Roads Go Ever On

[Konveyor Belt]

Now there is something to be said that Google Maps is not a reliable source, but there are plenty of high quality maps from reputable sources to choose from.

No, there aren't; at least not this way.

GNIS and GNS are the perfect illustration of this. The majority of GNIS was compiled from 1:25000 topographic maps, or Ming should say, it was entered in a sort of in-house crowd-sourcing. The problem was that, no matter how good the maps were, figuring out what a name on the map referred to turned out to be hugely error-prone.

For (US) roads the sources that I'd consider most reliable are maps published by state departments of transportation, and if those aren't available then maps published by the old paper road map companies (Rand McNally and its subsidiaries, AAA affiliates, etc.), which aren't based on GNIS. However, I don't know what the actual policy is on this stuff, and I don't care to make myself angry by finding out.

[Ming]

For (US) roads the sources that I'd consider most reliable are maps published by state departments of transportation, and if those aren't available then maps published by the old paper road map companies (Rand McNally and its subsidiaries, AAA affiliates, etc.), which aren't based on GNIS. However, I don't know what the actual policy is on this stuff, and I don't care to make myself angry by finding out.

They are solid for the colored lines and the numbers in the little boxes and shields. For the dots connected by those lines, not so much. It's something of the same problem as with GNIS (and especially GNS): nobody questions whether there is anything at the dot's location. Ming forgets which western state it was, but someone at GNIS entered a bunch of bogus town names from state highway maps and third party atlases. The sad truth is that all of these mappers are playing a game of telephone with each other.

[The Blue Newt]

For (US) roads the sources that I'd consider most reliable are maps published by state departments of transportation, and if those aren't available then maps published by the old paper road map companies (Rand McNally and its subsidiaries, AAA affiliates, etc.), which aren't based on GNIS. However, I don't know what the actual policy is on this stuff, and I don't care to make myself angry by finding out.

They are solid for the colored lines and the numbers in the little boxes and shields. For the dots connected by those lines, not so much. It's something of the same problem as with GNIS (and especially GNS): nobody questions whether there is anything at the dot's location. Ming forgets which western state it was, but someone at GNIS entered a bunch of bogus town names from state highway maps and third party atlases. The sad truth is that all of these mappers are playing a game of telephone with each other.

Not just telephone, but minesweeper; I’m sure Wiki has gotten bitten by a copyright trap or two.

[Konveyor Belt]

They are solid for the colored lines and the numbers in the little boxes and shields. For the dots connected by those lines, not so much. It's something of the same problem as with GNIS (and especially GNS): nobody questions whether there is anything at the dot's location. Ming forgets which western state it was, but someone at GNIS entered a bunch of bogus town names from state highway maps and third party atlases. The sad truth is that all of these mappers are playing a game of telephone with each other.

Not just telephone, but minesweeper; I’m sure Wiki has gotten bitten by a copyright trap or two.

Obviously don't cite this in an article, but a simple Google Earth check to make sure something actually exists at a point would save many headaches.

[Meanderingbartender]

Here's an AFD Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/A236 highway (Nigeria) (T-H-L) that had 8 keeps and not a single one made an attempt to add a reference to the article A236 highway (Nigeria) (T-H-L)

[Randy from Boise]

Here's an AFD Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/A236 highway (Nigeria) (T-H-L) that had 8 keeps and not a single one made an attempt to add a reference to the article A236 highway (Nigeria) (T-H-L)

There is no obligation or expectation for Keep voters in a deletion discussion to make article improvements in association with that discussion.

That is not the purpose of AfD. The purpose is to determine whether a challenged article has sufficient basis in policy and precedent to merit retention or to bring deletion.

t

[Meanderingbartender]

My point was all these WP:Roads editors really have no interest in making Wikipedia better. They just want to win their AfDs and pretend that all their work actually matters without doing much of anything.

[AndyTheGrump]

Here's an AFD Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/A236 highway (Nigeria) (T-H-L) that had 8 keeps and not a single one made an attempt to add a reference to the article A236 highway (Nigeria) (T-H-L)

There is no obligation or expectation for Keep voters in a deletion discussion to make article improvements in association with that discussion.

