S. Route 98 Truck (Brooksville, Florida) has a northern terminus and an eastern terminus, which makes it hart to add the termini to articles such as List of U.S. Highways in Florida. -User:DanTD (talk) 18:43, 14 February 2013 (UTC)
 * There won't be a satisfactory solution, I'm afraid. From and To as headers are not going to work unless the highways are unidirectional. Unless we went with the generic End 1 and End 2 or similar, no solution is going to cover the oddball cases. Except for cases where the DOT switches the signage from north–south to east–west, I wouldn't worry and stick to the signed direction, and match the columns appropriately.  Imzadi 1979  →   20:45, 14 February 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm thinking we may have to create our own sorting template. I'm looking for something that will add leading zeros to a string of numbers.  It would also have to strip anything that isn't a number (read: suffixes).  I don't think there is anything like that. –Fredddie™ 21:58, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Could we add a circa flag? If circa_established=yes or circa_decommissioned=yes, wrap the date output in circa (or a subst of it), but still sort by the year. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 00:31, 15 February 2013 (UTC)
 * I think yes. Unless I've been missing something, Kansas' state highway maps only go back to 1932, so I put everything that appears on the 1932 map as c. 1932. I think there are other states like this. – TC N7  JM  00:34, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

Proposed standard
WikiProject U.S. Roads/Standards/Route lists—comments? —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 10:22, 23 February 2013 (UTC)
 * The only thing I don't like is what seems to be a requirement to start every list's title with List of..., but that's a minor thing. I like the meat and potatoes of the proposal, though. –Fredddie™ 16:25, 23 February 2013 (UTC)
 * I don't know...I like the sound of List of South Dakota numbered highways better than just South Dakota numbered highways. The latter make the article seem like it's about the system, and not just a list, but that's just me. I like this proposal, too. – TC N7  JM  16:31, 23 February 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm not saying I want to ban its usage, I think it sounds like a requirement and not a guideline. –Fredddie™ 16:33, 23 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Okay, but isn't the whole page just a guideline? – TC N7  JM  16:36, 23 February 2013 (UTC)
 * I prefer not having "list of" in front of titles, mainly for aspirational reasons. We should aspire to create lists that are not just one sentence and then a table. For instance, List of Interstate Highways in Texas has a three-paragraph lead before the first table.
 * A few nitpicks. I took a mini-course on plain language at work that noted how ambiguous the word "shall" is; I think we should change all instances to "should," "will," or whatever a more appropriate word is. More importantly, some states use the term "U.S. Route" and others "U.S. Highway"; we should allow for the variation in terminology and place the appropriate redirects for U.S. Highways in addition to state highways.  V C  20:48, 23 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Our standards documents typically use "shall" to reflect the meaning that the MUTCD uses for that word, i.e. to denote that this is a standard statement and not an option. "Should" denotes guidance or best practice that is more flexible than a standard. "May" denotes purely optional suggestions. See MUTCD chapter 1 for more details. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 22:33, 23 February 2013 (UTC)
 * I like the proposed standard for the state highway lists. Another idea to possibly discuss in the essay is a way to standardize county route lists, which have different parameters. For the county route lists, I would recommend modeling them after what NJ and NY have.  Dough 48  72  22:40, 23 February 2013 (UTC)
 * The standard as currently written could handle county route lists. I looked at a couple NY lists (Orange and Rockland) and it looks like the only columns there that are missing in the standard are the "via" column (which I would rename to "Local name(s)" if we decided to retain it for county routes) and the "Notes" column, which it looks like most people are in favor of deprecating. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 00:43, 24 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Actually, I'm not in favor of removing the Notes column. They're useful for pointing out various things, like dealing with how to note that Michigan's Interstates weren't signed until 1959, even though segments were opened starting in 1957 and 1958, alternate names for highways that might be as well known by the other names, etc.  Imzadi 1979  →   02:15, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

Points of discussion
All right, I'm going to give us some conversation starters here about some things people seem to disagree with on the proposed standard. Let's see if we can come to a consensus on them. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 10:46, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

