The importance of safety cannot be overstated and requires continued shifts in the approach to safety management within the public transportation industry. The TRB Transit Cooperative Research Program's pre-publication of TCRP Research Report 218: Characteristics and Elements of Non-Punitive Employee Safety Reporting Systems for Public Transportation compiles the best practices used in non-puni...

Extreme weather events and a changing climate increasingly boost costs to transportation agencies and to the traveling public. While Departments of Transportation (DOTs) are taking into account changing climate and extreme weather when making infrastructure decisions, they typically are not using a formal set of tools or cost-benefit analyses (CBAs) to address climate resilience because they ma...

Cost-benefit analysis (CBA) is useful for climate change response and adaptation, and if used properly, it has great potential for long-range planning. CBA should help agencies navigate the spectrum of decisions from mitigation and greenhouse gas reduction to adaptation: where does investing public funds generate the most public good? The TRB National Cooperative Highway Research Program's NCHR...

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...

The findings of this survey report show that providing light beyond the limits of the roadway travel lanes benefits drivers’ visual performance and that the spectral content of light-emitting diode (LED) sources should be a design consideration. The study also found that, at present, there are no health impacts from properly designed roadway lighting. The TRB National Cooperative Highway Resear...

The lighting industry has changed dramatically over the past decade. The optical system design of legacy high-intensity discharge (HID) luminaires was restricted to the lamp, refractor, and reflector design, which had limits in the distribution of the light, controls, and adaptability. Roadway luminaires have moved beyond this design methodology to include the vast possibilities presented by so...

The increasing incidence of wildfires, especially in the western half of the United States, poses many challenges to communities. Along with needs related to aspects of the environment, rebuilding communities, public health, and emergency preparedness, addressing transportation and infrastructure-related issues is key to helping to prevent future wildfires, fighting them while they are happenin...

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.

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?

Transit agencies are beginning to harness the value of external data, but challenges remain. The TRB Transit Cooperative Research Program's  TCRP Research Report 213: Data Sharing Guidance for Public Transit Agencies – Now and in the Future is designed to help agencies make decisions about sharing their data, including how to evaluate benefits, costs, and risks. Many transit agencies have ...

Intersections are challenging locations for all road users, but they can be especially difficult for people walking and biking. Between 2014 and 2016, 27 percent of pedestrians and 38 percent of bicyclists killed in crashes were struck at intersections. The TRB National Cooperative Highway Research Program's NCHRP Research Report 926: Guidance to Improve Pedestrian and Bicyclist Safety at Inter...

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 ...

TRANSED is the International Conference on Mobility and Transport for Older Adults and People with Disabilities. Transportation Research Circular E-C262: TRANSED 2018 is a sample of current research and practice in the field of accessible transportation for older adults and people with disabilities. The research was presented at TRANSED on November 12-15, 2018, in Taipei, Taiwan.

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...

The risk of disease transmission at airports and on aircraft is similar to the risks associated with other densely populated places. There are also unique factors related to the interaction of individuals from geographically diverse regions with differing immunity and endemic diseases. The TRB Airport Cooperative Research Program's ACRP Report 91: Infectious Disease Mitigation in Airports and o...

Stray current and stray current–induced corrosion remain concerns among transit agencies, electrolysis committees, utility owners, providers, and electric railway carriers across the globe. It is easier to implement stray current isolation, mitigation, and collection options on a newer transit system with proper foresight and planning by following the logical sequence of the design process than...

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...

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...

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...

In determining what is effective in preventing or slowing ice formation and growth on roadways and bridges, it was found that biomimetic antifreeze molecules (BAMs) would not effectively melt ice once it has formed nor provide additional synergistic benefit to using the molecules in tandem with traditional deicers. Contrastingly, BAMs did prevent freeze-thaw damage in cement paste and concrete....

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...

There is mounting evidence demonstrating the effectiveness of wildlife overpasses and underpasses in improving motorist safety and conserving wildlife. The TRB National Cooperative Highway Research Program's NCHRP Web-Only Document 280: Valuing Wildlife Crossings and Enhancements for Mitigation Credits synthesizes current practices used by state DOTs and their partners for calculating and apply...

Scaling loose rocks from slopes adjacent to highways is a simple and effective measure for temporarily reducing the risk of rockfall potential on naturally occurring bedrock outcrops and highway rock–soil cuts. However, the current practice in estimating scope of work and contracting rock scaling projects are inconsistent from agency to agency. Many owners and transportation agencies conduct sc...

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 ...

The full issue of the July-August edition of TR News is now available. This issue 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 present an overview of the prevalence of trespassing deaths and address a variety of preventive strategies and technologies...

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...

States and localities are beginning to recognize and act on the connection between health and transportation. A growing number of entities have produced a number of resources, guidance documents, and strategic plans on the topic. The TRB National Cooperative Highway Research Program's  NCHRP Research Report 932: A Research Roadmap for Transportation and Public Health builds upon this body ...