The July-August 2020 issue of TR News —with a focus on stormwater—is available in hard copy and digital copy for subscribers. For those who are not subscribers, the table of contents is available. Feature articles in the issue include "Integrating Stormwater Infrastructure into State Department of Transportation Processes," "Transportation Perspective on Virginia’s Nonpoint Source Nutrient Credit ...

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and equity issues will be included soon in   Critical Issues in Transportation 2019 . In this report, which is updated periodically by the TRB Executive Committee, a series of challenging questions are posed to explore issues and opportunities that may arise 10 to 20 years into the future. These questions, 63 in all, have been organized into 12 topic areas ...

Social media is an important, if not crucial, tool for sharing information among individuals and for connecting organizations with their customers. For this reason, social-media managers at airports are critical to emergency management for information gathering and sharing. The TRB Airport Cooperative Research Program's ACRP WebResource 8: Integrating Social Media with Emergency Management at...

Issue 326 of TRB's magazine dives into details from the TRB 99th Annual Meeting, which had a record crowd of nearly 14,000 attendees gathered January 12–16, 2020, in Washington, D.C. The March–April 2020 TR News features photo highlights from the Annual Meeting along with more coverage of the conference. TR News is TRB's bimonthly magazine featuring timely articles on innovative and state-of-the-a...

There is a wide disparity between the goals that state departments of transportation (DOTs) have for priced managed lanes and the public assumption for those goals. The public tends to be highly skeptical of priced managed lanes because the concept is difficult to explain to a nontechnical audience. The TRB National Cooperative Highway Research Program's NCHRP Synthesis 559: Emerging Challenges to...

Compared with much of the world, the United States has relatively few highway tunnels. Norway, for instance, has more than 900 roadway tunnels, while the entire United States has 503. In a feature article in TR News magazine, Number 327, May-June 2020, the authors examine the challenges of using tunnels in a road or rail network, including relatively high first costs, the need for continuing maint...

There are issues, opportunities, and challenges related to technology-enabled mobility services, and lots of ways that transit can learn from, build upon, and interface with new ways of traveling. The TRB Transit Cooperative Research Program's TCRP Report 188: Shared Mobility and the Transformation of Public Transit examines the relationship of public transportation (including paratransit and dema...

The high-resolution micro traffic data (HRMTD) of all roadway users is important for serving the connected-vehicle system in mixed traffic situations. The roadside LiDAR sensor gives a solution to providing HRMTD from real-time 3D point clouds of its scanned objects. "Automatic Background Filtering Method for Roadside LiDAR Data" proposed an algorithm based on the spatial distribution of laser poi...

Few resources provide information related to selecting the most appropriate traffic signal phasing for the various geometric and operational situations encountered in the field. This is especially true for left-turn signal phasing decisions with respect to the level of control for the left-turn movement and whether left turns should precede or follow the main through movement. The TRB National Coo...

The May–June 2020 issue of TR News is a special edition illuminating the many hidden aspects of tunnels as well as the benefits of tunnel technology to modern transportation systems. Articles highlight the contribution of tunnels to the economy and how transportation operators use the best technology to keep tunnels efficient and safe.

There are three major perspectives on transit reliability: from the customer, agency, and operator points of view. The TRB Transit Cooperative Research Program's TCRP Web-Only Document 72: Developing a Guide to Bus Transit Service Reliability finds, through a transit agency survey, that most agencies do not have a formal bus service reliability improvement program. The guidebook presents a framewo...

Trajectory data are reported to have served many different mobility purposes. Vehicle travel trajectories are acquired via real-time communication between a data center and in-vehicle gadgets such as smartphones and GPS navigators. "Real-Time Piecewise Regression: Application to Effective and Economical Collection of GPS Trajectory Data," by Yang Zhang, Yuandong Liu, and Lee D. Han, looks at the e...

With a quick search online, you can discover the answers to all kinds of questions. Findability within large volumes of information and data has become almost as important as the answers themselves. Without being able to search various types of media ranging from print reports to video, efforts are duplicated and productivity and effectiveness suffer. The TRB National Cooperative Highway Research ...

With a quick online search, you can discover the answers to all kinds of questions. Findability within large volumes of information and data has become almost as important as the answers themselves. Without being able to search various types of media ranging from print reports to video, efforts are duplicated and productivity and effectiveness suffer. The TRB National Cooperative Highway Research ...

The TRB Airport Cooperative Research Program's ACRP Web-Only Document 42: Toolkits and Resource Library for Airports and Unmanned Aircraft Systems provides supplemental material to Volumes 1 , 2 , and 3 of ACRP Research Report 212: Airports and Unmanned Aircraft Systems .