Naming convention
This is probably the big one. Should we prefer List of Interstate Highways in X or Interstate Highways in X? Should we allow U.S. Highways to substitute for U.S. Routes? Should this guideline bless any naming convention at all? —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 10:46, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm a bit concerned about having separate lists for IHs and USHs. This is not what dewiki does, to my recollection, and could cause interwiki conflicts and confusion. Also, it makes for two really short lists. --Rschen7754 10:48, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Another user (I think Imzadi) stated that they were opposed to merging the IHs and USHs because such a merge is just an arbitrary attempt to make a longer list. It has FL approved precedent (see the TX interstate list). I don't think we should let interwiki links determine how we structure our own articles. Other than that though I am kind of neutral on how the lists should be divided. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 02:20, 2 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, I was the one that opposed an FLC on the basis that it cherry-picked two of the three subsystems in a state. The FL criteria have been interpreted to prefer lists have at least around 10 items to avoid being a short content fork from another list though. Both are considerations to keep in mind, however if the state has business routes for either the IH or USH systems, those can be included as a separate table to bulk up the item total.  Imzadi 1979  →   02:26, 2 March 2013 (UTC)
 * To answer another one of your questions, I don't think we should substitute U.S. Highways for U.S. Routes per WP:USSH. If we don't do it to the articles, why do it to the list? – TC N7  JM  02:29, 2 March 2013 (UTC)
 * We already have a crazy dichotomy of naming conventions. The lead article is titled United States Numbered Highways, but we have U.S. Route 2 in Michigan (even though Michigan eschews "Route" in favor of "Highway" for nomenclature). The category for Michigan is called Category:U.S. Highways in Michigan, and all of the other state categories match it. However, we have those listed in Category:U.S. Routes by state which is in Category:U.S. Highway System. The list for the state is at List of U.S. Highways in Michigan, which is similar to most of the other states.  Imzadi 1979  →   02:36, 2 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Hmmm...I'm still in favor of listing articles titled U.S. Route X in Y with a list titled the same way. – TC N7  JM  02:39, 2 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I prefer "Interstate Highways in X" to "List of Interstate Highways in X." I am ambivalent about local variation in the "U.S. Routes in X" versus "U.S. Highways in X." There is a good argument to use U.S. Route for the sake of consistency, but there is also a point to be made for using local naming convention. In both of these cases, we can create redirects to the deprecated or alternate term so someone searching for the alternate term would get sent to the correct place, which is ultimately more important than splitting hairs on the terminology. I agree with Imzadi1979 about not creating a list with U.S. Highways and Interstates. If the number of U.S. Highways and Interstates is so few, those lists should be merged into the state route list. There should be either one list or three lists, but never two. Finally, not every state has county routes, so I do not think we should consider them as part of this guideline-making process. County route lists are of questionable notability and trying to include them in a solution here would create information overload.  V C  16:06, 2 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Continued below in "County routes" section. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 23:21, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

County routes

 * continued from "Naming convention" above.

I think we should include county routes in this. While it's questionable that county routes deserve their own articles, I doubt even the most rabid deletionist in the project (probably me :P) opposes a mere list of them. Whether or not every state has them, I do think that when they are used, they should be standardized. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 18:41, 2 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I concur with Scott on the CR issue. County roads have at least some kind of importance and could probably survive in a list. – TC N7  JM  18:43, 2 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Agree that county roads are of questionable notability, but iff we have lists of them, they should be of the same standard. –Fredddie™ 18:46, 2 March 2013 (UTC)
 * As I mentioned above, I personally like the standard used in NJ and NY for county route lists as they are clean, easy to read, and allow for redirects to point to the specific route in the list.  Dough 48  72  19:50, 2 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I was not advocating eliminating or keeping county lists. I was advocating not including them in this set of standards.  V C  20:09, 2 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I still think we need to have a set of published standards for county route lists.  Dough 48  72  21:03, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

Is there any reason the standard as currently proposed for state/US/Interstate routes could not be used for county routes? —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 23:21, 2 March 2013 (UTC)
 * County routes do need an additional column indicating the road name(s). Otherwise, the state route standards can also be applied.  Dough 48  72  23:33, 2 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I disagree. Having two standards for the same type of information is stupid.  Isn't that part of the reason we consolidated the project, to get rid of the multiple standards for the same thing? –Fredddie™ 00:16, 3 March 2013 (UTC)
 * The state route and county route lists are different though. The county routes redirect to the lists and therefore the list serves as the main coverage area, unlike the state route lists. Also, since county routes are more local in nature it is important to list road names as in many cases the locals are more familiar with the road name.  Dough 48  72  00:24, 3 March 2013 (UTC)
 * We could implement this by including an optional "local names" column, which could be omitted where it is not relevant. This column could also be used to retain relevant information like freeway names, etc. that are currently found in the Notes column on some lists. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 01:01, 3 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I think that is an idea we can go with.  Dough 48  72  01:03, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

Local names
Optional column for county route lists? Or shall we deprecate this? —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 10:46, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
 * As I mentioned above, we should not consider county route lists in this discussion.  V C  16:13, 2 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I have reservations about this column. I would not mind it so much if we limited the local names to one, similar to our practice with the alternate name field in the infobox. –Fredddie™ 22:42, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

