Talk:National Highway System (United States)

NPOV
This seems a little NPOV "NHS also will help us meet the challenges of global economic competititon by enhancing our different modes of transportation, increasing America's productivity, and bolstering its economy," any suggestions for replacement. Mbisanz 02:17, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

National Highway System
A link should be provided to Canada's National Highway System - that was already propsoed in 1988. See http://www.tc.gc.ca/ship/nhsrrn.htm for details. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.133.42.1 (talk) 21:57, 28 October 2005 (UTC)


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the . Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

no consensus. &mdash; Nightst a  llion  (?) 09:29, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Page move proposal
National Highway System → National Highway System (U.S.) (or similar) – There exist systems of national highways in many other countries. IMHO in the interest of NPOV and removing systemic bias National Highway System should redirect to National Highway, where I have created a disambig. — Paddu 16:42, 4 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Add *Support or *Oppose followed by an optional one-sentence explanation, then sign your opinion with ~ 


 * Oppose absent a showing of this specific name used elsewhere. Gene Nygaard 18:10, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
 * See the previous section in this page where the Canadian NHS is mentioned. -- Paddu 23:53, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
 * These are the first few matches for searching for the term among Indian and Pakistani websites respectively:
 * India &mdash; →  (from website of the planning commission of India),  (from the website of Parliament of India)
 * Pakistan &mdash; →  (from website of the National Highways Authority of Pakistan)
 * The number of websites in these countries is much less than the number in the U.S. due to the systemic bias in the internet and hence the number of matches for these Google searches are much less than the number of matches from U.S. websites. -- Paddu 00:11, 5 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Support, as, even though there may be an absense of a highway system named this way, by definition they are all still national highway systems, and the US is not the only one to have one of these. SeanMD80 05:20, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Comment You can't ignore capitalization in that statement. That in itself is only a good argument for a disambiguation page at National highway system rather than a redirect from there to National Highway System.  A case can probably be made for this move; it hasn't been made yet.  Gene Nygaard 16:11, 5 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Oppose. I think I agree with Gene Nygaard here. I see that India and Pakistan have national highway systems, but it isn't obvious that they have a National Highway System. &mdash; Knowledge Seeker &#2470; 21:19, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
 * India has "National Highways" and according to List of motorways and highways of Pakistan, Pakistan has too. So does that mean we should have another page at National Highway system? -- Paddu 21:25, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Weak support, but in principle, he's right. &mdash; Nightst a  llion  (?) 09:29, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Discussion

 * Add any additional comments


 * Your disambiguation page should be National highway, not National Highway. Gene Nygaard 18:10, 4 March 2006 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

NPOV + Cleanup tags
The History and Justification section had been tagged as needed "cleanup" since March 2006. According to the history, this was by Jersyko, who cited his reason as, "needs cleanup; this section is written from the POV of the dept. of transportation (obviously copied from their website), thus we have words like "us" and "our" here." On May 6, 2006, I added an NPOV tag for much the same reason, including the reason that Mbisanz cited several months ago in the first topic on this talk page. On May 7, Novasource removed these tags without fixing the problems, claiming that rationale had not been provided.

Virtually the entire article has been copy and pasted from the FHWA website. If this is public domain and not copyright enfringement, that's fine, but that doesn't automatically make it encyclopedic material. The first person used throughout the history and justification section is wholly inappropriate for an encyclopedia. It requires a rewrite.

I would do the edit myself instead of tagging it, but I am not knowledgeable enough to do the rewrite.

Please do not remove these tags until the problem has actually been fixed. -- Northenglish 23:20, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Alaska Marine Highway
Should something be mentioned about the Alaska Marine Highway ferry system being part of the National Highway System? It's a vital link in Alaska (since there are no highways to most of the towns it serves) and it's interesting (to me, anyway--I didn't know) that it's considered part of the NHS and receives funding from it. cluth 21:48, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Requested move

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of the . Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

no consensus to move the page, per the discussion below. As a consequence, I have redirected the "National Highway System" disambiguation page to National Highway, which already included references to both the Canadian and American systems and has links to more than one article. Dekimasu よ! 05:31, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
 * National Highway System (United States) → National Highway System.

There is no ambiguity — only one "National Highway System" has an article. Undiscussed move was made despite previous consensus against it and the target is blocked by a dubious disambiguation page. —  AjaxSmack     22:11, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Survey

 * Feel free to state your position on the renaming proposal by beginning a new line in this section with  or  , then sign your comment with  . Since polling is not a substitute for discussion, please explain your reasons, taking into account Wikipedia's naming conventions.


