Talk:Interstate 40 in Tennessee

Exit list from I-240
This was on I-240 and may be useful here:

Feedback post on Interstate 40 in Tennessee
From the wikipedia feedback system, some feedback for this page on the question of a missing exit from the exit list. It is noticeable that the numbering in the list has gaps, with no explanation of those gaps. --Tagishsimon (talk) 21:11, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

//Why don't you have distances from the start of the interstate to the exits on the interstate. I notice you have that for your US routes and State routes but few of your interstates. I myself am writing a series of books about rebuilding the earth with all electricity renewable and knowing distances between the start and stop of an interstate, state route, or US route in a particular state and the distance between the start of the highway and each exit on the highway is practically needed and I don't want to have to look up some mileage calculator to calculate distance between start of highway and an exit on that highway for every single exit, especially the interstate ones.Caters1 (talk) 06:33, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on Interstate 40 in Tennessee. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20101231003123/http://www.tdot.state.tn.us/smartfix/jwp/ to http://www.tdot.state.tn.us/smartfix/jwp/

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 04:44, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on Interstate 40 in Tennessee. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20090615075026/http://news.tennesseeanytime.org/node/2104 to http://news.tennesseeanytime.org/node/2104

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 17:26, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

I-69 Overlap - How Official Is It?
There has been a bit of an edit war on the I-269 page, with the dust settling on a claim that Wikipedia should not recognize the extension of the interstate designation as official until there is documentation that TDOT has recognized the change, even if federal approvals have been granted.

This begs the question: for I-69 in Tennessee, is there any documentation in support of TDOT recognizing the designation as official? It's obviously been approved by AASHTO and FHWA; TDOT is almost certainly going to sign it as such if/when the new sections get built. But at the moment, I don't see any documentation that TDOT officially agrees that the overlap section of I-55/I-240/I-40/SR 300 really is I-69 today. There's just a bunch of internet lore, much of it referencing Wikipedia, that TDOT will sign it "someday".

(This comment is being added all of I-40/I-240/I-55/TN 300. More detail on I-269 talk page.) MikeTheActuary (talk) 04:52, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

Roane / Cumberland County line?
Per this link, it appears that the Roane/Cumberland County line (the Eastern/Central Time Zone border) is at milepost 340.4. Shouldn't the exit list be adjusted accordingly? --DarkStarHarry (talk) 17:48, 11 June 2019 (UTC)
 * it would appear that the mileposts do not match the actual accumulated mileage based on whatever source was used to list the mileposts in the table. For example, exit 340, which is just inside Roane County (in terms of the cross road), is listed at MP 343.67. This roughly three-mile offset runs all the way back to exit 2A in Memphis, and the offset decreases from there back to the state line at the Mississippi River. It would behoove us to find the source used for all of the mileposts and verify them all.  Imzadi 1979  →   18:13, 11 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Wouldn't it be prudent to add a reference to the Time Zone Change between the Roane/Cumberland County exits? DarkStarHarry (talk) 17:00, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
 * not really. Time zone boundaries, if mentioned at all, are usually included in the route description section, and not in the junction list table.  Imzadi 1979  →   17:24, 13 June 2019 (UTC)

Memphis tanker explosion
According to multiple sources, the 1988 tanker truck explosion was blamed on a poorly designed ramp with a sharp curve. Multiple sources, including this one (dead link), cite this accident as one of the top reasons for why this interchange was completely reconstructed. Bneu2013 (talk) 23:39, 13 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Looking at WP:CARCRASH (full disclosure: I wrote it), this would be a good example of an accident that led to a redesign of the highway. That being said, I think you could get a good paragraph out of it.  Ideally, the reader should be able to tell what happened, how the old design was unsafe, how the new design was different, and how long the roadway was under reconstruction. –Fredddie™ 04:08, 14 January 2021 (UTC)


 * I'm going to reinstate it, but this time rewrite it to focus more on how it led to the resesign.Bneu2013 (talk) 08:52, 19 January 2021 (UTC)

