Talk:Transportation in the United States

POV/Unsourced claims
"Such mass transit as exists in the U.S. requires massive subsidy -- about 90% of the real cost of providing one trip is paid by those not maming it -- ticket prices do not come close to covering system costs. There is always a minority advocating more mass transit in the US. Such advocacy is rarely successful. When it is, the ridership that in fact occurs falls well short of the inflated projections used to justify its construciton."


 * Heh, I agree 100% with the statement, but it's very POV.--Rotten 05:16, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

This paragraph doesn't conform to NPOV. It's clearly written to make transit advocacy in the US sound like lunacy. I'd like to see this rewritten, and I'd like the statistics to be sourced. You only see numbers like 90% coming from anti-transit groups, libertarian think tanks, Wendell Cox and the like. "rarely successful"? Ridership falls short of projections? This is clearly not encyclopic language, in addition to being pretty much untrue. Passdoubt | Talk 20:09, 13 September 2006 (UTC)


 * this is a statement of fact, therefore it is NPOV. And since mass transit funding is lunacy, it sounds fine to me.

Clearly not encyclopedic, sounds about as much like propaganda as like encyclopedia to me... 86.219.105.185 15:29, 2 January 2007 (UTC)


 * That's funny, since defenders of monorail systems (the chronically unprofitable Las Vegas Monorail comes to mind) keep pointing out that no local mass transit system has ever maintained a balanced budget without any public subsidy over the long term. Only long haul mass transit like planes and trains can make the numbers work (and even then, just barely).  --Coolcaesar 11:37, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Rail Freight
This article needs more info about our huge use of freight rail. We have more miles of rail than any other nation of earth and they aren't there for looks only (as this article would imply).--Rotten 05:17, 18 February 2007 (UTC)


 * It says very little about freight in general. Not pipelines, trucking, anything.  Water freight gets a mention.  Hey, at least it's not as light on freight as Transportation in New York City.  So, does someone who knows something want to put a freight subsection into each section, or create a separate freight section?  There are, incidentally many articles about individual railroads, connected through a link to their list.  Jim.henderson 04:42, 22 February 2007 (UTC)


 * The article has since been expanded. -- Beland (talk) 18:06, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Transportation in Alaska, proposed merge
No thanks. Would make this page much too long plus Alaska is far away distinct enough from the rest of the U.S. to earn its own page. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Jarfingle (talk • contribs) 01:46, 24 February 2007 (UTC).


 * Also a no. Alaska is a large place with special problems and opportunities in transport, just as New York is a small place with special problems and opportunities in transport.  Both of them properly have their own article.  Jim.henderson 00:35, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Rail vs Truck
According to my information from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, truck freight accounts for more than any other mode of transportation. While rail freight accounts for more tons per mile traveled, truck shipments dominate the transportation industry both in value and weight of shipments. I checked the sources for the claim of "40% of all shipments are by rail" and the source is understandably biased (Association of American Railroads) and they provide no source for their claim. The other recently added, and more reliable source, shows that rail owns a 38% share of the freight movement by ton-kilometers. They have no mention of the total amount of freight hauled by value or weight. According to my source, in 2002 the rail industry shipped 31% of all ton-miles, and trucks accounted for 34% of ton-miles. However, if you look at the total value or weight, there is no comparison. Rails are mainly used to haul bulk freight over long distances... hence their dominance in the ton-miles catergory. Trains carry freight over longer distances without stopping, which is why they are more efficient than trucks. But as far as the total volume/value of freight, trucks dominate the industry. Therefore, I am changing the intoduction... if anyone has further proof then just let me know. --ErgoSum88 (talk) 18:47, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Article quality
Not to sound harsh, but this article needs a lot of work. The sections are not uniform and there is a whole table for shipping while pipelines has only numbers? For anyone working on this article, a good place to start would be the Bureau of Transportation Statistics and the U.S. Department of Transportation. They have lots of good info and stats that are needed for an article like this. I'm willing to do some work on this, and I made a few changes today, but this whole article needs to be rewritten. It has no "flow" and seems disjointed. Not to mention some glaring errors and uncited material. I'm not trying criticizing anyone's work, but transportation is my primary area of interest (and also my occupation), so I'd like to see this page look a little better. If anyone is willing to work on this with me please let me know. My field of expertise is trucking, and as a result of that I know a lot about highways and interstates. I'd like to see this article reach Featured status, and if anyone would like to collaborate with me on this, you know where to find me! --ErgoSum88 (talk) 19:56, 29 February 2008 (UTC)


 * This article needs a lot of work.


