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Talk:Toll roads in Texas

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Improvements

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I think that this page needs some major improvements, please post any suggestions you have here, or feel free to be bold and edit the page yourself. I Feel Tired (talk) 23:34, 8 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Under Regional Tollway Authority’s for Sulphur River Regional Mobility Authority (SURRMA), Lamar is spelled incorrectly. This article has it as Lemar, but it is actually spelled Lamar. Thx. Super B2000 (talk) 00:48, 4 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your suggestion, Super B2000. When you believe an article needs improvement, please feel free to change it. We encourage you to be bold in updating pages, since wikis like ours develop faster when everybody edits. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes—they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. You can always preview your edits before you publish them or test them out in the sandbox. If you need additional help, check out our getting started page or ask the friendly folks at the Teahouse. –Fredddie™ 00:56, 4 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Article organization issues

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I see this article has been adopted as a college class project. There are several organizational issues I'm seeing. The biggest is that this is a "List of tollways in Texas", yet there is no list! Take a look at List of Interstate Highways in Texas (which is a Featured List), and you'll see that there are tables containing the pertinent data on the different Interstate Highways in the state. Actually, the better example would be List of Interstate Highways in Michigan, which has better text sections leading into the tables. (The Michigan list was just promoted as a Featured List this year, where the Texas one is older and reflects a less-stringent application of standards.)

Additionally, Wikipedia has a WP:Manual of Style, and in our MOS is MOS:HEAD which says to write headings in sentence case. That means you only capitalize the first word of a heading and any proper nouns within, not every word or every word over X letters. Also, MOS:HEAD says we don't repeate the subject/title of the article within headings. MOS:SLASH generally says not to use a slash. Taking these together, it should be "Purpose and operation" instead of "Purpose/Operation of Toll Roads", and " Pros and Cons of Toll Roads in Central Texas" should be just "Pros and cons" if it is retained. Honestly, these last two section headings could be removed to combine those parts with "Explanation" (which would sound better as "Background", IMHO).

Additionally, we have MOS:LAYOUT which says we do not insert external links into the body of an article; instead they go in the "External links" section at the end. The exception to external links, that is links to other websites that are not the English Wikipedia, is in citations. If a toll road operator does not have an article on it, please do not link the name in the body of the article to its website. Instead, add the double brackets anyway. You'll get a red link, which is perfectly fine. Redlinks are one of the ways Wikipedia grows by establishing we need an article on a topic.

Moving forward, the lengthy blockquote in the "Explanation" section needs to be paraphrased and summarized. I would cut that to at least a third of its length. The other short prose sections need to be combined together. The various bulleted lists need to be replaced with a single integrated table or set of tables that includes each toll road's length, termini, and creation dates. I will start a table here on the talk page in another section, and it can be copied into the article once completed. Imzadi 1979 → 23:18, 2 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I reorganized the sections of the article to put them into major topic areas: Background, Operating agencies, "Central Texas tolls", and finally the List itself. Traditionally, the list at the heart of the article is placed last (see List of Interstate Highways in Texas, List of Interstate Highways in Michigan, Michigan Heritage Route), etc) so that the sections above it provide context for the raw stats below. As an example of that context, now all of the various agencies have had their names spelled out in full with abbreviations, so we can simply abbreviate them in the table.
The first part of Background section should be a bit more focused on the historical timeline that lead to the creation of these toll roads. In short, it needs dates! The "Central Texas tolls" section should be renamed, expanded, and generalized into section just on Tolls that answers a few key questions:
  • How are tolls assessed?
  • How are tolls collected?
  • Who receives the revenues?
The tolls section shouldn't inundate the reader with dollar values, but a few examples are good. Average toll costs, usually in a price-per-mile value, are good, but we should not see 25 sets of prices, just a representative sample. The big list needs lengths, and if possible, the lengths should be figured using a single base source and computed to the same number of decimal points (three is good, six is extremely excessive precision). Imzadi 1979 → 04:23, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Table

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Ignore the errors above, this is a draft in progress at the moment. Imzadi 1979 → 23:42, 2 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The error issues have been corrected. The table now just needs its data and concise notes. As a note, the table is built using templates, which are documented at Template:Routelist row. The idea is that by using the templates, these sorts of tables will be consistently formatted from state to state, type of highway to type of highway, across the United States.
It is also worth noting that highways with markers under copyright will not have their marker appear above based on our policies related to non-free content, like WP:NFCC. If we can make derivatives, like in the 183A or 290 situations, we will. if there are older designs that can be used, we can add those as well. Imzadi 1979 → 00:48, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Since the table has been copied, I'll remove it from here. It's not necessary to spell out the full names of each agency followed by the abbreviation, just "pipe" the links so only the abbreviation shows. Since this table should be last in the article, all of the explanatory text will precede it, so the first usages of each agency name will appear in full followed by the abbreviation above this table. Also, we're specifically allowed to use abbreviations in tables to save space. Imzadi 1979 → 03:29, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
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Added Reference

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The citation needed tag in the lead added to the claim about toll roads and gas taxes - I added a CBS affiliate that refers to the Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority, and the reasons they gave for new toll roads. If not necessary or not useful, feel free to revert! King keudo (talk) 11:55, 7 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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