TRB’s Airport Cooperative Research Program (ACRP) Legal Research Record 14: Achieving Airport-Compatible Land Uses and Minimizing Hazardous Obstructions in Navigable Airspace discusses airport-compatible land-use requirements, the legal issues related to achieving airport compatible land use, and legal issues particular to eliminating hazardous obstructions to airspace. The report also includes...

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) Synthesis 98: Ridesharing as a Complement to Transit explores current practices in using ridesharing to complement public transit and highlights ways to potentially enhance ridesharing and public transit.

TRB’s National Cooperative Freight Research Program (NCFRP) Report 14: Guidebook for Understanding Urban Goods Movement is designed to help facilitate decisions that accommodate and expedite urban goods movement while minimizing the environmental impact and community consequences of goods movement. The guidebook and cases studies are designed to help decision makers better understand the potent...

TRB’s Airport Cooperative Research Program (ACRP) Report 58: Airport Industry Familiarization and Training for Part-Time Airport Policy Makers highlights policy issues affecting airport administrative and operational decisions. The report is designed to provide airport policy leaders, stakeholders, and policy-related decision makers with a common framework to understand airport administrative a...

The National Research Council has released a report that evaluates the economic and environmental consequences of increasing biofuels production as a result of the Renewable Fuels Standard, as amended by the Energy Independence and Security Act (RFS2). The report describes biofuels produced in 2010 and those projected to be produced and consumed by 2022, reviews model projections and other esti...

TRB’s second Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP 2) Report S2-L06-RR-2 Guide to Improving Capability for Systems Operations and Management examines the way transportation agencies should be organized to successfully execute operations programs that improve travel time reliability. After the guide was submitted for publication, the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Of...

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 Special Report 307: Policy Options for Reducing Energy Use and Greenhouse Gas Emissions from U.S. Transportation examines the potential for policies to yield major changes in transportation energy use and emissions trends by policy measures targeting cars and light trucks, medium and heavy trucks, and commercial airliners. These three modes are by far the largest users of energy by U.S...

TRB’s National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Research Results Digest 362: Review of Mexican Experience with the Regulation of Large Commercial Motor Vehicles reviews and summarizes the Mexican experience with changes in truck size and weight limits. The report also evaluates the potential applicability to size and weight limits in the United States.

TRB’s Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, No. 2221 includes 12 papers that explore funding options for federal surface transportation, mileage-based charges, replacing the federal fuel tax with per-mile user charges, the vehicle mileage fee at federal and state levels, cost of collecting vehicle miles traveled fees, urban network privatization, the poli...

The TRB Committee for a Review of U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) Study on Implementation of Changes to the Section 4(f) Process has delivered its third and final letter report to the USDOT. The report explores the results of the committee’s review of whether the findings and conclusions of the USDOT’s draft Phase II report are supported by evidence presented in the report. The letter...

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’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...

A featured article in the May-June 2011 issue of the TR News highlights how public–private partnerships (PPPs) are increasingly becoming a way for public agencies around the world to build or upgrade transportation infrastructure, while in the United States PPPs are still developing. The article discusses successful U.S. programs, draws out potential rules for success, and hihglihgts three...

The May-June 2011 TR News explores issues related to public–private partnerships by examining how the model might help meet an agency's challenge to deliver transportation projects; the variety of arrangements to select from for projects; how to ensure value from the arrangements; ways to protect the public interest in long-term concessions; the appropriateness to U.S. contexts; how the mo...

TRB has released an interim report of the committee examining methods for assessing the effectiveness of an operator’s Safety and Environmental Management Systems (SEMS) program on any given offshore drilling or production facility. The letter report presents nine methods for evaluating the effectiveness of an operator’s (i.e., lessee’s) SEMS program, presents the benefits and disadvantages of ...

TRB’s National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Report 689: Costs of Alternative Revenue-Generation Systems presents a framework for analysis of the direct costs incurred in generating the revenues that support federal-aid and state highway construction, operations, and maintenance and uses that framework to estimate unit costs for fuel taxes, tolling, vehicle-miles of travel fees, ...

TRB’s National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Research Results Digest 353: Identification of Local Matching Fund Requirements for State-Administered Federal and Non-Federal Public Transportation Programs documents the policies adopted by the states to provide matching funds for state-administered federal and non-federal public transportation grant programs. The report include...

The Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate, part of the National Academies’ Division on Earth and Life Studies (DELS), has released a report that builds on the four previous America's Climate Choices study reports and reaffirms that the preponderance of scientific evidence points to human activities as the most likely cause for most of the global warming that has occurred during the las...

TRB Special Report 302: Federal Funding of Transportation Improvements in BRAC Cases explores federal funding of transportation improvements in Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission (BRAC) cases. The committee that produced the report concluded that traffic delays resulting from the BRAC decisions and short timeline for implementing the decisions will impose substantial costs on surro...

TRB’s Committee on Environmental Issues in Transportation Law has released the latest issue of its newsletter.  The newsletter is designed to keep lawyers and transportation officials abreast of the latest developments in environmental issues in transportation law.  The opinions expressed in the Natural Lawyer are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Tr...

Women’s Issues in Transportation: Summary of the 4th International Conference, Volume 2: Technical Papers includes 27 full peer-reviewed papers that were presented at the October 2009 conference. The conference highlighted the latest research on changing demographics that affect transportation planning, programming, and policy making, as well as the latest research on crash and injury preventio...

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...

TRB’s National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Synthesis 416: Implementing Race-Neutral Measures in State Disadvantaged Business Enterprise Programs explores race-neutral strategies being used effectively by state departments of transportation (DOTs) to meet their Disadvantaged Business Enterprises (DBE) participation goals. It also reviews and synthesizes problems faced by state D...

TRB’s National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Report 686: Road Pricing: Public Perceptions and Program Development explores road pricing concepts and their potential effectiveness and applicability. The report includes guidelines for project planning and integrating pricing into regional and state planning processes, and for communicating strategies and engaging affected parties.

The Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate, part of the National Academies' Division on Earth and Life Studies (DELS), has released booklet that helps quantify the outcomes of different stabilization targets for greenhouse gas concentrations using analyses and information drawn from the scientific literature. Based on a report produced by DELS in 2010, the booklet is geared to help policymak...

TRB’s Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, No. 2187 contains 19 papers that explore tax increment financing, revenue performance and bonding costs of toll roads, pass-through tolling agreements, flexible-term highway concessions, a vehicle mileage-based user fee, impact fees emphasizing vehicle miles traveled, equity in road pricing, equitable congestion...

TRB’s National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Report 677: Development of Levels of Service for the Interstate Highway System examines a level-of-service-based approach to describing the performance of Interstate Highway System (IHS) assets. The report also includes a template and process that state departments of transportation (DOTs) may use to implement this approach for managin...