Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Roads/Blog/January 2009

AARoads Forum!
I am pleased to annouce that AARoads.com has recently opened its Roadgeek forum! Check it out: http://www.aaroads.com/forum/index.php –RoadGuy wuz here 17:57, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Article promotions
The following articles have been promoted to GA, GT, A, FL, FA or GT status in January. Please take the time to read these newly-promoted quality articles and congratulate those that worked to improve the article:

Flooding in Washington closes a lot of highways
Currently, flood danger and avalanche and landslide danger has closed a lot of highways in Washington State. Interstate 5 in Lewis County, and Interstate 90 through Snoqualmie Pass remain closed at this time. This has resulted in virtually all the major routes connecting Western Washington with the rest of the country being closed. Crews still have not determined detour routes for the I-5 or I-90 closures.

More information can be found at Washington State Department of Transportation. --Rschen7754 (T C) 21:07, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Featured member for January
The featured member for January is Ljthefro.

When the U.S. Roads wikiproject first started compiling state based statistics, Nevada was in last place with over 3/4ths of all Nevada road articles at stub class. Since then, Nevada's road articles have been improving, the stub count dropping, and the statistics on Nevada road articles have now surpassed several other states. Ljthefro has improved many Nevada road stub stub articles to C or B class articles. Thanks for the hard work!

The featured member for February is now being discussed, if you want to nominate someone for featured member, head on over to WT:USRD/B.

The USRD Cup Derby
I am announcing the new USRD Cup contest, modeled after WP:CUP. This will promote improvement of USRD articles and participation in USRD. This contest will begin shortly after the County Challenge concludes. What are you waiting for? Sign up now at User:Rschen7754/USRDCup! --Rschen7754 (T C) 06:04, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
 * The contest will be starting this Saturday at 00:00 UTC. --Rschen7754 (T C) 06:30, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Leaderboard for 29 December
All states have not moved; Michigan, Utah, Arizona and Connecticut have not lost any points, but New York has lost one hunderedth of a point; five new states were added as part of an expansion to include the top ten and the states, in order, are:. Now, here's the condensed leaderboard (if you want the full version of the board just head on over to WP:USRD/A/S): –RoadGuy wuz here 19:23, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

2008: Year in review
It's been a rough year for USRD. Towards the beginning, we had just begun the second arbitration case, and throughout the year there were several disagreements.

On the other hand, we have made much progress throughout the year in terms of article quality. On January 1, we had 3 FAs; we now have 22. We now have 18 A-class articles (up from 6), our first 5 featured lists, and 217 GAs (up from 23). We have many more quality articles than we did last year.

Hopefully in 2009 we will continue to improve article quality across USRD and have a more successful year as a project. --Rschen7754 (T C) 05:52, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Featured member for December
User:Algorerhythms has been active in the maps task force and with his map contributions has helped numerous articles reach GA or FA status. He has also been active writing about articles about roads in Maryland, especially historical routes of U.S. Route 40, including the recently promoted U.S. Route 40 Alternate (Keyser's Ridge – Cumberland, Maryland). Thanks for the hard work.

The featured member for January is now being discussed, if you want to nominate someone for featured member, head on over to WT:USRD/B.