Talk:Freeway

Archive of Talk:Freeway prior to November 2006

Drifting towards entropy, it seems

Well, I guess this article is becoming more and more of a mess (starting with the fact that it has the motorway icon at the top, which is never used in the country where the term "freeway" was pioneered, the United States). I'm too busy working on Lawyer as well as keeping up with my professional career to fix this mess, and it looks like everyone else is busy with school or work.

I briefly looked around on CalCat over the weekend and it looks like a few libraries do carry the old AASHTO Highway Definitions book, which would help clear up a lot of the arguments over definitions! Unfortunately, the only library with a copy that's 60 miles of me is the Institute of Transportation Studies Library at UC Berkeley, which has extremely limited public access hours (1-5 pm) and is closed weekends. So I won't be able to get up there for a few months. On the weekdays I'm just too busy with lawyer stuff like depositions. --Coolcaesar 07:50, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

I finally got the Highway Definitions book! Though it's actually a booklet. I'm going to start cleaning up this article and Expressway this weekend as I've been discussing over at Talk:Types of road. --Coolcaesar 06:03, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

"which is never used in the country where the term "freeway" was pioneered, the United States" - What does that matter?

• Perhaps Freeway is a distinctly US name for an international concept, in which case the article should be renamed a la Airplane to something internationally neutral.
• Or perhaps freeway is a sufficiently internationally-accepted name for a main article title, in which case every locale with freeways enjoys equal stake in the article.
• Or finally, as seems to be the settled consensus, perhaps freeway is a distinct concept, not just a distinct name; if so, the article needs to be pruned to be relevant to freeways and not autopistas etc. I think that's clearly the WRONG way to approach it, in that it's totally unlike how Wikipedia handles any other varying names for a concept, but hey -- it looks to me that a bunch of US-based road enthuisasts have been successful in promoting this aberrant view to the point where it is pretty much consensus. I might change my point of view if I could be convinced that freeway were a totally separate concept from motorway, autopista, or what have you.

You want to have your cake and eat it too, by having an article on international limited-access highways remain under this name and retain international content but then privileging the United States based on the name of the article. Indeed, the article is outrageously US-centric, and apparently some of the rationale has to do with nomenclature. I'm too lazy to pull out WP standards at the moment (maybe later) but I'm pretty sure that parlay (name an international concept by the US name, keep international content in the article, then complain about its prominence w/r/t US content) is inherently unWikipedian. - PhilipR 14:56, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Freeway originated in the US. So why should this not be directed to the US and also include other areas that have adopted this term and also mention the names used by other places that have adopted this concept? Vegaswikian 19:34, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

To the extent that the freeways themselves (rather than the term freeway) originated in the US, your point has some validity. But don't the German Autobahnen predate any US freeways, so that by your rationale the article would need to be Germanocentric? Regardless of who invented the freeway, origin is not the sole determinant in Wikipedia naming conventions. Fixed-wing aircraft were invented in the US (I'm not sure what term the Wright Brothers used) yet Wikipedia found it necessary to adopt a compromise term as a main name for the article. There are plenty of other topics such as football (soccer) where locale of origin is but one consideration in the Wikipedia naming conventions.

The other issue is that articles like Motorway, Autopista, Freeway, Autobahn etc. seem to be organized around documenting the terminology rather than documenting the actual entity. For Wiktionary that would no doubt be the proper way of doing things, but my understanding is that for WP this is pretty non-standard, albeit apparently pretty well-established in this instance. - PhilipR 20:11, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Pardon my bluntness, but your postings are so out of touch that you have clearly failed to read this entire talk page, as well as Talk:Types of road. I suggest starting from the top of both talk pages and reading down until you understand exactly what is going on. If you go back up several sections, you'll see that SPUI wanted to do precisely what you are implying (that is, using this article to treat the topic generally), and I was sort of siding with that view, but a huge number of other editors objected, particularly User:Zoney. Specifically, many UK-based editors were highly offended by the notion of merging Motorway into this article, even though the term is clearly a minority usage in English (the fact that Hollywood is located in California helps to boost usage of "freeway" over "motorway"). That is why Vegaswikian and I have moved towards a consensus position of keeping separate articles for all similar types of high speed restricted access roads and then carefully trimming down each one to eliminate redundant material already available in the other articles in the group. Wikipedia users interested in the other names for similar roads can find out about them through the footer template and the main Types of road article.

If you want to develop a new consensus in favor of the position that SPUI was advancing, you can certainly join forces with him to advance that position. I am personally neutral on this issue and will side with any position on how to organize the road articles as long as it is coherent and consistent; if you can develop an articulate argument that Freeway should be the blanket term used on Wikipedia for all such roads, I will support you on it. But I have to warn you that you will encounter extreme resistance from Zoney and all other UK-based editors (as well as all French and German editors if you start advocating the merger of autoroute and autobahn into this article). I have to also warn you that I will oppose any merger of Freeway with Expressway (as some non-legal trained editors have unsuccessfully proposed in the past) because the two terms are distinctly different in U.S. federal law (as I have noted in the article's current version) and in six U.S. states. --Coolcaesar 03:33, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

You're right that I got lazy and failed to read a rather longish talk page (any of the 30 items I should be looking at? #24 perhaps?). Is there any practical way to have an informed opinion on this topic without reading several long Talk pages, e.g. is there a summary somewhere? I may just have to come to terms with the fact that Wikipedia is in some ways a hobby only for those with hours of free time, and that participants therefore tend to self-select on that basis. That's not a complaint toward you (after all, it seems reasonable that I should perform due diligence), rather a general gripe I have with Wikipedia. Often the persistent can win disputes through attrition.

