Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates/Ontario Highway 401/archive2


 * Resolved comments from Nick-D
 * Comments This is a very comprehensive article - great work. I think that it needs a bit more work to reach FA class though. My comments are:
 * "In foresight of the future expansion of the highway, the planners purchased a 91.4-metre-wide (300 ft) right-of-way along the entire length." - 'in foresight' should be 'in anticipation' and the land was presumably purchased by a government agency rather than 'the planners' themselves as this implies
 * This hasn't actually been fixed - changing it to "transportation ministry planners purchased" is basically the same as the original wording. The government agency made this purchase, and not any individuals within that agency. If you drop the word 'planners' here, it should work. Nick-D (talk) 09:38, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
 * What's "driver engagement"?
 * 'the lack of driver attention' reads awkwardly I'm afraid. Nick-D (talk) 10:00, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
 * "Unlike the collector lanes, which provide access to every interchange, the express lanes only provide direct access to a select few" - the use of 'select few' implies that these lanes are reserved to the use of a small number of elite drivers - is this really what you meant?
 * 'Macadamized' shouldn't be capitalised
 * Why did World War II allow planners to survey 375,000 drivers? And how and why did they conduct this insanely huge survey? (there is no statistical reason why they would have needed to survey more than a few thousand people to obtain the same overall results)
 * "the onset of the Korean War in 1949 " - the Korean War started in 1950
 * "The convenience of a road to get across the city" reads awkwardly
 * "Motorists found the new road to be convenient for travels across the city" isn't an improvement ('travels' is awkward) Nick-D (talk) 10:00, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
 * What's a MPP?
 * The blow by blow account of how the 'Highway of Heroes' name came about seems exessive: you could just say that it received this name as a result of a petition which was presented to the Minister for Transport following a public campaign.
 * Both the notes at the end of the article need supporting references Nick-D (talk) 06:52, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Speaking only as someone that stepped in to make some changes, I implemented some copy editing in the article. The first through fourth items have been addressed in some fashion. In reading that fifth item, in the article, it said that the tenure of the war allowed them to survey so many drivers. Yes, I too find the sample size to be rather large, but a survey conducted for six years would allow that. As for the remaining items, I've address all but the last two. Floydian will need to address any sources for the explanatory nootes, and I don't think we need to remove information about the Highway of Heroes developments from this article.  Imzadi 1979  → 
 * The planners were working for the ministry. Unlike today, in the 1930s and 1940s the highway departments did the surveying, planning and design work, then hired a company to build it. Design/build contracts didn't start appearing until the mid-1950s. Driver engagement is how engaged a driver is in driving. A sleepy driver is not engaged, but one paying attention to the road is. This sentence is one of a couple that have come up at every step of review, and so I'm going to ask what your suggestion for fixing it is (ditto the motorists being magnetized to the new highway), as several others have contributed to the wording. As for the Highway of Heroes, I snipped it apart from the original length, and I feel any more would make it less comprehensive. It is currently the best account of how the highway got that name available. Even the "Highway of Heroes" book by the guy that started it (Fisher) doesn't explain it this well. I've ref'd the first note; the second note is simply a comment on the sources used throughout the article, stating that every source, except the annual report published March 31, 1952, claims July 1952. -  ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ  τ ¢  15:09, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, the planners were working for a ministry, but it was the ministry which actually purchased the land - the planners were (in a manner of speaking) its agents as they obviously didn't personally stump up any of the money or gain ownership of it. "Due to fatigue caused by the lack of driver attention along the flat and straight lengths of highway" could become "Due to fatigue caused by the highway's flat and straight route" or similar. "Motorists found the new road to be convenient for travels across the city;" could be "Motorists found the new road to be convenient way of travelling through Toronto" or similar (though this is still a bit awkward/simplistic), and I don't get why there's an overly detailed paragraph on how part of the road came to be called the 'Highway of Heroes' and almost nothing on why the whole thing is called Highway 401. Nick-D (talk) 10:16, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
 * All fixed. The Highway of Heroes name actually has a story behind it, whereas the 401 was just a numbered designation assigned in 1952. I can't find any explanation behind the use of 400-series numbers (the annual reports just say "this year we atarted to"), but regardless there is no human touch to it. Highway of Heroes has some meaning behind it and a well documented story. -  ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ  τ ¢  16:42, 15 February 2012 (UTC)