Wikipedia talk:WikiProject U.S. Roads/Interstate Highways/Archive 1

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

Improvement drive

The article on Transportation is currently nominated on Wikipedia:This week's improvement drive. Vote for Transportation there.--Fenice 09:11, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

Road Infobox vs. this one

Is there any reason that Template:Routeboxint is prefferred over Template:Infobox road? --Engleman 06:33, August 30, 2005 (UTC)

Yes there are reasons: the other state hwy WPs use this format, this one provides more info, etc. This project was originally developed to have a multi-state routebox since the CA and WA WPs want certain info in the routebox (but then the project eventually grew to what it is today). There are certain characteristics of an interstate that just aren't adequately ddressed in the road infobox template. --Rschen7754

Thanks for the info --Engleman 17:27, August 30, 2005 (UTC)

Highway abbreviations

I am trying to get the proper abbreviations on all of the highway-related articles. This may sound trivial, but such information is still considered valuable in an encyclopedia. --Ixfd64 01:11, 2005 September 1 (UTC)

Ridiculously Long Junction Boxes?

So... wait... I'm still not sure what the Legend is for... is that for the junction box/list?

If so, doesn't that mean something like Interstate 90 will end up being ridiculously long? --Rob 02:00, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

For the interstates divisible by five, it would probably be best to include only other 2di's. For other 2di's, I would include all 2di's and 3di's. For 3di's I would include definetely all interstates, and perhaps some other major roads. These aren't strict rules; they are just guidelines that I'm following as I begin to bring those boxes into more widespread use.

It also might be a good idea to split the legend off, making it just a link. (Many articles won't even need to use the color-coding anyway.)

Oh, by the way, if you want to make one for I-90, but don't want to research all of the interchanges out to Boston, I can do from where you leave off in the east and do the rest to Boston.

--Engleman 13:42, September 6, 2005 (UTC)

I'd agree with Engleman on this one... I prefer that all interstate junctions are listed on all interstates, but then I guess it would be a little long... sorry that I'm not helping with the boxes more. --Rschen7754 03:25, September 7, 2005 (UTC)

You could always make a separate page for the long ones, i.e. List of interstate 90 junctions. --Holderca1 02:35, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

Milepost(TM) style distance formatting ??

Just a thought/question... do you want the articles to have a driving guide, in order from west to east south to north?

Something like the famous Milepost (distances not correct, just here for example):

Distance from Los Angeles (LA), followed by state milepost (MP), followed by distance from Dallas (D), followed by distance from Jacksonville (J). Additional intermediate cities: Phoenix (P), El Paso (EP), New Orleans (NO), Mobile (M).

  LA 0 . MP 0 . P 385 . EP 886 . D 1499 . J 2690 - junction of Interstate 10 with Interstate 5 in Los Angeles

  LA 217 . MP 217 . P 168 . EP 669 . D 1282 . J 2573 - California/Arizona border; westbound travelers must stop for agricultural inspection

  LA 385 . MP 168 . P 0 . EP 501 . D 1114 . J 2305 - Phoenix, Arizona at junction with I-17

  LA 442 . MP 225 . P 57 . EP 444 . D 1057 . J 2248 - Tucson, Arizona at junction with I-19

  LA 886 . MP 4 . P 501 . EP 0 . D 613 . J 1804 - El Paso, Texas

  LA 1499 . MP 617 . P 1114 . EP 613 . D 0 . NO 603 . M 771 . J 1191 - Dallas Texas

  LA 1877 . MP 995 . D 378 . NO 225 . M 393 . J 813 - Louisiana/Texas border

  LA 2102 . MP 225 . D 603 . NO 0 . M 168 . J 588 - New Orleans

  LA 2270 . MP 26 . D 771 . NO 168 . M 0 . J 420 - Mobile, Alabama

  LA 2334 . MP 49 . D 834 . NO 232 . M 64 . J 356 - Tallahassee, Florida

  LA 2990 . MP 405 . D 1191 . NO 588 . M 292 . J 0 - Jacksonville, Florida, at junction with Interstate 95

That's the general idea. Progressive distance from assorted key points along the route. Since mileposts are up in every state, an additional indicator (MP) could follow the first place on the highway to indicate which mile in that state the driver is at. Assorted other waypoints (like Mount Rushmore, the Alamo, etc.) would be shown as intermediate points. GBC 23:52, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

Well I'd like for it to be a driving guide, but I feel like this information might clutter the articles... the term "Milepost" is entirely coincidental and does not refer to the Alaska Highway publication... the routebox takes care of the mileposts anyway. It would be extremely time-consuming to put the information in there, and many people wouldn't need this. Thanks for your input, however. --Rschen7754 00:06, September 11, 2005 (UTC)

Major cities??