Be that as it may, I think you've confirmed that my impression of the status quo is substantially correct, i.e. that some people have built a local semi-consensus for these articles that's radically different from established WP precedent for other issues such as fixed-wing aircraft. If I have time maybe I can try to reestablish consensus with SPUI or maybe it's a fruitless battle, I don't know. I think WP:WINAD is very much on our side, i.e. that articles shouldn't be in 1:1 correspondence with terms but with concepts. But if it's going to be a major battle then I'm afraid I'm just not that motivated to see things done the theoretically "right" way against resistance.

I generally agree about expressway/freeway, btw; I would probably expect a dab from Expressway to the articles on various forms of roads indicated by the term, since you're correct that the meaning varies greatly across locales, particularly across US locales. Regards, PhilipR 05:45, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Labels

Sometimes too much legal technicalities will result in unnecessary headaches. One could try to be nit picky about the definitions of hurricane (tropical storms that plague North America including Hawaii), typhoons (tropical storms that plague Asia-Pacific), and tropical cyclones (tropical storms that plague either Australia or the Indian Subcontinent) when this is totally irrelevant: they are all names of extreme low pressure tropical storms. We could also explore the legal definitions that discriminate "hill" from "mountain" depending which country one is in. And then if you legally declare something as a hill, I'll try to add enough dirt to legally make it a mountain. We could simply say that there is a general class of free-flowing high speed roads, accessible by entry and exit ramps and that such roads has the following counterpart names . . . . An article on freeways shouldn't be as divergent as an article on dumplings. A Chinese dumpling, a British dumpling, and a nice cinnamon-carmel apple dumpling are very different compared to a freeway and an expressway. Oh, yes, didn't the Supreme Court ruled on a case on what is legally a fruit and what is legally a vegitable when such legalities defy scientific common sense? Allentchang 17:03, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

You might be right, but try convincing Zoney and all other European editors of that. Again, as I've repeatedly stated, I will support either position as long as it is internally coherent and consistent, but if you want to push that position, you would probably have to draft a guideline, try to enforce it against the road articles (that is, by posting merge tags on freeway, expressway, motorway, autoroute, autobahn, etc.) and then push the resulting battle all the way through mediation and arbitration.

Are you really ready to do that? That would require hundreds of hours of work. Because I'm neutral, I would insert the occasional brief "I concur" comment but it's really up to you to draft the hundreds of thousands of words necessary to push that position and to rebut all counterarguments. I've filed one request for arbitration so far, which was successful (User:Ericsaindon2 was blocked for his vandalism and repeated insertion of original research) but arbitration and indeed the whole dispute resolution process is incredibly time-consuming. Also, it's possible that ArbCom might agree with the European position that to merge motorway with freeway (even if freeway is the majority term in terms of the number of native English language speakers who use it) would be offensive and insensitive since this is a encyclopedia of global scale.

Finally, you need to look at the articles on Autobahn and Motorway, which are already quite long. Merging those into Freeway would result into a gigantic article and cause many editors to argue for going back to separate articles based on the length issue alone. For example, that's what happened to the formerly huge Transportation section of the Los Angeles, California article, which is now Transportation of Los Angeles!

Essentially all these terms are approximate co-equals, which is why we treat them as such under Types of road. --Coolcaesar 21:06, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

"to merge motorway with freeway (even if freeway is the majority term in terms of the number of native English language speakers who use it)" -- Well, that issue is dealt with by a well established precedent (Airplane, Aeroplane => Fixed-wing aircraft). But I agree that it's a battle not worth the effort. If Wikipedia's powers-that-be want a less-rendundant Wikipedia, let them worry about it. Score one for Wikipedia:Why Wikipedia is not so great. - PhilipR 21:49, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

That compromise actually worked because "fixed-wing aircraft" is frequently used in formal writing, especially histories of aviation, to distinguish all modern aircraft from the movable-wing aircraft that came before (when people thought that the way to fly was to flap their arms like a bird's wings). The problem with freeways/expressways/motorways/autobahns/autoroutes etc. is that although they are all a type of road, there is no universally accepted adjective that can be coupled with "road" like "fixed-wing" can be coupled with "aircraft." Neither "high-speed" nor "restricted access" standing alone are sufficient. "High-speed restricted access road" is ambiguous, as are "high-speed limited access road" and "high-speed controlled access road," and all three run into the requirement that Wikipedia article titles should be in common use. See official policy WP:NAME.--Coolcaesar 21:08, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Fun to drive an uncongested freeway?

Many rural expressways offer unrelieved monotony. Unless such a highway is in a scenic area it can hardly be "fun" to drive. Easy and swift? Sure. But most are much flatter than the roads that they supplant, much straighter, and of course without the courses through town, one sees little local character. Even the commercial development along freeways is homogenized.