 * Support as nominator. —  AjaxSmack     22:11, 30 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Oppose. Since the US is not the only country that has a "National Highway System". Canada has one as well. -- Alan Liefting talk 05:25, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Weak support. If there are only two uses of National Highway System (in all caps as a proper name, not merely highway systems funded by the government), then a hatnote can be used to reference Canada's; I think the U.S.'s is considerably better known (A search on Google Canada for National Highway System unadorned lists the US page and the Wikipedia page first, for instance).  If it turns out that there are other NHS's out there, then a weak oppose.  Also, a unilateral move when there was already a requested move that failed with no new discussion on the talk page...  meh.  If there's no consensus for this move, the "default" location of no parens should be restored, as that was the old location for the article. SnowFire 19:18, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
 * There may be other National Highway Systems out there. Having National Highway System adds yet another slight increment to systemic bias. Not sure if google searches are approp to determine WP structure. Should article names be set up for least surprise or for least skewwing toward the current favourite? -- Alan Liefting talk 20:29, 1 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Wikipedia is descriptive, not prescriptive. If the US meaning really is the predominant meaning in the real world, then any "bias" is due to the outside world, not Wikipedia.  (Also, the Google Canada search was offered more as "supporting evidence," not the entire basis of the !vote.) SnowFire 21:10, 1 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Oppose. Ridiculously US-centric proposal. Still, I guess there's an even sillier precedent... State University! Andrewa 12:58, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Oppose (as the one who moved it). The Canadian system is very similar to the U.S. one, and was probably modeled on it, but is its own entity, and is just as notable within the country. Are we also sure that there is nothing called the "National Highway System", translated into a different language? --NE2 08:42, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
 * If you unilaterally made the move to National Highway System (United States) despite the consensus above not to move it, why are you bothering to discuss it now? And if the Canadian system is so notable, why is there no article on it? —   AjaxSmack   05:33, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I didn't look at the talk page before making what seemed to be a common-sense move. --NE2 10:19, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
 * The result before was no consensus. That's not the same as consensus not to move. Andrewa 12:26, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Oppose. Many countries have a national highway system, whether or not it is officially so called. Anthony Appleyard 16:16, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Support. Currently, the page was moved against previous discussion.  It should therefore be moved back by default for the immediate future as matter of fair process.  As to where it should go in a considered move, there's still no other article to disambiguate from, so again, the proposed location suits.  Once returned, if a new article requiring disambiguation is then created, universality would indicate a move to a parenthetically modified namespace, IMO. ENeville 15:20, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Discussion

 * Further discussion

In reply to SnowFire's comment above ''Wikipedia is descriptive, not prescriptive. If the US meaning really is the predominant meaning in the real world, then any "bias" is due to the outside world, not Wikipedia.'': Yes, all true. But part of the dream of Wikipedia is also to be an international encyclopedia. This is in some ways the cheekiest part of the whole project, particularly in English Wikipedia, but it's there and quite upfront.

And because it's there, when we fail in it this affects our credibility far more deeply than you might at first think. If you were a student at Belarusian State University and looked up State University on Wikipedia, what would you think? If you were an Islamic activist there as well, I think you'd joyfully add a denunciation of Wikipedia to your next anti-US speech... maybe even as the keynote.

Look again at SnowFire's comment. What is the real world, and how do we measure it? How do we decide whether US meaning really is the predominant meaning in the real world? Most English-speaking Internet users are US-based, most internationally based reporters speak US English, etc. etc. etc.. So, should we just say, US English rules? This has not been policy to date. If it's to be our practice, we should at least be upfront about it.

This is not a criticism of SnowFire. They are addressing some very real and tricky issues. Andrewa 20:12, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the . Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Merge proposal

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

Oppose merger and rename. The merger tags have long been removed anyway.  Imzadi 1979  →   22:40, 23 February 2012 (UTC) The United States Numbered Highways and this article should be merged because the two articles are similar. If this article talks about the general idea, it should be renamed Highways in the U.S..Jupiter.solarsyst.comm.arm.milk.universe 20:02, 8 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Oppose These are two different things. U.S Numbered Highways are highways which are consistent between states, but they are not Interstates. The National Highway System is similar to the National Truck Network, which consists of both Interstates and U.S. Numbered Highways. You might make a case for merging these articles into Transportation in the United States or something similar, but I think they're fine where they are. National Highway System and National Truck Network are both designated as important routes for trade, mobility, and defense; which includes both Interstates and U.S. Numbered highways, so it would make no sense to merge them into one or the other. -- ErgoSum • talk • trib  20:23, 8 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Oppose - See Talk:United States Numbered Highways. Dough4872 (talk) 18:35, 9 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I removed the templates, since these are very different. The NHS includes many state and local highways, and does not include many U.S. Highways that parallel Interstates. --NE2 23:42, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Oppose - makes sense to me to remove the banner. PeterEastern (talk) 12:26, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Strong oppose—they not are not the same. For instance, County Road 17 (Elkhart County, Indiana) is on the National Highway System. So is the entirety of the Interstate Highway System. Many state highways, like M-6 or M-28 in Michigan, are fully included in the NHS, but U.S. Route 41 in Michigan, which is part of the United States Numbered Highway System, is not on the NHS north of Houghton, Michigan. Sorry, but this suggestion is ill-conceived and should not be implemented. Please note that we already have Numbered highways in the United States as well already, linking various articles about the different types of highway systems in the US together.  Imzadi 1979  →   12:48, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Principal arterials under MAP-21
Should "principal arterials", under Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act (MAP-21), be added to the Overview section? The official memo from NHS, "Updated National Highway System Maps", dated September 28, 2012, would seem to suggest so. Does the prose about "Other Principal Arterials" at the main official NHS webpage refer to these same roads?

Also, the main NHS webpage distinguishes between the Strategic Highway Network (STRAHNET) and Major Strategic Highway Network Connectors, while the article currently has the rather confusing and ungrammatical prose, "The Strategic Highway Network (STRAHNET) of importance to the United States' strategic defense policy including links from major military installations and this Strategic Highway Network", for both. This looks, IMO, like it should be reworded and/or expanded, but I'm not a subject matter expert concerning this topic. Thanks, fellow roadgeeks!! --Chaswmsday (talk) 18:24, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

STRAHNET
Just something I noticed: The STRAHNET redirect on this page redirects to this page. I don’t know if that’s how it should work, but maybe it shouldn’t be a redirect? 2600:100D:B057:A934:A44E:F662:4FF2:D73F (talk) 20:04, 22 September 2022 (UTC)


 * STRAHNET highways are part of the National Highway System. What do you propose? –Fredddie™ 01:31, 27 September 2022 (UTC)