Transit agencies in the US use four primary communications mechanisms to dispatch, monitor and manage the operations of their mobile assets: private radio systems, Wi-Fi communications, cellular communications, and track circuits and signaling. Most data communications in the transit industry today are still based on vendor proprietary communications protocols and messaging. This limits agency ...

New sources of data that may improve safety planning are investigated in Data Mining to Improve Planning for Pedestrian and Bicyclist Safety , a report from the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute. This report explores data from multiple sources to inform bicycle and pedestrian safety improvements.

The Wisconsin DOT issues both single- and multi-trip permits for Oversize–Overweight (OSOW) vehicles. As the number of OSOW vehicle permits issued in Wisconsin have increased in recent years, the management and analysis of OSOW permit data has become more labor-intensive and time-consuming. This "Research Pays Off" feature in  TR News edition 324 (November-December 2019), by Hani Titi, Nic...

States and localities are beginning to recognize and act on the connection between health and transportation. A growing number of entities have produced a number of resources, guidance documents, and strategic plans on the topic. The TRB National Cooperative Highway Research Program's  NCHRP Research Report 932: A Research Roadmap for Transportation and Public Health builds upon this body ...

The engineering post-hazard assessment of bridges is detailed in Post-Hazard Engineering Assessment of Highway Structures using Remote Sensing Technologies , a report from the U.S. Federal Highway Administration. This report focuses on geo- and hydraulic hazards, and its goal is to collect engineering data related to the behavior and damage to bridges.

As of June 2019, transportation network companies (TNCs) such as Uber and Lyft operate in the ground transportation markets at all major domestic commercial airports. The rapid emergence has presented multiple challenges to airport operators, states, regional transit authorities, and city governments. The pre-publication draft of the TRB Airport Cooperative Research Program's ACRP Research Repo...

The needs of airports may vary depending on the types of operations typically conducted at the airport, as well as the type of weather common to the airport. The TRB Airport Cooperative Research Program's ACRP Syntheis 105: Airport Surface Weather Observation Options for General Aviation Airports aims to provide the operators of general aviation (GA) airports a comprehensive source of informati...

The potential impacts of autonomous vehicles (AV) on transit and parking systems are examined in Challenges and Opportunities of Autonomous Vehicles to Urban Planning: Investigation into Transit and Parking , a report from the Center for Transportation Studies at the University of Minnesota. This report identifies general impacts of AVs, as well as their specific effects on transit and parking.

This article is adapted from The Transportation Research Board, 1920–2020: Everyone Interested Is Invited , to be published by the National Academies Press in January 2020. TRB can be best understood as an infrastructure—one that people purposely designed, carefully constructed, and devotedly maintained to share and strengthen knowledge about transportation. The core missions and structures tha...

Critical roadside safety devices for truck platooning are identified in Implications of Truck Platoons for Roadside Hardware and Vehicle Safety , a report from the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute. Platooning is an extension of cooperative adaptive cruise control and forward collision avoidance technology, which provides automated lateral and longitudinal vehicle control to maintain short...