I thus removed the "some find driving an uncongested freeway fun" concept from the freeway article. One ordinarily uses a freeway to get from one place to another quickly, and the highway is rarely a destination in itself. Shunpiking simply to avoid a monotonous stetch of bland expressway happens. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Paul from Michigan (talk • contribs) 06:59, 3 January 2007 (UTC).

I dispute your deletion. I just opened a similar dispute with another editor over the Transportation in Los Angeles article. I believe both disputes can be resolved with a citation to the L.A. Freeway book by David Brodsly. The book is widely available (see WorldCat) so I should be able to get to a copy and get the page cite in a couple of weeks. --Coolcaesar 11:10, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

This may not mean much, but, anecdotally, I certainly enjoy driving on uncongested freeways. A drive need not be 'scenic' in the usual sense to be inspiring. I know plenty of people around here who (used to) drive on freeways simply for the sake of driving or getting away, rather than with a particular destination in mind (back when gas cost less than $1.00/gal.) That said, I'm not sure what place a statement of whether or not freeway driving is considered to be enjoyable has in this article, anyway. --71.123.221.4 (talk) 15:58, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Bad bad quote, why I took it out

“ " 'Freeway' is a highway in respect to which the owners of abutting lands have no right or easement of access to or from their abutting lands or in respect to which such owners have only limited or restricted right or easement of access." - California Civic Code 332 as of 2006 ”

I just deleted the above text from the lead paragraphs. This is totally inappropriate. First of all, Streets & Highways Code section 257 (which is already cited in the right place in the article) is the more appropriate code section. Second, we should not be leading the article with a section that represents only one part of the United States when we are trying to take a worldwide view on Wikipedia. The article, as I've drafted it, already cites and discusses the MUTCD federal definition, which is much broader and more widely accepted. We should move from the general (federal) to the specific (state), not start with a very state-specific quote and then waffle back and forth between the specific and the general. --Coolcaesar 07:32, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Use of the word freeway in Canada and Taiwan

The word "freeway" [...] is currently in regular use in Canada, Taiwan, Australia, and the United States.

Canada

I think the use of the word in Canada is fairly restricted. The Gage Canadian Dictionary gives the word freeway the label Esp.U.S.. Personally, — I'm from Quebec — I've never heard anyone use anything other than expressway and autoroute. I think people in Western Canada use it, but the most common word in Canada, when people don't just say highway, is definitely expressway. I think "Canada" should probably be changed to "parts of Canada". Joeldl 16:24, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

The above is utter nonsense. The word freeway is widely used in Canada and autoroute is never used outside of Quebec. Also, expressway has a totally different meaning than freeway in Canada. Relying on a Canadian dictionary in most instances is a joke. They have become nothing more than social engineering tools to convince Canadians that we are totally different than Americans in every way. They can delude themselves but that doesn't mean they are fooling or convincing the rest of us of their nonsense. Getting back on point, freeway is widely used and acceptable in Canada. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.146.2.138 (talk) 03:16, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

"Freeway" is rarely used in Canada. "Highway" is used.156.34.38.163 (talk) 23:02, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

I think that a dictionary should be considered a more liable source than a post here.--Ernstk (talk) 23:53, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Taiwan

What does this even mean? Is freeway pronounceable in Chinese? If this just means that they borrowed the word from English, then I would say that the word they use is whatever the pinyin for it is. Joeldl 16:24, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

'Freeway' is the official English translation there. I can show you some images if you want.

Generalising

I note my name mentioned a few times above. I'd like to offer input on this again. I think this article should restrict itself (and therefore be more coherent) to addressing what a Freeway is in countries that use that terminology.

I do agree that a general piece about "Freeway-like" roads makes sense, and I would suggest that somewhere on Wikipedia there should be content with a summary paragraph each about Freeways (in US, etc.), Motorways, Autobahns, etc and then a comparison section. Considering you would have difficulty finding a generic term for such roads (there is enough complication defining the roads within countries that we have large discussion on Freeway, Motorway, etc. as is) that is why I suggest using Types of road. That article could do with *major* work as it is essentially just a list. A decent taxonomy would be far better, and would be a sort of parent article for this (Freeway) article and others such as Motorway.

zoney ♣ talk 16:23, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

• Well since Types of road was rewritten to kind of serve that purpose, it sounds reasonable. As I recall, the original rewrite to the current form was mostly a gutting to remove a lot of the editorial issues with the previous versions of the article. As you say, the current simple lists could be expanded to tables that included information like the countries where those types of roads are found and other useful comparison data. Since the table would retain the link to the main article, only data worth comparing against other similar roads would need to be included. If you want to try a version of the table on one of these, give it a try. Vegaswikian 18:52, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I'm really too busy. I thought it might be of some use nevertheless to leave some more up to date comments here. zoney ♣ talk 19:02, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