That is not the purpose of AfD. The purpose is to determine whether a challenged article has sufficient basis in policy and precedent to merit retention or to bring deletion.

t

Perhaps 'encouraging people to rectify issues with articles who's subject matter notability has been questioned' should be added as a purpose?

[Ming]

Here's an AFD Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/A236 highway (Nigeria) (T-H-L) that had 8 keeps and not a single one made an attempt to add a reference to the article A236 highway (Nigeria) (T-H-L)

There is no obligation or expectation for Keep voters in a deletion discussion to make article improvements in association with that discussion.

There is a great deal of enjoyment, however, in needling them over their failure to do so.

[Ritchie333]

My point was all these WP:Roads editors really have no interest in making Wikipedia better. They just want to win their AfDs and pretend that all their work actually matters without doing much of anything.

Yup, they were all over Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Autovia C-13 (T-H-L) but none of them actually expanded the article beyond an uber stub, until I wrote a few paragraphs.

[el84]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... _and_notes

I was looking to see what caused Rschen7754 to resign, and it seems that the Roads project has moved off to somewhere else?

[Vigilant]

Good

[rnu]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... _and_notes

I was looking to see what caused Rschen7754 to resign, and it seems that the Roads project has moved off to somewhere else?

In an emotional TikTok video (which has attracted 48k likes at the time of writing), one of the seceding editors explains the underlying concerns in more detail, arguing that "in the past couple of years, our little corner of the site [Wikipedia] has come under attack [... for] two reasons: sourcing and notability".

Sourcing and notabilty? How dare people "attack" their pet project over such trivialities!

[ArmasRebane]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... _and_notes

I was looking to see what caused Rschen7754 to resign, and it seems that the Roads project has moved off to somewhere else?

In an emotional TikTok video (which has attracted 48k likes at the time of writing), one of the seceding editors explains the underlying concerns in more detail, arguing that "in the past couple of years, our little corner of the site [Wikipedia] has come under attack [... for] two reasons: sourcing and notability".

Sourcing and notabilty? How dare people "attack" their pet project over such trivialities!

Yeah I don't see how you look at that TikTok not knowing anything about the subject and think in response to "the problem is no one is writing about some random Virginia state road", "...so why do you care?"

Fundamentally most roads aren't notable, certainly not ones outside of longstanding populated cities, the same way a ton of minor or "invisible" architecture and infrastructure isn't. There was a pretty great article by Tyler Vigen about trying to figure out who built a pedestrian bridge over a highway and why that speaks to this. Probably someone should care more about these random roads, but they fundamentally don't and that's not Wikipedia's problem to solve.

If these people actually do move over and stay there, I hope they're happy with their fan wiki where other road nerds can find it, and Wikipedia can dump its "just sourced to Google Maps and one government report" articles. That's the best possible solution for everyone.

[rhindle]

Don't they have their own roads wiki? If they don't, they really should.

[FelinaLavandula]

Don't they have their own roads wiki? If they don't, they really should.

The Signpost article indicates that they now do, at aaroads.com. Bets on how long it’ll take before somebody tries to cite it on-wiki?

[Vigilant]

The roads people are among the most insane on en.wp.

Their children are described in less glowing and verbose terms than their roads.

[orangepi]

I'm torn between "what they are trying to do will work better somewhere else" and "good riddance".

Something like Arkansas Highway 104 (T-H-L) (which is a description of some maps, plus a ridiculous claim that the north-south highway is "considered an east-west route" that is neither supported by sourcing nor the List of state highways in Arkansas (T-H-L) article) should not be an encyclopedia article.

But if some obsessives want to make a Google search result landing page elsewhere, more power to them.

[Boing! said Zebedee]

The roads people are among the most insane on en.wp.

Yeah, but come on, Wikipedia does need in-depth coverage of all the major areas of human knowledge... Arts, Sciences, Humanities, Roads...

[Ritchie333]

The roads people are among the most insane on en.wp.

Yeah, but come on, Wikipedia does need in-depth coverage of all the major areas of human knowledge... Arts, Sciences, Humanities, Roads...

It also doesn’t need people who flounce when others disagree with them or consensus doesn’t go their way.

[eppur si muove]

Don't they have their own roads wiki? If they don't, they really should.

The Signpost article indicates that they now do, at aaroads.com.[...]

