TRB’s second Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP 2) has released a project brief that highlights Transportation Project Impact Case Studies (T-PICS). T-PICS is a web-based tool designed to allow for economic impacts to more easily be considered during community visioning for transportation, or during public and stakeholder involvement for long-range system planning or corridor planning. Vi...

TRB’s National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Synthesis 424: Engineering Economic Analysis Practices for Highway Investment explores how U.S. transportation agencies have applied engineering economics--benefit–cost analyses and similar procedures--to decisions on highway investments.

TRB’s Transportation Research Circular E-C162: Winter Maintenance and Surface Transportation Weather includes papers that were presented at the April 30-May 3, 2012, conference in Coralville, Iowa. Issues addressed by the papers include environmental stewardship and sustainability, road safety under winter conditions, decision support systems, winter surface friction, blowing and drifting snow,...

TRB’s National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Report 716: Travel Demand Forecasting: Parameters and Techniques provides guidelines on travel demand forecasting procedures and their application for helping to solve common transportation problems. The report presents a range of approaches that are designed to allow users to determine the level of detail and sophistication in selecti...

State DOT chief executives must serve deftly and effectively in a number of roles. They are at once policymakers, the public faces of their agencies, and managers of organizations with thousands of employees. The short- and  long-term challenges that CEOs face are often quite different from those of  other transportation professionals.

Delivering a safe transportation system is a universal goal among state DOTs. NCHRP was the driving force behind AASHTO’s Highway Safety Manual, which provides states with a modern, science-based approach to safety management, analysis, planning, and delivery.

TRB’s Conference Proceedings 48: Financing Surface Transportation in the United States: Forging a Sustainable Future—Now summarizes a May, 2010 conference that focused on developments in innovative funding techniques and options for securing continued revenue to support national infrastructure and mobility needs. Views presented in Conference Proceedings 48 reflect the opinions of the individua...

TRB’s National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Synthesis 431: Practices to Manage Traffic Sign Retroreflectivity includes examples of practices that illustrate how different types of transportation agencies might meet federal retroreflectivity requirements for traffic signs.

TRB’s National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Synthesis 432: Recent Roadway Geometric Design Research for Improved Safety and Operations reviews and summarizes roadway geometric design literature completed and published from 2001 through early 2011, particularly research that identified impacts on safety and operations. The report is structured to correspond to chapters in th...

TRB’s second Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP 2) Report S2-C08-RR-1: Linking Community Visioning and Highway Capacity Planning explores community visioning efforts, identifies steps and activities that might be considered when engaging in visioning, and highlights the links between vision outcomes and transportation planning and project development processes. The report also presents a ...

Roundabouts have seen unprecedented growth across the United States, from just a handful a decade ago to more than 2,000 and counting. National guidance had to keep pace with the needs of states and communities planning and implementing roundabouts, and NCHRP took a lead role.

TRB’s National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Synthesis 428: Practices and Procedures for Site-Specific Evaluations of Earthquake Ground Motions identifies and describes current practice and available methods for evaluating the influence of local ground conditions on earthquake design ground motions on a site-specific basis. The report focuses on evaluating the response of soil de...

TRB’s National Cooperative Freight Research Program (NCFRP) Report 15: Dedicated Revenue Mechanisms for Freight Transportation Investment explores methods that might be used to raise revenue to support government investment in freight transportation facilities, primarily for highway transportation. The report assesses revenue-generating mechanisms such as motor-vehicle fuel tax surcharges, vehi...

TRB’s National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Report 712: Optimization of Tack Coat for HMA Placement presents proposed test methods for measuring the quality and performance characteristics of tack coat in the laboratory and the field, and includes a training manual presenting proposed construction and testing procedures for tack coat materials. Links to appendixes B and D to NCH...

TRB’s National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Synthesis 427: Extent of Highway Capacity Manual Use in Planning assesses how state departments of transportation, small and large metropolitan planning organizations, and local governments are using or might use the Highway Capacity Manual for planning analyses, or more specifically, for performance monitoring, problem identification,...