The current division between motorway/freeway/expressway is silly. There is no more of a connection between a freeway in Australia and a freeway in the U.S. than there is between a freeway in the U.S. and an expressway in Canada. In fact, the last two are likely to be more similar. These multiple articles seem to all have an initial segment about major highways in general, and then delve into country-specific information. I think there should be a single article covering this type of road in general, in which country-specific information is brief and serves to illustrate the general notion, and country-specific articles elsewhere. There would likely be disagreement about which word to use for the title and in the text, since there seems to be no solution here like fixed-wing aircraft instead of airplane and aeroplane. But I think Wikipedia policy favours the variety of English of the first contributor for non-country-related articles, so the idea would be to go back and see which of the three articles freeway, expressway or motorway was created first, and that would be the word chosen for the "international" part. Otherwise just pick one randomly, because the current division is entirely artificial, as I think the Australia-U.S.-Canada example shows. Joeldl 02:40, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Is it really possible to have a general section rather than summaries of the main country-specific features? Surely anything that attempts to talk about general features will be a mess of "except for" and "termed X in country Y", and so on. I understand your point about different countries with "Freeways", perhaps there should be "Freeways in country X" for each one, and this article would have summary sections for each? The introduction would refer to the countries using roads called freeways and mention some general characteristics (this would be more possible as you have less "cases" as you are only dealing with the group of countries using "freeways"). zoney ♣ talk 13:12, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, there is no doubt that there should be individual country pages containing most of the country-specific information. I think it's possible for experts to talk about expressways in general (e.g. history, effect on traffic, effect on neighbourhoods, etc.) in a way that is general. Also, including a limited amount of country-specific information is not a bad thing if it illustrates the general concept. It will be up to others to determine what goes on that page, but the principle will be that it's an "international" one. As I said, we'd have to go to the first contributor rule WP:ENGVAR to determine which word to use. The current setup also excludes countries that don't have an official English word (so they won't be covered in any "overview" page) and I think the argument about there being fewer countries per page is a bit artificial, because there is nothing really relating the roads in these countries except the word. The current division is too focused on avoiding conflict about the choice of word at the expense of content. Joeldl 17:09, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Zoney that a lot of the non-freeway stuff needs to be purged from the article and I disagree with Joeldl's position. The problem is that there are so many terms in use in English, and with such subtle distinctions between them, that it is nearly impossible to create a single article that takes a worldwide view and fully covers the general category of controlled-access divided highways. The situation with expressway is particularly messy since the U.S. MUTCD and seven states (including my own) define expressways as an intermediate category between arterial roads and freeways, and several states prefer expressway altogether instead of freeway. The mess in British English with classification v. type of road means that the definition of a motorway is difficult to reconcile with the freeway/expressway pigpen. So the result of Joeldl's proposed merge would probably be a 50K unreadable mess, which would immediately cause some editors to demand that it be split up, and we'd be right back where we started. --Coolcaesar 10:15, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

If it was made clear in what sense the word expressway was used from the very start (if that word were chosen), it would not be any more confusing for people from those U.S. states where an expressway is something less than a freeway than it is when an American sees "football" for the hundredth time in Football (soccer). I really think that it's been less a matter of being worried that people could actually be confused than each nationality complaining about using the other's words. There is no need to define freeways, expressways, etc. precisely in the international article (except in brief country-specific paragraphs referring to full articles elsewhere, perhaps), since the role of these roads has a lot in common in all countries. My point earlier was that whatever subtle U.S. distinction you make between freeway and expressway, that's not going to carry over to Australia or Canada in exactly the same way, so even on a page like Expressway or Freeway you can't really try to draw that distinction except doing it in a different way for each country. Currently, Freeway contains information about Autobahns. Why does Freeway get to do this instead of Motorway? In fact, is there something about German Autobahns that allows them to be talked about here that Irish motorways don't have? If we consider all the local words that exist around the world in non-English-speaking countries, are we going to decide to have 50 pages, but talk about Portuguese and Brazilian ones together because they have the same name, even if the roads turn out to be very different? I am proposing a merger but also a split, so in the end it will be quite a manageable length. The country-specific information would need to be cut down considerably (summary and illustrative examples) on the international page, and most of it sent to pages like Motorways of New Zealand, Autobahns of Germany, Autobahns of Austria, etc.Joeldl 11:25, 25 March 2007 (UTC) I should add Freeways of the United States and Motorways of the United Kingdom. Joeldl 11:35, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, if we were to use "expressway," we would offend half the U.S. audience (including a substantial portion of the American civil engineering and law enforcement communities, who are all required to learn the federal MUTCD as part of their training) and the other half if we use "freeway." So there really is no satisfactory way to merge the terms.

I've been editing Wikipedia for about three years now (go look at my contributions) and I've seen freeway and expressway merged and split up in various edit wars because there is no easy way to satisfy the other half of the U.S. population that prefers their definition. Plus a lot of the freeway/expressway content went off to Types of road for a while per Zoney's suggestion, but that really didn't work very well, so I brought some of it back. --Coolcaesar 00:35, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

