The TRB Centennial Book is available for purchase in ebook or print format. In The Transportation Research Board, 1920–2020: Everyone Interested Is Invited , author Sarah Jo Peterson tells the story of how people and institutions created and have continued to shape TRB. In a compelling narrative accompanied by more than 150 images exploring the history of transportation and research, she argues...

Issue Number 326 of TR News magazine is available in full to subscribers. Here is a sample from the issue: a feature article on the trap that drivers could fall into by believing that autonomous vehicles are more capable than they really are. As with traditional driving instruction, a solid understanding of the concepts of automation is important—not just knowing which buttons to press.

Public transit buses face many operational challenges—especially when operating on the same streets and roads as other vehicles. Buses can be slowed by traffic congestion and get repeatedly caught at traffic lights, slowing buses down and delaying both passengers on board and passengers waiting at stops farther along the route. The TRB Transit Cooperative Research Program's TCRP Synthesis 149: ...

Accurate traffic forecasts for highway planning and design help ensure that public dollars are spent wisely. Forecasts inform discussions about whether, when, how, and where to invest public resources to manage traffic flow, widen and remodel existing facilities, and where to locate, align, and how to size new ones. The TRB National Cooperative Highway Research Program's NCHRP Report 934: Traff...

Issue Number 326 of TR News magazine is available in full to subscribers. Here is a sample from the issue: a 14-page photo collage of the 99th Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting from January 12–16, 2020 in Washington, D.C. Do you see yourself in any of the photos?

State departments of transportation often encounter public resistance to alternative intersections, with 86% of respondents in a new survey of state DOTs agreeing or strongly agreeing that public resistance hinders their implementation. Public resistance can vary among projects based on intersection type and whether the project was initiated at the local or state level. The TRB National Coopera...

The March-April 2020 issue of TR News (#326) - including a cover feature on TRB's "century of progress and foundation for the future" of transportation research - is available in hard copy and digital copy for subscribers. For those who are not subscribers, the table of contents is available. Other feature articles in the issue include ones on whether research processes can keep up, accessible ...

Topics in the November–December 2019 issue of TR News include an analysis of the #TRBAM Annual Meeting Twitter hashtag to understand communication dynamics; climate change, a critical transportation issue; assessing, marking, and coding highway structures in emergencies; and more. This issue also kicks off the magazine’s yearlong celebration of the 100th anniversary of TRB, which will include t...

Now available to order from the TRB Bookstore, the Highway Capacity Manual, Sixth Edition: A Guide for Multimodal Mobility Analysis (HCM) provides methods for quantifying highway capacity. In its current form, it serves as a fundamental reference on concepts, performance measures, and analysis techniques for evaluating the multimodal operation of streets, highways, freeways, and off-street path...

One of the most time-honored of the technical activities that TRB performs, state visits revealed lots of interesting issues in 2019, including a lot around the important role state Departments of Transportation increasingly have around data needs. The TRB staff summary of the visits, each of which last one or two days and typically consist of meetings with various levels of DOT management; dis...

LED signal lights may get too cold on the signal lens to deice or melt snow and could cause accidents in snowy conditions. The TRB IDEA (Innovations Deserving Exploratory Analysis) Program's Rail Safety IDEA Final Report 29: Self- Deicing LED Signal for Railroads and Highway Intersections aims to develop and demonstrate a new type of self-deicing LED signals for highway and railroad intersectio...

Each summer, tens of thousands of people journey to the Nevada desert by land and by air to participate in a unique event. For one week, the volume of traffic on nearby desert roads and at an otherwise sleepy airport rivals the operational volume at some of the largest highways and commercial airports in the country. A modern-day Brigadoon—the mythical Scottish town that magically appears and d...

Managing access connections to roadways is vital to safety and operational performance of roadways for all users. Given the separation of authority between state and local governments over land development and access, intergovernmental coordination is integral to effective access management. The TRB National Cooperative Highway Research Program's NCHRP Synthesis 549: Incorporating Roadway Acces...

Issue 323 of TRB's magazine complements our recent short video Your Future in Transportation . The September-October 2019 issue  has several features on the workforce topic, including ones called " People, Organizations, Jobs, and Businesses for Tomorrow’s Transportation, "The Future Multimodal Workforce," "How to Win the War for Talent," and "Building a Business Case for Increasing Divers...

The January-February 2020 issue of TR News - including a cover feature on the "radical" transportation logistics of the Burning Man festival - is available in hard copy and digital copy for subscribers. For those who are not subscribers, the table of contents is available. Other feature articles in the issue include ones on data's critical role in transportation decisions, the transportation ne...

