Analysis of the erodibility of geomaterials is important for the study of problems related to soil erosion such as bridge scour, embankment overtopping erosion, and stream stability. Erodibility is the relationship between the soil erosion rate and fluid velocity or hydraulic shear stress. Since different soils have different geotechnical properties, their erosion rates vary. The TRB National C...

Accurate traffic forecasts for highway planning and design help ensure that public dollars are spent wisely. Forecasts inform discussions about whether, when, how, and where to invest public resources to manage traffic flow, widen and remodel existing facilities, and where to locate, align, and how to size new ones. The TRB National Cooperative Highway Research Program's NCHRP Report 934: Traff...

The condition of sidewalks and pathways affect all pedestrians, but people with disabilities, older adults, and injured veterans are especially affected by them. For instance, among wheelchair users surveyed in the U.S., the wheelchair and the physical environment were the most significant factors limiting community participation. The TRB IDEA (Innovations Deserving Exploratory Analysis) Progra...

In the current U.S. climate of on-demand transportation services, the development of transactional data specifications for demand-responsive transportation (DRT)—sometimes referred to as “on-demand services”—will help facilitate interaction between software systems that manage DRT services in the United States. The TRB Transit Cooperative Research Program's TCRP Research Report 210: Development...

Automated vehicles, shared mobility, and other transformational technologies in transportation provide a unique opportunity to make significant advances in meeting societal goals. TRB's Transportation Research E-Circular 253: Transformational Technologies in Transportation: Impacts on Traditional Research Processes and Programs explores whether and how, in an era of rapidly evolving transformat...

On April 9–10, 2019, 127 freight community members— including transportation professionals from transportation planning agencies, independent consultants, industry experts, and academic researchers from across North America—participated in the second Innovations in Freight Data Workshop in Irvine, California. Alison Conway from City College of New York chaired the planning committee for this wo...

"Big data" is not new, but applications in the field of transportation are more recent, having occurred within the past few years, and include applications in the areas of planning, parking, trucking, public transportation, operations, ITS, and other more niche areas. A significant gap exists between the current state of the practice in big data analytics (such as image recognition and graph an...

How do we bring governance into the era of digitization so it can manage demand and supply digitally? At the same time, it is necessary to correct for the existing inequities in our system, working closer with public- and private-sector partners and developing the infrastructure needed to ensure that the transition to shared and autonomous vehicles (SAVs) minimizes the potential challenges and ...

Traditionally, pavement management decision-making has relied on surface cracking as an indicator of structural condition. However, with early-intervention preservation activities to extend the life of pavements, surface cracks no longer are a reliable indicator of structural condition. In the past 15 years, traffic speed deflection devices (TSDDs) have been developed to measure pavement struct...

Public transit agencies are increasingly partnering with mobility service providers. Among these providers are transportation network companies (TNCs), which include companies like Uber and Lyft and are the specific focus of this research effort. The transit industry has produced research to describe primary considerations transit agencies should have in mind for partnerships with TNCs, but exi...

Global business and tourism depend heavily on the efficient operation of airports and movement of passengers, baggage, and cargo across many areas. With increasing demand and connectivity requirements for airports comes the need for more sophisticated simulation and modeling tools to validate design assumptions. Furthermore, airport design and planning decisions have significant impacts on poli...

“Pavement condition data” are essential inputs to the process of managing airport pavements and ensuring safe operations. The technology available today to collect pavement condition data is considerably different from that available even 20 years ago, and new technologies are being developed and introduced into practice at a rapid pace. ACRP Research Report 203: Guidelines for Collecting, Appl...

Turning movement count data is key to evaluating the performance of signalized intersections and is also a crucial component of data-driven decision-making processes of transportation agencies. Unfortunately, the availability of quality turning movement count data is not the norm for transportation agencies. The National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Innovations Deserving Explora...

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...

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 inciden...

