TRB's Rail Safety Innovations Deserving Exporatory Analysis (IDEA) program has released Safety Report 32: Railroad Bridge Inspections for Maintenance and Replacement Prioritization Using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) with Laser Scanning Capabilities. Measuring bridge movement under trains in the field is difficult and expensive because a fixed reference point is not normally available, thus c...

Twenty-seven percent of fatal crashes occur at horizontal curves, although they account for less than 10 percent of public roadway miles. Knowing where horizontal curves are located and their geometric characteristics are key to successfully addressing curve safety issues. Curve information is also essential for accurate placement of warning signs as safety treatment, especially where a curve h...

TRB's Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP) Research Report 195: Broadening Understanding of the Interplay Among Public Transit, Shared Mobility, and Personal Automobiles explores the effects of app-based transportation network companies on the cities in which they operate, including on public transit ridership, single-occupancy vehicle trips, and traffic congestion. Built upon the findin...

TRB's National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Research Report 868: Cell Phone Location Data for Travel Behavior Analysis presents guidelines for transportation planners and travel modelers on how to evaluate the extent to which cell phone location data and associated products accurately depict travel. The report identifies whether and how these extensive data resources can be used...

In 2012, Congress gave the U.S. Federal Transit Administration (FTA) the authority to establish a new comprehensive framework to oversee the safety of the country’s public transit systems. As part of that framework, state and local transit agencies are required to engage in safety planning. In the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act of 2015, Congress asked the National Academies of Scie...

TRB’s Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board has released 15 early access papers addressing data and information technology, including: Vulnerability of Traffic Control System Under Cyber-Attacks Using Falsified Data ( link ) Interstate Speed Profiles ( link ) A Vibration-Based Vehicle Classification System using Distributed Optical Sensing Technology ( lin...

TRB’s Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board has released 15 early access papers addressing data and information technology, including: Missouri-Specific Crash Prediction Model for Signalized Intersections ( link ) Data Fusion of Commercial Vehicle GPS and Roadside Intercept Survey Data ( link ) Network Level Clearance Assessment using LiDAR to Improve the ...

TRB's National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Synthesis 515: Practices for Preventing Roadway Departures identifies and summarizes practices being used by state departments of transportation (DOTs) to prevent roadway departure crashes and to identify the data-driven advantages and disadvantages of these practices. More than half of all traffic fatalities result from roadway depart...

Transportation Research Circular 233: Applying Census Data for Transportation explores a conference held on November 14-16, 2017, in Kansas City, Missouri that focused on the use of census data for transportation applications. The conference provided a forum for participants to share experiences with the use of Census data, including new techniques for integrating different data sets for use in...

TRB's E-Circular 232: Automated Vehicle Symposium 2017: Summary of a Symposium highlights the themes from an event that took place on July 11–13, 2017 in San Francisco, California. The event explored the development, testing, building, and deployment of autonomous vehicles (AVs). The 2017 AVS provided the opportunity for communication, collaboration, and information sharing on a wide range of t...

TRB's National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Research Report 874: The Transportation Research Thesaurus: Capabilities and Enhancements documents the results of a comprehensive assessment of the Transportation Research Thesaurus’s (TRT’s) capabilities and strategies for the TRT’s future development. The TRT is a structured, controlled vocabulary of terms in English, used by TRB an...

TRB's Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP) Synthesis 134: Customer-Focused Service Guarantees and Transparency Practices documents the nature and prevalence of customer-focused practices among transit providers in North America and supplements the discussion by including information from European transit providers. A growing number of North American public transit agencies have adopted s...

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine has released a report that summarizes the high-level interdisciplinary discussions that took place during the Raymond and Beverly Sackler U.S.-U.K. Scientific Forum “The Frontiers of Machine Learning” took place on January 31 and February 1, 2017, in Washington, D.C. The field of machine learning continues to advance at a rapid pace ...

TRB's Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP) Web-Only Document 71: A Transit Agency Guide to Evaluating Secondary Train Detection/Protection Systems in Communications-Based Train Control Systems provides a practical approach to evaluating the appropriate level of secondary train detection/protection systems (STD/PS) for a given communications-based train control system application. In term...

To keep pace with accelerating rate of research distribution, the Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board is now publishing articles as soon as they are finalized. The latest papers to be published are as follows: Use of a Laser Diffractometer to Obtain the Particle Size Distribution of Fine-Grained Soils Interstate Speed Profiles Conditioning and Testing Pr...

