Are you a Transportation Geek too??

[ghYHZ]

We all like roads and everything about them.....but do you also find yourself like me at other forums such as:

Airliners.net
Railroad.net
TrainOrders.com
Shipsnostalgia.com

.......and all the others a quick Google search will find?

[PHLBOS]

I've been on Airliners.net since 2004-2005.  I stumbled across that site when I was doing a search for Northeast Airlines planes... the Yellowbird DC-9s & 727s in particular.  

I'm also on the more local site www.phlairline.com.

[realjd]

I read FlyerTalk regularly since I travel a lot for work and have become a points/miles whore. That's really the only other forum I'm in though. I'm interested in other transportation topics, but not enough to read/contribute on forums about them.

[Takumi]

I'm on a couple of Honda/Prelude forums. I don't suppose that counts.

[formulanone]

I read FlyerTalk regularly since I travel a lot for work and have become a points/miles whore.

I read FlyerTalk a lot, but some people just seem to think it's Yelp for airlines. Still, the info is quite valuable, I must say. If an article about ships and railroads comes up in my searches, I'm not adverse to reading it!

I belong to a couple of automotive/racing forums, and with the exception of the one I moderate at (which is primarily a video game forum about racing, but has very active real-life sections that I tend to), I kind of avoid the rest, save for doing a deep web search or two.

[1995hoo]

I visit ConcordeSST.com but haven't had much to post on the forum recently, which I suppose is rather understandable. See my avatar to the left–I'm in Seat 20D in that video (left side of the plane from the viewer's perspective).

I have a FlyerTalk account but I don't post there much, especially since in the past few years all my travel has been either by car or train (Auto Train or Acela). In general it's a site I'll read when I'm considering flying somewhere or planning to fly, especially if the trip is international, and beyond that I seldom visit. I simply don't have the time nor the obsessive nature that would allow me to become completely obsessed with getting the theoretical "maximum value" for all miles/points in the way many folks there do–in my view, the "best value" for miles/points is whatever has the most value to you. It doesn't matter if you can get a great deal using your points to stay at a hotel in Mexico City if you don't have any desire to go to Mexico City, you know?

I post periodically on an Acura forum (AcuraZine; I frequent the subforum for the third-generation TL) and very rarely on an RX-7 forum (rx7club.com), the latter generally when I have trouble with the RX-7 and need technical advice.

I also post frequent comments to the blog run by Dr. Gridlock at the Washington Post.

[Duke87]

I am also into rails/trains but I don't really participate in that community much since I tend to find it disagreeable. Too full of people who think that cars are the spawn of satan or are otherwise far-left nuts. Or at least, that's been my experience dealing with NYC subway fans.
Also much more common a hobby, so it's not as tight-knit and friendly. In roadgeeking you almost have a sense that everyone knows everyone else, directly or indirectly. And I've never met anyone who wasn't one who knew what it was. But no such condition exists in railfanning: more people are into it, and plenty of people who aren't recognize it.

[huskeroadgeek]

I'm not that interested in trains, except for route maps and schedules. Airplanes are a little more interesting to me, but again, I'm more interested in route maps and schedules. Generally, I'm more interested in where different modes of transportation go rather than the actual mode of transportation itself.

[english si]

Yes, though I find most other railgeeks annoying. I was on a popular London Underground forum and they treated those of us discussing fantasy plans far worse than here - and we weren't being OTT or anything like proposing extensions to Paris, just discussing the relative merits of official proposals (Crossrail, Bakerloo line extension, DLR in Central London) with traffic figures, proper concepts like footfall, traffic generators, frequency, suppressed demand, looking over the option documentation, etc and proposing alternatives to the ones chosen that would be more sensible (which is where the fantasy came in. But there, even discussing how lots of people run over the bridge at Rayners Lane in a dangerous way that ends in disappointment when the train leaves just as you make it to the platform, lamenting how they built side platforms rather than an island, was fantasy railways and needed to go on the 'kiddies' board, as TfL bigwigs occasionally read the site, and we don't want them upset by reading suggestions of how to make the tube better, do we?).

I find on Skyscraper City that the intelligent ones who do have some understanding of what makes a good scheme have pet projects they are blinded by that must be done. The one that grinds my gears most is a Canary Wharf - Stratford chord on Crossrail. Crossrail has a problem in the east end as it tries to do about 3 things and can only really do one (but if you are spending £14 billion, you want it to do more than it can). There's predicted severe capacity shortages just outside Central London because the line branches too close to the the centre. The solution often proposed is to run trains between the two eastern branches, avoiding the centre. Now that fails to deal with the problem nearly entirely and, at great cost, makes the system more complex and possibly reduces potential max frequency (and thus capacity) between Central London and the 2 branches. But apparently this would fix all the problems. </facepalm>.