Truck lanes
From what I can tell, the general consensus has been to include only major events in the history sections of roads, such as initial construction, reconstruction projects, major accidents that led to reconstruction, etc. Therefore, we probably shouldn't include smaller projects, such as resurfacings, bridge repairs, new interchanges, minor interchange reconstructions, etc., in the history section, even though the latter two are generally acceptable in the exit list. insists that we should include information about a truck climbing lane that was recently constructed in Smith County; however, I'm not sure that this should be included in the history section. This is one of about ten truck lanes that have been constructed on I-40 in Tennessee in the last ten years, and the current wording seems to imply that it is related to the ongoing widening in Lebanon, which is not indicated by the source. Maybe a sentence or two about an effort by TDOT to construct truck lanes throughout the entire corridor that included this project would work better; however, a different source will be needed for this. Bneu2013 (talk) 00:31, 13 June 2021 (UTC)
 * There is nothing stopping you from adding any of those other projects. My opinion on Wikipedia has always been that more information, rather than less, leads to a more comprehensive article. Now I will agree that not every repaving project or brand new interchange should be included (there is such a thing as too much info), but a >2-mile widening project seems to be notable enough for inclusion. United States Man (talk) 00:36, 13 June 2021 (UTC)
 * - we should probably include all of these projects then, and likely have a distinct paragraph dedicated to them. From what I've been able to find, the I-40/81 corridor study in 2008 identified the need for these truck lanes, and initiated the projects. Bneu2013 (talk) 01:30, 13 June 2021 (UTC)

FA criteria
I have made additional improvements to this article since it passed GA, and would like to nominate it for a featured article. However, there are a few outstanding issues I have that I would like to address before doing so.


 * I would like to have a photo of the Pigeon River gorge stretch in the "Geological difficulties" section; however I currently have none of my own, and could not find any decent ones online that are free to use. It will probably be some time before I can get back there. I'm also leaning towards another photo of the Cumberland Plateau section, as well as an updated photo of the descent.


 * There are a number of projects, mostly widenings and truck lanes, that are planned to take place in the near future; however there isn't much information out there about them. I feel like mentioning plans for future road projects infringes on WP:CRYSTAL, as there is no guarantee they will ever take place as planned (and TDOT is notorious for delaying projects repeatedly), unless they have repeatedly received significant coverage, none of which any of these have.


 * Several segments of I-40 in Tennessee have honorary designations, in addition to multiple bridges. I feel like I might should include a section about this, and have started drafting one in my sandbox; however, I don't want the article to get too long.


 * I'm leaning towards including a photo of the crack that closed the de Soto Bridge.

I'd appreciate if someone more experienced with getting US road-related articles to FA could give some input. Bneu2013 (talk) 22:05, 8 May 2022 (UTC)
 * I see the FAC has been archived, which is a shame, as I was planning to take a look at this. I realize I-40 in TN is a long Interstate Highway, but I think the article's sheer size (62 kB of readable prose size) may have dissuaded reviewers. For example, the route description alone has more than 20 kilobytes of readable prose; by contrast, Interstate 82's route description is only 8 kB, while Kansas Turnpike's route description is 14 kB. I also know that these highways are physically shorter. Nonetheless, I think this article may benefit from summary-style condensation - for instance, some of the details about the landscape and minor roads could probably be omitted without significantly degrading readers' understanding of the subject. – Epicgenius (talk) 16:05, 6 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Indeed, Interstate 8 doesn't mention every junction in the RD, which is where I think a lot of the length comes from. --Rschen7754 00:13, 7 April 2023 (UTC)


