thumb|right|[[Driving south on Alaska Tok Cutoff Highway.]]

thumb|An abandoned early [[U.S. Route 66 alignment in southern Illinois in 2006.]]

A roadgeek (from road + geek) is a person involved in "roadgeeking" or "road enthusiasm", an enthusiasm for roads, fond of road trips as a hobby.

Interest

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

thumb|200px|The numbering zones for A-roads in Great Britain

thumb|right|200px|[[FHWA Series fonts—also known as Highway Gothic or the Interstate typeface]]

Roadgeeks are not necessarily interested in motor vehicles;

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

Online

In 2002, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that road enthusiasm was an Internet phenomenon. There is a Usenet newsgroup, misc.transport.road, where participants discuss all facets of roads and road trips from "construction projects to quirks and inconsistencies in signage".

Web based forums are popular; one of the largest is AARoads Forum.

SABRE

Started in 1999, the Society for All British and Irish Road Enthusiasts (SABRE), originally known as "Study and Appreciation of the British Roads Experience", is one of the larger and most prominent communities of road enthusiasts online. The organization hosts a large collection of articles and histories of particular roads and terminology, online photo galleries, discussion forums, and an application to overlay and compare historical roadmaps. Because some Taiwanese road enthusiasts didn't know how to use a terminal or BBS reader to access it, the web forum Taiwan Highway Club (; literally, "Highway State") was started in 2008. It contains subforums where users discuss road policies and post highway news and images.

Relationship with governments

In Taiwan, the Ministry of Transportation and Communications' Directorate General of Highways () has held occasional Road Fan Conferences () since 2011 where roadfans and highway transportation-related organizations made suggestions to the government.

References

Further reading

  • AARoads Glossary