Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Roads/Michigan

Hello and welcome to the Michigan State Highways Task Force! If you would like to help, please jump in and start adding or editing.

Scope and goals
Numbered Michigan State Trunkline Highways as designated by the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT). This includes all signed highways within the State of Michigan, such as Interstate 96, US Highway 10, and M-1. This task force will also expand and introduce a uniform format to articles dealing with Michigan's county-designated highways and other notable county roads.

The goal is to organize, standardize, and expand the articles on Michigan state highways. The eventual goal is to get as many articles as high on the assessment scale as possible.

How you can help
You can help by editing any highway that you can provide more information about, with citations. All articles on the list of state highways to create now exist.

Many of the existing highway articles need to be modified to comply with the project standard (see below). Articles in Category:Routes needing mileposts are missing mileposts for the junctions. You can open this category and add mileposts for any highway listed. Once the mile column has been completed, the Mileposts tag can be removed.

Assessment
To maintain consistency, the project will follow the assessment guidelines at WP:USRD/A.

Resources

 * Footpath to Freeway: The Evolution of Michigan Road Maps from the MSU Library (archived)
 * , including transfers beginning in 1990
 * MDOT PR Finder Application (includes mileposts)
 * List of unsigned state trunkline highways
 * Map database with citation templates.
 * 1926 renumbering
 * Popular Pages list with page view statistics updated on the first of the month
 * County by County statistics updated periodically on request

Structure
To maintain a consistent format, articles will be organized according to WP:USRD/STDS, with the following additional information specific to this project's articles.

Naming convention
Highway articles should be named "M-N (Michigan highway)" where N is the route number assigned by MDOT. Additional articles for the Michigan segments of Interstate and US Highways should be named "Interstate N in Michigan" (mainlines), "Interstate N (Michigan)" (auxiliaries), "U.S. Route N in Michigan".

Articles for Michigan County Designated highways use "X-YY (Michigan county highway)"


 * X= Zone letter
 * Y= Designation

Other county roads should be of the format: "County Road ### (Z County, Michigan)" with the number and appropriate county name unless it bears a completely unique name like Brockway Mountain Drive

Highway markers
All active Michigan state highway markers are available on the Commons. We have also created period-appropriate markers, as the signs would have looked in 1919, 1926 and 1948 (state and US) and 1957 (Interstates). The jct template can be used to simplify creating the links to the graphics and articles in a consistent format.

Article sections to exclude
Since Michigan does not have toll roads, the Services and Tolls sections are not appropriate. A section on rest areas or service centers can be included as a subsection of the Route description.

Infobox
This project uses infobox road and infobox road small as needed. The type codes used are the same for jct as listed below.

Major intersections or Exit list
This task forces uses the optional colored backgrounds incorporating the restrictions spelled out in the Manual of Style for road junction lists (MOS:RJL). To create the tables, there is the specialized MIinttop to create the standard table headers for at-grade or freeway tables. There is also the MIint template to create each the entries in the table. To close the table, use jctbtm. The color keys are required if the table has background colors, per MOS:RJL. The template will produce a table footer row with the required elements per MOS:RJL. If a highway is composed of both at-grade and freeway segments, pick the section heading appropriate to the majority of the highway's length. All exits must be included in the table, plus any at-grade intersections with other state highways. Include junctions with the County-Designated Highways in the tables as they are included on the MDOT maps. Other county roads may be included in non-participating counties to balance the table.

Note: Since the MDOT Physical Reference Finder Application can be used to compute miles to three decimal places, all tables should not be rounded to two decimal places unless the distance information comes from another source. Use the level of precision that reflects the source data.

Categories
At a minimum, the following categories are used on articles. For each category, nnn is a three-digit number for the highway, with leading zeroes as needed. M-1 would have "001", for example. I-696 would use "696". Place these at the bottom of the article as needed, above any interwiki links or stub templates as appropriate.

Junction template
For Michigan highways, we use the to create links to highway articles complete with the correct marker (shield) graphics. The following type codes are valid:
 * I for Interstates
 * I 1957 for Interstates using the original 1957 markers
 * US for US Highways, using the modern markers
 * US 1926 for 1926-vintage US Highway markers in cutout form
 * US 1948 for 1948-vintage US Highway markers in cutout form
 * US 1961 for 1961-vintage US Highway markers in cutout form, Do not use. MI did not use this style, but neighboring states did.
 * M for state highways, using the modern markers
 * M 1919 for 1919 version of the state highway marker in cutout form
 * M 1926 for 1926 version of the state highway marker in cutout form
 * M 1948 for 1948 version of the state highway marker in cutout form
 * For other states, use their two-letter postal abbreviation.
 * CDH for County-Designated Highways. (county# must be specified to show a county-specific rendering of the marker)
 * CR for County Roads (county# must be specified to show the correct marker and display a link if the article exists.)
 * FFH for Federal Forest Highways
 * BL/BS for Interstate Business Loops or Business Spurs (dab# must be specified for the link to work)
 * X-Alt/X-Bus/X-Byp/X-Conn/X-Emerg/X-Truck for alternate, business, bypass, connector, emergency or truck routes. Substitute "US", "US 1926", "US 1948", "M", "M 1926" or "M 1948" for the X before the hyphen. (dab# must be specified for the link to work)
 * Capitol Loop for the Capitol Loop (insert a blank route number parameter for this to work)
 * Tour for the Great Lakes Circle Tours, use LSCT, LMCT, LHCT or LECT as appropriate.

Browse template
If an article does not already have browser template, it will need one added. Infobox road will automatically create one using the type codes and numbers. There are several situations where one will need to be added.
 * 1) The parent article on an Interstate Highway or US Highway will not have a browser for all the states in the infobox. They are added at the end of the article in geographical order, west to east or south to north.
 * 2) Decommissioned highway designations may not have their own article. Instead they may redirect to a current designation that replaced the previous one.
 * 3) Several highways may be merged into a single list, like USRD's "Rockland County Scenario". They will use the more compact infobox road small template instead, which does not have an integrated browser.

To insert a browser, the code:

will create something like

Replace previous and next type with whatever is the appropriate type code used by jct. If the article already has a browser at the bottom of the page, the mi browse template can be inserted with the others.. If a second browse needs to be added to an infobox, such as the example at M-26, add the mi browse to the browse= attribute of the infobox, substituting the appropriate highway name for the link to the Michigan State Trunkline Highway System article.

Stub templates
Michigan-road-stub should be placed on any Stub-class articles. If there is an article where this applies, please clean up and expand the article.

Project templates
See Template:WikiProject U.S. Roads/doc for all of the parameters that the template accepts.

Userboxes
{{{tlu|Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Roads/Michigan/Userbox}} or if you prefer to have the icon be your favorite route, use 20 where 20 would be exchanged for the number you'd like

Barnstar
Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Roads/Michigan/Barnstar can be placed on a user's talk page as a reward for assisting the project. The template has one parameter where the reason for award is given with a signature.

News template
Template containing news for all USRD WikiProjects.

USRD Announcements