Category talk:Highways

Naming

• In looking at Wikipedia [1], it calls state highways in Alabama "State Routes", as in "Alabama State Route 75" instead of Alabama Highway 75. I know locally we call them Highway 75, Highway 280, etc. What should be the standard? Also on this category page we have Highway 280 and Highway 31, should we go with the "U.S. Highway xxx" or the "U.S. Route xxx" format used on Wikipedia [2]? I am just wondering because a good number of my bank articles refer to US Highway 280, etc. --Wheresdib 07:04, 12 October 2006 (PDT)

• The main difference between us and Wikipedia is that we don't want to disambiguate between Alabama state highways and Mississippi state highways. I started out thinking it would be nice to just use the most common name for the main article (with redirects from alternate names), but it turns out that doesn't work so well when we have US highways and state highways with the same number. At this point, following Wikipedia style may be the way to go and I apologize for setting a poor precedent. --Dystopos 08:08, 12 October 2006 (PDT)

• Wikipedia recently adopted standards for state highways. In summary, Wikipedia articles about Alabama state highways are to be titled "Alabama State Route X," while a simple "State Route X" is used to refer to them in the text (unless the state would be ambiguous, which is unlikely here at BhamWiki). I propose we use this standard here.

According to Wikipedia, "U.S. Route" is used more often in federal law and committe reports, but "the use of U.S. Route or U.S. Highway on a local level depends on the state." It's not official research, but just doing Google searches limited to "site:al.us" for the terms returns 20+ results "U.S. Route", but 1000+ for "U.S. Highway." My personal feeling is that "highway" is also used much more often by the local populace than "route."

I therefore propose articles about such stretches of road be titled "U.S. Highway X", with redirects created for "Highway X", "US Highway X", and "U. S. Highway X". Furthermore, I propose articles open with something like "U.S. Highway X (also known as U.S. Route X)". Please feel free to blow my proposals out of the water if you disagree, I just figured we needed to start somewhere.

--Lkseitz 08:36, 12 October 2006 (PDT)

• That seems pretty reasonable to me. --Dystopos 10:09, 12 October 2006 (PDT)

• I completely agree that we should use the "Highway" reference opposed to "Route", especially when referring to an address such as "1234 U.S. Highway 280. Addresses in Birmingham are not listed as "1234 U.S. Route 280" and more often than not just say "Highway 280" or "U.S. 280". The local venacular is fine to use as long as we are referencing the standard format (Route), as Lkseitz recommended. I just wish that Wikipedia had gone with "Highway" for Alabama instead of "Route". --Wheresdib 10:48, 12 October 2006 (PDT)