But it's only for North American roads. SO the road nerds from elsewhere will have to make do with WP for now. And searching on terms such as "Mexico", "Guadalaajara" and "Puebla" suggest that by "North America" they mean the US and Canada. Indeed, looking at https://wiki.aaroads.com/wiki/Pan-Ameri ... h_America), there are red links for everything South of the US and for a few of the highway's aliases in Canada.

[Ritchie333]

British and Irish roads go here : https://www.sabre-roads.org.uk/wiki/ - established 15 years ago, and some of the important editors there would never go near Wikipedia and think it's rubbish.

[FelinaLavandula]

But it's only for North American roads. SO the road nerds from elsewhere will have to make do with WP for now. And searching on terms such as "Mexico", "Guadalaajara" and "Puebla" suggest that by "North America" they mean the US and Canada. Indeed, looking at https://wiki.aaroads.com/wiki/Pan-Ameri ... h_America), there are red links for everything South of the US and for a few of the highway's aliases in Canada.

I didn’t look into this wiki even a little bit so this is crazy news to me. None of these roadheads care about roads in India or Western Europe?! None of the lovely little seaside roads in France… just the gravel highway dead ends of Texas…

[Ming]

Maryland already has its road nerd site from way back.

[Lyallpuri]

Back when I developed a strange obsession with remote former highways in Ontario (where I haven't even lived in a long time) during high school, I used to refer to this site very often.

[Giraffe Stapler]

Back when I developed a strange obsession with remote former highways in Ontario (where I haven't even lived in a long time) during high school, I used to refer to this site very often.

There's danger on the edge of town
Ride the King's highway, baby
Weird scenes inside the gold mine
Ride the highway west, baby

[yasslay]

Look at this nonsense from the List of motorways in the United Kingdom (T-H-L) article:

Possible number for the spur from M90 J2A to the A92 near Dumfermline. Number does not appear on any maps, signs or in official documents, but a blue route confirmation sign shows "A92" instead of "(A92)", suggesting that this section of motorway is part of A92 under motorway restrictions (hence A92(M)), but it could be just a spur of the M90, however.

There are other examples in this section:
§ Secretive (unsigned) motorways

All of this information is sourced from one particularly unreliable website that is good for having a laugh about some truly terrible motorways, but not suitable for inclusion in an encyclopaedia.

In reality, most of these "secretive" motorways are spurs of another motorway.

You can use this website (link) from the UK government to confirm this.

[rnu]

Look at this nonsense from the List of motorways in the United Kingdom (T-H-L) article:

Possible number for the spur from M90 J2A to the A92 near Dumfermline. Number does not appear on any maps, signs or in official documents, but a blue route confirmation sign shows "A92" instead of "(A92)", suggesting that this section of motorway is part of A92 under motorway restrictions (hence A92(M)), but it could be just a spur of the M90, however.

There are other examples in this section:
§ Secretive (unsigned) motorways

All of this information is sourced from one particularly unreliable website that is good for having a laugh about some truly terrible motorways, but not suitable for inclusion in an encyclopaedia.

In reality, most of these "secretive" motorways are spurs of another motorway.

You can use this website (link) from the UK government to confirm this.

Wow. That section is -- to quote what John Searle (T-H-L) said about Jacques Derrida (T-H-L)'s writings -- the kind of stuff that gives bullshit a bad name.

[Kraken]

Did You Know Wikipedia has an article called List of motorways in the United Kingdom (T-H-L) but doesn't have an article called Motorways in the United Kingdom (T-H-L)?

And why would it? It's not like motorways are important. They're as irrelevant to UK roads as the Interstate is to the US roads network.

Did You Know that the Wikipedia search terms Motorway (T-H-L) redirects to the page Controlled-access highway (T-H-L)?

And who would have an issue with that? We can forgive Wikipedia forcing an Americanism on British readers right?

But what even is a controlled-accesss highway?

A controlled-access highway is a type of highway that has been designed for high-speed vehicular traffic, with all traffic flow—ingress and egress—regulated. 

And who would dispute that? Well, maybe someone with a limited understanding of UK motorways perhaps? Britain came late to motorways, which probably explains why they were designed primarily not for speed or limited access but as a means to relieve congestion by bypassing town centres. And in the most famous project of all, the M25, bypass London entirely.

