denotes services I have used
denotes services which exist but which I have not used
denotes services which do not carry passengersI love transportation. This is my home page, and I should be talking about some of my favorite stuff. Well, I can't feel guilty talking about transportation. I am a great fan of public transit. I absolutely despise taxicabs. But buses, planes, and trains I deal with quite nicely.
Of course, there are many different types of transport, but the main ones I'm concerned about here are shipping (sending objects from one place to another), travel (going from one geographic area to another), and local (moving from point to point within a city, metropolitan area, or small state (like New Jersey).) Within each of the three sections, I've got links to various agencies that can help you get oriented.
Airlines | Airports | Trains | Buses | Roads
These days, at least in the United States, most people travel by air. Train travel, much more common in Europe and elsewhere, is hampered by the rail system here, which is designed for freight traffic. Roads lack the convenience and speed of most "leave the driving to us" travel, even if one takes an intercity bus.
Most airline web sites these days allow searching for flights and making reservations online, a far cry from 1996, when I could only find four airlines who would give me a reservations phone number online. In addition, several third-party travel sites claim to be one-stop shops for travel reservations. I look at the third-party sites Travelocity and Orbitz occasionally, but I would never book a flight via them, nor would I ever use a travel agent. A page from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's web site pointed me to ITA Software's Matrix engine, the same engine Orbitz uses, which allows me to not look at Orbitz and get info. I suppose using a travel agent might not be quite as distasteful as taking a taxicab, but I still don't like the whole idea.
I haven't flown all these airlines -- just the ones marked Airside -- and I don't endorse them, necessarily. But they're all quite useful airlines.
| ICAO Code | IATA Code | Airline Name | Reservations |
|---|---|---|---|
| AAL | AA | American Airlines | reservations |
| ACA | AC | Air Canada | reservations |
| AFR | AF | Air France | reservations |
| ASA/QXE | AS/QX | Alaska Airlines/Horizon Air | reservations |
| JBU | B6 | JetBlue Airways | reservations |
| BAW | BA | British Airways | reservations |
| COA | CO | Continental Airlines | reservations |
| DAL | DL | Delta Air Lines | reservations |
| TRS | FL | AirTran Airways | reservations |
| KLM | KL | KLM Royal Dutch Airlines | reservations |
| DLH | LH | Lufthansa | reservations |
| NKS | NK | Spirit Airlines | reservations |
| NWA | NW | Northwest Airlines | reservations |
| QFA | QF | Qantas Airways | reservations |
| AMT | TZ | ATA Airlines | reservations |
| UAL | UA | United Airlines | reservations |
| USA | US | US Airways | reservations |
| SWA | WN | Southwest Airlines | reservations |
I haven't flown into all these airports, either. (I have flown into 12 -- oops, make that 13 -- airports in my life, including old Denver Stapleton. The 12 that are still open are all listed here, marked Airside. I've been to a couple others groundside only, but that hardly seems important.) But if you are considering flying somewhere, often the airport site (or the managing agency site) can be quite useful.
Passenger train travel in this country is effectively a one-horse race. There's the National Railroad Passenger Corporation, and that's it.
Bus travel in this country is also effectively a one-horse race, or perhaps I should call it a one-dog race. Oddly enough the times I have taken an intercity bus (which I have done twice), the route was between points served by Amtrak. So I've never used buses to go places I couldn't get by train.
I used to have a link here for road condition reports from the Illinois Department of Transportation. But IDOT changed their page. And they made me dig. Shame on them, because I found this site instead, which is far more useful, as it is run by the USDOT and has links to all state agencies' reports.
Well, all that traveling is fine, but what do you do once you get to the area you're trying to get to? That's what most people, myself included, usually mean by "public transit". Depending on the area (and the area covered), public transit agencies may use heavy commuter rail, light rail, buses, or even ferries to move people around.
I've finally overhauled this section, using tables like I did above. This time, though, I've consolidated the links by agency: if one agency provides three serviced, that agency has one row and not three. I've used columns in the tables to designate each service; the links are still service-specific.
denotes services I have used denotes services which exist but which I have not used denotes services which do not carry passengersI always have had a couple shipping links here. Shipping is part of transportation, too; sometimes, you've just got to send stuff. I usually use the USPS, but I won't mail a $2000 computer weighing 32 pounds over 1700 miles. That is what UPS is for.