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.

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 Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP) Report 152: Guidelines for Ferry Transportation Services examines the history and characteristics of ferry systems throughout North America and offers guidelines for planning, marketing, operating, and managing a ferry system as a component of an overall transportation network. The report also explores the potential benefits of and impediments t...

TRB’s National Cooperative Freight Research Program (NCFRP) Research Results Digest 3, NCFRP: A Status Report is a staff digest of the progress and status of the program. The NCFRP is a cooperative research program sponsored by the Research and Innovative Technology Administration (RITA) and administered by the Transportation Research Board. The program was authorized in 2005 with the passage o...

The National Academy of Engineering and the National Research Council have released a report that examines the causes of the blowout of the Macondo well that occurred in the Gulf of Mexico on April 20, 2010. The report provides a series of recommendations, for both the oil and gas industry and government regulators, intended to reduce the likelihood and impact of any future losses of well contr...

TRB’s Hazardous Materials Cooperative Research Program (HMCRP) Research Results Digest 2: Hazardous Materials Cooperative Research Program: A Status Report provides an update on the industry-driven, applied research program that develops near-term, practical solutions to improve the information used in managing risk associated with the transportation of hazardous materials.

TRB’s National Cooperative Freight Research Program (NCFRP) Report 12: Framework and Tools for Estimating Benefits of Specific Freight Network Investments provides a framework and tools designed to help estimate the private and public benefits of potential freight infrastructure investments. The evaluation framework is intended to assist public planning and decision-making processes regard...

TRB Conference Proceedings on the Web 4: Offshore Wind Energy Projects: Summary of a Workshop summarizes a March 2010 workshop held in Washington, D.C., that examined the processes use by the former Minerals Management Service (MMS) for selecting and managing certified verification agents (CVAs) and for identifying appropriate standards for assuring good engineering judgment and practice; for r...

TRB’s Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, No. 2222 includes 13 papers that explore China’s port reform and development, optimization of capacity of ports, estimating coastal maritime risk, schedule design and container routing in liner shipping, port effectiveness, estimating truck queuing time at marine terminal gates, and truck delays at seaports. Thi...

The July-August 2011 TR News assembles feature articles exploring the state of security and critical infrastructure protection, including an assessment of U.S. infrastructure resiliency, North American perimeter security and the movement of trade, the security of bridges and tunnels, measures to protect rail and transit from attacks, the effects of piracy on the global supply chain, a...

TRB Special Report 305: Structural Integrity of Offshore Wind Turbines: Oversight of Design, Fabrication, and Installation explores the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement (BOEMRE) approach to overseeing the development and safe operation of wind turbines on the outer continental shelf, with a focus on structural safety. The committee...

TRB Special Report 306: Naval Engineering in the 21st Century: The Science and Technology Foundation for Future Naval Fleets examines the state of basic and applied research in the scientific fields that support naval engineering and explores whether Office of Naval Research (ONR) activities, under its National Naval Responsibility for Naval Engineering (NNR-NE) initiative, have been effective ...

TRB’s National Cooperative Freight Research Program (NCFRP) Report 6: Impacts of Public Policy on the Freight Transportation System describes the numerous ways that government policy decisions can affect the freight system and, in turn, how understanding the differing concerns and priorities of governments is crucial to better consideration of the potential impacts of public policy.  The r...

TRB’s Hazardous Materials Cooperative Research Program (HMCRP) Report 6: Feasibility of a Consolidated Security Credential for Persons Who Transport Hazardous Materials discusses the feasibility of consolidating several existing security credentials, which are necessary under current regulations and policies, into one credential for all transportation modes. The report evaluates the credentiali...

TRB’s Hazardous Materials Cooperative Research Program (HMCRP) Report 3: Guidebook for Conducting Local Hazardous Materials Commodity Flow Studies is designed to support risk assessment, emergency response preparedness, resource allocation, and analyses of hazardous commodity flows across jurisdictions. The guidebook updates the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Guidance for Conducting Hazard...

The Water Science and Technology Board, part of the National Academies’ Division on Earth and Life Studies (DELS), has released a report designed to help inform the regulation of ballast water by helping the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Coast Guard better understand the relationship between the concentration of living organisms in ballast water discharges and the probabilit...

