Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Roads/Standards

The U.S. Roads WikiProject has a standard page format that all users generally agree should be followed. These standards are not set in stone, however, and can be ignored if the particular highway warrants it. Please note that WP:MOS, the Wikipedia-wide Manual of Style, should be also be followed; in cases where the two conflict, follow the MOS instead. (You should probably also bring the conflict to the project's attention so this document can be amended to comply with MOS.) Also, be advised that many of the state subprojects specify different standards that may override these, so check with the applicable subprojects to see what other standards apply.

Notability

Before writing an article on a highway, you should check to make sure it is notable. Interstate, U.S. Routes, and state highways are always notable. Other streets, roads, and highways may not be. Check Wikipedia:Notability and Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Roads/Notability to ensure your article won't be deleted due to notability concerns.

Names

Main page: Wikipedia:Manual of Style (U.S. state and territory highways)

The standard article naming convention (where the page is located) for interstate highways is "Interstate [number]", and the convention for U.S. highways is "U.S. Route [number]". State highway articles are generally titled in the form "[State] [road type] [number]" (e.g. Missouri Route 13, Oklahoma State Highway 3, New York State Route 17). Kansas and Michigan are the exception to this general trend, due to those states' DOTs naming their highways as "K-[number]" and "M-[number]" respectively. Each state's convention is listed at the page listed above. Naming conventions were determined after a long period of conflict, so ignoring or proposing drastic changes to these conventions is contentious.

Displayed text for links

Main page: Wikipedia:Manual of Style (U.S. state and territory highways) § Linking

Displayed text for links to routes in the infobox should be an abbreviated form. Use a common abbreviation for that state.

Incorrect	Correct
New York State Route 15	NY 15
Oklahoma State Highway 51	SH-51
Interstate 99	I-99
U.S. Route 20	US 20

Highway names in the main body of the article (i.e. in the prose, not in the infobox) can either be abbreviated as above or written out fully. Note that the name of the state should generally be dropped when it is not part of the official name and is unambiguous, e.g. Route 76, not Missouri Route 76. (See WP:USSH for details.)

Use the standard abbreviations for bannered routes ("BUS", "BYP", "ALT",...) for the displayed text. Their mixed-case counterparts ("Bus., "Byp.", "Alt.",...) are equally acceptable.

Incorrect	Correct
U.S. Route 222 Business US 222 Business	US 222 BUS
West Virginia Route 10 Alternate WV 10 Alternate	WV 10 ALT
U.S. Route 66 Bypass US 66 Bypass	US 66 BYP

Shorter banners, such as Loop, Spur, and Truck can either be abbreviated or used in their full form.

Infobox

All articles should include an infobox. In most cases, {{Infobox road}} should be used. (Further documentation on fields the infobox accepts can be found on its template page.) Many state subprojects use a state-specific infobox based upon Infobox road, such as {{Infobox NH Route}} for New Hampshire.

Maps

Articles should include a map showing the route the highway takes. The Maps Task Force is responsible for the creation and maintenance of all

Major intersections

In the major intersections section of the infobox, there are to be no more than 10 junctions listed. These are preferably Interstates; on longer articles, the most major interstates (those ending in 0 or 5) should be the only ones mentioned. A shorter route can have more minor junctions, but the 10 junction limit still applies regardless. The major intersection list in the infobox should be a <br/> (line break)-delimited list. Breaks in segmented routes can be reflected in this field with a <hr> (horizontal rule).

Lists of cities or counties should be a comma-delimited list.

State abbreviation for communities

Do not include the state abbreviation with town names for the junction list for a state highway (as it is implied that the town in question is in the same state as the road). Do include the state abbreviation in every other case.

USSH incorporation

All items addressing the infobox in WP:USSH apply here as well.

Browsing

The bottom section of the infobox provides a field for browsing all highways in a state in numerical order. This section standardizes the order they should be laid out in.

Type codes

By default, three types are enabled for all states: Interstate, U.S. route and state highway. To generate the correct type, the following should be entered into "previous_type" or "next_type", where applicable:

• Interstate for Interstates
• US for U.S. routes
• 2-letter state abbreviation for state highways

In some states, redirects exist for state highway types but making more redirects is not necessary nor recommended.

