What's New in Highways

The U.S. Forest Service has released a report that summarizes the high-visibility safety apparel requirements for U.S. Forest Service employees who work on public roadways.

The Mineta Transportation Institute has released a report that describes the modeling, calibration, and validation of a traffic-flow simulation of the San Jose, California downtown network to help assess strategies that could be used in various evacuation scenarios and first responder routings during a no-notice disaster.

The Florida Department of Transportation has released a report that explores the impact of shared lane markings on bicycle traffic before and after application of the marking to the street. 

The National Transportation Operations Coalition has released a report that highlights the importance of investment in traffic signal management and operations.

The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has released a facts sheet that explores data that provide estimates of alcohol involvement in fatal crashes for the United States and individually for the 50 States, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico in 2010.

The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has released a facts sheet that explores the use of motorcycle helmets using 2011 data.

The Lighting Research Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has released a report that explores the visibility of pedestrians by drivers at roundabouts under different vehicle and roadway lighting conditions.

TRB standing committees have issued  calls for papers for the TRB 92nd Annual Meeting, January 13-17, 2013, in Washington, D.C, and the Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board (TRR). While papers addressing any relevant aspect of transportation research will be considered, some committees are soliciting papers in specific subject areas to help potential...

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 is sponsoring the Workshop on the Future of Road Vehicle Automation on July 25-27, 2012, in Irvine, California. The workshop will focus on the current state of the art in the area of road vehicle automation. The workshop is designed to provide an opportunity for attendees to explore the roles that might be played by the U.S. Department of Transportation and the state departments of transpor...

The New Zealand Transport Agency has released a report that explores the safety of multi-lane roundabouts versus signalized intersections, pedestrian facilities, and vertical deflection devices.

The New Zealand Transport Agency has released a report that highlights the development of safety models designed to help enable practitioners to better understand crash risk at urban intersections.

The Centre for Automotive Safety Research at the University of Adelaide, Australia, has released a report that explores the profile of the person, crash, and licensing characteristics of a group of road users involved in a casualty crash as a result of alcohol impairment.

The Federal Highway Administration has released the latest version of its Focus magazine, which highlights efforts designed to accelerate infrastructure innovations in order to build better, safer roads.

The Transportation Lighting Alliance has released a report that discusses the influence of vehicle headlamps and roadway lighting on the ability of drivers to see pedestrians along crosswalks in roundabout intersections.

The Australian Department of Infrastructure and Transport has released three reports that evaluate the effectiveness of 1,599 black spot projects approved and completed between 1996 and 2003. The Black Spot program provide funding to target road locations with either a history of crashes or which have a heightened risk of crashes occurring.

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 is sponsoring the Innovations in Traffic Flow Theory, Highway Capacity, and Quality of Service Symposium on June 19-22, 2012, in Ft. Lauderdale, FL. Topics expected to be explored during the symposium include methodological advancements in traffic flow fundamentals that relate to Highway Capacity Manual (HCM) models, the calibration and validation of HCM methods, methods for measuring or es...

TRB's second Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP 2) will hold its annual Safety Research Symposium on July 12, 2012, in Washington, D.C. The symposium is designed to provide updates on progress on SHRP 2 safety projects. Topics that will be addressed include SHRP 2’s naturalistic driving study and roadway database, analysis projects, and data access and institutional review board issu...

TRB's National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) is soliciting nominees to serve on oversight panels for new projects being established under the NCHRP's FY 2013 program. Nominees should have expertise directly relevant to the proposed project topic. To help identify nominees who are members of historically underrepresented groups, TRB encourages the nomination of women and members o...

The Mineta Transportation Institute has released a report that explores the development and evaluation of real-time crash risk-assessment models for four freeway corridors.

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 Freight Research Program (NCFRP) is soliciting nominations of individuals to serve on oversight panels for new projects being established under NCFRP's fiscal year 2012 program. Nominees should have expertise directly relevant to the proposed project topic. The nomination of women and members of minority groups is encouraged. Panels for the new research projects are s...

TRB is sponsoring the TRB/AASHTO Joint Roadside Safety Meeting on July 29-August 2, 2012, in Irvine, California. The meeting will focus on future goals and research needs that will help set the stage for the next versions of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) Roadside Design Guide and the Manual for the Assessment of Safety Hardware. Both publication...

TRB’s Innovations Deserving Exploratory Analysis (IDEA) has released its annual program announcement that solicits funding proposals for the upcoming review cycles.  The announcement explains the IDEA programs, describes the types of eligible projects and their funding structures, suggests general areas for which IDEA proposals can be submitted, and provides guidelines and forms for submit...

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...

VTI, the Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute, has released a report that explores the monitoring methods, maintenance measures, and acceptable end user service levels of road equipment in seven European countries: Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and UK. The report is written in English. 

The Texas Transportation Institute at Texas A&M University has released a report that explores the a framework for levying mileage-based user fees designed to achieve various air quality improvement policy objectives. 

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.