Some of the cities listed under major cities are hardly "major cities." For example, the I-90 page lists Chamberlain, South Dakota as a major city along its route. Chamberlain has a population of just over 2,000 people. I think there needs to be a standard for this, perhaps a major city is any city with at least a population of 100,000. --Holderca1 02:42, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

We're talking about this over on the main template discussion page -- see Template_talk:Routeboxint --Rob 11:51, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

Copyright

Can someone here confirm or deny that interestate highway signs are in the public domain? 68.80.134.151 21:12, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

The shields are created by the government, and the images are released into the public domain... I don't see any problems. --Rschen7754 21:18, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

That's what I thought. I just wanted a confirmation from people who probably knew better. Remember, if the signs were made by a contractor then sold tho the U.S., they wouldn't be public domain. P.S. That was me above logged out. Superm401 | Talk 23:12, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

I think they are because they were made by the US Federal government. --Chris 21:21, 24 September 2005 (UTC) (i began writing this before rschen posted)

The signs themselves are probably made by contractors... the images in all of the Interstate articles are made by Wikipedia users, usually User:Bumm13. These are released into the public domain by the users themselves, who are the original copyright holders. Incidentally, that means you can use them outside of Wikipedia without attribution, although it's the nice thing to do. --Rob 01:32, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

I know what public domain means. However, if the signs are made and designed by external contractors, that grants them copyright over the sign, (a creative work) automatically according to the Berne Convention. Even if they are transferring copyright to the government along with the sign, that doesn't make it PD. Copyrights that have been transferred to the US gov remain valid. However, if the US government invented the logo, then it is in PD. If someone takes a picture of a copyrighted work, however, the picture is a derivative work with the same copyright terms as the original. Hence, that wouldn't be enough to free up the copyright. So it makes a difference who invented the logo. Superm401 | Talk 08:38, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

What you say is true, but I think the shields were invented by a government employee, not a contractor. (I could easily be wrong here, though.) As for photographs, I'm pretty sure most of the signs here aren't photographs, although there are exceptions, and in those cases, the photographer is often also the uploader. (Example: Image:The_Pennsylvania_Turnpike_LOGO.jpg) --Chris 17:34, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

Highway Photographs

I can take high-resolution pictures of the H1, H2, H3 in Hawaii where I'm stationed in the military and any road going through Houston, my home town, especially I-45, which I even have pictures from Hurricane Rita. What criteria should I think about when taking pictures? Since highways are usually very long roads, it may be pretty far to drive to get to a major landmark on the road to include in the photograph. Is there anything additional I should think about or does anyone have any additional comments regarding this?

Interesting or historically significant signs are good. Really anything out of the ordinary, I suppose. There are also some spots on some roads that just look good to the eye for some reason. Use your own judgement, I guess. It's really up to you. --Chris 21:29, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

I'm glad you asked this... I was thinking about it. I was thinking that pictures should include the road and be generally scenic -- too many Interstates in this part of the Midwest that look like two lanes, a median, and corn. If you want to start a "Requests for 'Copyrighted - Free Use' Pictures page", we can do that too. I'd personally add a better picture of the Abraham Lincoln Memorial Bridge (for I-39) and a picture of the Baker Bridge in Peoria (for I-74) to the list. --Rob 03:19, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Browse in Infobox

