Talk:A45 road

Road history

When was this road built? 62.253.32.5 12 August 2005, 07:35 (UTC)

Article Style

This article is a bit too wordy for me, which is why I've added the {{essay-entry}} template. See A1 and A66 for good examples of how a roads article should be laid out, and not simply a narrative of all its waypoints, which is not useful for an encyclopedia. See wp:mos. — superbfc [ talk | cont ] — 21:21, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Map

Any chance of adding one? A picture is worth a thousand words... -Hence Piano 09:58, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Muddled past/present

The article is very confusing with arbitrary mixtures of past routes and present routes. Surely only the current route should be stated, or at least use the first half of the article to give the current route and create a second half to give the former route(s). It could be done with a copy/paste then edit each half to remove the irrelevant info for this half. --Concrete Cowboy 16:58, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Expanded history

I've expanded the history entry, but adding a note that the A45 used to pass through Ipswich towards Felixstowe, and that it diverted across the Orwell bridge after it was built. I'm afraid that I haven't got any references for this. I do know that it is true, as I lived in Felixstowe in the seventies through to the early nineties, and I remember them building the bridge. However, by my own admission, this is OR, so if you want to revert it, I'll understand. StephenBuxton (talk) 11:24, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

External links modified

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Route description has too much obsessive detail

I have been bold and heavily edited this article. IMO, it was bogged down in obsessive detail and consequently had a lot of out of date material. Per WP:BRD, another editor has reverted those edits so it is time to discuss.

Compare this with articles like A1 road and it seems obvious to me that the house style for road articles on wikipedia is that they be concise and give no more rthan the essentials. In my edit comments, I have suggested that if people want the wp:fancruft, then go to Roadgeek#SABRE:SABRE.

It seems to me to be important that WP be as accurate as possible and if we bog it down in detail that won't happen. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 15:55, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

A good rule of thumb has been one decent paragraph per every 50 miles for medium- to long-length roadways, and more paragraphs for shorter highways. The key has been to scale up (or down) the level of detail. I'm thinking that for 75 miles, the current description is too detailed, and the other option was not detailed enough. I think the solution is somewhere in between. Imzadi 1979 → 20:07, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

Just to be sure I'm commenting on the two appropriate revisions, they are [1] and [2], correct? My thoughts are similar to Imzadi's but I take a slightly different approach. I have a sliding scale based on the length of route, terrain and historical or scenic value. For a 3,000 mile long route, I pretty much stay with the states and cities a route traverses, specific world famous landmarks and engineering marvels along the route. That is similar to the November 9th version for A45 article, except the A45 is nowhere near 3000 miles in length. The November 10th version is what I call the "turn-by-turn" route description. I personally don't like this style myself, as I could just follow along with Google Maps and come up with the same verbiage. However, I do use this on short routes (less than 20 miles in length) without any geographical or historical interest.

Given the A45 is about 75 miles (can I say I'm disappointed that for all that text in this wikipedia article I had to use Google Maps to find that out?) I would probably have 3-4 paragraphs in the route description. So my route description would be slightly shorter. However, given my personal preferences, and the fact that I'm a dumb American who can count the number of times he's driven on UK roads on his fingers, I would focus on the following beyond the obvious cities served and major junctions and landmarks:

• Per Google maps this isn't even remotely close to the shortest route between the two termini of the A-45, there must be some historical reason why it is routed this way. I don't see any obvious geographical obstacles that had to be conquered, the only obvious observation from Google Maps is the A-45 is the "old road" routed through more urban areas than most of the newer replacements (the lead also implies this). That implies that there are some historical events or places that likely have a connection to this roadway. I'd try to flesh those out.
• The terrain appears to be a lot of rolling hills, with a mix of both farmland and urban areas traversed. In either version this type of content is absent, as the one is very brief, and the other focuses almost exclusively on junctions.

Just My $.02, take it for what that's worth. Dave (talk) 01:09, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

Thank you, it is really helpful to have an opinion from someone who can take the long view and avoid our parochialism.

So following from that comment, let's compare the A1 and Route 66 articles with this one. The A1 is about ten times longer than the A45 and manages with a twelve line route description what gives a sense of its route without getting bogged down in detail as this one does. Then look at U.S. Route 66 in California, a road four times as long as this one and that does the route in 25 lines [on my screen] and even that includes some waffle. This article needs 45 lines for its 75 mile route description and even needs to tell us that what kind of grade separated junctions it has. This is not encyclopedic material, it does not belong in Wikipedia but is exactly right for SABRE.

Another consideration is that a good route description does not merely regurgitate the junction list. Yes, some of the junctions are worth discussing, and possibly with some detail in unusual situations, but the point of the section is to give the reader a sense of where the roadway runs. We also need to write about the landscapes (natural and man-made) along the way. There are dozens of FAs on highways to use as templates for ideas on how to do this, and do this well. Imzadi 1979 → 23:25, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

For what it's worth, Oklahoma State Highway 32 and Oklahoma State Highway 58 are two GAs for roads of about the same length. Both of them have four paragraphs of route description content. I think they both could actually be expanded a bit with geographical details. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 15:45, 22 November 2018 (UTC)

Major junctions

Hello fellow Wikipedians, BTW I have reduced the amount of major junctions on this article from 8 to 6, by moving the termini junctions (M42 and A14) into terminus area. Roads4117 (talk) 16:15, 1 March 2023 (UTC)