Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Roads/Newsletter/Issues/Volume06/Issue04

Volume 6, Issue 4 • Fall 2013 • About the Newsletter

In this issue Fall is here, and 2013 is hitting the home stretch. It's time to publish another newsletter and gear up for the final push to the end of the year. In this quarterly update, we look at our progress on this year's project goals, as well as some news related to the project structure. Until next year, keep up the good work! Michigan's Brockway Mountain Drive in the fall
Featured story Final push for 2013 goals USRD's relative WikiWork since 2009 Editor: Fredddie As we go through the last two months of the year, let's take a moment to review our project goals for 2013. We have had great success with one of our goals, while the other two are stagnant. Lower our relative WikiWork to 4.400. This is where we have had our greatest success. When the year started, we had 49,888 classes across 10,951 articles, which gave us a relative 4.556. We currently have 52,412 classes across 12,414 articles, which gives us 4.222. So while we have added nearly 200 articles over the year, we have still reduced our relative wikiwork by 0.334. However, our work is not yet finished. We still have -2210 classes remaining until we reach our goal. Destub 25 states Over the course of the year, only two states (Idaho and Washington) have been destubbed. The good news is that there are fifteen states that have no more than 25 stubs and five states with no more than 10. Interstate and US Highway cleanup drive Despite adding three Featured Articles in the Interstate Highway category, we have had only marginal success improving these articles. Luckily, there is still time to accomplish our goal, and it's easy to work on all three goals at the same time by editing any of these stubs: Interstate 15 in Montana U.S. Route 19 in Georgia U.S. Route 20 in Oregon U.S. Route 28 U.S. Route 36 in Illinois U.S. Route 45 in Illinois U.S. Route 97 U.S. Route 310 U.S. Route 341 U.S. Route 395 in Oregon U.S. Route 411
A New York state of merger Logos before and after the merger Editor: Rschen7754 Following a discussion, the last remaining state highway WikiProject, New York, was demoted to a task force in October. Supporters of the move cited the inactivity of the project, as well as a desire to have the U.S. Roads project not be partitioned. Today, for the first time in its history, USRD is one whole project working together across state lines for the development of U.S. road articles in the United States. Let's welcome the New York roads project back into the family!	Templates, Lua, and sister projects Logo for Lua Editor: Rschen7754 Work continues to convert all of our templates to Lua code in order to decrease load times and improve readability. Happy5214 has converted several portions of {{Infobox road}}, as well as {{Jct}}. In the meantime, Scott5114 has written documentation for {{Routelist row}}, our new replacement template to support state highway lists. Out at Wikidata, work continues to add basic data to road items. At Meta, we discovered that there are 63 Wikimedia sites with information on U.S. roads, including 53 language Wikipedias. And at Wikisource, the first of the California Highways and Public Works Journals has been uploaded for proofreading. We are excited at the possibilities that all this will bring, and look for more updates in the months to come!
