Access to relevant, precise, and timely information is crucial for a pleasant experience in air travel. Travelers with cognitive and sensory disabilities, aging travelers, and travelers with limited English proficiency need alternative approaches to those provided for general travelers for accessing and communicating air travel information. The TRB Airport Cooperative Research Program's ACRP Sy...

Incompatible land uses can threaten the safe utility of airports and expose people living and working nearby to potentially unacceptable levels of noise or safety risk. At the state level, all 50 states have enacted some form of airport zoning legislation since the 1950s. The majority of states (90 percent) have enacted laws mandating or enabling local governments to adopt, administer, and enfo...

The condition of sidewalks and pathways affect all pedestrians, but people with disabilities, older adults, and injured veterans are especially affected by them. For instance, among wheelchair users surveyed in the U.S., the wheelchair and the physical environment were the most significant factors limiting community participation. The TRB IDEA (Innovations Deserving Exploratory Analysis) Progra...

Measures that are effective at reducing speed, such as speed humps and mini traffic circles, are sometimes used in low-speed areas such as school zones. But they are often not recommended or allowed (via local policy) on the higher-speed streets typically associated with the highest injury severity for pedestrians. For those higher-speed streets, redesigning them to communicate lower speed, suc...

Between 2005 and 2011, the number of traffic fatalities in the U.S. declined by 11,031, from 43,510 in 2005 to 32,479 in 2011. This decline amounted to a reduction in traffic-related deaths of 25.4 percent, by far the greatest decline over a comparable period in the last 30 years. Historically, significant drops in traffic fatalities over a short period of time have coincided with economic rece...

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 ...

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...

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...

Airports — especially in the past two decades—have generally sought to promote and increase collaboration among the members of the airport community, particularly between an airport and its airlines. One metric of this trend has been the increase in the number of U.S. airports with full-time emergency managers, from fewer than 10 in 2007 to more than 120 today. Collaboration and increased profe...

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 pre-publication draft of Tra...

Most rail trespassing casualties can be avoided. The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) and its safety partners conducted studies to better target and implement outreach, public education, and law enforcement efforts. The results, along with national workshops, led to the Community Trespass Prevention Guide, which documents a collaborative, step-by-step problem-solving approach for local com...

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...

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...

The July-August 2019 TR News includes a featured story that examines the data behind railroad trespassing fatalities, as well as countermeasures and research to reduce the rates of these deaths. The limitations of current interventions, from design solutions to procedures and rules, demonstrate the trespassing challenge: system-wide, the most beneficial interventions are seen as hard to impleme...

The July–August 2019 issue of TR News focuses on types of trespassing in passenger and freight rail: the importance of the issue, possible strategies to prevent trespassing, and effects on the rail transportation system. Articles will present an overview of the prevalence of trespassing deaths and will address a variety of preventive strategies and technologies as well as related research. The ...

Geometric design practitioners in state transportation agencies have a new set of guidelines on probability of vehicle rollover based on various roadside design features. NCHRP Research Report 911: Guidelines for Traversability of Roadside Slopes will assist practitioners in the reduction of serious injury crashes associated with rollovers on roadside slopes. Data from the National Automotive S...

The distance between the driver’s line of sight along the roadway ahead on a horizontal curve and a sight obstruction on the inside of the curve is known as the horizontal sightline offset (HSO). Highway agencies can use  NCHRP Research Report 910: Design Guidelines for Horizontal Sightline Offsets as guidance to address the types of sight distance restrictions that are most likely to be e...

TRB’s National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Synthesis 533 identifies the current state of practice among state departments of transportation (DOTs) regarding selection and setup of very short duration work zone (VSDWZ). The report presents case examples of four state DOTs along with an in-depth analysis of the VSDWZ policies of these states. The case example agencies have develo...

The full edition of the November-December 2018 edition of the TR News is now available. This edition explores a study conducted by NASEM about alcohol-impaired driving. This edition also features articles about the U.S. Department of Transportation's Disadvantaged Business Enterprise program, TRB's Inclusion and Diversity Initiative, and information about recent TRB reports. The TR News is TRB'...

TRB’s National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Research Report 901: Prioritization Procedure for Proposed Road–Rail Grade Separation Projects Along Specific Rail Corridors is designed to assist state and local planners in making prioritization and investment decisions for road–rail at-grade crossing separations. The report provides a comprehensive means of comparing similar project...

TRB's Transportation Research Circular E-C243: SHRP 2 Safety Data Student Paper Competition 2017-2019 contains student papers that were selected from a competition to promote use of the SHRP 2 Safety Data. A call for abstracts was issued in October 2017 to graduate students across the country, soliciting innovative ideas for using the data. The Review Panel for the SHRP 2 Safety Data Stude...

TRB's Transit Innovations Deserving Exploratory Analysis (IDEA) Program Final Report 86: Advanced Neutral Temperature Estimation using Solitary Waves (ANTEUSW) explores a new nondestructive evaluation method able to determine the axial stress and the neutral temperature of continuous welded rails. Continuous welded rails (CWRs) are widely used in rail transportation. Typically, they are laid un...

TRB's National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Research Report 889: Performance Measures in Snow and Ice Control Operations presents approaches for monitoring the performance of snow and ice control activities by public agencies and proposes a core set of performance measures that can be customized and used by agencies to meet their snow and ice control objectives. The report inclu...

A featured article in the January-February 2019 issue of the TR News explores emerging trends, applied research, research needs, and innovative solutions to challenges across all transportation modes and functions. State departments of transportation are deploying new technologies, streamlined and innovative processes, research-driven methods, and holistic systems approaches to further the goal...

TRB's National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Research Report 894: Performance of Longitudinal Barriers on Curved, Superelevated Roadway Sections  presents guidance on designing, selecting, and installing longitudinal traffic barriers for curved, superelevated roadways for possible incorporation in the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO...

TRB's Rail Safety Innovations Deserving Exploratory Analysis (IDEA) Safety Project 34: Prototype System for Managing and Analyzing Enterprise Rail Transport Risks of Hazardous Materials summarizes a project that resulted in a web-based prototype system designed to support railroads with new risk data visualization and decision-making capabilities. The prototype system addresses the following: •...

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine has released Assessing the Risks of Integrating Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) into the National Airspace System. This consensus study examines the various ways that risk can be defined and applied to integrating these Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) into the National Airspace System managed by the Federal Aviation Administration (F...

TRB’s National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Research Report 888: Development of Roundabout Crash Prediction Models and Methods provides crash prediction models that quantify the expected safety performance of roundabouts for motorized and non-motorized road users. Safety performance factors (SPF) and crash modification factors (CMF) are predictive models that estimate expected c...

TRB's National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Synthesis Report 527: Resilience in Transportation Planning, Engineering, Management, Policy, and Administration documents resilience efforts and how they are organized, understood, and implemented within transportation agencies’ core functions and services. Core functions and services include planning, engineering, construction, maint...

TRB's Transportation Research Circular E-C242: A Literature Review of Rail Trespassing and Suicide Prevention Research reviews and summarizes available research reports and data sources related to the issues of railroad trespassing and suicide, focusing on research from 2013 onwards. This report explores incidences of rail-related trespassing and suicide based on several factors, including leth...