TRB's Airport Cooperative Research Program (ACRP) Research Report 155: Guidebook for Advanced Computerized Maintenance Management System Integration at Airports explores the use of a Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS) to manage a variety of assets across a number of different airport systems. This report develops guidance on the steps necessary to implement a CMMS, factors for co...

A featured article in the January-February 2018 issue of the TR News explores findings from the Transportation Research Board's 2017 State Partnership Visits Program. This article presents an overview of how states are preparing for the fast pace of technological change, strengthening the resilience of transportation systems, ensuring equitable and accessible mobility, and utilizing resources e...

TR Circular E-C229: 10th SHRP 2 Safety Data Symposium: From Analysis to Results explores the October 6, 2017 symposium that served as a forum for the exchange of ideas about uses and methods for the SHRP 2 Safety Data Program and identified lessons learned from working with the data. This symposium focused on safety data analysis, results, and applications to help researchers and practitioners ...

TRB's National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Web Only Document 241: Development and Management of Sustainable Enterprise Information Portals documents the research approach and methodology to develop  NCHRP Research Report 865 : Guidance for Development and Management of Sustainable Enterprise Information Portals. The guidance addresses the  development and managem...

TRB's National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Research Report 865: Guidance for Development and Management of Sustainable Enterprise Information Portals provides guidance for the development and management of effective Enterprise Information Portals (EIPs) at state departments of transportation. EIPs have become key tools for transportation agencies as they make available informat...

TRB’s Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, No. 2659 consists of 24 papers that explore statistical methods and safety data, including: Methodology to Backcalculate Individual Speed Data Originally Aggregated by Road Detectors Traffic Conflict–Based Before–After Study with Use of Comparison Groups and the Empirical Bayes Method Developing Macrolevel Colli...

TRB's National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Web-Only Document 237: Environmental Justice Analyses When Considering Toll Implementation or Rate Changes—Final Report presents information gathered in the development of NCHRP Research Report 860 : Assessing the Environmental Justice Effects of Toll Implementation or Rate Changes: Guidebook and Toolbox. This web-only document summari...

TRB’s Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, No. 2645 consists of 21 papers that explore information technology in transportation, including: Economic Feasibility Study for Pavement Monitoring Using Synthetic Aperture Radar-Based Satellite Remote Sensing: Cost–Benefit Analysis Hunt for Perfect Detection of Parking Occupancy: Evaluation of On-Street Technol...

The latest edition of Research Pays Off explores an application that was developed to provide traveler information through a single, user-friendly source, specifically for rural travelers. The article describes the development process for the app and discusses the features it includes. The TR News is TRB's bimonthly magazine featuring timely articles on innovative and state-of-the-art research ...

TRB's Transit Innovations Deserving Exploratory Analysis (IDEA) Program Final Report 83: Track Circuit Monitoring Tool Standardization and Deployment at Chicago Transit Authority explores the transformation of a tool used by the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority into an independent stand-alone track circuit integrity monitoring system to help identify safety critical failure condit...

TRB's National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP)  Web-Only Document 238: Developing the Guide to Retaining Essential Consultant-Developed Knowledge Within DOTs documents the methodology used to develop NCHRP Research Report 867 :  Keeping What You Paid For—Retaining Essential Consultant-Developed Knowledge Within DOTs . The document also provides key findings of the project...

TRB's National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Research Report 867: Keeping What You Paid For—Retaining Essential Consultant-Developed Knowledge Within DOTs presents guidance on the use of knowledge capture and active learning to ensure that essential, mission-critical knowledge is maintained within the agency when a contractor’s work is finished. Knowledge capture is the process o...

The full edition of the July–August 2017  TR News  magazine is now available.  Moving research into practice is the theme of feature articles in this edition. Authors describe today’s successes, present a systematic approach that has proved effective at a state department of transportation, describe federal programs encouraging innovations at the state level, discuss initiatives ...

TRB's Airport Cooperative Research Program (ACRP) latest Impacts on Practice explores a resource that helps airports view information technology from a strategic level. ACRP Report 59 : Information Technology Systems at Airports—A Primer helped officials from Los Angeles World Airports codify best practices. Additionally, the use of the report's assessment tools by Tulsa International Airport h...

TRB’s Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, No. 2643 consists of 18 papers that explore travel data, including: Automated Highway Sign Extraction Using Lidar Data Real-Time Piecewise Regression: Application to Effective and Economical Collection of GPS Trajectory Data Conducting Onboard Transit Rider Surveys with Electronic Handheld Tablets: An Agencywide...