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template: about.jade
title: About
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Welcome to [scenicbyways.info] - an open source initiative to restore to the public content of
the discontinued byways.org website.

byways.org was a website established to promote a collection of 150 byways designated by the US
Secretary of Transportation. But it was doing much more than that - it presented comprehensive
information about over 850 scenic roads in US complete with photos, maps, sample trips and
attractions along the way. The information invaluable to the traveling public.

And suddenly, without any specific public announcement it closed in the end of September 2013 as
part of adoption of the [2012 transportation bill] that failed to provide funding for National
Scenic Byway Program or a graceful way to shut its resources down. Partial information on the 150
America's Byways® is available at [Federal Highway Administration][FHWA] but the central repository
of information on non federally designated scenic roads is gone. The information might sill be
somewhere, scattered over multitude of websites, much harder to be of use to travelers.

We, the [developers][creators] of [Furkot] (a trip planner web application), decided to restore the
content of byways.org to public domain. We took the raw data that we downloaded prior to byways.org
closure that we meant to use in [Furkot] and we created this website as an open source project that
everybody can contribute to at [github].

We don't have all the information that used to be available at byways.org but we'll do our best to
find and add it to [scenicbyways.info].

There are many ways you can help us. If you have access to information about byways that used to be
on byways.org please [share it with us][email]. If you like to code, contribute to byways project at
[github]. And if you have an idea what we can add to [scenicbyways.info] to make it a better trip
resource, just [email us][email].

This website is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising
program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to
amazon.com.

[scenicbyways.info]: http://scenicbyways.info/
[2012 transportation bill]: http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/MAP21/
[FHWA]: http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/byways/
[creators]: https://humans.furkot.com/
[Furkot]: https://furkot.com
[github]: https://github.com/melitele/byways
[email]: mailto:contact@scenicbyways.info
