What's New in Public Transportation

Interested in having a TRB Centennial component as part of a 2020 meeting or event your organization is sponsor? The TRB Centennial Roaming Exhibit is designed to allow organizations to have a TRB Centennial exhibit booth as part of a meeting or event they are hosting during 2020. The booth can be configured for a table top exhibit or for a 10 x 10 to 10 x 20 square foot booth. The booth is not...

TRB turns 100 on November 11, 2020. You are invited to join your colleagues listed below who have contributed to the TRB Century Club to support activities that will mark the anniversary; promote the value of transportation research; and celebrate the achievements of TRB’s volunteers, sponsors, affiliates, and staff. Details on the Century Club and a link to contribute is available at https://t...

TRB officially turns 100 on November 11, 2020. To help celebrate, TRB is asking you to “Tell Us ‘Our’ Story.” The TRB “Tell Us ‘Our’ Story" centennial activity is designed to allow as many of you (TRB’s volunteers and friends) as possible to participate in the TRB Centennial Celebration through the submission of your stories. The “Tell Us ‘Our” Story” Centennial activity consists of a series of...

AM Online, the repository for TRB Annual Meeting content (a version of which was previously known as the “Compendium of Papers”) is going away, but it is being replaced by a new process that will provide material much more quickly and, ultimately, to a wider audience.  Read  mor e .

On October 16, 2019, the U.S. House Committee on Transportation Subcommittee on Highways and Transit held a hearing to examine the future of transportation network companies. Witness statements and a webcast of the hearing are available online.

Learn how five men from Iowa shaped TRB’s earliest decades with their expertise and commitment to research and how they succeeded in part because Iowa exemplified in the extreme the close relationships between universities and state highway departments during their earliest years. As part of the Centennial Celebration, TRB has initiated the History Highlights series that will regularly release ...

Have fun while you peruse TRB's online timeline with more than 200 milestones that encapsulate the events that shaped TRB as well as the people that purposely designed, carefully constructed, and devotedly maintained the entity that is now TRB. The timeline was developed as part of TRB's Centennial Celebration and produced in part with the help of contributions by individuals and organizations....

Act now to secure your exhibit space at the 2020 TRB Annual Meeting, January 12-16, 2020, in Washington, D.C. All indications are that attendance at the meeting will be the largest ever. Don't miss this opportunity to demonstrate your organization's support for transportation research and innovation, and to showcase your products and services to more than 13,000 transportation professionals. So...

Register and make hotel reservations today for the TRB 99th Annual Meeting, January 12-16, 2020, in Washington, D.C. Registration is required for all Annual Meeting attendees, including session speakers, poster presenters, and those who attend the exhibit hall, career fair, or any workshops. As part of TRB's Centennial Celebration, all full registrants at the 99th Annual Meeting will be eligib...

TRB is hosting a committee meeting for the Mobility Management Study on Tuesday, October 29, 2019. The meeting will include highlights from U.S. transit agencies who have significantly improved their service and/or taken steps toward integrating regional mobility options. It will also discuss some of the technical and legal challenges of integrating traditional and new mobility services.  ...

Learn about the history of traffic signal systems, and of the shifting interests of the community of researchers interested in them in the Standing Technical Committee on Traffic Signal Systems' Centennial Paper. Over the years, the committee has served as one of the principal forums on signal control and has stimulated many currents in research that have had transformative impact on the indust...

Dr. Marcia McNutt, president of the National Academy of Sciences, has approved appointments for the TRB Executive Committee. Carlos Braceras, Executive Director of the Utah Department of Transportation, will become Chair of the Executive Committee at the completion of the TRB Annual Meeting on January 16, 2020. At the same time, Susan Shaheen, a Professor from the University of California, Berk...

The Cucaracha Slide had first bedeviled the builders of the Panama Canal in 1907. It appeared along the Gaillard (Culebra) Cut that carried the canal through the mountains and over the Continental Divide. A huge break in January 1913 pushed back the canal’s opening to August 1914. Slides continued and dredging struggled to keep pace. A fast-growing island appeared in the canal, eventually forci...

Mobility barriers and challenges that women face are identifies in a report from LA Metro. The goal of this report is to make informed decisions about transit planning and ensure that applicable departments at Metro are utilizing gender specific data to implement service changes and improvements.

The current level of coordination and cooperation between Florida Metropolitan Planning Organizations and transit agencies is evaluated in a report from the Florida Department of Transportation. The goal of this report is to identify strategic issues for long-range transportation plans and transit development plans in Florida.