What is the point, what shoulod we be directing people to browse to? I don't get it. TimL 05:32, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Well... the CA, WA, and KY projects, as well as some of the other ones I believe, require users to be able to navigate state highways. For example, they should be able to go from CA-3 to CA-4 to I-5 to CA-7 (since there is no CA-6). However if there isn;t a wp for the state yet, people don't want to bother and put in the code to make the browse links. Someday I;ll go back and fix the templates though. --Rschen7754 (talk - contribs) 05:47, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Can you take a look at the I-75 infbox box then? Is that the right thing to do just leave a non-working PREV and NEXT section? TIA TimL 05:53, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

In fact it looks better than most. If you just type browse=| then it should be fine. --Rschen7754 (talk - contribs) 05:55, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Routebox and Shields

I think the Routebox template would look better if the shields led the text. Scaling the shield images down to 20 px looks good, however the article for Interstate 84 has them at 30 px. I've also tried them at 25 px, which may be a good compromise. I also like the layout for the Routebox currently used on the article for Interstate 5.

There should also be some attempt to standardize the appearance of Interstate shields in terms of size, color and font. From what I've seen so far, there seem to have been two main sources of Interstate shields: versions initially uploaded by Denelson83 in May of 2004, and the larger, darker versions uploaded by Kamlung last month. Both sources claim the shields to be the work of the U.S. federal government. Many shields have been replaced with Kamlung uploads, but many Interstates are still using the Denelson83 uploads. I think the shields uploaded by Kamlung are of higher quality, more readable, and more aesthetically pleasing. His source should be identified, and the rest of the Interstate shields on Wikipedia should be updated with this model. -- Fogger 01:50, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

I never noticed the size of the shields, but you have a valid point. As far as the standardization, there is sometimes a reason why they aren't. Take I-4. The whole thing is in Florida, so why not use the full shield, since it isn't showing partiality to any state. However, I was actually recently wondering how to go about making a shield for a 3di (they don't all have them)... PS: I never noticed a difference between the sheilds, with the exception of state names. --Chris 02:32, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

Because of the size concerns I'd use 20px... but yeah there's a lot of things nonstandard about the routeboxes, especially with Interstate 5. For example, should the mileposts say "Oklahoma 185" or "OK 185"? What is a major junction? Some routeboxes have no images for each individual junction as well. Hmm... --Rschen7754 (talk - contribs - count) 01:31, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

I was starting to write a standard on this before the routeboxes came up. I'm sticking with 20px (File:Interstate94.png I-94) for 2dis and 25px (File:Interstate-294.png I-294) for 3dis on my pages. The goal is to have the numbers be the same size. That said, I also need someone to make PNG versions of Illinois state shields... my current source is pretty good but the 3dis aren't correctly sized. --Rob 14:21, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Out of curiosity (and so I can make some), what is your source? --Chris 23:16, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

This place: Rick's Highways Page. Contains more about Illinois State Highways than you would ever have cared to know about, and still a good "original source" type website. --Rob 01:07, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

Helpful

I found this site hlepful. http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/programadmin/interstate.html

elevations and grades on the nation's Interstate Highways

There is a need, on this site, both for truckers and those of us who travel in recreation vehicles, for a linear chart which shows highway elevations (in feet) and grades (%) for the entire Interstate system.

You mean for each individually? If you or anyone else wants to put all of that on here, it's fine with me, but I'm not going to. Though perhaps the maximum grade (I'm guessing there is one as part of the Interstate standard) should be listed in the Interstate highway article. Besides, wouldn't the maximum grade be fine for trucks? The Interstate highway system was designed to be fine for trucks; one of the purposes back in the 1950's or whenever was military. --Chris 00:40, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

The standard is 6% or less. (see Interstate Highway standards) --Chris 04:02, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

USGS arial photos

Are they public domain? --Chris 02:28, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Yes. Template:PD-USGov-USGS. dbenbenn | talk 00:11, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. --Chris 16:14, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

MUTCD/SHS and the interstate shields on wikipedia

This is really wierd, but the sign I came up with by following SHS exactly leads me to have a 3di sign that looks like this File:Interstate 469.svg. You'll notice that the word INTERSTATE is much bigger on that than on the others. (File:Interstate-287.png, File:Interstate-684.png, etc) SHS says to use type E writing for 3dis. It appears that most of the other 3di signs on wikipedia use the type C, which is what ought to be used for 2dis (File:Interstate95.png). It also says that the word INTERSTATE should take up 72% of the total width of the sign. It's not a big deal; I just want to make sure that I am correctly interpreting SHS (I can't seem to find an example 3di shield anyplace in MUTCD; the dimensions are just listed beneath those for a 2di shields in M1-1.)

