Talk:Overpass

This article is written in American English, which has its own spelling conventions (color, defense, traveled) and some terms that are used in it may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus.

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Overpass article.
This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.
New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help.

Article policies

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Civil engineering High‑importance

	Engineering portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Civil engineering, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Civil engineering on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Civil engineeringWikipedia:WikiProject Civil engineeringTemplate:WikiProject Civil engineeringCivil engineering
High	This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale.

Bridges and Tunnels Top‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Bridges and Tunnels, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of bridges and tunnels on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Bridges and TunnelsWikipedia:WikiProject Bridges and TunnelsTemplate:WikiProject Bridges and TunnelsBridge and Tunnel
Top	This article has been rated as Top-importance on the project's importance scale.

Trains High‑importance

Trains Portal

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Trains, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to rail transport on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion. See also: WikiProject Trains to do list and the Trains Portal.TrainsWikipedia:WikiProject TrainsTemplate:WikiProject Trainsrail transport

High

This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale.

Transport High‑importance

	Transport portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Transport, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of articles related to Transport on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.TransportWikipedia:WikiProject TransportTemplate:WikiProject TransportTransport
High	This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale.

Flyover

It was my understanding that here (in the UK) as well as in America a 'flyover' is specifically a high level overpass, or one existing solely for grade-separation (ie not part of an embankment etc). Midlandstoday 22:06, 21 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Copied from User talk:Ewlyahoocom#Flyover: I'm in the UK, and I always understood a 'flyover' to be a high-level road overpass, or one existing solely for grade seperation. I had never heard of an 'overpass' until relatively recently. In short, I do not believe that use of 'flyover' to be US-centric. Midlandstoday 16:32, 22 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I assumed using "flyover" to only mean a high-level overpass was US-centric, but since you're not USian I guess I assumed wrong. Also, http://m-w.com/dictionary/flyover just shows them as synonyms. (I think a lot of these roadway terminology pages are horribly ambiguous e.g. Expressway vs Freeway vs Motorway.) Anyways, I changed the link on the Flyover disambiguation page to a redirect which I hope we can both agree on. Ewlyahoocom 04:11, 23 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I agree international road terminology is rather ambiguous, possibly due to the residents and governments of different nations developing their own terms for roads which are, in engineering terms, very similar. I must admit though that my understanding of the word 'flyover' may apply mainly to English Midland Dialect which is of course the most familiar to me. As far as I can tell, 'overpass' is rarely used here, yet 'flyover' has much the same meaning as in the US. Most people would call a US-'overpass' simply a 'bridge', with no specific term in common use. 'Underpass' however is widely used, especially to refer to a pedestrian underpass, particularly those constructed as part of the grand urban road schemes of the 60s and 70s. Midlandstoday 16:39, 23 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting. I've always seen the terms flyover and overpass as fairly synonymous in Australian usage, with flyover being less common and possibly perceived as a "foreign" term. A flyover would generally have approach ramps at both ends to get it "up and over", but a lot of older flyovers are referred to as overpasses. In particular, a road flyover going over a railway line to replace a level crossing is often referred to as a railway overpass. A pedestrian footbridge over a road is usually referred to as a "pedestrian overbridge", "pedestrian walkway" or similar. Here, where a road and a railway line cross, the choice between calling it an "overpass" or "underpass" appears to be whether the road passes over or under the railway line. To make it really confusing, in some places where a road or footpath was put through an existing raised railway formation by replacing part of the formation with a bridge or tunnel, it's not uncommon to see it referred to as a "subway" by people over about 60yo. --Athol Mullen 00:09, 24 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

In aussieland, flyover is purelyu an americanism, all overpasses down here :)Nbound (talk) 00:48, 9 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I live in Australia too, and I agree with the above comment. Enlil Ninlil (talk) 03:57, 9 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

List of railroad over railroad flyovers

I think the list of places where a track that is a part of the US national rail system (by which I mean, not a subway track) crosses above another such track would be short enough that making a list would be practical, were someone so inclined. The only example I can think of in Massachusetts is at Readville, where there's a bridge so that a train from the MBTA's Franklin Line can continue to the Fairmount Line, above the Providence Line / Northeast Corridor tracks. JNW2 (talk) 10:58, 13 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Would there be any reason to limit this to the USA? In general, they're fairly rare, and the only 2 that I'm aware of in Australia are the Sandgate Flyover and Hanbury Dive, although the Southern Sydney Freight Line will have a flyover at one point to get it from one side to between the passenger lines and a dive at another point where the freight line branches away from the passenger lines. I suspect that the overall list of rail-over-rail flyovers and dives would be fairly small. --Athol Mullen (talk) 12:04, 13 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

No reason to limit this to the US, other than the challenge of coming up with the right terminology to scope the category in such a way that it's an interesting, non-huge list. In the US, we have some pretty clear rules that subway type trains are not a part of the national rail system. If you start including subway tracks, the US list becomes a lot longer. For example, in Massachusetts, the MBTA Red Line crosses the below the Green Line and Orange Line; the MBTA Blue Line crosses the Green Line and Orange Line in some grade separated fashion; the Orange Line goes under some commuter rail tracks a bit east of Back Bay Station; the Red Line crosses under commuter rail tracks at Porter Square; and my list here is probably incomplete. I think the British may not have such a clear separation of subway from heavy rail (in part because they also don't run such large freight trains at all). But heavy rail is also not a terribly precise choice of terminology, as I think I have seen the MBTA's Orange Line, at least, described as heavy rail even though it's a subway line that's not a part of the national rail system. JNW2 (talk) 20:49, 15 June 2008 (UTC).thank you[reply]

Gallery Added

Original message from my talk page is here.

My reply on Jojalozzo's talk page:

Regarding the images on the article Overpass, the prior arrangement was somewhat unsightly due to the relatively small amount of text on the page and the large number of images. I left one image out of the gallery because, in my opinion, it was the image that is most descriptive of the concept of Overpass/flyover.

I did intend to move the image to the right side of the article, but I forgot to do that. I have just corrected that oversight.

In your note you mentioned that the images were, "moved ... to the railroad overpass section." I'm not sure what you mean. The article, and the gallery I added, is about both highway and railroad overpasses. What I did was create a gallery for all but one of the images to make the article flow better visually.

Finally, the policy I mentioned in my edit summary is Section 3.2 of Wikipedia Manual of Style/Images which talks about how to locate an image. But I was also influenced by Section 2 of Wikipedia:Picture tutorial, Avoiding stack-ups where we learn that stacking multiple images against large amounts of white space is visually undesirable. My edit was intended to fix that.

Finally if your interest is in railroad overpasses, I think the article would benefit from more railroad related images. If you have any that would be appropriate that would be great.

— Bill W. (Talk) (Contrib) – 24 December 2024, 15:58 (UTC)