Talk:Pan-American Highway (North America)

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What is this nonsense about California as the producer of "most of the world's rice"? It isn't even the biggest producer among US states.

Thanks for mentioning this, that was my mistake. California *is* the #2 producer of rice in the U.S., so that should perhaps be mentioned instead. Please sign your comments using ~~~~ so others will know who the comments belong to, per Wikipedia custom. Bumm13 15:51, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Contents 1 Old talk 2 From VfD 3 Wikipedia is NOT a travel guide 4 Circle, Alaska as the Northern Terminus 5 Rewrite: route inconsistencies

[edit] Old talk

The routing south of San Francisco is all wrong. It is physically impossible to take California State Route 1 from San Jose: State Route 1 runs along the coast, and does not intersect US Route 101 until much further south. Does the Pan American Highway take California State Route 17 to Santa Cruz, and connect up with Highway 1 there, or does it connect south of San Jose via another route? Or, does it bypass the Coast Highway route entirely until San Luis Obispo? Also, south of Santa Barbara, it dosen't say whether or not you continue along SR-1 south of Ventura County (taking the coastal route and connecting up to I-405 in Santa Monica), or take US-101 to I-405, connecting in the San Fernando Valley. I'm making modifications to the article to reflect this confusion until I can find out for sure what the "official route" is. (Even the initial web research I've done has conflicting routes, mixing US-101 and SR-1 as if they are the same highway: they aren't.) --Feedle 15:25, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)

There seems to be a _lot_ of confusion as to what the exact route is. The web research I did on the length of the road was also conflicting... JesseW 01:52, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Okay, this is confusing. I just finished a short conversation with somebody at the Southern California branch of the AAA, and it was her opinion and understanding that the Pan-American Highway never leaves Interstate 5 until it hits San Diego, and that it's likely the routing we have predates completion of I-5 in the 1960's. While I would certainly agree with the argument that some employee at the AAA is not canon, it does add to the confusion rather than getting us closer to solving it. My next stop is going to be CalTrans, although I was warned that they probably won't know. --Feedle 16:51, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)

As I started this whole Pan-American Highway information section on the English Wikipedia, I should add some additional comment to this comment page. In the United States, there is no official Pan-American Highway designation as there is in Central America and most South American countries. A quote I found at this website states, "The Pan American Highway is sometimes described as running through the western United States and Canada up into Alaska. But neither country has officially named any highway as part of the Pan American Highway system."

The route that I proposed is based on (relatively speaking) the most direct route along the U.S. West Coast in terms of connectivity from Alaska, via Canada. I haven't spent much time on outlining route alternatives (particularly in California), so the criticisms of that part of this article are especially welcome. California Highway 1 tends to show up a lot as an alternate scenic route in California to U.S. Highway 101 (before both highways terminate in the L.A. area). All relevant alternate routes in California are definitely welcome.

I do have some issue with the Pan-American Highway in California being completely coterminous with the length of Interstate 5 (Golden State Freeway). Outside of major California urban areas, I-5 is meant to be a high-speed freeway primarily for long-distance travel within California as well as for freight shipping. Many stretches of I-5 are quite rural and contain little in the way of tourist attractions or notable scenery. California Highway 99 is scenic in many places but tends to lack the high number of tourist attractions found in the Bay Area and Los Angeles while still suffering from frequent bad traffic in cities such as Sacramento, Stockton, Modesto, Fresno, and Bakersfield. Again, additional input for this article is certainly welcome. Bumm13 15:51, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

We have a bigger problem. Check out the stuff I just added - I just looked through the NY Times archive, and nothing is mentioned about this route, only another one further east. --SPUI 15:00, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Eh, this may explain it: http://www.msnbc.com/modules/bt/talk/archive/062403_bt_sklim.htm

Is a system of highways that extends from the United States-Alaska-Mexican border to southern Chile. It also connects the east and west coasts of South America, and links the capitals of 17 Latin-American countries. The 29,525-mile (47,516-kilometer) system benefits Latin America's economy. The Pan American Highway is sometimes described as running through the western United States and Canada up into Alaska. But neither country has officially named any highway as part of the Pan American Highway system.