The fact that freeway is official at the federal level in the U.S. may give it greater status there, but the only word that is universal in Canada is expressway. Although some provinces also now use freeway, mine doesn't and I've never heard it. Older Canadian dictionaries mark freeway as "Esp. U.S." or something similar. So Americans who prefer freeway have no more reason to be offended than Canadians do in provinces where freeway is never used. (There is no federal rule in Canada that I'm aware of.) As far as I'm concerned, that places freeway, expressway and motorway on equal footing. I don't object to the title of the international article being "Controlled-access divided highways" as suggested below, but it is unrealistic to use that expression throughout the article. Therefore the "first used" rule from WP:ENGVAR should apply, and should at least give people a measure of comfort because their word wasn't rejected on the basis of its being judged less suitable, just that usage varies by country and one word had to be chosen. This is not just a U.S./U.S. debate or even a U.S./U.K. one. Joeldl 12:33, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

About the generic term ("Controlled-access divided highways"); assuming that the length of the term is what makes it unrealistic to use throughout the article, the acronym CADH could be substituted in the article once it's defined. --Wiley 15:18, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Is that acronym attested? Joeldl 01:16, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

The acronym is just a more practical version of the generic (i.e., jurisdiction independent) term. If there's a Wikipedia rule that the acronym form of a term has to be attested, it might be appropriate to ignore that rule in this case. --Wiley 03:02, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

All right. I overreacted. I don't think there's any problem as long as it is made clear that the abbreviation is being introduced by the article (if that is the case). I would be open to using "CADH" as a compromise if that turns out to be necessary. I think it would be a bit sad that we had come to that because it would, for example, be even less intelligible to Americans and Canadians than "motorway" and less intelligible to Britons than "freeway" or "expressway". But I think the most important thing is an appropriate division of the material between articles rather than what words are used, so any compromise on the wording would be a good thing if that allowed things to move forward. Joeldl 03:43, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

• Just in case the following hasn't already been suggested:

How about having an article with a jurisdiction independent name like controlled-access divided highways for the international material? Aliases whose meaning varies by jurisdiction (such as freeway, expressway, motorway, etc.) could be redirected to it. Detailed material could then be broken out by jurisdiction into separate articles as needed.--Wiley 13:23, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

That has been suggested at least three separate times. I opposed it in the past, but after watching all the road geeks fighting over these terminology issues for three years, I think it is the only compromise everyone can live with. I would support your suggested merge and use of redirects. --Coolcaesar 00:35, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Don't some of those terms apply in some countries to roads that aren't controlled access? And not necessarily divided highways? The only common factor seems to be that they are a type or class of road usually used for high volumes of traffic. How to have an article solely on that premise? I suggest sticking to Types of road and providing more detail there. zoney ♣ talk 15:08, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Here's a new idea. How about this: Disambiguation pages with links to articles on particular highway systems. The following is not comprehensive, but is merely intended as an illustration of the general pattern:

• Autobahn
  • Autobahns of Germany
  • Autobahns of Switzerland
• Autoroute
  • Autoroutes of France
  • Autoroutes, freeways, and expressways of Canada
• Expressway
  • Autoroutes, freeways, and expressways of Canada
  • Freeways and expressways of the United States
• Freeway
  • Freeways and motorways of Australia
  • Autoroutes, freeways, and expressways of Canada
  • Freeways and expressways of the United States
• Motorway
  • Freeways and motorways of Australia
  • Motorways of Ireland
  • Motorways of New Zealand
  • Motorways of Pakistan
  • Motorways of the United Kingdom

And then at the end of each of the disambuigation link lists, have a link to Types of road for readers interested in the big picture. What does everyone think? --Coolcaesar 08:56, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

I like the idea, but it won't work once Wikipedia is "complete" (whatever that means), because there are 200 countries in the world. Maybe it would be best to do it by continent (or other regions), so that the number of countries will be permanently manageable. Also, there is no guarantee that there will be as much controversy within countries as there is between countries, so maybe the editors of those pages should decide on the names. Have a look at this survey: [1], in particular the results of Question 49. Of course, "highway" isn't an acceptable name. Joeldl 11:15, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

I disagree. Wikipedia will always be a work-in-progress. The point is to come up with something that will work for at least the next 10 years until the rest of the world gets online. Right now the English Wikipedia road articles simply don't fit together very well because we have fragments of four or five different organization schemes; I'm simply proposing that we standardize on one. Furthermore, large parts of the developing world are either so impoverished or so sparsely inhabited that they will definitely not have any freeways for the next 10 to 20 years, and a few countries will certainly never have freeways because they don't make economic sense (I'm thinking of some of the small island countries in Polynesia). Plus many countries that have freeway-like roads still have relatively few English-speaking Wikipedia editors who are also interested in transportation, so we won't have to worry about them for a while.

The only thing that's messy about my idea is that we have odd situations where it's not clear whether to use the native word or the English equivalent. For example, most English speakers understand autobahn and a fairly large minority understand autoroute, but terms like autocesta or autopista would get only blank stares. --Coolcaesar 07:06, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Okay, then we can have a navigation box for all countries that have articles. But to save space in the box, it's probably best to omit the particular word used. In article titles, for non-English-speaking countries, the choice of the foreign term or an English one would be based on recognizability and accuracy criteria. Where an English word is called for, I think the choice between "freeway", "expressway", "motorway" and "autoroute" would have to be based on the first contributor rule in WP:ENGVAR. "Autoroute" is acceptable in English because it is used by English-speakers in Quebec as a synonym for "expressway" (anywhere) (but since they're only 0.2% of the world's English-speaking population and they also say "expressway", there would probably be about a 0.1% chance that a particular article would be called that.) Joeldl 03:41, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Images at night