Many agencies discourage access within the functional area of a signalized intersection, as recommended in current access management guidelines, which also suggests that unsignalized median openings be bidirectional openings designed for only left turns from the roadway (and possibly U-turns). The TRB National Cooperative Highway Research Program's NCHRP Research Report 929: Unsignalized Full M...

Transit reliability is critical to the operation and attractiveness of public transportation services. With the current unprecedented evolution in transportation services, including new competition from mobility service providers such as Uber and Lyft, improving transit reliability has taken on an even greater level of importance. The TRB Transit Cooperative Research Program's pre-publication d...

A clear funding and business case –neither of which have yet been clearly articulated – will be important for the success of AVs and shared mobility. Transportation Research Circular E-C261: TRB Forum on Preparing for Automated Vehicles and Shared Mobility: Mini-Workshop on the Economic Implications of Automated Vehicles and Shared Mobility details the roles of government and the public sector ...

Ballast is an important part of railroad infrastructure. It is used as a support base for bearing the load from the track, as well as facilitating drainage of water from the track. Hence, the ballast layer serves an important role in track performance. The TRB IDEA (Innovations Deserving Exploratory Analysis) Program's Rail Safety IDEA Final Report 30: Ballast Real-time Information System ...

Automatic passenger counters (APCs) provide passenger boarding and alighting information associated with time and location data. They are a standard tool used by many transit authorities to measure and report monthly ridership to the National Transportation Database, with resulting federal subsidies calculated solely based on the data they provide. The TRB IDEA (Innovations Deserving Explorator...

The Wisconsin DOT issues both single- and multi-trip permits for Oversize–Overweight (OSOW) vehicles. As the number of OSOW vehicle permits issued in Wisconsin have increased in recent years, the management and analysis of OSOW permit data has become more labor-intensive and time-consuming. This "Research Pays Off" feature in  TR News edition 324 (November-December 2019), by Hani Titi, Nic...

Prior to 2013, the use of bicycle-specific signals in the U.S. was limited to a few jurisdictions. However, in recent years, the number of installations has grown rapidly. This research identified more than 500 intersections using bicycle signals in a variety of contexts. Despite the recent approval and practice, the TRB National Cooperative Highway Research Program's NCHRP Web-Only Document 27...

The needs of airports may vary depending on the types of operations typically conducted at the airport, as well as the type of weather common to the airport. The TRB Airport Cooperative Research Program's ACRP Syntheis 105: Airport Surface Weather Observation Options for General Aviation Airports aims to provide the operators of general aviation (GA) airports a comprehensive source of informati...

This article is adapted from The Transportation Research Board, 1920–2020: Everyone Interested Is Invited , to be published by the National Academies Press in January 2020. TRB can be best understood as an infrastructure—one that people purposely designed, carefully constructed, and devotedly maintained to share and strengthen knowledge about transportation. The core missions and structures tha...

As transit agencies, local governments, and citizens look for ways to improve existing, and start new, transit service, many of them are turning to the Quick-Build (Tactical Urbanism) methodology. This approach uses inexpensive, temporary materials and short-term tactics as a way of implementing projects in the short-term, while longer-term planning takes place. The TRB Transit Cooperative...

The November-December 2019 issue of TR News —with a focus on climate change resilience—is available in hard copy and digital copy for subscribers. For those who are not subscribers, the table of contents is available. Other feature articles in the issue include ones on the history of both TRB and transportation in general and a preview of the TRB Annual Meeting slated for January in Washington ...

The unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) industry is on the cutting edge of aviation innovation. Airports, including tenants and contractors, are discovering the benefits of UAS to their operations and bottom line. Yet, with the diversity of UAS applications at airports, there has been a lack of relevant industry data on this topic to inform the airport industry on current practices. The TRB Airport...

Commuter rail services bring travelers from the rural and suburban fringes to the inner neighborhoods and central business districts of many large metropolitan areas in the U.S. The isolated nature of these rural and suburban commuter rail parking lots makes it difficult and expensive to secure and safely operate these transit assets. Further, as the more than two dozen commuter rail systems in...

Self-driving cars, rising temperatures and sea levels, increasingly strong weather events, changing citizen preferences, and innovations in technologies that are revolutionizing purchasing behavior, social interaction, financial transactions, communications, and travel—the transportation world is changing very rapidly. Transportation Research Circular E-C256: Managing Transportation Systems in ...

The U.S. transportation system is developed, operated, and managed by private and public enterprises and, as of 2012, employs approximately 4.3 million people. This number is even larger when it accounts for people whose jobs are entirely dependent on the transportation system, from delivering fresh lettuce year-round to a fast response to a fire alarm to the reliable delivery of children to sc...