The September–October 2020 issue of TRB's magazine is now available in full online. Themed “Embracing the Future,” the issue celebrates TRB’s centennial with articles forecasting the future of transportation. Authors present outlooks that are multimodal, creative, diverse, inclusive, and thought-provoking, offering a pause point for transportation researchers, policy makers, and practitioners as t...

The year 2020’s raging coronavirus pandemic and reckoning with long-standing racial injustice led to widespread disruption and suffering, social unrest, and renewed calls for an accounting of our fragmented public health system and troubled history of racial inequity. The crises of 2020 transcend transportation yet also raise fundamental questions for it along with other sectors of our society and...

The 2020 Annual Report summarizes TRB’s accomplishments in each of its major program areas and how TRB has served the nation and the global transportation professional community throughout 2020. TRB provides leadership in transportation improvements and innovation through trusted, timely, impartial, and evidence-based information exchange, research, and advice regarding all modes of transportation...

Coronavirus (COVID-19) has proven a formidable adversary worldwide, with tremendous impact on the United States. The transportation system is an essential element of our response to this pandemic but has also been significantly impacted across all modes, both passenger and goods movement. This environment is where research is needed most. TRB's Transportation Research Circular E-C267: Summary of T...

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted transportation agencies across the U.S. in a variety of ways. On July 15, 2020, TRB's Transportation Asset Management Committee hosted a webinar that featured executives and CEOs from state, regional, and transit agencies. Transportation Research Circular E-C266: Transportation Asset Management in a COVID-19 World captures the details of the discussion on how the...

TRB hosted the Transportation Resilience 2019: 2nd International Conference on Transportation Resilience to Natural Hazards and Extreme Weather Events (TR2019) at the National Academy of Sciences Building in Washington, D.C., November 13–15, 2019. The primary purpose of TR2019 program was to present advancements made in transportation systems resilience to natural hazards, climate change, and impa...

The Alabama Department of Transportation (DOT) incorporated post-construction stormwater management design into the overall roadway design process. The Texas DOT developed the approval process for products used in the construction of a roadway to promote vegetation. And the Virginia DOT improved the management of data associated with stormwater infrastructure best management practices to effective...

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 ...

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...

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.

Geotechnical instrumentation and monitoring technologies have been used to inform safety, operational, and treatment decisions for unstable slopes. The TRB National Cooperative Highway Research Program's NCHRP Synthesis 554: Advances in Unstable Slope Instrumentation and Monitoring documents and synthesizes the state of practice for implementation and use of advancements in unstable slope instrume...

The TRB National Cooperative Highway Research Program's NCHRP Synthesis 551: Highway Hydraulic Engineering State of Practice documents significant changes in highway hydraulic engineering practices implemented by state departments of transportation (DOTs) over the past decade. The synthesis focuses on eight subtopics of highway hydraulic engineering: roadway drainage; culvert aquatic organism pass...

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...

Scaling loose rock from highway rock slopes is an important aspect of improving rock slope safety in mountainous areas, according to input from 42 state departments of transportation and two regional divisions of the Office of Federal Lands Highway. The TRB National Cooperative Highway Research Program's NCHRP Synthesis 555: Estimating and Contracting Rock Slope Scaling Adjacent to Highways docume...

When an intense wildfire occurs, the heat changes the chemical and biological makeup of the soil, impacting the microbial environment and increasing erosion risks that can propagate to devastating mudslides and debris flows. The TRB Highway Innovations Deserving Exploratory Analysis Program's IDEA Final Report 200: Rapid Rehabilitation of Highway Slopes Using Seeded Microbial Bio-Cement  aims...

Issue Number 326 of TR News magazine is available in full to subscribers. Here is a sample from the issue: a 14-page photo collage of the 99th Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting from January 12–16, 2020 in Washington, D.C. Do you see yourself in any of the photos?

Geophysical methods provide a means to rapidly and economically characterize subsurface conditions and infer soil properties over a spatial extent that is not possible with conventional methods. The TRB National Cooperative Highway Research Program's NCHRP Synthesis 547: Advancements in Use of Geophysical Methods for Transportation Projects evaluates the current state of practice in the use of geo...

The March-April 2020 issue of TR News (#326) - including a cover feature on TRB's "century of progress and foundation for the future" of transportation research - is available in hard copy and digital copy for subscribers. For those who are not subscribers, the table of contents is available. Other feature articles in the issue include ones on whether research processes can keep up, accessible rai...

Topics in the November–December 2019 issue of TR News include an analysis of the #TRBAM Annual Meeting Twitter hashtag to understand communication dynamics; climate change, a critical transportation issue; assessing, marking, and coding highway structures in emergencies; and more. This issue also kicks off the magazine’s yearlong celebration of the 100th anniversary of TRB, which will include them...

One of the most time-honored of the technical activities that TRB performs, state visits revealed lots of interesting issues in 2019, including a lot around the important role state Departments of Transportation increasingly have around data needs. The TRB staff summary of the visits, each of which last one or two days and typically consist of meetings with various levels of DOT management; discus...

Issue 323 of TRB's magazine complements our recent short video Your Future in Transportation . The September-October 2019 issue  has several features on the workforce topic, including ones called " People, Organizations, Jobs, and Businesses for Tomorrow’s Transportation, "The Future Multimodal Workforce," "How to Win the War for Talent," and "Building a Business Case for Increasing Diversity...

The January-February 2020 issue of TR News - including a cover feature on the "radical" transportation logistics of the Burning Man festival - is available in hard copy and digital copy for subscribers. For those who are not subscribers, the table of contents is available. Other feature articles in the issue include ones on data's critical role in transportation decisions, the transportation needs...

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, Nichol...

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 that u...

The November-December 2019 issue of TR News —with a focus on climate change resilience—is available in hard copy and digital copy for subscribers. For those who are not subscribers, the table of contents is available. Other feature articles in the issue include ones on the history of both TRB and transportation in general and a preview of the TRB Annual Meeting slated for January in Washington D.C...

Commuter rail services bring travelers from the rural and suburban fringes to the inner neighborhoods and central business districts of many large metropolitan areas in the U.S. The isolated nature of these rural and suburban commuter rail parking lots makes it difficult and expensive to secure and safely operate these transit assets. Further, as the more than two dozen commuter rail systems in th...

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 policy ...

TRB’s Technical Activities Division has released Transportation Research Circular E-C248: 12th International Conference on Low-Volume Roads, highlighting topics including road surfaces, geotechnology, cold regions and climate change, pavement management, planning and economics, unpaved roads management, geosynthetics in low-volume roads, drainage and stream crossings, climate change resiliency, st...

TRB’s National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Synthesis 532: Seismic Design of Non-Conventional Bridges documents seismic design approaches and criteria used for “non-conventional” bridges, such as long-span cable-supported bridges, bridges with truss tower substructures, and arch bridges. Design of conventional bridges for seismic demands in the United States is based on one of two ...