Talk:Illinois Route 53

History
The history section should include the origin of the route, not just from 1963 onwards. CarlGH 09:47, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Yeah, when I started I figured it was implicit to the "Established" field in the infobox. It doesn't hurt to have it explicit, but it does imply that from 1924 through 1963 the route remained the same as defined in the article. &mdash; Rob (  talk  ) 14:47, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Route description
Why does the path of Route 53 leave the "interstate standard" highway at Dundee/Route 68, travel west to Rand/Route 12, north to Hicks past Lake-Cook to Route 83? Why doesn't it instead follow the simpler and faster route through the end of the "interstate standard" highway to Lake-Cook, then west to Hicks and north to Route 83? Who is in charge of making decisions like this? Thanks for your insight! --DAW0001 (talk) 20:14, 28 March 2008 (UTC)


 * The original IL 53 stopped at Dundee Road. In the early-to-mid 90s the pavement from Dundee Road north to Lake-Cook Road, and plans back then were to extend the IL 53 freeway north to IL 120, and then east to I-94 and west to U.S. 12. That died a remarkably slow death, but the signs remain the same, as if the plan may still happen. (And it might, but not if the city of Long Grove has anything to say about it.) &mdash; Rob (  talk  ) 20:39, 28 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your reply. You have nicely explained why the path of Route 53 was set as it is when the pavement ended at Dundee Road; got it.  However, why was the path NOT changed when the pavement was extended to Lake-Cook?  Further, why has it not been changed SINCE?  Even if the pavement is extended further north, this path realignment of rOUTE 53 would make sense.  And, WHO decides the path of the Highway?  Thanks again!  --DAW0001 (talk) 14:28, 31 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Well, because ideally, the entire freeway running north to IL 120 would become signed IL 53 on completion. The new pavement to Lake-Cook Road was laid on the assumption that further construction would be done shortly thereafter. However, the more time that passes, the less likely this will happen. IDOT determines which streets are signed which numbers, with input from the local municipality (theoretically, records of where the route runs are kept at the county clerk's office, according to the IL state code.) &mdash; Rob (  talk  ) 15:31, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

I posed the question to IDOT and got the following reply on 5/7/2008, presumably from "Mr. Steve Mastny, Area Programmer":
 * By Department policy, marked state routes must follow roadways under state jurisdiction. Lake-Cook Road in this area is under the jurisdiction of the Cook County Highway Department.  As a result, Illinois Route 53 cannot follow Lake-Cook Road as you suggest, even though at first glance this might seem be a more logical and direct route.  Illinois Route 68 (Dundee Road) is the furthest north state route the access controlled highway that carries IL-53 intersects.  As a result, the only way for Illinois Route 53 to continue its northward journey to its termination at Illinois Route 83 is to follow the state owned Illinois Route 68 (Dundee Road) and U.S. Route 12 (Rand Road) to Hicks Road, which is also state owned.

So, the current route is a result of route designation policy and the ownership of the roads, rather than the past history or expected future of the pavement! --DAW0001 (talk) 14:33, 7 May 2008 (UTC)


 * thanks. I've often wondered about that, and even the newspapers aren't consistent on this exact matter.  Nerfer (talk) 03:45, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

There is a note at the top of the page regarding reversing the order of the description of the road and its intersections. Respectfully, that's a nutty idea: nobody who actually lives in the metropolitan Chicago area would think of the road that way. The important part of IL 53 begins in the northwest suburbs and runs south to Joliet. Gardner, the town where it ends further south, is a little tiny place that sees the absolute least amount of traffic on the route. Starting the description of the route's path with the southern end would make absolutely NO sense. Rules are made to be broken when they don't make sense. Thsi is one of those occasions. Mrtraska (talk) 00:33, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

Proposed merge with Illinois Route 53 Extension
Ultimately, I think this can be summarized a little bit and merged together.  Imzadi 1979  →   22:44, 15 December 2015 (UTC) As the author of the new Illinois Route 53 Extension article, here is my two cents. That's my opinion on it. Interested to see what other Wikipedians think. Thank you. Michael Powerhouse (talk) 19:52, 16 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia seems to have an article for each interstate freeway and highway in U.S. They are data-driven and describe the freeways/highways.
 * I did know that the Route 53 main article mentioned the extension when I was drafting the article. However, given how far back the extension goes, and how it has been continually in the news for a long time, I felt it would be an interesting stand-alone topic.
 * While the extension issue is one component of Route 53 generally, I was able to find enough content to create a stand-alone article.
 * Personally, I find that shorter, more specific articles to be helpful. And then if they are linked to the broader issue, readers can go explore further.
 * I was thinking of how M-6 (Michigan highway) has been able to handle the full convoluted history of that highway's planning and construction all in the same article. Granted, that highway is finished, but the same concept should work here.
 * I agree that the history of the extension is interesting, but I think what you've written and be integrated into the parent article and improve that. As for length, WP:SIZE suggests a cutoff of about 4,000–10,000 words for overall article size. Even if we fully copied and pasted everything together, the result would only be about 1,500 words. That's not a long article at all. However, if merged, we wouldn't do that, since a lot of the new article expands on the future section of the original. In essence, we have two articles now saying the same basic things about the same topic. Why don't we integrate everything now, and if the result gets too long in the future, we can discuss splitting things up with summary style?  Imzadi 1979  →   20:22, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

i vote in favor of keeping the articles separate. the route 53 page is about the highway itself. the 53 extension page describes a 50 plus year complex political-transportation issue. a comprehensive news search showed me that the extension is a big issue in its own right. the highway is a road, but the extension is a public issue. a 50 year effort on a public issue is something that will probably go down in history, which i think is the type of articles people want to see on Wikipedia. Geraldine Harris (talk) 17:48, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
 * The Extension article is specific. The Route 53 article is broad and seems like a template article for state highways. Keep them separate. Agree with Extension is a public issue article, while Route 53 is a highway article. Maybe the distinction to keep them separate would be in renaming the Extension article? Xavier Lehtinen (talk) 18:32, 6 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Keep separated. Parvana fattahov (talk) 21:37, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Merge. There is no need to have a completely separate article about the extension. It is covered enough on the main page as well as on the highway revolts page.NBA2030 (talk) 18:10, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 1 one external link on Illinois Route 53. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20100528111655/http://www.lakecountyil.gov/route53/Documents/April09ReferendumResults.pdf to http://www.lakecountyil.gov/route53/Documents/April09ReferendumResults.pdf

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Cheers.—cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 14:59, 9 January 2016 (UTC)