All of the images in this article are of freeways during the day. I think it would be neat to have one of those night-time long exposure images, where you can see an few minutes's worth of traffic streaming by, indicating the volume of traffic during that time. -GTBacchus^(talk) 04:01, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

That's a good idea. Pick your favorite from [2] and upload it. --NE2 06:34, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Are those released under GFDL? -GTBacchus^(talk) 13:01, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

If they are, I like Freeway on p. 3 best, but if they are not, maybe we should pick an image from wikimedia commons.--Sefringle 23:02, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Image gallery

Are we supposed to have an image gallery in the article? Isn't it prefered to just link to a Commons gallery? (Besides, what kind of freeway image gallery doesn't have a single photo of a Southern California freeway? Honestly.) -Branddobbe 20:36, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Citations??

"In major cities, guide signs are often mounted on overpasses or overhead gantries so that drivers can see where each lane goes.[citation needed]"

Citations are hardly needed when a fact is common knowledge. Anyone driving on one of these highways can confirm the above claim to be true. Let's cease with the rather liberal use of the "citation needed" tag.Jlujan69 (talk) 14:34, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Two years later and this is STILL A MESS

This is an example of the tragedy of the commons, I suppose. NO ONE has the time, energy, or desire to fix this hopelessly confused hairball of an article, so it gets worse every year. At least Lawyer is slowly getting better over time because I keep an eye on it and kill off bad edits immediately. --Coolcaesar (talk) 22:54, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Six weeks later and this is still a mess. Again, this is a situation where everyone has hopelessly conflicting visions of how this article should look like and no one has the time, energy, knowledge or ability to actually fix it. For example, the citations to the articles to which I inserted citations have been severely vandalized so that they are now cited to support assertions that are the opposite of what they were originally cited for! (E.g., the citation to van Hengel, Di Mento, Ryan.) But I don't have the time or energy to take the idiots who vandalized this article to arbitration and get them banned from the encyclopedia.

This is such a great example of everything that is wrong with Wikipedia. Some day I will have to write an article about this issue for some scholarly journal.

That's why I increasingly limit my limited Wikipedia editing time to uploading photos, and monitoring the few articles that I have been able to keep in decent shape, like Lawyer. --Coolcaesar (talk) 01:23, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

You may want to take a look at this rename nomination. It should bring back memories. Vegaswikian (talk) 01:44, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

That's spoken like a true elitist, Coolcaesar. Admittedly working with others is difficult, but that doesn't excuse you from seeking consensus. I'm sure you think that Lawyer benefits from your edits exclusively, but you would be well served to respect the contributions of others and approach edits with a better attitude. -Pjorg (talk) 03:03, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm aware that I may sound elitist, but after four years of monitoring Wikipedia's edit wars, I'm sick and tired of seeing mediocre editors wandering into Wikipedia with no knowledge of the encyclopedia's traditional policies and wrecking perfectly good articles (which is why so many competent editors are fleeing).

What I keep seeing as the problem with many, many articles, including Freeway, is that we have a blind men and an elephant situation. That is, the concept of controlled/limited access roads has so many facets that very few civil engineers or historians of engineering have the time, energy, interest, and sophistication to get a grip on the issue in all its complexity, so as to be able to draft a comprehensive encyclopedia article that neatly summarizes the topic. Such professionals are too busy with their day jobs to waste time contributing to Wikipedia (when they have other higher priorities like trying to raise a family, build roads and bridges, deal with internal politics, etc.).

Thus, we end up with an article edited by a bunch of dilettantes who are not transportation professionals, and most of them have very limited knowledge of the subject. We end up with an incoherent document that swerves violently from one facet of the subject to the next. Look at the chaotic jumble in the first three paragraphs of the Freeway article, for example. It looks like a schizophrenic having a debate with himself!

Another example: Until I got the expressway issue ironed out by tracking down and inserting a lot of citations, we had a lot of problems with numerous ignoramuses on the East Coast who were unaware that federal law and some state laws define "expressway" as a divided highway with partial access control, which means expressways can and do have at-grade intersections. A lot of people apparently can't afford to travel widely and therefore aren't aware of the enormous diversity of transportation law and terminology. The last time I checked, an encyclopedia is supposed to deliver information, not ignorance.

At least, with Lawyer, there are enough Wikipedia editors who are lawyers (and are reasonably knowledgeable about the profession and are also reasonably intelligent people as well) that I've been able to develop consensus in favor of my version. There are several other people who are helping me kill off edits that are clearly linkspam, vandalism, unsourced crazy ranting, or are just far too specific to any one country (in an article that by necessity clearly needs to take a broad worldwide view). --Coolcaesar (talk) 03:38, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Speed

I suggest more information about allowed freeway speeds by country.--Mac (talk) 10:52, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

We've already got Speed limits by country. Admiral Norton ^(talk) 22:07, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Move from freeway

Why?Synchronism (talk) 04:53, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Huh?

This article seems to list 90% stuff ONLY relating to the USA, nothing about other countries? Huh? --Rsrikanth05 (talk) 11:31, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

The Motorways – Freeway – Expressway debate (again)

This posting appears on the Talk pages of Motorway, Expressway and Freeway. Please respond on the Motorway talk page.