TRB’s National Cooperative Freight Research Program (NCFRP) Report 11: Truck Drayage Productivity Guide is designed to help improve drayage productivity and capacity while reducing emissions, costs, and port-area congestion at deepwater ports. The guide includes suggestions designed to help shippers, receivers, draymen, marine terminal operators, ocean carriers, and port authorities address ine...

TRB’s Hazardous Materials Cooperative Research Program (HMCRP) Report 4: Emerging Technologies Applicable to Hazardous Materials Transportation Safety and Security explores near-term (less than 5 years) and longer-term (5–10 years) technologies that are candidates for enhancing the safety and security of hazardous materials transportation for use by shippers, carriers, emergency responders, or ...

TRB’s National Cooperative Freight Research Program (NCFRP) Report 10: Performance Measures for Freight Transportation explores a set of measures to gauge the performance of the freight transportation system. The measures are presented in the form of a freight system report card, which reports information in three formats, each increasingly detailed, to serve the needs of a wide variety of user...

The Water Science and Technology Board, part of the National Academies’ Division on Earth and Life Studies (DELS), has released a report that assesses the Council on Environmental Quality’s 2009 Proposed National Objectives, Principles and Standards for Water and Related Resources Implementation Studies. According to the committee that produced the report, the 2009 proposed revisions lack clari...

The Water Science and Technology Board, part of the National Academies’ Division on Earth and Life Studies (DELS), has released a report that states that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers-- which operates and maintains the nation's water resources infrastructure of dams, levees, locks, and navigation channels--faces a water planning paradox. According to the committee that developed the report, ...

TRB’s Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, No. 2168 includes 16 papers that explore the discrete berth-scheduling problem; multimodal network analysis and vulnerability assessment; location choice model for logistic firms; agent-based combined traffic simulation of private cars and commercial vehicles; and shipper willingness to pay to increase environme...

TRB’s Hazardous Materials Cooperative Research Program (HMCRP) Research Results Digest 1: Hazardous Materials Cooperative Research Program: A Status Report provides an update on the industry-driven, applied research program that develops near-term, practical solutions to improve the information used in managing risk associated with the transportation of hazardous materials.

TRB’s Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, No. 2146 includes 16 papers that explore an innovative transport solution for suburban areas, how to expand subway and urban railway networks, track geometry for light rail systems, vehicle and pedestrian safety at light rail stops, a solution to rail overcrowding, and improving metro networks. This issue of the...

The National Academy of Engineering and the National Research Council have released the interim report of the Committee on the Analysis of Causes of the Deepwater Horizon Explosion, Fire, and Oil Spill to Identify Measures to Prevent Similar Accidents in the Future. The interim report includes the committee’s preliminary findings and observations on various actions and decisions including well ...

TRB’s Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, No. 2166 contains 14 papers that explore ship-based greenhouse gas reduction negotiations; supply chain coordination for port sustainability; the berth-scheduling problem; a web-based foreign waterborne cargo data system; global port operations and their influence on port labor; measuring the concentration degre...

TRB’s National Cooperative Freight Research Program (NCFRP) Report 7: Identifying and Using Low-Cost and Quickly Implementable Ways to Address Freight-System Mobility Constraints explores standardized descriptions of the dimensions of the freight transportation system, identifies freight mobility constraints in a multimodal context, highlights criteria for low-cost and quickly implementable imp...

TRB’s Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, No. 2162 includes 13 papers that explore stacking priority rules, scheduling trucks at cross-docks, system efficiency at container terminals, air pollution impacts of shifting freight from truck to rail, freight mobility constraints, and the use of passenger rail infrastructure for goods movement. This issue of ...

A featured article in the July-August 2010 TR News explores how shifts in the trade and transport environment—at the local, national, and international levels—may pose a dynamic challenge and point to the need for a strategic freight plan for the U.S. Marine Transportation System, addressing such issues as intermodal transport capability, energy use, sustainability, and the effects of the expan...

A featured article in the July-August 2010 TR News includes a 21-question, true-or-false and multiple choice quiz that gauges knowledge of basic information, general and specific, related to globalization and transportation. The enlightening answers to the quiz are accompanied by citations of readily available resources for additional information and reference.