 * , - I was disappointed in the lack of response to both the nomination and this discussion (posted almost a year ago). While, I must admit that I was concerned someone might bring up the length, it still largely meets summary style, as the word count is less than 10k and all sections contain between one and four paragraphs. Furthermore, I would like to point out (I may have already done so elsewhere) that while you all have accurately pointed out that this highway is unusually long, it also most certainly has a lot more notable post construction history worth mentioning that articles about other interstate highways of similar length, such as Interstate 80 in Nebraska or Interstate 90 in Montana. This being the fact that I-40 in Tennessee has most certainly had far more widening and interchange reconstruction projects than these, due to Tennessee's much larger population and central location relative to the country's center of population. The article doesn't mention most interchanges; I tried to limit it to US Highways and primary state routes. But I suppose there are some we can trim; I'll be looking in to this. With regards to the length, I would like to point out that the vast majority of people who read this article are probably not going to read the whole thing. For example, if someone in Jackson or Cookeville wants to know when their stretch of I-40 was finished, I'd hope they would find this article, but that's probably all they are going to look at. I think it is important that we include this information, because it is clearly not easily accessible anywhere else on the internet (I know this from more than five years of working on this article). The only other options would be to dig through rolls and rolls of microfilmed newspapers at a select few libraries across the state; I actually had to do that to find a few of the sources used in this article. Bneu2013 (talk) 01:19, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

Unaddressed FAC comments
Note that I am reposting comments from the archived FAC review that I was unable to get to before it was archived. This is so I can confirm that they have been addressed before I re-nominate. Bneu2013 (talk) 05:01, 8 April 2023 (UTC)


 * by several noticeable upgrades and downgrades - ambiguous phrasing.
 * reworded to "several steep ascents and descents" and provided a topo map to back this up. Bneu2013 (talk) 05:01, 8 April 2023 (UTC)
 * short distance - used 3x in consecutive sentences
 * Reworded. Bneu2013 (talk) 05:14, 8 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Also seeing it used a lot throughout the RD section. Try and reduce this or consider eliminating entirely.
 * I've reworded and is some cases removed these and similar words where they are redundant. Bneu2013 (talk) 09:31, 8 April 2023 (UTC)
 * gradually ascending - not a good way to end a sentence
 * Fixed. Bneu2013 (talk) 05:14, 8 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Some of these paragraphs also need to be cited to a topo map.
 * Done.
 * The interstate - should be capitalized, also more lanes
 * Fixed. Bneu2013 (talk) 06:00, 8 April 2023 (UTC)
 * As part of the freeway that encircles downtown Nashville known locally as the Downtown Loop or Inner Loop - dependent clause that is saying a bit too much
 * Condensed, also added a citation for Inner Loop name. Bneu2013 (talk) 06:00, 8 April 2023 (UTC)
 * expanding back to eight lanes - more lanes
 * Done. Bneu2013 (talk) 01:36, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
 * another important means of access to the airport - shifting towards editorializing here
 * Fixed. Bneu2013 (talk) 06:35, 8 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Entering another long straightaway, some distance later - redundancy
 * Fixed. Bneu2013 (talk) 06:35, 8 April 2023 (UTC)
 * reduces back to four lanes
