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 Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to evaluate and provide recommendations on whether it is in the public interest ...

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 departure crashes. This type of crash occurs after a vehicle crosses an edge line or centerline or otherwise leaves th...

TRB's Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board has released more than 200 papers from the 2018 TRB Annual Meeting. Enhancements to the journal include:  Articles published much closer to final acceptance A new user interface for the journal Article-level metrics  Full-text HTML to enhance discovery of the research Interactive proof markup for authors LaTeX support for complex math articles (LaTeX is a typesetting system that includes features designed for the...

TRB's Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP) Legal Research Digest 53: Legal Considerations in Relationships Between Transit Agencies and Ridesourcing Service Providers explores the efforts made by public transit agencies to provide on-demand services to the public. It also provides transit agencies with legal guidance for considering whether to enter into relationships with ridesourcing service providers (RSPs). The report includes a description of ridesourcing services in the United States, state ...

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 Protocol Combinations to Detect Asphalt Mixture Damage Safety Evaluation of the SafetyEdge Treatment for Pavement ...

TRB's Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP) Legal Research Digest 52: Legal Implications of Video Surveillance on Transit Systems explores the use of video surveilance systems on buses, trains, and stations. The widespread use of such video surveillance systems has generated numerous legal issues, such as a system’s ability to utilize video to discipline union and non-union employees, safety issues associated with such use, public access to such video, and retention policies regarding video, among ...

TRB’s Airport Cooperative Research Program (ACRP) Research Results Digest 27: Legal Aspects of Airport Programs - An Update is a digest of the background and status of ACRP Project 11-01, Legal Aspects of Airport Programs. During the first 11 years of ACRP Project 11-01, there have been almost 50 topics selected for legal research in broad areas of interest to the airport legal community. Thirty-three ACRP Legal Research Digests have been published to date and are available through the TRB website.

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 by research programs to promote and document the implementation of results, and offer insights on technology tra...

The full edition of the May-June 2017 TR News is now available. This edition explores the role of transportation in economic development. Articles feature information about benefit-cost analysis, freight production models, transportation satellite accounts, and right sizing strategies. The TR News is TRB's bimonthly magazine featuring timely articles on innovative and state-of-the-art research and practice in all modes of transportation. It also includes brief news items of interest to the transportation...

TRB's Airport Cooperative Research Program (ACRP) Legal Research Digest 33: Overview of Airport Duties and Standards of Care in Airfield Accident Cases provides an overview of the legal duties and standards of care that may create liability when operating a public airfield. It discusses negligence principles and reviews duties and standards of care in an airfield accident context, including the extent to which federal preemption may apply. The digest concludes with a section discussing many types of airf...