Wikipedia talk:WikiProject U.S. Roads/U.S. Routes/Archive 1

Business US routes
Something needs to be mentioned about a phrase that is turning up on more and more highway articles under "Business Routes": ''There are several sections of Business US XX serving more as alternate routes of the main highway. While they go through towns and cities, they still run numerous miles through rural areas and often pass through more than one city''. I wrote the original in regards to some sections of US 71 in southwest Missouri/northwest Arkansas. These sections run 30+ miles, unlike the usual length of business routes of in rural areas of five or less. It appears verbatim with my original comments on US 71's BRs, and not that I mind this being copied, it is not correct information for some of these other highways. Rt66lt 05:09, August 28, 2005 (UTC)
 * I'm not really sure what to do about business routes... Wikipedia only has a few articles about them. For now I would just mention them in the main article until something is done about business routes.--Rschen7754 16:50, August 29, 2005 (UTC)

Direction and decomission
Additionally, why south to north on odd numbered highways? Most articles outside Wikipedia dealing with the highways are written north to south. The articles in existence in Wikipedia are already written this way, too. This seems to be convention and would probably be better here, too. It would be a good idea to change this now, before all the highways are this way and a change is decided upon. On the infoboxes, why isn't there a place for year of decommissioning? This should be included here for highways no longer in existance, and if all the information is included in infoboxes as shown here, it doesn't look like there would be any articles except for infoboxes. Rt66lt 05:09, August 28, 2005 (UTC)
 * I don't have a problem with year of decomission on the route box... I'll add it when I get a chance. The reason I did South-North was because mileposts typically ascend going northbound... but North-South is fine for me as long as the first section header says "Route description (north to south)" so the viewer doesn't get confused.--Rschen7754
 * About the infoboxes... I'm following the precedent set by WikiProject California State Highways. However not every single junction will be listed here... only major ones; this will reduce the size of the routebox.--Rschen7754

I can't believe it's come this far!
Way back when (ok, actually it was 1/9/2004), I took the incomplete but interesting List of U.S. Highways and expanded it to include every route I could find a reference to, past or present, organized by parent route. Then I tried something crazy -- I put together a model to use for detailing every route's termini, states travelled, and related routes, using information from mapguy_denver's U.S. Highway Ends pages. It seemed like an interesting idea... a little harebrained, but I'd already discovered to my delight that I wasn't the only roadgeek in the world. I figured it might be fun and useful. I even looked into the WikiProject system, but decided I really didn't have time (or the Wiki knowledge) to put such a thing together.

Now, there are templates, nice formatting for the highway list, more information on the highway pages than I'd have ever thought possible... and a full-fledged WikiProject! This crazy idea has progressed far beyond my wildest dreams. I doubt I'll be able to be very deeply involved, though I'll add any tidbits I can. But congratulations on turning a strange little idea into a Wikipedia institution! --Robertb-dc 18:48, 28 September 2005 (UTC)