Transportation Trivia: A Night of Social Distancing Fun
By Avital Barnea, WTS-DC
For an organization that thrives on in-person events, these days WTS-DC has been thinking creatively about how to provide networking and educational opportunities to our members. On June 11, WTS-DC hosted a trivia event and invited our audience to engage in an hour of virtual fun and networking. Thirteen WTS-DC members and friends convened for the virtual trivia event.
Five teams of two joined in on the fun with three moderators/scorekeepers. WTS-DC Past President Adrienne Ameel and Board Advisors Margaret Ballard and Avital Barnea developed and read the questions and answers, which included two verbal rounds and one picture round.
Questions ranged from “What is the only underground WMATA Metrorail station that has high speed elevators but no escalators to access the surface?” (answer: Forest Glen) to “In 1997, who was the first female appointed to lead the Federal Aviation Administration?” (answer: Jane Garvey) to “The Arc de Triomphe, one of the most famous monuments in Paris, France, has how many avenues radiating from its central plaza?” (answer: 12).
The picture round presented teams with images of 10 U.S. license plates, with the state names blanked-out. Teams then had to guess which state matched each license plate. Some were quite challenging, but one team got all 10 correct!
For the final question, teams were able to wager up to their total number of points accrued through the first three rounds. The category of the final question was “U.S. Airports” and teams had to come up with the correct three-letter codes for five major airports across the country (Portland, Phoenix, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Newark, and Orlando). Teams had to correctly name all five three-letter codes to claim any points. The final question ended up tumbling two teams down to zero points, but three teams knew all five airport codes, allowing one team to double their score.
Congratulations to the winning team—“DCBusIsBest,” comprised of Allison Davis of WMATA and Dalia Leven of Cambridge Systematics—who came in first place!
Despite having to stay at home and social distance, participants agreed that the night provided a creative way to network, learn some random transportation facts, show off people’s obscure transportation prowess, and have fun. Thank you to all who participated and to Kimley-Horn for providing the Zoom platform.