Generally, I'm more interested in where different modes of transportation go rather than the actual mode of transportation itself.

That's me too.

[mgk920]

In addition to AARoads, I'm on a couple of very localized railfan forvms and email lists, a couple of other railfan and roadgeek email lists, all where pretty much everyone knows everyone, as well as Skyscrapercity.  As long as one can see past some of the partisan political flotsam, the SSC road, rail and urban development forvms are pretty good and observant - and they have good coverage of the entire World, not just North America.  I am also a regular on an urban planning forvm.

I was an old regular from MTR, too, but I haven't posted there since September of 2004 (I actually spent some time digging back into the MTR archives a few weeks ago).

Mike

[AsphaltPlanet]

I am also into rails/trains but I don't really participate in that community much since I tend to find it disagreeable. Too full of people who think that cars are the spawn of satan or are otherwise far-left nuts. Or at least, that's been my experience dealing with NYC subway fans.
Also much more common a hobby, so it's not as tight-knit and friendly. In roadgeeking you almost have a sense that everyone knows everyone else, directly or indirectly. And I've never met anyone who wasn't one who knew what it was. But no such condition exists in railfanning: more people are into it, and plenty of people who aren't recognize it.

i whole heartily agree with this sentiment.  So many transit geeks talk about the car as if it is the spawn of Satan.  I lurk over at Urban Toronto, which generally has a pretty left wing lean to it, and the members talk about the TTC (the Toronto Transit Commission) as if it were bestowed upon the City from heaven itself.  ... This ignores the fact that, you know, despite the success of the transit company (and it is quite successful) most trips within and around the City of Toronto are still made by the car.

[realjd]

I have a FlyerTalk account but I don't post there much, especially since in the past few years all my travel has been either by car or train (Auto Train or Acela). In general it's a site I'll read when I'm considering flying somewhere or planning to fly, especially if the trip is international, and beyond that I seldom visit. I simply don't have the time nor the obsessive nature that would allow me to become completely obsessed with getting the theoretical "maximum value" for all miles/points in the way many folks there do–in my view, the "best value" for miles/points is whatever has the most value to you. It doesn't matter if you can get a great deal using your points to stay at a hotel in Mexico City if you don't have any desire to go to Mexico City, you know?

I'm not quite that obsessive about it. I've never gone on a mileage run like many of those folks do. But I am big on maximizing my points earning and status/perks within the constraints of my travel for work, which leads to nice/free vacations. I think my next big trip will be to drop 150k miles each for my wife and I to fly business class to Sydney for a long Australian vacation.

[1995hoo]

I have a FlyerTalk account but I don't post there much, especially since in the past few years all my travel has been either by car or train (Auto Train or Acela). In general it's a site I'll read when I'm considering flying somewhere or planning to fly, especially if the trip is international, and beyond that I seldom visit. I simply don't have the time nor the obsessive nature that would allow me to become completely obsessed with getting the theoretical "maximum value" for all miles/points in the way many folks there do–in my view, the "best value" for miles/points is whatever has the most value to you. It doesn't matter if you can get a great deal using your points to stay at a hotel in Mexico City if you don't have any desire to go to Mexico City, you know?

I'm not quite that obsessive about it. I've never gone on a mileage run like many of those folks do. But I am big on maximizing my points earning and status/perks within the constraints of my travel for work, which leads to nice/free vacations. I think my next big trip will be to drop 150k miles each for my wife and I to fly business class to Sydney for a long Australian vacation.

Yeah, I think that's entirely reasonable and I'd do the same. A few years ago I had to spend a month in Princeton on business. We stayed at the Westin north of town, which was great because I have a Starwood Gold membership. I tried to pay for my room (some $5000 or so) with my own charge card to get the additional points on top of that, but the client had arranged for direct billing. Oh well. To me stuff like that isn't an inconvenience and it would be kind of silly not to try to maximize in those contexts. My Concorde flight was a good example of maximizing the miles because I paid for it with a then-new BA Visa card, so I got double miles for the roundtrip airfare, 25% cabin bonus for the flight over in World Traveller Plus (premium economy), 200% cabin bonus for the supersonic flight home, 10,000 bonus miles for first use of the card....added up quite nicely to get me an upgrade the next time I flew BA.

