Transport NN (alexkidd.narod.ru; "NN" for Nizhny Novgorod) was a personal Nizhny Novgorod website about passenger transport: route maps, timetables and lists of the fixed-route taxis (marshrutkas) of Nizhny Novgorod, the region, Bor, Dzerzhinsk and the Volodarsky District[1]. The author signed the pages with the nickname Alex, later AlexKiDD[1][2]. The earliest surviving snapshot of the home page is dated 7 April 2001 and carries a 2000 copyright notice[1]; the last update date announced on the site itself was 21 June 2009[2]. In the nn.ru directory the project was listed under the name "Transport maps" with the note "Buses, electric transport...", and it was from there that it entered the Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating.

What the site was like in 2001

The early snapshot shows a page arranged as a reference guide rather than as a showcase. The header carried character-encoding switches — KOI 8-R and Win 1251[1] — a mark of the early Runet. The subtitle set out the coverage: "Nizhny Novgorod and the region. Passenger transport maps"[1]. In the same place the author warned that the maps given here made no claim whatsoever to completeness of information, and asked readers to report to him any routes that did not match the real ones[1].

The material was laid out by territory. For the region, timetables of suburban trains and of suburban and intercity buses were posted[1]. For Nizhny Novgorod there were the metro, a map of all transport and, separately, a map of commercial transport (both marked as consisting of nine parts), as well as fixed-route taxis with the qualification "GAZelle", the minibus model they ran on[1]. Separate sections covered Bor — suburban buses with a separate link to the timetable, and city buses — and Dzerzhinsk together with the Volodarsky District, where electric transport was added to the suburban buses[1]. There was also a line reading "Main news"[1].

Next to each link the author noted the file size: the suburban train timetable — 73 kB, suburban and intercity buses — 62 kB, the metro — 39 kB, fixed-route taxis — 12 kB, the Bor suburban buses — 25 kB, the city buses — 13 kB, the Dzerzhinsk buses and electric transport — 15 kB each[1]. A stated file size is a mark of the dial-up era, when the reader worked out in advance what a download would cost him. The copyright line at the foot of the page: "(c) Alex 2000"[1].

What was left on the home page by 2009

By the time the site stopped being updated, the home page had shrunk noticeably. The title remained the same — "Transport NN" — but the subtitle had grown more modest: "Some information about transport in Nizhny Novgorod"[2]. Neither the regional timetables nor the sections on Bor and Dzerzhinsk were listed on it any longer. Four links remained: the current map of passenger transport services in Nizhny Novgorod, a list and a map of fixed-route taxis as of 2001, a list of fixed-route taxis as of 2004 and a map of fixed-route taxis as of 2004[2]. That is, the site had turned from an as-of-today reference guide into a small archive of its own: two cross-sections of the city route network, from 2001 and 2004, alongside the current map.

By that time the copyright read "(c)AlexKiDD 2001-2009", and beneath it stood a demand not to copy the material without the author's consent and a short "Respect other people's work"[2]. The date of the last update was 21 June 2009[2].

Place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet

"Transport NN" belongs to the layer of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet that was not measured by hit counters. The site has no position in the Counter.nn.ru ranking, and it does not appear among those taking part in the voting at the Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day; it entered the census only through the nn.ru directory. This is not unusual for personal projects at third-level addresses: they were read by direct link and through the directory, not through banner networks.

The material was maintained by one person: the copyright stood in his name, he was the one who asked to be written to about discrepancies with the real routes, and he forbade reprinting without his consent[1][2]. At the same time the volume of work is visible in the pages themselves: the map of all transport and the map of commercial transport were each broken into nine parts[1]. The preserved lists and maps of fixed-route taxis for 2001 and 2004[2] are a dated cross-section of the Nizhny Novgorod route network, made not by a government body but by a private individual.

How it ended

The site's content came to a halt in June 2009, but the page remained accessible for a long time afterwards: the web archive snapshot of 5 October 2022[2] and the snapshot of 11 October 2025[3] show exactly the same text with the same update date — for sixteen years after the announced last update the home page did not change. In all, the web archive accumulated about seventy copies of the address.

The census of dead Nizhny Novgorod sites recorded no live response at alexkidd.narod.ru, and in the register of the Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating the site is marked as dead, with a lifespan of 2000–2025. The register records no move to another address. The last thing available from the project is the web archive snapshot of the home page from 11 October 2025[3].

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, 2001 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — Home page, 2022 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — Home page, 2025 (archive)