Bannered routes (such as West Virginia Route 10 Alternate) should not be included in the browse. Suffixed routes (such as New York State Route 252A) should. Use the "spur_of/spur_type" parameter for bannered routes instead.

Browsing precedence

Precedence for browsing is as follows:

Interstate	→	U.S. route	→	State highway
I-58		US 58		Route 58

Interstates with the same number should be ordered first, followed by U.S. routes, followed by primary state highways. If any secondary state or county highway systems are present, they may be included at the discretion of the state subproject. The state subproject should also determine the browsing order for their secondary highways.

Article layout

Articles should include a set of standard sections that cover various aspects of the route. This ensures more complete coverage and provides a standardized look-and-feel. Articles covered by a subproject should use any modifications to the structure specified by the subproject. All articles not covered by a subproject use the below structure. Sections can be added or modified as necessary.

Infobox

Articles should use Infobox road, and all known info should be supplied. See the the template documentation for applicable flags and WikiProject U.S. Roads/Article Templates#Infobox for standards for the routebox.

Lead

Untitled section that describes the route. It might be helpful for formatting to use {{TOCleft}} at the top of this section to display the table of contents on the top left, followed by the main description of the route. Depending on the route this section may just name the direction (E/W or N/S) and termination points, or may go into considerable detail. However, the majority of detail, such as progress by town or county, should be reserved for the next section.

Route description

This section is for describing the route itself and its progression across the state or country.

In the case of Interstate and U.S. routes, the description should be broken up by states using third level headings (===California===, for example). If this state is CA or WA, then put the sections that that WP wants here. Otherwise, describe the routing through this state. Optionally, use {{main}} to define detail pages (like U.S. Route 24 in Illinois) at the beginning of the paragraph, followed by a general paragraph that contains less detail than the detail page. If no detail page exists, simply write a general paragraph of the route's routing through the state. States should be listed from south to north and west to east.

Interstate and U.S. route articles should also include a floating table listing each state the route goes through and the length of each state's portion of the route. Place the length table in this section, using {{lengths table}} to create the table header. Do not add a length table to articles describing intrastate interstates.

For intrastate U.S. and Interstate routes, state detail pages, and state routes, third-level headings are not required. These articles should not contain a length table.

Regardless of the route's length, progression should be described from south to north, west to east.

Major cities

Interstate and U.S. routes may have a secondary infobox providing a list of major cities along the route. (Application of this box to state routes should be determined by the state subproject.) Place the list of cities in an infobox located at the top of the "Route description" section. Use the following coding to generate the box:

For Interstate routes

{| class="infobox" width="230px"
!style="background: #ccf;"|<big>Major cities</big><br><small>'''Bolded cities''' are officially-designated [[control city|control cities]] for signs</small>
|-
|
*
|}

For U.S. routes

{| class="infobox" width="230px"
!style="background: #ccf; "|<big>Major cities</big>
|-
|
*
|}

The cities should be listed in the box from south to north and west to east. Additionally, official AASHTO Interstate control cities on should be displayed in bold text.

History

Any historical information known about the route should be noted. Historical routes that other pages redirect to in the article (for example, NY 36A in NY 63) should be bolded.

Future

This section is optional. Any concrete future plans regarding the future of the route. Proposed extensions, truncations, upgrades, or decommissionings would fall into this section. Special care should be taken to ensure all content included in this section is reliably sourced to be under serious consideration by highway officials and not mere speculation.

Services

This section is optional. If the road offers any special motorist services (such as motorist aid hotlines, service plazas, a dedicated law enforcement unit, call boxes, or a travel radio station), discuss them here. If very little can be written about the services (less than about two paragraphs or so) then this section should be merged into the route description. Most of these extra services are associated with turnpikes, and so this section will be less common on articles about free roads.

Tolls

For articles on turnpikes only. This section should cover the cost to drive the entire turnpike, the system used to assess tolls (barrier, ticket-based, or wholly electronic), where toll plazas are located, and what, if any, electronic tolling system is accepted (EZ-Pass or its equivalents) and whether open-road tolling is available.

Major intersections or Exit list

The contents of this section may vary by route. Refer to the table below for the appropriate section header and further instructions.

