Talk:Numbered highways in the United States

West Virginia
Would this confirm the naming of West Virginia State Routes: ?

--Geopgeop 11:08, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Significance of Shield Designs
I went through the page and compiled this list of what the significance of the designs means in each state. The reason I did this is because I'm hoping someone will know what the significance of the New York shield is (I grew up in New York and have always been curious about it). Also, I've driven in Michigan, North Carolina, and Washington, and the designs of the shields in those states only leave room for relatively small numerals, making the signs hard to read.

State Outlines
Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, D.C., Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Louisiana, Missouri, Nevada, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee

Generic
Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Montana, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Texas, West Virginia

"Generic-ish"
Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, Vermont, Wyoming

State Flag Elements
Alaska, Colorado, New Mexico, South Carolina

Misc

 * California: Spade used by 49ers
 * Hawaii: ?
 * Kansas: Sunflower
 * Nebraska: Pioneer wagon (I don't know if there's significance to the trapezoid shape)
 * New Hampshire: The Old Man of the Mountain
 * New York: ?
 * North Dakota: Indian Head
 * Oregon: ?
 * Pennsylvania: Keystone
 * Utah: Beehive
 * Virginia: ?
 * Washington: George Washington
 * Wisconsin: ?

Jimpoz (talk) 06:51, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Re New York, see Talk:List of State Routes in New York. -- T M F Let's Go Mets - Stats 06:55, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

American Samoa's shield represents a fale, which is a traditional Samoan hut. Lovelac 7 04:31, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

--NE2 17:09, 3 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Guam: seal of Guam
 * Hawaii: perhaps copied from California; the shape was first used by the military in WWII
 * Montana secondary: arrowhead
 * Nebraska: the trapezoid was a rather late addition, probably chosen because it could contain the number (newly moved to the top) and wagon and is more interesting than a simple rectangle
 * New York: seal of New York?
 * Northern Mariana Islands: latte stone
 * Oregon: seal of Oregon
 * Puerto Rico: coat of arms of Puerto Rico?
 * Tennessee secondary: generic triangle also once used nearby in Mississippi and on Alabama county roads
 * Virginia: generic shield shape? the original design offers no clues as to why this particular shape was chosen
 * Wisconsin: evolved from a generic triangle (perhaps chosen to match the edges of the W); the rectangle was added to give more space for the number

DC
Why is the District of Columbia's routes listed under "state highways"? DC is not a state. Shouldn't it be listed together with the territorial highways? --Zeruelx (talk) 08:53, 30 March 2011 (UTC)


 * I don't understand why this is so controversial, but I reckon you're right. QM 400032 (ta lk)  18:06, 18 May 2013 (UTC)  — Preceding unsigned comment added by QM400032 (talk • contribs)

183A Toll Road - problems
I'm having a problem adding the 183A Toll Road-based Texas U.S. Highway. I got the image and "Shown:" icon to work, but not the bold link to work. Is this because the link is a category? Your help would be greatly appreciated! QM 400032 (ta lk)  18:05, 18 May 2013 (UTC)  — Preceding unsigned comment added by QM400032 (talk • contribs)
 * Because the graphic involved is fair use, I removed your addition here. Fair-use images can only be used in specific ways, and each article where they appear has to have a separate fair-use rationale to justify inclusion. Such a FUR is likely not possible for a list article; we don't permit copyright-protected photos of actors in their character roles on lists of characters, but we might on an individual article about that character.. The same concept is going to play out here in that this is a list of types of highways and the specific article would use the image under fair use.  Imzadi 1979  →   23:34, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

Purpose of this article
What exactly is the purpose of this article or whatever it is? It seems like it is a duplication of the portal, even though this is nine months older, and not as nice. If I had to guess, it's supposed to be a capstone list that summarizes all the different numbered highway systems, but it isn't that at all. It's a meta list with pretty shield pictures that IPs like to change every so often. Does anyone have some ideas for how we can improve this beast? –Fredddie™ 03:18, 4 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Well, it does have one purpose: to serve as the article linked from the top of US numbered highways. I would agree that this is partially the capstone, but it also serves the purposes of a directory page, or something akin to a disambiguation-type page to point readers from a higher level toward articles or lists on specific topics or jurisdictions. I'm not sure what else there is to do if it is just here to serve as a directory.  Imzadi 1979  →   05:28, 4 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I guess my problem with it in its current state is that a navbox can present the exact same information and present it better.
 * Are there any other projects that have lists like this? How do they handle capstone lists? –Fredddie™ 17:33, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

Text overlap
The captions overlap in many of the image arrays. I tried to fix it but was reverted. if this is not fixed, I will try again shortly. Frietjes (talk) 15:55, 26 February 2015 (UTC)
 * I've inserted abbr to resolve another, different issue. Namely, non-American readers may not know that "Conn." is the old-style abbreviation for Connecticut, but by rendering it as Conn., a reader can hover his or her cursor over the underlined abbreviation to get a tooltip with the full name. Doing so in other place should resolve the overlap issue. Another option may be to reduce the array from 6 to 5 examples per row, allowing each one to be 20% wider in the process at the expense of an extra row.  Imzadi 1979  →   16:03, 26 February 2015 (UTC)
 * still overlapping, and text spilling out of the boxes. Frietjes (talk) 16:05, 26 February 2015 (UTC)
 * It doesn't overlap or spill over for me on Safari on MacOS X Yosemite. It also has only minor issues with the word "Secondary" in Chrome and Firefox running slightly wide which could be resolved by switching that to Sec. or even just "Sec." because the context is clear in that situation.
 * I've offered two other options (further abbreviation of state names such as New Hamp., Wisc.; using 5 markers per line instead of 6) to retain the current set up. However, the set up with the faux infoboxes was causing other issues and taking up too much width on the screen.  Imzadi 1979  →   16:13, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

1940s highway signs
Hello. I have seen a chart of state highway signs from the 1940s online at. I don't know how to add those route markers to the article. They could be added under a "Historical route markers" section or something to that effect. Thanks for your help. Jay (talk) 19:32, 8 March 2017 (UTC)