My brother recently did a mileage run to Anchorage to maintain his United status, but he spent the weekend there using a hotel chain voucher from some other trip. To me that sort of thing makes a mileage run bearable, though I don't normally do that sort of thing.

To me the "miles for upgrade" tends to be more appealing on long trips than a free ticket. Last time we went to Europe my (now-)wife and I booked WT+ on BA and used miles to upgrade to Club World (business class), but on the way home we got an upgrade to FIRST at the gate at Heathrow. Hard to beat that!

I am also into rails/trains but I don't really participate in that community much since I tend to find it disagreeable. Too full of people who think that cars are the spawn of satan or are otherwise far-left nuts. Or at least, that's been my experience dealing with NYC subway fans.

....

I agree with this. I've always been interested in subways, especially New York's, but I think in a modern metropolitan area there needs to be a BALANCE. I'm not so stupid as to think the DC-area Metrorail system doesn't have serious benefits even for people who don't use it, but I'm also not naive enough to think mass transit can be a cure-all. I mean, it's flat-out unrealistic for most white-collar workers, who often cannot rely on leaving the office at the same time every night, to try to tie their work hours to the bus schedules. It simply doesn't work when you wind up having to stay late without prior notice. I think a lot of people here also no longer trust our subway to get you to your stop in time to catch the bus, either. Strangling the roads simply because it may be unsustainable to continue to promote car-centric travel–and I agree that the continued push of the suburbs farther and farther out into the former countryside is unsustainable–is a terrible option. The District of Columbia tried to take away existing lanes of traffic on a couple of streets to create bus lanes. Problem is, they didn't take away a lane of parking to compensate for the lost capacity, and they also don't enforce rules against double-parking and the like. So you have a road that had three thru lanes in theory (often two due to double-parked cars) suddenly choked down to a single lane if drivers respect the bus lane. Not surprisingly, everybody ignores the bus lane.

A lot of the transit-philes in the DC area seem to be part of the camp who call themselves "smart growth advocates." While I have no quibble with some of the things they favor (bike lanes; locating major new development near transit hubs where feasible), I think all too often their phrase "smart growth" is a misleading code for "make everyone live in a small apartment within walking distance of work." That's simply not realistic nor appealing for many, perhaps most, people. (To give an example: My parents are now retired, but for many years my dad worked in downtown DC and my mom taught in Centreville, Virginia. They lived near Fairfax City. It wasn't anywhere near either of their jobs–but it was about halfway between, and to me that seems pretty damn reasonable. The "smart growth" advocate would probably say it was irresponsible for them not to have jobs located near each others' workplaces.) Also, what happens when you change jobs, or your employer moves to a new office, or one spouse changes jobs and the other doesn't? Or, more importantly to many people here in the DC area, what if your job moves but your kids are in a particular school and you do not want them to have to go to a different one? (That's a BIG DEAL to many people in Fairfax County: LOTS of parents decide where to live based on which school the kids in that neighborhood would attend.)

But anyway, live within walking distance of work.....you know, I did that for that month in Princeton when our trial office was within walking distance of the hotel (across the street, to be precise). It was horrible. I felt like I was never away from the office, though no doubt working from 7 AM to 11 PM every day didn't help. I've long felt that it's vital to keep a separation between your work life and your home life as much as possible, and that summer simply reinforced it for me.

[formulanone]

Too full of people who think that cars are the spawn of satan or are otherwise far-left nuts.

i whole heartily agree with this sentiment.  So many transit geeks talk about the car as if it is the spawn of Satan.

Heh, most automotive/motorsports forums are usually a mix of lefts-centrists-rights, but depending on the focus or brand(s) represented on those boards, the electric car and hybrids are the spawn of Satan. Truck/off-road forums generally lean in one direction, politically and mechanically, but there's also many auto forums that suffer from a hive-mind mentality that's quite annoying. Another board I used to be active on (I even knew some of the members, since they were my service customers and co-workers) that was a little too tolerant of every dangerous idiot troll, or permitting of ALL CAPS mis-information wasn't much fun, either. This place is the only one I know of which deals with my specific transportation-infrastructure interests, and thank goodness it's a nice place to be. (Sorry if I sound like a suck-up.)

I know of some co-workers that use their miles solely to keep their status just before the calendar year ends, because they are less inclined to use the miles for pleasure, and enjoy the perks of their status within the airline. I thought it was nuts too, but now I understand...I do use the airlines' and hotels' and rental agency's cross-promotions to add bonus miles, but basically, you link your account numbers and they tell you how long the deal is good for. It doesn't add much, but for 2 minutes of my time...sure. But I don't go totally out of my way for an extra 250 points.