 * Synchronism (talk) 01:12, 10 October 2008 (UTC)


 * I've fixed the major organizational problems. If people want to identify errors and missing citations by tagging them  and  or mentioning them here on the talk page, that would be helpful in bringing this to Good Article status. -- Beland (talk) 19:06, 21 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Very nice work. I haven't had much time for editing lately, but I get five days off on thanksgiving weekend so I'll probably be doing some work on this around then. I think the list of mass transit systems could be split off into it's own article and of course the intro needs to be expanded to summarize the article. Thanks for the work. On another note, I'm not a big fan of using tags to flag errors... I tend to fix them on the spot instead of cluttering an article with tags. If I can't find the information to correct the errors then I use the tags. It always irks me when people complain about problems without doing anything to fix them. But anyways... its looking good. --ErgoSum88 (talk) 18:25, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

This article is organized well enough, but so many sources are old, as to rates of personal vehicle ownership, trends in transit ridership and so on. Most sources are 2006 or thereabouts with an occasional 2009, and it is 2015 now. A few things have happened since then, no?   --Prairieplant (talk) 13:13, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

The graph and underlying data on Road Savety is rather distortive. The EU has stagnating 505m inhabitants the US 325m and rising. Valid comparison needs to be based on death per 100k inhabitants or a comparable metric. ( EU:5/100k vs US:10/100k is the current relation.) --ZwergAlw (talk) 15:44, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

Why no "highway" section in overview?
The intro has tons of information about the country's road usage, but the rest of the article has none. The lead is supposed to be a summary of the rest of the article. I'm fixing this.--Loodog (talk) 15:21, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
 * ...time passes...the intro was getting very long; I moved most of the details to subsections. -- Beland (talk) 18:07, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

The airline info needs to be expanded on to discuss the monolopy airline industry that provided air service for the USPS in the early years. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.146.160.194 (talk) 16:26, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Hmm...
Interestingly, even though this article relates to the US, and I have never left India, I seem to be able to help with this article..... If anybody needs help in anyway, I'm there, I'm good at stuff that relates to Transport.. --Rsrikanth05 (talk) 10:03, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Moved without discussion
The title, along with the rest of the article is in American English. It is okay to categorize it as "Transport", but the title must be left in American English which is the preferred "Transportation" in the US. Student7 (talk) 18:11, 10 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Reverted. Please check links in "Outline" articles to confirm that this is reverted correctly.  — Arthur Rubin  (talk) 18:26, 10 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Note that your blanking of the target made the talk page move require admin action. (The article move already required admin action, because of vandalism.)  — Arthur Rubin  (talk) 18:31, 10 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Concur this article should be in American English and under an American English title. If User:The Transhumanist does that again with no warning or attempt at good faith discussion, please block or ban him.  Thanks. --Coolcaesar (talk) 15:25, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

America's Highways Reference
It may be of interest to the maintainers of this page to know that I recently posted a PDF copy of the 1977 Federal Highway Administration book "America's Highways 1776-1976" at the Internet Archive. This is a primary source used by most of the historical accounts of the US highway system. --BenFranske (talk) 07:00, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

Unfinished sentence
The first paragraph of the History section ends with an unfinished sentence.

"Economic expansion in the late 18th century to early 19th century spurred the building of canals to speed goods to market, of which the most prominently successful example was the-" Uncle Alf (talk) 10:31, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

No Statutory Category (e.g., U. S. Traffic Laws/Uniform Traffic Code)
It's not very exciting (until you get stopped for, say, going from MN where you can pass at 10 mph over the posted limit to IA where you can't exceed the posted limit while passing...) but there should be a category under U.S. Transport/POVs dealing with standardization and/or the lack thereof of traffic laws at the federal level.

