Talk:Pennsylvania Turnpike#Merging Interstate 276

We are saying, {{tq|it reduced travel time between Pittsburgh and Harrisburg from nearly six hours to about 2 1⁄2.}} We are citing Cupper 1990, page 18. What it says on that page is, {{blockquote|Those who took a little longer -- many reported drivingf end-to-end in between 2 hours 30 seconds and 20 hours 40 minutes -- still shattered the 5 1⁄2- to six-hour trip time then considered normal for a Harrisburg-Pittsburgh journey via the ... Lincoln ... or William Penn ... highways.}}

But obviously, comparing an end-to-end Carlisle to Irwin time with a Pittsburgh to Harrisburg time is not a fair comparison. This is Cupper's fault, but by copying numbers from Cupper and citing him, we are making it our fault too.

It's hard to estimate how much time a Harrisburg-to-Pittsbugh trip would have been with the new turnpike, given that the Carlisle-to-Irwin stretch was 2 and a half hours. How good were the roads from Irwin to Pittsburgh, or the roads from Harrisburg to Carlisle? We need a more careful source for a head-to-head comparison.

In the next paragraph Cupper says, {{blockquote|One trucker said he was able to cover in four hours what ordinarily would have taken 10, saving six hours of time and 20 gallons of fuel.}}

This is hard to understand. If the one-way trip is 2 and a half hours, what trip is taking 4 hours? So I don't know a helpful way to cite that, either. Bruce leverett (talk) 20:38, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

We are saying, {{tq|With the annual rise in tolls, traffic has been shifting from the turnpike to local roads.}} To support this we cite an article from 2013. Twelve years later, this is not a reliable source for data about turnpike revenue. The primary source, of course, is [https://www.paturnpike.com/about-us/investor-relations/toll-revenue-and-volumes this part of the Turnpike's website], but for us to rummage around in those numbers and draw conclusions would be original research. We will either have to find a more up-to-date secondary source or give up this claim. Bruce leverett (talk) 03:08, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

We are saying, {{tq|As part of Act 89 (signed in 2013), annual payments to PennDOT would end after 2022 – 35 years earlier than the original Act 44 proposal. It was not known if the annual toll increases would continue after 2022.}} We aren't giving a source for this, and it's not very accurate. Because the Turnpike didn't make nearly enough money to pay $450 million every year, most of it was paid with borrowed money. The Turnpike's accumulated debt is now about equal to the debt of the entire rest of the Pennsylvania state government. Even though the Act 44 payments went down to $50 million in 2021, the Turnpike still must work off that debt, and will continue to raise tolls every January for years to come. I have found some reliable sources for this, and will rewrite some of the text to reflect this situation and cite those sources, as I find time.

Here are some more things I will try to fix:

• The first four paragraphs of the "Act 44 increases" section are ridiculously over-detailed.
• The analysis of tolls by Budget Direct, and the response by the PA Turnpike guy, are lightweight and we should not be citing them. Neither says much about the methodology used for calculation.
• The paragraph about Act 44 and Act 89 in the "Tolls" section should be merged down into the "Act 44 increases" section.

Bruce leverett (talk) 04:20, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

{{ping|Red0ctober22}} Thank you for the explanation of your change, which was to add "in Pennsylvania" to the short description. Fortunately for me, the short description is not something I lose sleep over, but I will take a moment to explain why I attempted to remove that part.

When you start typing "Pennsylvania Turnpike" into the Wikipedia search box, you immediately get a drop-down menu of article titles, which soon includes "Pennsylvania Turnpike". After each title comes the article's short description. So "Pennsylvania Turnpike" is followed on the next line by "East-West toll highway in Pennsylvania". It is conspicuously silly, or at least it seems so to me, to specify "Pennsylvania" twice here.

In other articles I have edited, I have seen editors remove such redundancy. But, I am new to editing the state turnpikes. You are right, the first few that I looked at have the same problem. I would mention, by the way, that there is no particular virtue in copying a mistake from one turnpike article to another.

WP:SHORTDESC starts with, {{blockquote|The short description of a Wikipedia page is a brief phrase intended to complement and clarify the page title, particularly in contexts where this is seen in isolation from the page itself.}} Obviously, the extra "in Pennsylvania" doesn't do anything to "complement" or "clarify". If the short description were ever to appear anywhere that the title doesn't appear, then the "in Pennsylvania" would supply necessary context; but I don't think it ever does, which is why the word "complement" appears several times in that policy article.

So I have made this argument here, is there some other talk page where I can make the same argument for the benefit of editors of the other state turnpikes? Bruce leverett (talk) 21:15, 3 May 2025 (UTC)

:Thanks for that explanation. I actually agree with you that having the state name in the short description is very redundant, but unfortunately, the reality is this is the standard across Wikipedia, even though both of us don't agree with it. Even pages for state routes whose titles literally say "Pennsylvania Route 29" include the state name in the short description, again, much to my disapproval. Sorry about any of the trouble this may have caused.

:If you want to raise this point, I would suggest Wikipedia talk:WikiProject U.S. Roads, but unfortunately, since almost every route page does this, it would be a massive undertaking to try and fix this. Red0ctober22 (talk) 21:31, 3 May 2025 (UTC)

::I brought the topic up in WT:USRD. No one took my bait and it has been archived. (Less than one month seems like a short lifetime for posts in such a slow-moving talk page. But, I leave that for wiser heads to think about.)

::I think it would be OK for me to re-revert this article, returning the short description to its slightly shorter form. But I have little or no interest in making the same change to other Roads articles. Bruce leverett (talk) 02:11, 23 May 2025 (UTC)

:::Yes unfortunately it seems the USRD is largely inactive ever since the AARoads split off. I will bring it up with the global WikiProject Highways, but it doesn't seem likely we will get an answer there either. Assuming I don't get an answer, the reality is, we both maintain this page, and we agree on the short description being as it is now, so I see no reason not to leave it as is unless someone else wants to dispute that. Red0ctober22 (talk) 02:17, 27 May 2025 (UTC)