An install-delete battle is breaking out on the Motorways article regarding the description of Pakistan’s motorways. I do not want to take sides, but I would like to resolve this problem and also, at the same time resolve the larger problem of Motorway, Freeways and Expressways.

My proposal is as follows:

1) The section on Pakistan’s motorways be allowed to stand for the time being.

2) A new article entitled Motorways, Freeways and Expressways be written. This article will explain the difference between the various terms using the OECD definition as a starting point. The choice of the OECD definition will ensure a neutral standpoint.

3) Merge the Freeways article and Motorways articles into one, removing country-specific items unless they are noteworthy outside the country concerned. The combined article (which would have the title OECD-preferred name of Motorway) would have a short introduction to the various country-specific articles which would serve as an introduction to the article List of highway systems with full control of access and no cross traffic.

4) Finally point redirect the Expressway article to the Motorway article.

Any comments? Martinvl (talk) 12:35, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

I have incorporated the OECD definition of motorway into the "Legal Definitions" section of the article. Martinvl (talk) 21:34, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

And I'm countermanding your edit immediately because it confuses readers (that is, the question it brings to mind is "What the hell is this doing here in an article on freeways?") and makes this article even longer than it already is. The freeway-expressway definition mess is discussed in both articles because of the massive internal confusion on this issue within the United States (which is a common problem in many areas of American law because of the unique dual-sovereign nature of American federalism). In contrast, there are no countries where both motorway and freeway are in simultaneous use as legal definitions. Anyone interested in the motorway definition can read it there. Also, you haven't responded to the points I made at Talk:Motorway almost a month ago. --Coolcaesar (talk) 05:53, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Assuming there's nothing sketchy going on with on List of OECD countries by road network size, the OECD does use "motorway" to include U.S. freeways. Given that, and their definition, they're definitely talking about the concept covered in this article, and not the one in the motorway article ("roads specifically called motorways", which is more analogous to an Interstate than a freeway). --NE2 06:29, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

If this article is about US Freeways, what is the discussion about South African and Canadian freeways doing in it? If it is about freeways worldwide, does a better authoritative definition exist to link the various article than the one that I published? Regarding Coolcaesar's question of confusing readers - the article currently covers three countries, the United States, Canada and South Africa. Having spent almost half my life in South Africa, I can assure everybody that no South African reader would be confused by equating the two words. I cannot however speak for US or Canadian readers. Martinvl (talk) 11:08, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Coolcaesar's stated there are no countries where both motorway and freeway are in simultaneous use as legal definitions. May I cite South Africa. A search on Google using the filter ".gov.za" revealed the use of both terms, with the N3 usually being referred to as a "motorway". There are historic reasons for this that I can go into, but won't. Moreover, the Afrikaans word word (which has equal standing in South African law) is snelweg - the Afrikaans word snel meaning "fast" or "express" and weg meaning "road" or "way" (cw with the Dutch word autosnelweg). —Preceding unsigned comment added by Martinvl (talk • contribs) 12:57, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Propaganda

This unsighted comment is merely propaganda:

and growing popular support for high-speed mass transit in lieu of new freeways.

This is merely opinion without a poll, study, or at least something. People need to keep their personal beliefs out of Wikipedia. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.92.244.253 (talk) 06:36, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

The improper motorway material in this article needs to go

Having personally driven on both, I can say that motorways are both legally and physically different from freeways in many, many ways. Conflating the two concepts is inaccurate, misleading, and plain wrong; it's like conflating the concepts of trams and light rail, which are certainly related but are also clearly distinguishable. The OECD definition is inappropriate. I plan to excise it from the article soon. --Coolcaesar (talk) 22:22, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

This article is about a type of road built for high speeds with no grade crossings. I assume motorways are like that. If the title is the problem, we can think of how best to address that but describing various implementations of high speed roads with no cross traffic is entirely appropriate for the article on that topic. --Polaron | Talk 00:37, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

This article is about freeways worldwide, not just about US freeways. IfCoolcaesar can find an internationally agreed definition of what a freeway is, then my all means replace the motorway definition with that definition. Until then, leave it - it give an internationally-recognised point of reference. Martinvl (talk) 07:56, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

They are certainly comparable. Physically, they are the same concept regardless of handedness. It shouldn't need to be said that every road is different in some way. Functionally and legally however, there are many national and even more sub-national differences and variations. 'Freeway' is a technical and legal term, as is 'motorway', but 'motorway' has a second sense that freeway does not: a top-level route classification with Interstate Highway as its American counterpart. That the terms are used interchangeably in many English speaking parts of the world attests to their similarity, but shouldn't be used as a reason to discount long-established legal and technical definitions used in the US. On that note, it really doesn't make sense to use a definition of a different term to define this one. Could you imagine the hubbub of introducing a definition of freeway (even a UN backed one) to authoritatively define the scope of the motorway article as you have done here? It wouldn't fly for a lot of reasons either.Synchronism (talk) 06:21, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

What is a freeway? For that matter, what is a motorway or an Expressway? AS an experiment I did a Google search on “N3 freeway Pietermaritzburg”, “N3 motorway Pietermaritzburg” and “N3 snelweg Pietermaritzburg”. (“Snelweg” is an Afrikaans word which literally translates as “Expressway”). All three searches gave a significant number of hits, so is the N3 a motorway, a freeway or an expressway in the vicinity of Pietermaritzburg?