There is a website by an org., National Committee for Uniform Traffic Laws and Ordinances (NCUTLO). But the committee died in 2009 while the defunct and inaccurate website lives on. The Wiki page for Uniform Vehicle Code still links to this dead site, but there is no other source I can find for what was once the province of the now nonexistent ICC.

The point for including a category here is not to explain all of the variations from state to state on traffic laws. Those could be linked, state by state. Instead the point is to capture the history and ongoing activity to standardize/regulate traffic codes at the federal level -- if any!

And any added category must distinguish between driving laws and vehicle laws -- the latter being laws covering such things as how bright the lights can be, how many taillights a vehicle can/must have, etc. That, too, might be a category to include but that info. can presently be found under NHTSA info. online.

Webistrator (talk) 22:13, 5 August 2014 (UTC)


 * I do not know if there should exist some categories, but some artile such as Transportation safety in the United States and/or road traffic safety in the United states might deal with such topics.
 * The federal state, known as the USA, might be involved in some rroad/traffic/safety harmonization, for instance it might have chosen to align, or to not align with policies such as :
 * Convention sur la circulation routière (1949)
 * Vienna Convention on Road Signs and Signals (1968)
 * Vienna Convention on Road Traffic (1968)
 * Additionaly, Traffic code wikipedia article states: In 1949, US is involved in the treaty named Convention sur la circulation routière (Genève, 19 September 1949) in the goal to «establishing certain uniform rules». Such treaty defines for instance dimension of vehicules: 2m50 or 8 feet 20 and in the other side 3m80 or 12 feet 50 or a model of driving permit (USA ratification 30 August 1950). It also assumes existence of national legislation in this domain.
 * In the United States each state has its own traffic code, although most of the rules of the road are similar for the purpose of uniformity, given that all states grant reciprocal driving privileges (and penalties) to each other's licensed drivers. There is also a "Uniform Vehicle Code" which has been proposed by a private, non-profit group, based upon input by its members.  As with many such offerings, some states adopt selected portions as written, or else with modifications, and others create their own versions.  Similarly, most states have adopted relevant standards for signs and signals, based upon the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices from the U.S. Department of Transportation.  Many of the standard rules of the road involve consistent interpretation of the standard signs and signals, such as what to do when approaching a stop sign, or the driving requirements imposed by a double yellow line on the street or highway.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.9.67.236 (talk) 21:02, 16 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Aditionaly, the National Transportation Safety Board, , the NTSB has issued about 14,000 safety recommendations in its history, 73 percent of which have been adopted in whole or in part by the entities to which they were directed. Starting in 1990, the NTSB has annually published a "Most Wanted List" which highlights safety recommendations that the NTSB believes would provide the most significant — and sometimes immediate — benefit to the traveling public.  ; Among transportation safety improvements brought about or inspired by NTSB recommendations
 * Highway: Graduated drivers license laws for young drivers, age-21 drinking laws, smart airbag technology, rear high-mounted brake lights, commercial drivers licenses, and improved school bus construction standards.
 * Multi-Modal: Alcohol and drug testing in all modes of transportation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.9.67.236 (talk) 21:02, 16 July 2017 (UTC)
 * For hte 10 mph over the posted limit, it looks quite specific to the USA. In europe, it looks like difference are less important: In France enforcement allows a 5 km/h overspeed under 100 km/h, and 5% over . In many countries the margin is quite lower. In Holland (the netherlands) tolérance is 2 km/h. In Germany, 55 km/h is enforced.
 * The issue is that allowing a big overspeed margin reduces the credibility of the speed limit.
 * Anyway, speeding is not only one of the most prevalent factors contributing to traffic crashes, it also increase by 4% the number of killed people in a single crash occurence (a big number in the USA)..
 * And Speeding-Related Fatality Rate per 100 Million VMT, 2002 is under 0.24 in IA, and between 0.24 and 0.48 in MN, showing that for speed limit IA is better than MN.
 * And Speeding-Related Fatalities as a Percentage of Total Fatalities by State is 27.2% in MN, vs 12.1% in IA.
 * Source and numbers in.

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