TRB’s Technical Activities Division has released Transportation Research Circular E-C249: Key Elements of Construction Quality Assurance for Implementation, presenting a synopsis of " Quality Assurance: There’s Value in the Basics," held at the 2018 Annual Meeting of the Transportation Research Board. In this session, four speakers with a range of perspectives—the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), state transportation agencies, and a contractor—presented on key elements and best practices for imple...

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, stabilization, and safety.

TRB’s Technical Activities Division has released Transportation Research Circular E-C245: Transportation Oral History: State of the Practice and a Path Forward that highlights the availability of more than 1,000 transportation oral histories and includes a proposal for the creation of a guidebook that transportation organizations could use to create their own oral histories. The circular also explores core topics associated with the collection of new oral histories including purpose, interviewee selectio...

TRB’s Forum on Preparing for Automated Vehicles and Shared Mobility has released Transportation Research Circular E-C247: TRB Forum on Preparing for Automated Vehicles and Shared Mobility.  The circular provides a summary of a February 2019 mini-workshop on the importance and role of connectivity within the automated vehicles and shared mobility environment. Key takeaways from the workshop suggest that (1) more needs to be done to create consumer awareness of the differences between and the benefits...

TRB's Technical Activities Division has released Transportation Research Circular E-C246: Structural Monitoring as a primer to convey an understanding of how structural monitoring (SM) technology can be used most effectively. The circular is designed to help bridge owners understand the different purposes of structural health monitoring (SHM). Effective use of SHM can help determine the most cost-effective course of action for resolving some difficult performance or deterioration structural issues. SHM, ...

TRB has released Transportation Research Circular E-C244: Mobility on Demand: A Smart, Sustainable, and Equitable Future is the synopsis of a January 13, 2019, workshop that explored the current state of mobility on demand (MOD), examined next steps for preparing for transition to autonomy, and discussed ways to optimize sustainability and ensure equitability. The workshop emphasized the role of public transit, share mobility, and automation shaping the future of mobility. The market for personal mobilit...

TRB's Transportation Research Circular E-C243: SHRP 2 Safety Data Student Paper Competition 2017-2019 contains student papers that were selected from a competition to promote use of the SHRP 2 Safety Data. A call for abstracts was issued in October 2017 to graduate students across the country, soliciting innovative ideas for using the data. The Review Panel for the SHRP 2 Safety Data Student Paper Competition selected eight students to conduct their research. These students subsequently received a d...

The notion of an aging and under-funded infrastructure in the United States is widely accepted. Current legislation calls for performance targets to be established to aid not only in the administering of funds, but also to assist states in identifying high-risk practices and roadways within their own networks. In addition to the performance targets, agency officials are looking to design and construct longer-lasting pavements through performance specifications. In the late-1980s and early-1990s, the Stra...

TRB's Transportation Research Circular E-C242: A Literature Review of Rail Trespassing and Suicide Prevention Research reviews and summarizes available research reports and data sources related to the issues of railroad trespassing and suicide, focusing on research from 2013 onwards. This report explores incidences of rail-related trespassing and suicide based on several factors, including lethality, age, gender, and risk factors. It also discusses trespassing and suicide countermeasure findings.

TRB's E-Circular 239: Arterial Roadways Research Needs and Concerns: Informing the Planning, Design, and Operation of Arterial Roadways Considering Public Health explores the planning, design, and operation of arterials considering public health. This report presents a series of descriptive examples where arterials and health concerns appear in practice and identifies how and where health could be included in TRB's arterial-related research. It also highlights crosscutting issues relevant to the cas...