Notes column
Should we have a notes column? Some people want it, others don't like the trivia that ends up in them. Make it optional, or deprecate it? —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 10:46, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes. The solution for trivia isn't to remove the column, but to be vigilant in pruning it. The notes column is valuable for indicating major alternate names (8 Mile Road for M-102, Woodward Avenue for M-1) and even notes like the fact that MSHD didn't put up any Interstate signs until 1959 even though many segments of Michigan's Interstates were already open to traffic. There are important details that should be included, but obviously unnecessary stuff should be tossed out.  Imzadi 1979  →   02:38, 2 March 2013 (UTC)
 * For the alternate names examples you cite, there is the option of a "local names" column, as has been seen on some county route lists. Although that may be a waste of a column if M-102 and M-1 are the only instances it would be needed in (though you could put Detroit freeway names in there too). —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 03:27, 2 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Deprecate the Notes column. If we keep it, we would need an enforcement mechanism to avoid any piece of miscellaneous info being put there. Any information we deem legitimate that would go in a Notes column could be handled with footnotes.  V C  16:11, 2 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Another baby/bathwater situation. Because some editors have been crufty, we toss out a valuable resource or option to avoid allowing editors to be crufty in the future? In short, the proven value of keeping the column (see section below on special situations) outweighs the potential harm. I'll strenuously remind all members of this project that the best answer for trivia is localized deletions instead of removing the column where it appears. Why lose good notes to avoid bad ones that should just be deleted without comment?  Imzadi 1979  →   01:48, 3 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I advocate keeping the notes column as there are times where it is necessary to provide additional information about the route.  Dough 48  72  18:57, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

Special cases
How do we handle routes that...
 * Exist as multiple disconnected segments?
 * Use the longest segment for the purpose of sorting for length or creation date, and add a footnote to explain the situation. Use the option to span the termini columns with a single cell to explain the situation ("6 segments between Town X and Town Y").
 * We could also list the segments individually.  Dough 48  72  23:35, 2 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Another option might be to use a bulleted or numbered list to present all termini in the usual termini columns. If multi-segment routes are merged into one row, I would advocate having the length cell display the sum of all segments. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 05:48, 3 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Can you show a visual interpretation of your idea?  Dough 48  72  16:40, 3 March 2013 (UTC)
 * , please ignore the alignment issues in the first two rows. To implement the lists, we will need to change the way routelist row outputs its data, as it currently uses a format incompatible with lists in cells. I threw in a third option of horizontal rules, which would require no template changes (though it could look messy at times if the rules don't line up nicely like they did in this case). —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 18:57, 3 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I like the third style the best.  Dough 48  72  19:05, 3 March 2013 (UTC)
 * This version includes some longer termini. Experiment with it in some narrower windows so you can see how page wrapping affects the horizontal rules. Still acceptable? —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 19:50, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Routes with strange termini (3 or more termini, like SH-77D and SH-77S in OK)
 * Use the option to span the termini columns with a single cell to explain the situation ("Southern terminus in City A, eastern terminus in City B, and western terminus in Town C.  V C  16:34, 2 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Have information that is not known or not available (currently length displays "0", year columns display –)
 * Would it be possible to use N/A and not screw up the sorting mechanism?  V C  16:34, 2 March 2013 (UTC)
 * N/A is probably not appropriate, because it's not that the data is not applicable, it is just missing. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 19:28, 4 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Have any other weird quirks that aren't listed above?

For a lot of the above, this is the perfect reason to not deprecate the notes column. These are precisely the situations that call for that column!  Imzadi 1979  →   01:30, 3 March 2013 (UTC)
 * After looking at all the points provided by Imzadi arguing not to remove the notes column, I have to agree with him. There are valid reasons to keep it. – TC N7  JM  18:13, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

Proposed standard II
Okay, I've updated the standard to include a local names column and a notes column. (I will need to update the templates to support these.) It also explicitly includes county routes. What do people think of the proposed standard now? —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 18:10, 11 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I like it. Maybe you could include some examples with county routes (to demonstrate the use of local road names), beltways, or the notes column.  Dough 48  72  22:28, 11 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Expanding the examples will have to wait until the template is extended to support these. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 22:52, 11 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I like it. – T C  N7 JM  00:01, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

 * Support. --Rschen7754 00:59, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Since this has been open nearly a month with no opposition, I'm declaring this proposal accepted and christening this a guideline. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 06:34, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
 * What is the timeline for reformatting the "state routes in . . ." (and other equivalent) pages? Some pages, such as List of numbered highways in Georgia (U.S. state), are in serious need of reformatting, expansion, and addition of details, etc. Allen (Morriswa) (talk) 07:02, 11 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Whenever you feel the urge to do so. Note, however, that the templates do not reflect the changes made to the standard since the first proposal (so no Notes column, etc.) —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 07:03, 11 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I would like to start converting the Louisiana lists to the new format, but I have two questions: 1) How do I input a bannered route? and 2) Should they be included in the main list or in a separate list on the same page? Britinvasion64 (talk) 17:55, 4 May 2013 (UTC)
 * I believe you will use the same type parameters as you would on jct, infobox road, etc. (e.g. a US business route is type=US-Bus) —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 01:52, 10 May 2013 (UTC)