TRB’s National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Synthesis 541 explores how state departments of transportation (DOTs) and metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) acquire proprietary data for transportation applications. Recent technological advancements have led to new types of transportation data with characteristics that include improved quality and greater temporal and wider g...

TRB’s National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Synthesis 531 documents agency practices, challenges, and successes in conducting automated pavement condition surveys. The report also includes three case examples that provide additional information on agency practices for conducting automated pavement surveys. Pavement condition data is a critical component for pavement management s...

TRB’s National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Synthesis 538: Practices for Online Public Involvement summarizes current practices regarding online public participation strategies being used by state departments of transportation (DOTs), as well as explores the effectiveness of using these strategies and tools. Online public participation methods offer agencies the potential for ex...

The full issue of the January-February edition of the TR News is now available.  This issue explores emerging trends, research needs, and related events that discuss how technology may be harnessed to create more resilient transportation systems. Articles also focus on electrification, obesity solutions, and infectious diseases in the built environment.   The TR News is TRB's bimonthl...

TRB’s Forum on Preparing for Automated Vehicles and Shared Mobility has released Transportation Research Circular E-C247: TRB Forum on Preparing for Automated Vehicles and Shared Mobility.  The circular provides a summary of a February 2019 mini-workshop on the importance and role of connectivity within the automated vehicles and shared mobility environment. Key takeaways from the workshop...

TRB's Technical Activities Division has released Transportation Research Circular E-C246: Structural Monitoring as a primer to convey an understanding of how structural monitoring (SM) technology can be used most effectively. The circular is designed to help bridge owners understand the different purposes of structural health monitoring (SHM). Effective use of SHM can help determine the most co...

TRB’s Airport Cooperative Research Program (ACRP) Research Report 200: Using GIS for Collaborative Land Use Compatibility Planning Near Airports offers guidance for using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) as a collaboration tool to encourage compatible land use around airports. The report is designed to help airport and community planners seeking to work together to protect existing and futu...

TRB’s Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP) Synthesis 139: Transit Service Evaluation Standards provides an overview of the purpose, use, and application of performance measures, service evaluation standards, and data collection methods at North American transit agencies. The report addresses the service evaluation process, from the selection of appropriate metrics through development of ...

TRB's Transportation Research Circular E-C243: SHRP 2 Safety Data Student Paper Competition 2017-2019 contains student papers that were selected from a competition to promote use of the SHRP 2 Safety Data. A call for abstracts was issued in October 2017 to graduate students across the country, soliciting innovative ideas for using the data. The Review Panel for the SHRP 2 Safety Data Stude...

TRB’s Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP) Synthesis 138: Public Transit Rider Origin–Destination Survey Methods and Technologies captures the state of the practice among agencies of different sizes, geographic locations, and modes and evaluates the opportunities for and challenges of conducting surveys in an era of emerging technologies. The report presents the reality and complexity of...

A featured article in the January-February 2019 issue of the TR News explores emerging trends, applied research, research needs, and innovative solutions to challenges across all transportation modes and functions. State departments of transportation are deploying new technologies, streamlined and innovative processes, research-driven methods, and holistic systems approaches to further the goal...

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine has released Data Matters: Ethics, Data, and International Research Collaboration in a Changing World: Proceedings of a Workshop. The publication summarizes an event held on March 14-16, 2018, in Washington, DC that explored the changing opportunities and risks of data management and use across disciplinary domains. The third worksho...

TRB's National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Synthesis 528: Analyzing Data for Measuring Transportation Performance by State DOTs and MPOs summarizes what data state departments of transportation (DOTs) and metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) are using and how they are measuring transportation performance. Knowledge about transportation data already exists, but may be...

TRB’s National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Research Report 891: Dedicating Lanes for Priority or Exclusive Use by Connected and Automated Vehicles identifies and evaluates opportunities, constraints, and guiding principles for implementing dedicated lanes for connected and automated vehicles. This report describes conditions amenable to dedicating lanes for users of these vehic...

TRB has released 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 and provide a way to frame future areas of research, policy analys...