Nathaniel P. Ford, Sr. Recipient of the 2024 Sharon D. Banks Award

The 2024 Sharon Banks Award for Humanitarian Leadership in Transportation recipient is Nathaniel P. Ford, Sr., Chief Executive Officer of the Jacksonville Transportation Authority (JTA) in Jacksonville, Florida. Ford is recognized for putting the passengers, the employees, and the communities he serves first in all that he does. He is acknowledged for his visionary and innovative leadership driven by an innate desire to make public transportation work efficiently for people who ride, regardless of the mode.

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Pictured: 2021 ACRP Graduate Research Award recipients at the 2023 TRB Annual Meeting

ACRP Graduate Research Awards Winners

This year’s 11 Airport Cooperative Research Program Graduate Research awardees represent eight universities from across the U.S. Their research focuses on a wide variety of topics including pavements, baggage handling, cybersecurity, runway incursion prevention systems, airport arts programs, and airport noise.  

Each awardee receives a $12,000 stipend as well as the opportunity to present their work at TRB’s 2025 Annual Meeting, and the possibility to have their final research paper published in TRB’s journal, Transportation Research Record (TRR). Awardees are also assigned a panel of experts to advise them throughout their research. Learn more about this year's awardees.

Webinar Recording Available Now on Plastics Waste in Infrastructure

Most plastics waste is disposed of in landfills though a significant amount ends up as litter on land, rivers, and oceans. Less than 10 percent of this waste is recycled annually. The U.S. Congress directed that a study be conducted to review the current use of recycled plastics in transportation infrastructure and evaluate barriers and opportunities for using more recycled plastics in infrastructure. This TRB Straight to Recording Webinar is available now and presents the findings, conclusions, and recommendations from the recent TRB Consensus Study Recycled Plastics in Infrastructure: Current Practices, Understanding, and Opportunities.

Transit Lessons Learned During COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic left many people with disabilities and older adults without reliable transportation to access essential goods, medical care, and social engagements. Issues of social isolation for some individuals were exacerbated with the emergence of COVID-19 when transportation service was reduced, and customers sometimes deferred taking trips to avoid riding transportation services with other people. Transportation for People with Disabilities and Older Adults During COVID-19: Lessons for Emergency Response (TCRP Research Report 243), released this week by TRB's Transit Cooperative Research Program, aims to offer helpful information and strategies to transportation organizations.

Multi-Criteria Decision-Making Framework for Determining Public Microtransit Service Zones

There are some areas in which microtransit would have a higher potential for success. A new framework detailed in an article in Transportation Research Record (TRR), TRB's journal, takes into account factors such as access to work and points of interest, as well as the needs of specific populations like low-income communities. The framework specifically examines Prince George's County in Maryland, and these multiple factors provice more insights than a single index.

TR News (Issue 345), TRB's magazine, is now available in full for all online. It is the May-June 2023 edition and examines the theme of transportation planning on public lands. Authors look at active transport in state parks, forecasting recreational travel demand, the innovations the National Park Service uses to collect data, and much more.