State and national updates
Assessment roundup Contributor: TCN7JM This is a list of the top ten states as of November 11, 2013. Rank State FA A GA B C Start Stub ω Ω 1 Michigan 19 8 176 11 0 0 0 393 1.836 2 Delaware 1 0 53 2 7 0 0 140 2.222 3 New York 12 2 186 338 109 31 0 1979 2.919 4 Washington 0 2 71 79 52 8 0 629 2.967 5 Maryland 4 1 63 338 55 11 0 1416 3.000 6 New Jersey 1 2 103 46 20 81 0 831 3.285 7 Utah 4 2 12 63 125 20 1 821 3.617 8 Iowa 2 0 18 9 91 11 0 482 3.679 9 Arizona 1 0 13 17 46 21 0 366 3.735 10 Oklahoma 2 0 11 66 38 59 4 691 3.839 All states in the top ten remain in the same order as the last issue. Michigan's relative WikiWork continues to plummet as, with the promotion of U.S. Route 31 in Michigan to B-Class, it recently became the first state task force to have all articles in its scope assessed at B-Class or higher. For complete statistics updated almost daily, head on over to WP:USRD/A/S. Now here is how the project looks as a whole. Project FA A GA B C Start Stub Total ω Ω USRD 56 22 895 1265 2586 4363 1917 11103 49266 4.437 IH 13 4 47 40 221 227 13 565 2315 4.097 USH 11 3 58 34 185 292 28 610 2587 4.241 Auto trail 7 0 3 1 9 28 10 58 245 4.224 Two articles have been promoted to featured article status since the last issue, both of them in Michigan. They are Interstate 75 in Michigan and U.S. Route 23 in Michigan. Interstate 196 is currently our only article at WP:FAC, but there are a plethora of articles at WP:HWY/ACR that need reviewers. Project news in brief Editor: Imzadi1979 In September, a discussion related to highway article naming was closed to mixed results; no changes were enacted to change how titles of articles are determined. Additional discussions have opened in various places related to the various templates used by the project, especially related to their complexity. For some of these, like {{jct}} or the {{jctint}} family, that complexity when repeated large numbers of times on some of our longer articles results in server timeout errors when edits are saved. In other template news, the collection of navboxes listing the state highways in Texas by county were deleted.	Task force reports California Many recent GAs have been written, including California State Route 905, California State Route 209, and Interstate 805. Plans are to get I-805 to FA status. California State Route 52 was Today's Featured Article on August 12, 2013. The eventual goal is to finish getting the San Diego County road articles to GA status or higher before moving to Imperial County. —Rschen7754 Iowa After almost a year-long lull of activity, two articles, U.S. Route 6 in Iowa and Iowa Highway 25, achieved Good Article status within hours of each other. US 6 is now at ACR awaiting reviewers. —Fredddie Kansas At the beginning of the year, Kansas had only nine articles at GA-Class or higher. Since then, that number has more than doubled as, thanks to a recent surge in content creation, the state now has twenty recognized articles, five of which have been promoted to that status since the last issue. One of them, Interstate 470 (Kansas), is now at ACR. —TCN7JM Maryland The ongoing county-by-county sweep of Maryland state highway articles is nearing its conclusion. More than half of the highways in Montgomery County have been improved to B-class or higher. Montgomery County is the 23rd and final county to be swept as part of this process that began in April 2010 in Worcester County. Besides finishing improving articles in Montgomery County, upcoming work will include working on several state-wide routes of all three types—Interstates, U.S. Highways, and state-numbered highways. There are 11 Start-class articles remaining; work is underway to eliminate those so that the lowest class among Maryland road articles is C-class. The most recent article to be upgraded was Interstate 97. The improvement of this article from Start-class to B-class shortly before this newsletter went to press resulted in the Maryland task force achieving a wikiwork average of exactly 3.000, meaning the average article in the Maryland task force is B. —Viridiscalculus Michigan Brockway Mountain Drive was Today's Featured Article on October 14, and Interstate 196 is currently at FAC. If promoted, this would be the sixth article for the state promoted in 2013. Since the last newsletter, Interstate 75 in Michigan and U.S. Route 23 in Michigan were each promoted at FAC, meaning the articles representing the longest highway of the three major types (I, US, M) in the state have been Featured. U.S. Route 8 and U.S. Route 141 were also promoted to A-Class since the last newsletter. —Imzadi1979 Pennsylvania Recently, straight-line diagrams from PennDOT were discovered that provide mileage for state highways in feet. An override was added to {{PAint}} that can allow the feet to be converted to miles accurate to three decimal places. The process has begun to use the SLD mileages in Pennsylvania road articles. —Dough4872
