10 Instagram Accounts to Feed Your Inner Transportation Nerd

Los Angeles may be the country's car mecca, but it's also home to the gold standard of transportation accounts. LA Metro is not only in the midst of a precedent-smashing increase in light rail service. It also provides beautifully composed photos of Santa Monica beaches (get there on the new Expo line!), real transit love, and too-chic Angelenos commuting while hot. These cats are so media savvy, they even got on the tiny Drake meme.

Amtrak has an advantage here---it serves a huge swath of the US, from sea to shining sea. It would be a crime if this Instagram account were not beautiful, and boy, does the nation's struggling passenger rail system deliver. They've got your sunsets and your mountains, your handsomely stoic conductors and your adorable first-time travelers. Sure, the system itself is woefully underfunded and often beset by delays. But you might as well get on the Instagram train train.

Another day, another transportation agency mired in inefficiencies that just happens to be destroying it on Instagram. The TSA famously dedicates its account to the dolts who try to bring horrifying things on airplanes: bejeweled lipstick stun guns, inert mortar shells, sword canes, and lots and lots and lots of firearms. In case the stream of weapons gets you down, whatever genius handles this account also manages to sprinkle in a few explosives detection puppies.

The ATL doesn't quite crack America's 10 biggest transit agencies, but if we're judging by social media output, the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority is all about the people. MARTA's Instagram is ATLien-obsessed: on the bus, on rail, taking to the streets on their bikes. Atlanta may be unbearably hot in the summer, but at least it's colorful.

North Carolina's Department of Transportation has a key Instagram advantage---namely, that North Carolina is indubitably gorgeous. On social media, NC DOT delivers. Twisting trips through the green mountains and waterfalls, check. Long drives among the autumn foliage, check. Haunting images of post-storm road damage, uh huh. Add in a few PSAs, and you've got a functional but very pretty social media presence.

New York's home to the nation's largest public transit system, and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's Instagram account lives up the title. It regularly takes followers behind the scenes, from the repair work that keeps the subway running (well, most of the time) to all the snow shoveling that lets New Yorkers get around mid-blizzard. Plus: Mr. Met.

It feels weird to put two Los Angeles accounts on this list, but it must be done. LAX is very, very good at Instagram. Not only does California's largest airport post perfectly composed and filtered photos of stunning iron birds, it celebrates the food, folks and history that make the airport what it is. Bully for you, LA.

With 12.8 million trips since 2008, Washington, DC's Capital Bikeshare is one of America's great cycling successes. Get on board the future of urban transport and watch these intrepid cyclists change the nation's capital.

Philadelphia's Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority already kills the Twitter game, so why not Instagram? The 330-year-old city likes its train stations, bikes, and rail system just fine, but it also tends to indulge in its fair share of transportation nostalgia. And who can blame it? Its retro buses are dang cute.

Portland, Oregon's airport is known on the Internet for its charmingly ugly carpets, which have spawned their own hipster-y following. But when it comes to real Instagram beauty, the airport has one serious advantage, and its name is Mt. Hood. The 11,250-foot mountain stands white and serene behind nearly every silver airplane that takes off from the facility. It's almost like cheating.