Your TRB Annual Meeting submission is due on August 1! To avoid having your article rejected on a technicality, adhere to the guidelines outlined in the "Instructions for Authors." The system can slow down during intense site traffic, so don’t wait until the last minute. Successful submissions will receive a paper number and confirmation email. Submissions still in progress on August 2 will be removed. Questions about paper submissions? Contact TRBAMPapers@nas.edu.

TRB staff are grateful to volunteers who expressed interest in serving on one of the new standing technical committees! All those who applied will receive an email on August 1 informing them of their appointment status. The selection process was highly competitive, with many more expressions of interest than available member roles. 

Severe weather events can impact transit agency operations, equipment, and infrastructure. For example, Hurricane Katrina in 2005 destroyed the transit fleet of the New Orleans Regional Transit Authority, over 300 buses. In another example, an EF-4 tornado in 2021 destroyed the fleet of the Fulton County Transit Authority in Kentucky.

TCRP Synthesis 180: Transit Recovery in the Aftermath of Severe Weather Events: Current State of Practice, released this week by TRB's Transit Cooperative Research Program, documents the current state of practice around transit recovery plans and provides examples of short and long-term recovery. The focus, including a survey and case examples, is on bus operations in U.S. passenger public transportation systems, recognizing also that transit agencies may offer multiple types of services in addition to bus services, such as rail and light rail, streetcars or trolleys, paratransit, and ferry service.

When a serious roadway incident occurs, it triggers a network of emergency responders to handle a wide range of responsibilities. Connected, automated vehicles (CAV) have added another factor into the many considerations of traffic incident management (TIM) professionals. In a 2024 report from TRB's National Cooperative Highway Research Program, the authors discovered that TIM professionals are not sure where to find the most up-to-date information about CAV technology and they lack details on how to interact with the equipment.

NCHRP Research Report 1104: Integrating Traffic Incident Management and Connected, Automated Technology Communities: A Guide for Communicating and Connecting provides resource materials to help improve the regularity and frequency of outreach and communication between CAV developers, communities with active CAV pilots or programs, and TIM and responder teams.

Also take a look at the new National Academies Press Transformational Technology in Transportation Collection.

TRB's air traffic controller staffing consensus report continues to receive media coverage. NBC local TV affiliates in San Diego and Austin as well as CNBC aired segments about the report. Reason also published a longer breakdown asking who should pay for air traffic control in its Aviation Policy Newsletter.