Selected articles July Westbound I-70 in Hancock Interstate 70 (I-70) is a part of the Interstate Highway System that runs from Cove Fort, Utah to Baltimore, Maryland. In Maryland, the Interstate Highway runs 93.62 miles (150.67 km) from the Pennsylvania state line in Hancock east to a park and ride lot east of I-695. I-70 is the primary east–west Interstate in Maryland. I-70's route from Frederick to West Friendship was constructed as a divided highway relocation of US 40 in the early to mid-1950s and a freeway bypass of Frederick in the late 1950s. The first section of the Interstate to be marked as I-70 was an upgrade of US 40 near Hancock in the early 1960s. The remainder of the Interstate highway in Maryland west of Frederick was built on a new alignment in the mid- to late 1960s. I-70 was constructed from West Friendship to its present terminus in Baltimore in the late 1960s. The highway from Bartonsville in Frederick County to West Friendship was upgraded to Interstate standards in the mid-1970s. The final non-limited access portion of I-70 between Frederick and Bartonsville was eliminated in the mid-1980s. The Interstate is presently being upgraded through Frederick in a series of projects that began in the late 1990s. I-70 was originally planned to continue into Baltimore and end at I-95 and I-83, but that part was cancelled due to opposition.	Selected pictures July Interstate 10 running west of New Orleans spanning the Bonnet Carré Spillway at Lake Pontchartrain
August The Creek East toll plaza The Creek Turnpike is a 33.22-mile-long (53.46 km) freeway-standard toll road that lies entirely in the U.S. state of Oklahoma. The turnpike forms a partial beltway around the south and east sides of Tulsa, Oklahoma's second largest city. The Creek Turnpike's western terminus is at the Turner Turnpike in Sapulpa, while its northeastern terminus is at the Will Rogers Turnpike in Fair Oaks; both ends of the Creek Turnpike connect with Interstate 44 (I-44). Along the way, the highway passes through the cities of Sapulpa, Jenks, Tulsa, and Broken Arrow. The first section of the Creek Turnpike, from US-75 in Jenks to US-64/US-169 in Tulsa, was first authorized in 1987, with construction beginning in 1989. The turnpike's construction was controversial from opposition from homeowners and environmental concerns. The highway opened to traffic in three sections over the course of the first half of 1992. Further extensions to both the east and the west followed in later years after several years of false starts under the administrations of two different governors. Expansion of the highway was finally approved in 1998, with the entire road completed by 2002.	August State Route 309 between Kenton and Marion, Ohio
September SR 52 westbound heading towards I-15 California State Route 52 (SR 52) is a state highway in San Diego County, California, that extends from La Jolla Parkway at Interstate 5 (I-5) in La Jolla, San Diego, to SR 67 in Santee. A freeway for its entire length, it serves as a major east–west route through the northern part of the city of San Diego and connects the major north–south freeways of the county. SR 52 passes north of the Rose Canyon Fault before traversing Marine Corps Air Station Miramar (MCAS Miramar). East of Santo Road and west of SR 125, the highway goes through Mission Trails Regional Park, a large open preserve. Plans for a route between La Jolla and Santee date from 1959, and SR 52 was officially designated in the 1964 state highway renumbering. Construction of the freeway east of Santo Road encountered delays from environmentalists over the endangered Least Bell's Vireo, a songbird that faced habitat destruction, as well as those concerned with the destruction of homes and businesses. The extension to Mission Gorge Road opened in 1993, but funding issues delayed the completion of the entire route to Santee until 2011, more than fifty years after construction began.	September State Highway 103 at Echo Lake in Colorado
From the editors The next quarterly issue should be out in January 2014. The editors of the newsletter would like to hear from you, the reader. What do you like about the current format? What should be changed? Removed? Added? Your comments are needed. Lastly, remember that this is your newsletter and you can be involved in the creation of next issue released in the winter. Any and all contributions are welcome. Simply let yourself be known to any of the undersigned, or just start editing!	Contributors to this issue Dough4872 (contributor) Fredddie (editor) Imzadi1979 (editor) Rschen7754 (editor) TCN7JM (contributor) Viridiscalculus (contributor)

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