[kphoger]

I lived in the Chicago suburbs for a number of years without a car of my own.  I became very adept at public transportation, and could typically plan a route better than the people sitting on the other end of the transit agency phone lines.  I've always enjoyed Amtrak (OK, except one trip from Chicago to Virginia on which they ran out of regular food and fed us stuff that tasted not quite as good as Chef Boyardee), and have also come to not-quite-hate Greyhound.

It was during that time (mid-2000s) that I discovered hitchhiking, due in large part to the fact that I met my now-wife online, and she lived more than 500 miles away from me.....and I didn't have a lot of money.  I used to be a regular on the digihitch.com forums, but haven't been on there in years.  Back in Chicagoland, I even did some suburban hitchhiking, which is a whole other ball of wax.  My all-time most amazing ride scored was from downtown Lincoln Highway & Church St (New Lenox, IL) to Naper Blvd and Ogden (Naperville, IL) by way of Joliet.  Public transit would have taken hours to get me home, it being a Saturday; after less than 20 minutes of flying a 'Joliet' sign on the sidewalk of a gas station (west of where I was), I had a ride to within five miles of both my girlfriend's house and my house–about 30 miles total–by a guy in a work van.  I learned that a piece of cardboard and a marker can sometimes do you just as well as, if not better than, a bus/train ticket.

[Dr Frankenstein]

I'm a railfan; and by that, I mean both freight and suburban commuter rail. I have some interest in subway systems as well, especially Montreal's and Toronto's.

Apart from the above, I'm not that much of a transit fan, and I regard some people's obsession on "sustainable transportation" as utopic, unreachable and highly impractical. Fill the new Turcot interchange with bus lanes and make it worse of a bottleneck than it already is? Seriously? Tear down the Bonaventure and replace the interchanges with traffic lights? Raise parking fees in a poor attempt at traffic calming??

I also catch myself planespotting at times, mostly in Ottawa.

[D-Dey65]

I am also into rails/trains but I don't really participate in that community much since I tend to find it disagreeable. Too full of people who think that cars are the spawn of satan or are otherwise far-left nuts. Or at least, that's been my experience dealing with NYC subway fans.

The worst thing is, if you try to tell them otherwise, they think you're conspiring against mass transit, all ready to spew the myth of the "General Motors killing mass transit." And you're reading this from a guy who's been trying to save the Old Hewlett South Side Railroad Depot, and who has been advocating more railroad crossing eliminations both on Long Island, and in the Tampa Bay Metropolitan Area.

I agree with this. I've always been interested in subways, especially New York's, but I think in a modern metropolitan area there needs to be a BALANCE. I'm not so stupid as to think the DC-area Metrorail system doesn't have serious benefits even for people who don't use it, but I'm also not naive enough to think mass transit can be a cure-all. I mean, it's flat-out unrealistic for most white-collar workers, who often cannot rely on leaving the office at the same time every night, to try to tie their work hours to the bus schedules. It simply doesn't work when you wind up having to stay late without prior notice.

I once wrote a letter replying to Newsday in reply to somebody who insisted the government should take all the money they want to spend on the roads and give it to the Long Island Rail Road, despite the fact that they were firing station agents left and right and replacing them with the vending machines that don't work all the time. As if instead of improving Sunrise Highway they should build a station for Sunrise Mall.

A lot of the transit-philes in the DC area seem to be part of the camp who call themselves "smart growth advocates." While I have no quibble with some of the things they favor (bike lanes; locating major new development near transit hubs where feasible), I think all too often their phrase "smart growth" is a misleading code for "make everyone live in a small apartment within walking distance of work." That's simply not realistic nor appealing for many, perhaps most, people.

"Smart growth" is nothing but a misnomer, just like the so-called "9/11 Truth Movement." My view of the phrase "smart growth" is code for "make driving a huge pain in the ass, under the guise of "saving neighborhoods" or "protecting nature." It's a farce, which is why I long for a new Robert Moses.

[NE2]

This forum is overrun by pro-highway extremists who think every road should be an Interstate.

[D-Dey65]

This forum is overrun by pro-highway extremists who think every road should be an Interstate.

Even I don't think every road should be an Interstate. I can even live without the conversion of highways on Long Island to US highways.

As for me, I've lurked on the Railroad.net forums, but back around New Years Eve, I was on a railroad photos website and got hit with a massive virus of some kind.

I should sign into Railroad.net's forum though. Somebody on there had a tip about a failed proposal by the Long Island Rail Road to merge Deer Park, Pine Aire, and Brentwood Stations all in one prior to the electrification between Hicksville and Ronkonkoma, and I can't find any other evidence of that plan.