By the way, I plan to make signs with state names by using the dimensions from M1-2 and M1-3 (except P, which will change for each state). There doesn't really seem to be any mention of using state names in SHS, but MUTCD section 2D.11 clearly states that: "Interstate Route signs may contain the State name in white upper-case letters on a blue background.", so it is certianly OK; there just doesn't seem to be any official way of doing it. Therefore, I'll be just replacing the words LOOP and SPUR; since those are placed similarly.

As far as H201 (I mentioned it earlier.), it seems that the official shield is just a 3di shield with B lettering since "H201" won't fit as C.

I'd really appreciate your thoughts on the above. I could simply be misinterpreting the SHS book. --Chris 23:35, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

NJ State Routes as opposed to browse state highways

The New Jersians have a nifty thing that can be put on all state routes, which might be better than trying to incorporate a state-by-state thing into an interstate routebox. Just wanted to point that out. --Chris 02:48, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Then for I-95 we would have 15 of these boxes on the article. That's the problem. --Rschen7754 (talk - contribs) 03:12, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

I think NJ is the only state that does this sort of thing along the route; so, no there would only be 15 if every state did that. And even if every state did so, I-95 is an extreme (I believe it traverses the mos states); most (if you include 3dis) go through definetely less than 5, perhaps less than 3. --Chris 22:48, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

It's much more compact to do Browse State Highways though... look at Interstate 5 for instance. --Rschen7754 (talk - contribs) 23:44, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

State Highways templates

I thought that allowing these templates to exist would be a problem from the start. However, I decided to leave them uncontested. Here is the problem: editors have been putting them on Interstate and U.S. Highways... we can't have those on there. Here is the reason: If every state had one and put theirs on every Interstate they have, then Interstate 95 would have 15 templates- that's way too many. Even 3 or 4 is too many to have on one page... we already have U.S. Highway 1 with 3 on them and the page looks cluttered. Please share your thoughts. --Rschen7754 (talk - contribs) 06:36, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

Here's an idea: standandardize all the state route projects. There's no need to have seperate templates for all of them. All that's really needed is a paramater for the state name (and perhaps abbrviation, for shields or whatever). As far as the whole browsing thing, I'm still opposed to it in general (whether on an interstate routebox, in a seperate think (like NJ) or the california way). I don't really see whya nyone would want to go through every single state route, especially when the routes closest in numerical proximity often have nothing to do with it. The whole state highway on interstate highway thing is a bit strange to me in the first place (In NY, Interstate Highways and US Highways are not state routes. There are sometimes two roads with the same number, for instance Interstate 295 (New York) and New York State Highway 295 (it's insignificant, so i doubt there's a page, but if you're interested, it's right off interchange B2 of the New York State Thruway, the Taconic State Parkway exit)) Anyway, I say to hell with them all, but I suspect that that is an extreme point of view. I'm guessing that a compromise is in order. --Chris 12:25, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

There is some dispute as to its usefulness. See the talk page. --Chris 19:27, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

What if we stole their idea and had these templates on everyone's user page who edits U.S. road articles... and put stuff like the debates? That way everyone can give their input; they don;t have to search around for the info. Like for example, I'm only posting this notice here; none of the other WikiProjects know about this. If we had a shared template, everyone would know about this discussion, and we could all discuss this on one page. --Rschen7754 (talk - contribs) 07:53, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Umm isn't the point of a WikiProject to be about something specific? I don't see why I need to know about the happenings in Wikipedia:WikiProject Unrecognized countries. Perhaps one for a this specific WikiProject, but all of them? Besides, I have this page on my watchlist. --Chris 13:41, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

I meant all of the U.S. state highway/ Interstate/ U.S. Highway wikiprojects... sorry if I wasn't being specific. --Rschen7754 (talk - contribs) 20:13, 21 December 2005 (UTC)