Route. The Pan American Highway has four major U.S. terminals: Nogales, Ariz. ; and Eagle Pass, El Paso, and Laredo, Tex. It crosses Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, and into Panama. The Darien Gap, a stretch of about 70 miles (110 kilometers) of jungle, blocks the highway at Yaviza, Panama. Motorists usually ship their cars from either Cristobal or Balboa, Panama, to Colombia or Venezuela. South of the gap the highway follows the western coastline of South America to Puerto Montt, Chile.

At Santiago, Chile, about 660 miles (1,060 kilometers) north of Puerto Montt, a major branch of the highway cuts eastward across the Andes Mountains to Buenos Aires, Argentina. From Buenos Aires, it follows the east coast of South America north to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, then turns inland to Brasilia, the capital of Brazil. Other branches of the highway lead to the capitals of Bolivia (La Paz and Sucre), Paraguay (Asuncion), and Venezuela (Caracas).

Development. The idea to link North and South America dates from the late 1800's, when people talked of building a Pan American railway. But it was not until 1923, at the Fifth International Conference of American States, that a highway was seriously considered. This conference led to the First Pan American Highway Congress at Buenos Aires in 1925.

Yeah, that's the same link as above. But it seems pretty clear from what I've found in the NYT and above that the original route built was to Laredo, and three other routes in Mexico have been built to the border, but there is no official route in the US or Canada, and thus those should not be included. Should we even have this page at all, or just describe the route in terms of route numbers and towns in the main Pan-American Highway article? --SPUI 15:10, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] From VfD

See Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Pan-American Highway (route)

[edit] Wikipedia is NOT a travel guide

From What Wikipedia is not: Travel guides. An article on Paris should mention landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre, but not the telephone number or street address of your favorite hotel or the price of a café au lait on the Champs-Élysées. Such details are, however, very welcome at Wikitravel

I have started taking out some of the tourist tips (why talk about the Zocalo in an article about the Pan American highway?) and the jokey second-person comments. More editing is needed. - DavidWBrooks 20:00, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

Have fixed up the formatting of a few sections (Costa Rica, ) by removing the bullet points and adding links after I bumped into this article when I found out what the Interamerican Highway was located under. Added a redirect for one spelling of that, but I guess there are many more hyphenated and so on that would take ages to enumerate. I removed a bit of editorialising as well, but there is plenty left.

I may come back and do some more sections in the same fashion when I have time if no one hacks it around before I do. I'm certainly going to be wary next time getting involved with geography articles on wikipedia, the amount of redlinks that need to be filled in grows exponentially outside of a few countries like the US and UK. Sfnhltb 23:41, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Oops, the other two sections I did were Nicaragua and Honduras. Sfnhltb 23:42, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Circle, Alaska as the Northern Terminus

I'm just wondering if there is any justification behind having Circle as the Northern terminus of the Pan-American instead of either Prudhoe Bay, AK or Inuvik, Northwest Territories.

Prudhoe Bay seems the more logical ending point, since it is the northernmost place one can drive to, and is on the Arctic Ocean.

Can anyone explain this? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 142.104.217.192 (talk) 09:05, 22 March 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Rewrite: route inconsistencies

This article is entirely inconsistent with itself. The introduction seems to quite clearly indicate that the highway goes down the west coast but then in the details describes it as going down I-35 in the central U.S. Given that the I-35 path is the more traditional definition and the fact that there is no easy connection from the California route to routes that go through Mexico I would say the I-35 route is the more correct definition. Regardless certainly the west coast route should not be treated as the preferable definition.

--Mcorazao 15:21, 16 August 2007 (UTC)