Sure, they're for high speed traffic too, but they didn't introduce that to the UK. The national speed limit is the same on motorways and the next fastest type of road, the A-road. You can travel at 70mph on both. With advances in technology, you could probably raise the limit to 80mph, which is already what most people do. Nobody wants to do that, because it's never really been about speed. For that, we have things called racetracks.

The fastest A roads are similar to motorways in other ways too. They have a central reservation and fewer and faster exit/entry points. All to raise speeds and increase traffic flow. As a consequence, the shittiest oldest A-roads are nothing like motorways now. You drive on those at motorways speeds, you iz ded. There is a reason why quite a few UK motorways are simply A roads upgraded to motorway specifications, not actual motorways.

And one last hilarious wrinkle, they are (or were) removing one of the most identifiable features of the motorway over the A road network, the hard shoulder (an empty nearside lane). Why? To improve capacity, not speed.

The history of the UK motorway network is one of failure. They were designed to releive congestion and bypass urban areas, not raise speeds. But they merely attracted more traffic so quickly became congested (the M25 quite famously so) and reduced what speed gains were made over very long distances. And because the UK is densely populated, it's proven incredibly difficult to widen them. And where they can be, it's costly as fuck.

Meanwhile, the railways have been starved of investment and we came late to high speed rail (and its not been a success). Which all means that even now, the introduction of motorways AND the upgrading of the most useful primary-roads has been one of the most successful UK infrastructure projects in history. And all means the car is still king and we have an excellent just in time based supply chain servicing both industry and the consumer sector.

The motorcoach option of public transport greatly benefited from motorways, but the speed gains are small given coaches by and large still have to get in and out of urban areas. As a result, if you're not a cheap skate and there is a viable rail route, you let the train take the strain.

Outside the usual uses, motorways are perhaps most valuable nowadays as the means by which football fans move quickly around the country in private hire coaches to see their team playing at far flung places. But if you offered them a railway network that offered these same journeys, they would snap your fucking hand off. Speed isn't everything. Sometimes it falls to as low as the fifth most important factor in this quite small quite busy little island.

Perhaps the most enjoyable thing about motorways is the service station. Junk food, sweets, silly toys, trucks, coffee. A welcome relief from the monotony of motorway driving, especially for coach parties.

UK motorway service stations are famously tiny little towns serving a very captive market, a small slice of the abuses of capitalist greed. This whole concept was a rare thing at the time, with Britain having no speakable culture of this curiously American form of car worship, outside of the largest shopping malls. "Services" exist on A-routes, but are smaller and not usually self contained islands, sometimes just a restaurant.

As such, they hold a very special place in our popular culture. Most British people can name at least one. Many have their favorites. They crop up in all sorts of ways, from the serious to the silly. It defies logic at times, given we're supposedly all train fans. Wikipedia has none of this rich context.

So what have we learned? Roads are boring. And Wikipedia is rubbish at roads.

You're welcome.

[yasslay]

I've taken it upon myself to remove the section completely (diff).

There was some official documentation provided on some of the relevant pages of the self-published website which could confirm that some of these numbers did exist in official capacity in the past, however, the documentation seems to be largely irrelevant as even the government website doesn't take this into account.

The sleeper must awaken.

Wow. That section is -- to quote what John Searle (T-H-L) said about Jacques Derrida (T-H-L)'s writings -- the kind of stuff that gives bullshit a bad name.

I wouldn't even say that - I think that the original website is good for gathering basic facts about current and former motorways but isn't suitable for inclusion as a source in an encyclopaedia at all. Reliability is key.

[interesting story, too long to quote directly]

The definition of "high speed" is subjective but I would regard British motorways as being high speed as most of them are designed to a 70 mph standard, especially on the bypasses. More focus is generally applied on whether or not the road is designed for motor traffic, unmotorised traffic or both.

[rnu]

[...]
The definition of "high speed" is subjective but I would regard British motorways as being high speed as most of them are designed to a 70 mph standard, especially on the bypasses. More focus is generally applied on whether or not the road is designed for motor traffic, unmotorised traffic or both.

Introducing a 70 mph (112.6 km/h) speed limit for the Autobahn would be a great way to piss off a lot of Germans. The Advisory speed limit (T-H-L) on German Autobahn's is 130 km/h (80.7 mph). Large parts of the German Autobahn system have no legal speed limit whatsoever.