If one looks at the words involved, one will see that autobahn (German), autoroute (French) and autostrade (Italian) translate to “motorway” rather than “freeway”. This suggests to me that “Freeway” is an American term and “Motorway” is a British term for the same thing. As I said earlier, if the Freeway article is about US freeways, then use US definitions, but if it is about world-wide freeways, then use a world-wide definition and the only word-wide definition that I know of is the OECD definition.

In the previous statement it was noted that the OECD definition of “Motorway” defined roads of such a high quality that it could only apply to Interstate Highways. Never having been to the US, I am unable to comment, but if you want to compare different types of freeway, then the OECD definition provides a useful, neutral, well-worded reference point.

BTW, I have driven on Motorways/Freeways/Expressways in at least 10 different countries and I have seen the differences in roads that OECD class at "motorways/autoroutes". Martinvl (talk) 12:10, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Not all Interstate Highways are freeways, not all freeways are Interstate Highways, just as not all UK motorway routes are built to motorway standards, and not all motorway standard roads are motorway routes. South Africa appears to use the term freeway [3] synonymously with 'motorway', why should the world adopt SA's standard, when all relevant definitions can be included and given due weight?Synchronism (talk) 12:36, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

I am not suggesting that we use the South African definition – I was demonstrating by example that the assertion “Motorways and Freeways are Different” is not always true. I assert that there is such a large variation in the legal definitions of both freeways and motorways and that the overlap in these definitions is so large that it makes sense to use a single, concise, internationally-agreed definition as a point of reference and to compare other definitions to that one. Moreover, given the Wikipedia policy of verifiability (WP:VERIFY), the definition that I have found meets Wikipedia’s policy. Martinvl (talk) 21:17, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

I'll point out that if there is consensus to merge the material and have sections for the different named roads, then Freeway would be the base article since it was started over two years before Motorway. Motorway began as a redirect to freeway 4 months after the article was created. I'll also add that trying to develop a neutral name for this article was tried without success; Highways with full control of access and no cross traffic, Highway with full control of access and no cross traffic, Highways with no cross traffic and access only at interchanges, Freeway-standard road and Full access controlled highway among others. Vegaswikian (talk) 22:05, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

The problem, as Synchronism pointed out, is that motorways are also a roadway network in a way that freeways are not. This is why some countries, like the UK, have insane road numbers like A1(M). The smarter way, as the U.S. and many other countries have recognized, is that some roads will simply never make sense financially to link into a national controlled access network, so there is no need to indicate controlled access sections in their numbering. Rather, they can be upgraded piecemeal and then if funding eventually comes together, the last few gaps can be closed and the number for the entire route can be changed. This is what Nevada is doing, for example, with U.S. 395 between Reno and Carson City, which will probably become Interstate 580 when completed in 2016.

Also, motorways have shorter overpasses, tighter ramp geometry, narrower shoulders, narrower lanes, and less forgiving barriers than freeways. A Jersey barrier will take a little rubber off the tires; the metal barriers commonly seen on motorways will eat a BIG chunk out of the sheet metal. The signage is also less user-friendly on motorways; the U.S. and Canada went to very large overhead signs on freeways and expressways because of the realization that at high speeds, a sign needs to present a LOT of whitespace around the text to make the sign stand out against the background visual clutter. Plus, there are a lot more wide twelve-lane (and wider) freeways than wide twelve-lane motorways. --Coolcaesar (talk) 06:08, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Coolcaesar's Please provide reputable references to your statements, move of which look like unsubstantiated over-generalisations to me. Also, statements such as " ... like the UK, have insane road numbers like A1(M). The smarter way, as the U.S. ..." is a point of view and has no place an encyclopedia. As a Brit, I look for an appology for the latter statement. Martinvl (talk) 15:45, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Only some countries, primarily the UK, use motorway as a road classification or network, and in the UK's case there are roads that are not classified as as part of the motorway network that nevertheless fall within the broader OECD definition of motorway.

Other countries, such as South Africa, use road classification systems in which the relative importance of the road is emphasised rather than its standard. For example there are national roads (prefix N), regional (prefix R) and metropolitan (prefix M) roads.

Coolcaesar, your alleged differences in characteristics between a motorway and a freeway simply tell us about differences between roads in the UK and USA, not that there is a difference between the two terms. For example roads in the USA may be built to a higher standard than in the UK generally because they carry more traffic, because space is less limited, perhaps because funds are less tight etc, but there is undoubtedly a large overlap. As for concrete versus steel crash barriers all new motorways in the UK have been built with concrete barriers. Does this mean that a road in the UK with concrete crash barrier, long overpasses etc is objectively a freeway while a lesser US freeway is objectively a motorway? Logically it doesn't make sense and shows why the two things are fundamentally the same and should be merged. The only real difficulty is deciding on a name in my opinion. Let the country-specific stuff go on individual pages such as "UK motorway network" etc.