 * Cited. Bneu2013 (talk) 06:49, 8 April 2023 (UTC)
 * For the next roughly 25 miles - feel like there's one word too many here
 * Done. Bneu2013 (talk) 06:49, 8 April 2023 (UTC)
 * open farmland - I know I wasn't going to comment more about scenery, but "open" farmland?
 * Fixed. Bneu2013 (talk) 06:35, 8 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Another truck climbing lane
 * Cited all truck lanes with citations from history section. Bneu2013 (talk) 05:26, 8 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Update - replaced citations with a 2020 study which mentions all but one of them. The remainder uses a news article. Bneu2013 (talk) 01:36, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
 * This grade is moderately steep - cited to Google Maps. Might have your citations mixed up.
 * Fixed. Bneu2013 (talk) 06:35, 8 April 2023 (UTC)
 * for the first time in Tennessee - can you get that just from the Silver Point map?
 * No, but it's not difficult to verify elsewhere. No elevations in West Tennessee are this high, and very few locations west of Nashville reach elevations this high. Bneu2013 (talk) 06:35, 8 April 2023 (UTC)
 * the speed limit reduces to 65 mph (105 km/h)
 * After ascending further up - one too many words
 * Fixed. Bneu2013 (talk) 07:22, 8 April 2023 (UTC)
 * East of Crossville, the Crab Orchard Mountains, the southern fringe of the Cumberland Mountains, - the double appositive is confusing
 * Fixed
 * Another truck climbing lane
 * See above. Bneu2013 (talk) 07:22, 8 April 2023 (UTC)
 * once prone to rockslides - citation?
 * Reused from history section. Bneu2013 (talk) 07:22, 8 April 2023 (UTC)
 * off of - off?
 * Fixed. Bneu2013 (talk) 07:23, 8 April 2023 (UTC)
 * More speed limits and truck climbing lanes, they need to be cited or removed. Won't continue pointing them out.
 * All lane configurations have been cited with a study that mentions all of them. Still working on speed limits. Bneu2013 (talk) 01:36, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Update - fixed. Bneu2013 (talk) 04:32, 24 April 2023 (UTC)
 * some describe as dramatic views of the Tennessee Valley below - who? Source?
 * Cited with the Moore book. Bneu2013 (talk) 07:22, 8 April 2023 (UTC)
 * before reaching I-75 a short distance beyond - paragraph needs topo citations too.
 * Done. Bneu2013 (talk) 07:22, 8 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Please go through and make sure every paragraph that refers to ascending and descending is sourced with a topo.
 * Done. I was actually able to cite a few of them with the Moore book. Bneu2013 (talk) 01:36, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Here, they have an interchange with a local thoroughfare. - this sentence says almost nothing.
 * Removed. Bneu2013 (talk) 08:17, 8 April 2023 (UTC)
 * the Interstate has an interchange with SR 66 and the northern terminus of the Great Smoky Mountains Parkway, beginning an unsigned concurrency with the former. This interchange - could be more clear. This is one interchange?
 * This is one interchange. I've actually reworded and included the number of the interchange (Exit 407). While I don't think we should normally include exit numbers, this interchange has somewhat become a staple of popular culture in the area due to it's status as essentially the gateway to the Great Smoky Mountains. A number of local tourist attractions are even named after it. Bneu2013 (talk) 08:17, 8 April 2023 (UTC)
 * and, as a result, is one of the busiest non-Interstate exits in the state - needs a citation
 * Done. Bneu2013 (talk) 08:17, 8 April 2023 (UTC)
 * but there is no signage for this - needs a citation.
 * I couldn't find any source that says it is explicitly unsigned, but it is not shown on maps. Is street view acceptable for this? Otherwise, I can remove. Bneu2013 (talk) 08:17, 8 April 2023 (UTC)