In regions across the nation, bridge engineers know that the next major seismic event is coming—maybe tomorrow, maybe centuries from now. DOTs have the critical charge of designing for earthquakes and protecting the lives of travelers.

TRB’s second Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP 2) Report S2-S01A-RW-1: Development of Analysis Methods Using Recent Data introduces an approach to microscopic or individual event modeling of crash-related events, where driver actions, initial speeds, and vehicle locations are treated as inputs to a physical model describing vehicle motion. The report also illustrates how a trajectory mod...

TRB’s National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Synthesis 425: Waterproofing Membranes for Concrete Bridge Decks documents information on materials, specification requirements, design details, application methods, system performance, and costs of waterproofing membranes used on new and existing bridge decks since 1995. The synthesis focuses on North American practices with some info...

TRB’s second Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP 2) has released a project brief that provides an overview, brief description, and the status of the SHRP 2 projects related to underground utilities.

TRB’s Committee on Implementing the Research Results of the Second Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP 2) has released its first letter report to Victor Mendez, administrator of the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), and John Horsley, executive director of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO). The committee’s first report includes recommendati...

TRB’s Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, No. 2265 consists of 28 papers that explore reducing side collisions of transit buses, injury risk in collisions involving buses, prevention of tractor–semitrailer rollovers, large-truck transportation alternatives, evaluating truck safety systems, factors associated with motorcycle crashes, and severity of moto...

TRB’s second Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP 2) has released a Reliability Products Brief, which summarizes the status of products being produced within the Reliability area of SHRP 2. Reliability research in SHRP 2 addresses the root causes of unpredictable travel times by focusing on highway system operations. Travel time reliability, which is valued for many reasons, is co...

TRB’s second Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP 2) has released a Renewal Products Brief, which summarizes the status of products being produced within the Renewal area of SHRP 2. The goal of Renewal research in SHRP 2 is to advance the methods and materials that transportation agencies can use to renew the nation’s vital but aging highway system even as we continue to use and live n...

TRB’s second Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP 2) has released a Safety Projects Brief, which summarizes the status of products being produced within the Safety area of SHRP 2. Safety research in SHRP 2 will apply advanced technologies to understand how drivers interact with and adapt to a variety of factors—the vehicle, the traffic, the roadway characteristics, traffic control...

TRB’s second Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP 2) has released a Capacity Projects Brief, which summarizes the status of products being produced within the Capacity area of SHRP 2. The objective of Capacity Research in SHRP 2 is to develop tools for systematically integrating environmental, economic, and community requirements into the analysis, planning, and design of new highway c...

TRB’s National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Report 693: Attracting, Recruiting, and Retaining Skilled Staff for Transportation System Operations and Management provides guidance designed to help transportation agencies recruit and retain qualified professional staff in the systems operation and management (SOM) area. The report explores SOM career paths, skill requirements, and ...

TRB’s National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Web-Only Document 182: Appendices to NCHRP Report 693 includes a set of tables showing systems operations and management job categories, number of positions, and educational requirements for all 50 states. NCHRP Report 693 : Attracting, Recruiting, and Retaining Skilled Staff for Transportation System Operations and Management provides...

TRB’s Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, No. 2252 contains 19 papers that explore economic and environmental optimization of vehicle fleets, driver response to energy information feedback, California's low-carbon fuel standard, feebates and fuel economy standards, energy use for transport in 27 European Union countries through 2030, and a comparison of...

TRB’s second Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP 2) Report S2-L06-RR-1: Institutional Architectures to Improve Systems Operations and Management examines a large number of topics concerning organizational and institutional approaches that might help transportation agencies enhance highway operations and travel time reliability. The same project that produced SHRP 2 Report S2-L06-RR-1 also ...

TRB’s National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Research Results Digest 367: Continuing Project to Synthesize Information on Highway Problems is a digest of the progress and status of NCHRP Project 20-5, “Synthesis of Information Related to Highway Problems.”