Management of traffic signal systems is a critical function for every transportation agency.  Thanks to advancements in technology, it is now possible to collect large amounts of data at signalized intersections, leading to the development of dozens of performance measures. The TRB National Cooperative Highway Research Program's pre-publication draft of NCHRP Research Report 954: Performance-...

Traffic flow characteristics deteriorate significantly in fog conditions compared to normal weather conditions, which might result in high crash risk. "Understanding the Highway Safety Benefits of Different Approaches of Connected Vehicles in Reduced Visibility Conditions," by Md Sharikur Rahman, Mohamed Abdel-Aty, Ling Wang, and Jaeyoung Lee, from 2018, was 2019's fourth-most cited article from T...

State transportation agencies will always fulfill a role in the emergency-management effort - for all incidents, from the routine traffic incident through major emergencies to catastrophic events. State agency plans and procedures are expected (indeed required if the agency seeks federal compensation) to be related to state and regional emergency structures and plans. This involves multi-agency, m...

Knowing where people are at different times of the day potentially enables the design of airspace routes that minimize the environmental impact to a shifting population on the ground. The TRB Airport Cooperative Research Program's ACRP Web-Only Document 48: Evaluating the Use of Spatially Precise Diurnal Population Data in Aviation Noise Studies examines the potential role of spatiotemporal popula...

Small events pose threats of great consequences since the impact of any incident is magnified when a transportation network is operating at or past its capacity—as is the case in portions of many states as travel demand on their transportation networks grows. The TRB National Cooperative Highway Research Program's NCHRP Web-Only Document 266: Developing a Physical and Cyber Security Primer for Tra...

Since 2009, when NCHRP's last Security 101 report was released, there have been significant advances in transportation security approaches, including new strategies, programs, and ways of doing business that have increased the security of transportation systems as well as ensured their resiliency. Hazards and threats to the system have also continued to evolve since 2009. While the incidence ...

Lifestyle factors play an important role in shaping use of autonomous vehicles. Younger, urban residents who are more educated and technologically savvy are more likely to be early adopters of AV technologies than are older, suburban, and rural individuals, a fact that favors a sharing-based service model over private ownership. "Modeling Individual Preferences for Ownership and Sharing of Autonom...

The TRB National Cooperative Highway Research Program's NCHRP Web-Only Document 270: Developing a Guide to Ensuring Access to the Publications and Data of Federally Funded Transportation Research  provides guidance for state departments of transportation (DOTs) to help them meet the requirements of the U.S. DOT Public Access Plan requiring preservation of the products of all federally funded ...

The TRB Centennial Book is available for purchase in ebook or print format. In The Transportation Research Board, 1920–2020: Everyone Interested Is Invited , author Sarah Jo Peterson tells the story of how people and institutions created and have continued to shape TRB. In a compelling narrative accompanied by more than 150 images exploring the history of transportation and research, she argues th...

With increased connectivity between vehicles, sensors, systems, shared-use transportation, and mobile devices, unexpected and unparalleled amounts of data are being added to the transportation domain at a rapid rate, and these data are too large, too varied in nature, and will change too quickly to be handled by the traditional database management systems of most transportation agencies. The TRB N...

Collecting paper load delivery tickets at highway construction projects is an outdated practice that exposes construction inspectors to many safety hazards. State transportation agencies (STAs) have looked for decades toward automating this process through electronic ticketing, or e-ticketing. The TRB National Cooperative Highway Research Program's NCHRP Synthesis 545: Electronic Ticketing of Mate...

As the frequency of commercial space operations and number of licensed launch sites in the United States continue to grow rapidly, accurately assessing the impacts of propulsion noise and sonic booms on surrounding communities will become even more critical. The TRB Airport Cooperative Research Program's ACRP Web-Only Document 47: Commercial Space Operations Noise and Sonic Boom Measurements devel...

In Europe, public transportation plays a greater role in serving the public than it does in the U.S. and Canada. It generally is widely acknowledged in Europe that transit agencies should lead the integration of urban and regional transportation options. In North America, there is more work to be done in convincing local decision makers that the transit agency should be at the center of a Mobility...

Issue Number 326 of TR News magazine is available in full to subscribers. Here is a sample from the issue: a feature article on the trap that drivers could fall into by believing that autonomous vehicles are more capable than they really are. As with traditional driving instruction, a solid understanding of the concepts of automation is important—not just knowing which buttons to press.

Public transit buses face many operational challenges—especially when operating on the same streets and roads as other vehicles. Buses can be slowed by traffic congestion and get repeatedly caught at traffic lights, slowing buses down and delaying both passengers on board and passengers waiting at stops farther along the route. The TRB Transit Cooperative Research Program's TCRP Synthesis 149: Tra...