TRB's National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Innovations Deserving Exploratory Analysis (IDEA) has released Final Report 181: Development of Small Specimen Geometry for Asphalt Mixture Performance Testing. The use of small specimen geometries in Asphalt Mixture Performance Tester (AMPT) offer a means to measure as-built pavement layers. Small specimen geometries may improve the e...

The Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) has released a report that identifies and evaluates vegetation management practices ODOT Districts can implement to increase efficiency and cost-effectiveness of roadside maintenance activities that improve worker safety, foster safe highway use by the traveling public, and improve roadside aesthetics. The report includes arboricultural training and ...

The Oak Ridge National Laboratory has released a report that discusses the electrification of government, commercial, and industrial fleets. The research provides a basic overview of transportation market segments that may potentially be involved in electrification beyond light duty highway vehicles and provides the background to understand the potential for electrification in these markets. Th...

The Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) has released a report that determines the effectiveness of multiple liquid deicers available on the market, including the time it takes the deicer to work as well as the how long the deicers will continue to work after applied to the roadways. The research provides a potentially cost-effective and environmentally friendly option instead of salt, the ...

The Institute for Transportation at Iowa State University has released a report that assesses the safety performance of crash cushion systems based on historical crash information through an in-service performance evaluation. The report documents the cost-effectiveness of each system by collecting the installation, maintenance, and repair costs for each crash cushion; and provides guidance rega...

The International Council on Clean Transportation has released a report that investigates the opportunities for facilitating, and the barriers to financing, the transition to urban bus fleets with diesel or alternative fuel engines that meet Euro VI or U.S. 2010 emission standards. The report provides the technical basis for city officials, local fleet operators, and financial institutions to j...

The AAA Foundation has released a series of reports that estimates the cost-effectiveness of vehicle safety technologies in trucks by comparing the economic value of installing these technologies on large trucks with the costs of not installing them. These technologies include braking systems designed to shorten a truck’s stopping distance, systems that warn the driver if the truck begins to sh...

The Alternative Fuels Data Center at the U.S. Department of Energy has released a report that compares fuel economy of hybrid electric vehicles and conventional gasoline vehicles when motorists drive aggressively. This study was conducted in order to better quantify the environmental effects of aggressive driving.

The latest of TRB's National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Ready Results explores NCHRP Report 826 : Estimating Highway Preconstruction Services Costs, which explores ways to implement a framework for data-driven cost-estimating models for transportation projects. This framework helps agencies to estimate how much it will cost to plan, program, permit, and design a project during...

Moving research into practice is the theme of feature articles in the July–August 2017 TR News magazine. 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 by research programs to promote and document the implementation of re...