Route composition	Section header title	What should be here
All grade-separated interchanges; no at-grade intersections	Exit list	An exit list.
Mixture of grade-separated interchanges and at-grade intersections	Major intersections or Exit list	Depending on the route in question, either a junction table or a "combo" exit list featuring exits and intersections can be used. See Pennsylvania Route 60 for an example.
All at-grade intersections; no grade-separated interchanges	Major intersections	A junction list

Exit lists should be designed in accordance with the international exit list guide. There is no set standard for junction lists, but the de facto standard is to use the {{jcttop}}, {{jctint}}, {{jctco}}, and {{jctbtm}} system of templates to create a junction table. State subprojects may have specialized versions of these templates customized to address issues pertaining to that state.

Articles summarizing the full length of Interstates and U.S. routes should include a bulleted list of intersections with other Interstates, U.S. highways and other notable roads in place of a detailed intersection table. (Full junction lists should be placed in the state-detail articles instead.)

Auxiliary routes

This section is optional. Use this description to provide links to all other articles Place the 3di template in this section if the article route is a primary interstate. If the article route is an auxiliary interstate, treat it as a navbox and place it at the bottom of the article below all content.

Bannered routes

A section describing for the highway's bannered routes (business routes for Interstate articles), if applicable. If there are only a few bannered routes, describe them here. If there are many, split the description off into its own list (see Bannered routes of U.S. Route 71 as an example) and use this section to list simply the routes and their locations, with a hatnote at the top of the section linking to the list.

Articles on individual bannered routes are discouraged unless there is something unusual about them that would warrant them having their own article. Examples include being a freeway, having an extraordinary length, etc.

See also

Place links to related articles here.

References

Main page: Wikipedia:Citing sources

Place all references here, using the <ref></ref> tags in the article and the {{reflist}} tag in this section.

External links

Place all external links which are not references here. Links which only relate to one state on an article pertaining to a full Interstate or U.S. route should be placed under a third-level heading or, if it exists, on the appropriate state-detail page.

Categories

All state highways should be filed into the correct category. (Look at a similar article from the same highway system to determine which is the correct category.) Sortkeys for the category should be of the form nnnA, where nnn is 3-digit route number, and A is the letter designation if any (e.g. Route 1A is "001A", Route 2 is "002").

Deprecated sections

These sections may be present in older articles. If found, they should be removed from the article, their contents merged elsewhere.

Communities along the route

Formerly, this section contained a list of communities, which could range from small hamlets to large cities, along the route. Depending on the length of the route this may include only major communities, or just the few hamlets the route passes through.

This section has been dropped, as all cities should be mentioned in the route description. When found in an article, ensure all cities listed are mentioned in the route description, and remove the section.

Miscellanea

This section is deprecated per WP:TRIVIA. It included trivia or facts about a route. When found in an article, merge the trivia to a relevant part of the article.

Shields

In the infobox's termini and major junctions fields, shields must be displayed before the name/link to other intersecting highways (e.g. K-10). If a junction list is present, it should likewise contain shields before the names of intersecting highways. (Freeway exit lists are required to have such shields per WP:ELG.) For concurrent highways, the shields may either come first ( I-44/SH-3) or next to the applicable highway name ( I-44 /  SH-3), but one style or the other should be consistently used within an article.

Shields displayed at the top of the infobox should be 70px in height. (For most wide three-digit shields, this will require a width of 88px.) Auxiliary/banner plates (Alternate, business, etc.) should be 70px in width. Shields in the infobox, junction lists, and exit lists should be 20px in height (requiring a width of 25px for most wide three-digit shields), except in the event where a 20px height will cause the shield to be less than 20px in width. In this event, the shield should be 20px in width.

Shields should not be placed inline in the middle of paragraphs.

Talk pages

{{U.S. Roads WikiProject}} should be placed at the top of all talk pages of articles related to U.S. Roads with the "state" parameter set to either:

• Interstate for U.S. Interstate Highways
• US for U.S. Routes
• two letter state abbreviation for any state article (regardless of the existence of a subproject)

For non-route articles that do not pertain to a state, leave this option off the template to display the standard U.S. Roads banner.