[Zmapper]

In ways, I consider myself more of a transit fan than a road/highway fan. Generally most of my service concepts, fictional maps, etc involve transit rather than new roads. Compare the number of new road ideas in my Google MyMaps collection to the number of transit maps, some of them reproductions for some odd reasons. (Wait, didn't I map that idea out a few months ago?  )

[Sanctimoniously]

This forum is overrun by pro-highway extremists who think every road should be an Interstate.

This.

I have an interest in aircraft, and have Airliners.net bookmarked for quick perusal, but I haven't really joined any other transportation-related sites. I've also dabbled in Buick LeSabre and 3800-tuning communities in the past, but all of those went by the wayside.

[D-Dey65]

Would Internet Movie Cars Movie Database count?
http://www.imcdb.org/
http://forum.imcdb.org/forum_categories.html

[formulanone]

Would Internet Movie Cars Movie Database count?
http://www.imcdb.org/
http://forum.imcdb.org/forum_categories.html

I played around with that site for an afternoon or two at work one day...

[J N Winkler]

I have a general interest in other modes of transport but I don't have nearly the same depth of detailed knowledge on them, or interest in acquiring it, that I do for roads.  For me it comes down to a "rivets on a Class 35" test (originally inspired by a Sabrista who commented, in a SABRE thread of topic similar to this one, "I like trains, but I don't know how many rivets there are in a Class 35").

*  Ships--I know a little about them, partly because I have run across the conversion from tramps to liners in general histories of British transport (some economic historians suggest that German shipping companies were able to move into markets traditionally occupied by their British competitors in the early twentieth century because the Germans were focused on operating liner services).  But in general I tend to think of them in utilitarian terms.

*  Airplanes--I read aircraft accident reports.  (Did you know that if you flew in Britain in the 1930's, you had a one in five thousand chance of dying on each flight?)  I also know a little about airfield signs and pavement markings, and I understand the distinction between local and en-route ATC, but a licensed pilot--never mind a serious aviation geek--has already forgotten ten times as much as I know.

*  Trains--I like them.  If I can't drive and need to take a surface route between two points, the train is always my preferred mode (up to a bar of impracticability which I set pretty high).  But I can't tell you how many rivets there are in a Class 35, or indeed any other BR locomotive class (aside from a vague suspicion that spot welds were used instead of rivets).  Aside from that, I tend to think of them as industrial appliances and, quite frankly, it is possible to deal with trains and railroads as an economic historian without being a rail buff.  Fogel's railroad thesis is one example of this.

*  Buses--I will hold my nose and take an intercity coach if there are no other good choices.  I hate local buses.  As with rail, the usual Transit Capacity Manual stuff (which has economic dimensions) can be grappled with by non-specialist non-enthusiasts.

*  Bicycles--I was a bicycle commuter for over 10 years, but I am not an enthusiast about bicycles (in fact, I am very unsentimental about them, having had five consumer-grade hybrids either stolen or run into the ground over those ten years) or an expert in cycling infrastructure.  I am interested in them as economic appliances and as aids to good health, not something I "get into" in my leisure time.

It has long been my suspicion that to the extent that they have any preferences between enthusiasts and non-enthusiasts, transportation agencies like state DOTs actually prefer to hire people with a general, nonspecialist interest in various modes of transport as economic appliances, because they can be sure that possible investments in these modes will be appraised in a dispassionate fashion without special pleading being offered in favor of any one mode.  Master-planning has its place, and state DOTs are certainly aware of the need to apply minimum-regret criteria in choosing transportation investments (especially blatant example:  "Whatever the cost, no bridge shall be allowed to fall down while it is carrying traffic"), and in many states there are budget constraints based on geographical equity formulas, but in general an agency head evaluating possible transportation investments will ask two questions:  Does this produce a positive social rate of return?  Does this help promote economic growth in this state?  From this vantage point a person who gets up in the morning and says, "I kind of like my job but it is not my whole life" has a bit of an edge over the geek.

[vtk]

I grew up with a steadily growing train set, but I'm not quite sure I'd call myself a railfan.  Due to that, and my current occupation as a railroad crew transport driver, and because it was mentioned here, I recently joined railroad.net.  Not sure yet how active I'll be there.

I've also enjoyed MS Flight Simulator since version 4.  I miss the Discovery Wings channel.

I suppose I'm a fan of all forms of transportation infrastructure.  The vehicles aren't quite as interesting to me, aside from general technological concepts.