TRB is cosponsoring the Transport Research Arena 2020 (TRA2020) from April 27-30, 2020 in Helsinki, Finland. TRA2020 covers all transportation modes and all aspects of mobility. The conference provides a unique opportunity to hear about mobility trends in different parts of Europe, learn from achievements in industry as well as share best practices of policies and deployments. Transportation is...

How do we bring governance into the era of digitization so it can manage demand and supply digitally? At the same time, it is necessary to correct for the existing inequities in our system, working closer with public- and private-sector partners and developing the infrastructure needed to ensure that the transition to shared and autonomous vehicles (SAVs) minimizes the potential challenges and ...

Please visit TRB's Centennial website today.   Key parts of the site include the following: • Centennial Papers – Discover TRB’s standing committees’ past accomplishments and contributions to transportation, as well as current relevancy and activities, and consider the committees’ roles in meeting future challenges and opportunities. • History Highlights –Read short articles on major ...

The TRB “Tell Us ‘Our’ Story centennial activity is designed to allow as many of you (TRB’s volunteers and friends) as possible to participate in the TRB Centennial Celebration through the submission of your stories. The “Tell Us ‘Our” Story” Centennial activity consists of a series of monthly questions that will help capture your stories. According to Carol Aldrich, Engineering of Research, Mi...

The Transportation Research Board is looking to fill the position of a Content Strategist, who will create, curate, and publish engaging promotional material that will clearly and succinctly highlight the content-rich resources of TRB. The incumbent will report to TRB's Director of Communications/Media, and will work with the Director to develop and implement a Content Marketing Strategy f...

Public transit agencies are increasingly partnering with mobility service providers. Among these providers are transportation network companies (TNCs), which include companies like Uber and Lyft and are the specific focus of this research effort. The transit industry has produced research to describe primary considerations transit agencies should have in mind for partnerships with TNCs, but exi...

Ways in which public transit providers can improve commuting options for late-shift workers are identified in Supporting Late-Shift Workers: Their Transportation Needs and the Economy , a report from the American Public Transportation Association. Many of the largest late-shift sectors, such as healthcare, food services, and hospitality, are expected to grow faster than overall employment over ...

Global business and tourism depend heavily on the efficient operation of airports and movement of passengers, baggage, and cargo across many areas. With increasing demand and connectivity requirements for airports comes the need for more sophisticated simulation and modeling tools to validate design assumptions. Furthermore, airport design and planning decisions have significant impacts on poli...

The Sharon D. Banks Award is a biennial award established in the memory of Sharon Banks, who chaired the TRB Executive Committee in 1998. She passed away in 1999. The award recognizes innovative and successful leadership in people-oriented initiatives in transportation, sustained over an extended period of time, that exemplify Banks’ ideals of humanity and service. The Award will be presented d...

App-based mobility services are discussed in Regulating App-Based Mobility Services: Summary and Conclusions , a report from the International Transport Forum. This report is based on a roundtable discussion that focused primarily on bikesharing and ridesourcing apps. This report identifies potential regulatory principles to optimize consumer benefits of app-based mobility and ensure that these...

The Institute of Transport Studies at Monash University has released the latest issue of its bimonthly newsletter , which is designed to highlight recently added items to the World Transit Research database. This edition features research on planning, ridership, land use, and more.

The viability of developing urban mobility systems in Syracuse, New York is discussed in Feasibility Assessment of Sustainable Transportation (FAST): Syracuse , a report from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority. This report assesses the feasibility of implement, growing, and promoting three urban mobility systems in Syracuse. These projects aim to enhance walking and bi...

State transportation agencies will always fulfill a role in the emergency-management effort - for all incidents, from the routine traffic incident through major emergencies to catastrophic events. State agency plans and procedures are expected (indeed required if the agency seeks federal compensation) to be related to state and regional emergency structures and plans. This involves multi-agency...

TRB turns 100 on November 11, 2020. Your organization is invited to join the entities listed below that have contributed to the TRB Century Patron program to support activities that will mark the anniversary; promote the value of transportation research; and celebrate the achievements of TRB’s volunteers, sponsors, affiliates, and staff. Contributions made before September 30, 2019, will be rec...

Since 2009, when NCHRP's last Security 101 report was released, there have been significant advances in transportation security approaches, including new strategies, programs, and ways of doing business that have increased the security of transportation systems as well as ensured their resiliency. Hazards and threats to the system have also continued to evolve since 2009. While the inciden...