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Roadgeek

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"Roads scholar" redirects here. Not to be confused withRhodes Scholarship,Road Scholar,orRoad Scholars.

Drivingsouth on TheAlaska Tok Cutoff Highway.
An abandoned earlyU.S. Route 66alignment in southernIllinoisin 2006.

Aroadgeek(fromroad+geek) is a person involved in "roadgeeking" or "road enthusiasm", anenthusiasmforroads,fond ofroad tripsas ahobby.One may also be called aroad enthusiast,road buff,roadfanorRoads Scholar,the latter a play on "Rhodes Scholar".[1][failed verification]

Interest[edit]

Roadgeeks view their interest as an appreciation of engineering and planning feats:

We're interested in all the effort that goes into making roads. The railways in this country get an awful lot of press as great engineering achievements. Roads aren't seen in that way, but it wasn't always so. In the 1950s and 1960s they were part of a brave new era. Back then it was something to get excited about. They actually put people on buses and drove up and down them to have a look...

— Steven Jukes[2]
The numbering zones for A-roads in Great Britain
FHWA Series fonts—also known as Highway Gothic or the Interstate typeface

Roadgeeks are not necessarily interested in motor vehicles;[2]there may also be an interest incartographyand map design. Enthusiasts may focus on a single activity related to roads, such asdrivingthe full length of a highway (known as 'clinching') or researching the history, planning and quirks of a particular road or national highway system. Sometimes, road geeks are called "highway historians" for the knowledge and interests.[3]

Even the numbering system can be a subject of deep interest, as Joe Moran describes in his book "On Roads: A Hidden History":

On the online discussion forum of SABRE, the Society for All British Road Enthusiasts (sic), the 1400-odd Sabristi often debate about where the M25 starts and whether it is correctly numbered, or why the motorway from Carlisle to Glasgow is called both the M74 and the A74(M). In road-numbering lore, the absence of pattern—the discovery that there are so many exceptions to rules that the rules might as well not exist—only seems to revivify the search for inner mysteries. Road buffs talk in reverential tones about "David Craig Numbers" - the elegant theory, named after the man who proposed it, that three digit numbers derive from the roads they connect.[4]

Online[edit]

In 2002, theSt. Louis Post-Dispatchreported that road enthusiasm was an Internet phenomenon. There is aUsenetnewsgroup, misc.transport.road, where participants discuss all facets of roads and road trips from "construction projects to quirks and inconsistencies in signage".[5]Those who await each annualRand McNallyroad atlas release found a community of others online who were also interested in roads as a hobby. These communities of people could share photos, swap their thoughts on the highways in their areas and "debate the finer points of interchange design".[5]

Web based forums are popular; one of the largest is AARoads Forum.[6][failed verification]

SABRE[edit]

Started in 1999, theSociety for All British and Irish Road Enthusiasts(SABRE), originally known as "Study and Appreciation of the British Roads Experience",[7]is one of the larger and most prominent communities of road enthusiasts online.[8]The organization hosts a large collection of articles and histories of particular roads and terminology, online photo galleries, discussion forums,[9]and an application to overlay and compare historical roadmaps.[7]Although SABRE is primarily an online group, members organize group tours to visit sites of interest.[2]

Taiwan websites[edit]

In 2006, a board called "Road" (Chinese:Công lộ bản) in thePTT Bulletin Board System,which is a Taiwanese forum, was established.[10]Because some Taiwanese road enthusiasts didn't know how to use aterminalorBBSreader to access it, the web forumTaiwan Highway Club(Chinese:Công lộ bang;literally, "Highway State" ) was started in 2008.[11]It contains subforums where users discuss road policies and post highway news and images.[12]

Relationship with governments[edit]

In Taiwan, theMinistry of Transportation and Communications'Directorate General of Highways(Công lộ tổng cục) has held occasional Road Fan Conferences (Công lộ mê tọa đàm hội) since 2011 where roadfans and highway transportation-related organizations made suggestions to the government.[13]

References[edit]

  1. ^Wear, Ben (December 12, 2004)."Road to Future or a Dead End".Austin American-Statesman.Archived fromthe originalon September 5, 2006.RetrievedJanuary 20,2007.
  2. ^abcGupta, Lila Das (January 17, 2005)."Never Mind the Trainspotters".The Daily Telegraph.London.RetrievedApril 9,2009.
  3. ^Miller, Matthew (February 22, 2009). "Looking Back: I-496 Construction, a Complicated Legacy".Lansing State Journal.pp. 1A, 8A.
  4. ^Moran, Joe(2009).On Roads: A Hidden History(Hardcover ed.). London: Profile Books. p. 77.ISBN978-1-84668-052-6.
  5. ^abLamb, William (September 22, 2002)."'Road geeks' ramp up their hobby on the information superhighway ".St. Louis Post-Dispatch.pp. C1,C5.RetrievedFebruary 28,2020.Free access icon
  6. ^Thomson, Robert (February 27, 2014)."Map rage: Navigating Google's revised way-finding system".The Washington Post.RetrievedFebruary 28,2020.
  7. ^ab"Society: About Us".Society for All British Road Enthusiasts.RetrievedJune 21,2011.
  8. ^Milmo, Cahal (October 29, 2004)."Round the Bend? How We Became a Nation of Roadies".The Independent.London. Archived fromthe originalon April 24, 2008.RetrievedApril 9,2009.
  9. ^Greenacre, Simon (September 10, 2008)."Society for All British Road Enthusiasts".Total Vauxhall.Gloucester: A & S Publishing.ISSN1474-1393.Archived fromthe originalon June 19, 2011.RetrievedJune 14,2011.
  10. ^Công cáo công lộ bản khai liễu ~(in Chinese). Road board ofPTT Bulletin Board System.RetrievedSeptember 30,2011.
  11. ^【 công lộ bang 】 thành lập(in Chinese). Road board ofPTT Bulletin Board System.RetrievedSeptember 30,2011.(in Chinese)
  12. ^"Công lộ bang > thảo luận khu thủ hiệt".Công lộ bang. Archived fromthe originalon September 4, 2011.RetrievedSeptember 30,2011.
  13. ^"Quan dân hợp tác ‧ đại đạo khai khoát công lộ tổng cục cử bạn đệ nhị thứ công lộ mê tọa đàm hội".Archived fromthe originalon April 5, 2016.

Further reading[edit]

  • Beresford, Kevin (2004).Roundabouts of Great Britain(Hardcover ed.). London: New Holland.ISBN978-1-84330-854-6.

External links[edit]

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Roadgeek&oldid=1227354268#SABRE"