A warm welcome, kb3llm!
Most transportation forums are local in scope and (brace yourself) requires that you discuss things
in person. I am a member of the
ITS forum on intelligent transportation, one of this kind of forums. Forums "in person" that you may know include, for example, the
Australian TTF, Melbourne
PTUA and
Southwest PTF, Puget Sound area
PITF or the
European Commision Digest, which I read regularly. They distribute newsletters and articles, mainly, and host conferences.
It should be easy to create one for your area: I am sure that if you live in USA (well, except in Washington or NY) you need public transportation enhancement. I still remember the time I travelled to Frankfort, Kentucky to discover (I had not a valid USA driver license at the moment, so I could not rent a car) they had no buses and TWO taxis for the entire town!
As for "traditional forums" like F1technical, you could find
The Transport Forum, mainly devoted to rail (they are British) of which I am a member,
Oaxaca Transport Forum in México, the
Canadian Public Transportation Board (I am also a member there) or the Trip Advisor for Chicago (I couldn't find it, but I was a member in 2004). These forums are "classic" internet forums.
I am also a member of the
ITE, which I recommend strongly if you are a transportation engineer, home of the famous ITE magazine. You can read a lot there about transport.
I am sorry to say this, but public transportation in USA, in my humble opinion, is a total mess and not by coincidence. On one side you have the "wild capitalist" approach to transit, totally opposed to public transportation systems, and on the other hand an astonishing lack of city planning, in the hand of land developers, that creates suburbs "only for cars". You might like to google around to read something about the efforts of our ex-mayor, Enrique Peñalosa, to try to convince americans that
they could learn something from Bogotá about it.
What we have done in Colombia centers around heavy bus lines, like
Transmilenio. I doubt very much this system has any hopes in USA. It includes things like
prohibition of car use during peak hours (two days on the week), the "almost famous"
day without cars (talking about converting wish lists into reality: what would you do tomorrow morning if, for an entire day, you could not use your car?
), and even a prohibition to use a percentage of the public transportation vehicles on certain days of the week to clean the air. The efforts to replicate Transmilenio are happening (for example in Yakarta and in many cities of Colombia, like Medellín, Cali, Pereira, Barranquilla and Manizales), but rarely you can find the kind of integral, no-nosense approach we achieved here.
