TRB's Cooperative Research Programs Division manages several cooperative research programs that frequently produces reports that have relevence to issues outside of the program's core focus areas.

TRB’s varied activities annually engage more than 7,000 engineers, scientists, and other transportation researchers and practitioners from the public and private sectors and academia, all of whom contribute their expertise in the public interest by participating on TRB committees, panels, and task forces. Others get involved and support TRB activities by becoming a TRB Affiliate; participating in TRB sponsored meetings; authoring contracted reports; and more.

IDEA programs fund research into promising but unproven innovations for highways, transportation safety, and transit.

TRB manages programs of small studies focused on analyzing legal issues in the highway, transit, and airport fields..

The Long-Term Pavement Performance program (LTPP) is the largest pavement performance research program ever undertaken, gathering data from 2,000 pavement test sections over a 20-year test period.

In response to requests from sponsoring agencies or on its own initiative, the Marine Board serves the national interest by providing evaluations and advice concerning the ability of the nation's marine and maritime industries to operate safely and efficiently and in an environmentally responsible manner. The Marine Board identifies research needs and provides a forum for exchange of information relating to new technologies, laws and regulations, economics, the environment, and other issues affecting the marine transportation system, port operations, coastal engineering, and marine governance.

In response to requests from Congress, the executive branch, states, and other sponsors, TRB draws upon the nation’s leading experts in transportation and related fields to assess the technical bases of policy and regulatory decisions across all modes; analyze the potential effects of policy alternatives on mobility, safety, the environment, and the economy; and to review specific research programs and projects.

Congress established the SHRP 2 in 2006 to investigate the underlying causes of highway crashes and congestion in a short-term program of focused research. To carry out that investigation, SHRP 2 targets goals in four interrelated focus areas--Safety, Renewal, Reliability, and Capacity.

TRB's Transportation Research Information Service (TRIS) Online is the largest and most comprehensive source of information on published transportation research available free on the Web. TRIS Online is a joint project between the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) and TRB. TRIS Online provides access to almost 550,000 records of published transportation research through a user-friendly searchable database. More than 500 serial publications are regularly indexed and abstracted for the database.