- I thought I'd let you know that I have gone ahead and addressed all of the remaining points you posted that I was unable to get to before the FAC was archived. That being said, I've also made some additional recommended changes, as well as cleanups (and even managed to add a small amount of information while slightly condensing the article). That being said, I am going to try for an FA again. Bneu2013 (talk) 04:35, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

2013 multi-vehicle collision
While the crash that happened near Dandridge in 2013 did receive lots of press coverage, I don't see that it was in any way caused by a design in the roadway and/or resulted in a change in design to the roadway. This is usually used as a yardstick for inclusion of incidents such as these. While this incident was very tragic, accidents caused by blown out tires are fairly common and rarely caused by a flaw in the road. Contrast this incident to the Memphis tanker truck disaster, which was partly a result of an unsafe design and was the impetus for the eventual reconstruction of this section of highway. Or the 1990 Interstate 75 fog disaster, which did result in safety improvements to this section of highway. Bneu2013 (talk) 08:42, 30 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Such is the joy of editing roads articles in the modern Wikipedia era of policy nazis screaming "must be sourced to an ivy league academic journal and nothing less or we delete it!". The sad fact that roads are mentioned every 5 minutes in press and news coverage, but it's always a tangent to a bloody story. If we followed the mandates the policy nazis impose with more and more furor each day, road articles would only be an ever expanding list about people complaining about traffic congestion, politicians making promises for more funding that never materializes, and list of accidents and crimes that occurred along the roadway, with the occasional mention of a serial killer who preferred this roadway to find victims. There would be virtually no mention of anything about the road itself, except for a select few roads that are covered in travel guides and tourist promotional materials. All that to say, yes, be careful of covering accidents in roads articles because it can lead to a never ending spiral. A road that is 400 miles long and has a 50 year history has had literally thousands of accidents along the right-of-way. Consider also the principle of undo weight, which unfortunately applies to wikipedia articles but not the media it relies upon for sourcing. Without commenting on this specific addition, I agree in principle. I only mention accidents if there was something extraordinary about it, such as national or international media coverage, involved a famous person, resulted in changes to the roadway or new legislation, etc.  However, there's no rule. In fact, the rules go the other way; the rules say we must follow that the sources do and the sources are obsessed with highways as a reference location for "if it bleeds it leads" stories. If the policy wonks had their way, road articles would be a little more than "list of accidents and crimes along I-40 and political promises to improve I-40" with no mention of what I-40 actually is, because that's that the easy to find secondary sources do. Dave (talk) 16:27, 4 June 2023 (UTC)
 * That's fair. I seem to recall hearing other editors claim that there has been a consensus reached about what accidents are appropriate for inclusion. A paragraph about a similar accident on Interstate 65 in Alabama almost two years ago was removed on those grounds. Bneu2013 (talk) 19:53, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

History / railroads
It might be interesting to briefly address parallel / predecessor rail corridors. The main rail route between Memphis and Nashville was the Nashville, Chattanooga and St. Louis Railway, which as its name suggests did not continue east to Knoxville but rather southeast to Chattanooga. Nashville to Knoxville was never a major rail route; I think the closest thing to a direct connection was the Tennessee Central Railway. Mackensen (talk) 16:13, 29 July 2023 (UTC)


 * I don't know if there is a consensus about this, but from what I've seen, we generally only mention roads and trails as predecessors. There is a railroad that roughly follows all of the route of I-40 in Tennessee, but not very closely (even though US 70 deviates a good ways in some places too). That being said, some of the Native American trails between Knoxville and Nashville were probably predecessors to both the railroads and I-40. Before adding this, I think we should get the opinions of some other road editors. Bneu2013 (talk) 01:05, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

10 Jct Limit
I saw in the recent revert of the change is that the junctions are more than 10. What happened to the 10 jct limit? Why doesn’t it apply to this I-40 in TN article? 174.209.192.45 (talk) 14:06, 22 January 2024 (UTC)


 * The list has been trimmed by. I dropped the I-275 junction in Knoxville as the least important of the 11 because it's not a 3dI of I-40 and because it's the third junction listed for Knoxville. It appears that the listing was at 10, but at that time I-65 and I-24 had been merged together.  Imzadi 1979  →   05:58, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I don't know if there's a consensus for this or not, but if I'm not mistaken, we don't normally combine two designations if the junction is not at the same interchange. I-65 and I-24 are separate because they no longer interchange with I-40 at the same location. I had actually proposed combining the I-840 junction in the infobox to read "I-840 in Dickson and Lebanon", but if I remember correctly on one replied. I'm okay with removing I-275; that interchange is without a doubt the least important of all of the system-to-system exchanges. In fact, I could probably make a good case that Exit 407 is more important than I-275. But I suppose if my proposal were to be adopted we could reinstate I-275 in the infobox. Bneu2013 (talk) 07:32, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Normally we'd prioritize based on factors like: Interstate > US Highway > state highway, and then 2dI > 3dI while also considering geographic distribution along the routing of the subject of the article. It looks rather imbalanced to have three junctions (or 30%) in a single city, for instance.
 * As for combining the two I-840 junctions, I wouldn't do that since it makes the list jump around when read from one terminus to the other. I'd just leave them as is.  Imzadi 1979  →   07:44, 23 January 2024 (UTC)