TRB’s National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Report 716: Travel Demand Forecasting: Parameters and Techniques provides guidelines on travel demand forecasting procedures and their application for helping to solve common transportation problems. The report presents a range of approaches that are designed to allow users to determine the level of detail and sophistication in selecti...

Delivering a safe transportation system is a universal goal among state DOTs. NCHRP was the driving force behind AASHTO’s Highway Safety Manual, which provides states with a modern, science-based approach to safety management, analysis, planning, and delivery.

TRB’s National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Synthesis 431: Practices to Manage Traffic Sign Retroreflectivity includes examples of practices that illustrate how different types of transportation agencies might meet federal retroreflectivity requirements for traffic signs.

TRB has released the final version of TRB Special Report 308: The Safety Promise and Challenge of Automotive Electronics: Insights from Unintended Acceleration, which examines how the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA’s) regulatory, research, and defect investigation programs can be strengthened to meet the safety assurance and oversight challenges arising from the ex...

TRB’s National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Synthesis 432: Recent Roadway Geometric Design Research for Improved Safety and Operations reviews and summarizes roadway geometric design literature completed and published from 2001 through early 2011, particularly research that identified impacts on safety and operations. The report is structured to correspond to chapters in th...

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.

TRB’s Conference Proceedings on the Web 5: Research on the Health and Wellness of Commercial Truck and Bus Drivers: Summary of an International Conference is the proceedings of a November 2010 conference held in Baltimore, Maryland. The proceedings highlight and document what transpired at the conference; summarize noteworthy issues and gaps in knowledge identified at the conference; and descri...

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 second Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP 2) Report S2-S01A-RW-1: Development of Analysis Methods Using Recent Data introduces an approach to microscopic or individual event modeling of crash-related events, where driver actions, initial speeds, and vehicle locations are treated as inputs to a physical model describing vehicle motion. The report also illustrates how a trajectory mod...

TRB’s Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP) Synthesis 95: Practices for Wayside Rail Transit Worker Protection is designed to highlight knowledge, practice, lessons learned, and gaps in information related to wayside rail transit worker protection programs.

TRB’s Safety Innovations Deserving Exploratory Analysis (IDEA) program has released its annual report, which summarizes projects active or completed during the 2011 program year. The report also includes descriptions of projects completed before the 2011 program year. The  Safety IDEA program is sponsored by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration and the Federal Railroad Admi...

TRB’s Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP) Synthesis 97: Improving Bus Transit Safety Through Rewards and Discipline addresses the practices and experiences of public transit agencies in applying both corrective actions and rewards to recognize, motivate, and reinforce a safety culture within their organizations.

TRB’s Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, No. 2265 consists of 28 papers that explore reducing side collisions of transit buses, injury risk in collisions involving buses, prevention of tractor–semitrailer rollovers, large-truck transportation alternatives, evaluating truck safety systems, factors associated with motorcycle crashes, and severity of moto...

TRB’s Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, No. 2264 consists of 20 papers that explore automatic pedestrian detectors; infrared-based automatic pedestrian sensor data; sign visibility for pedestrians; advance yield markings; multiobjective optimization of signal timings for two-stage, midblock pedestrian crosswalk; and signal-based countermeasures for pe...

TRB’s Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, No. 2259 consists of 24 papers that explore traffic signal control, arterial offset optimization, coordination of arterial traffic signal, arterial signal phases and progression quality, coordinated system operation, the benefit of retiming traffic signals, modeling variability of urban travel times, intelligent...

TRB’s second Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP 2) has released a Safety Projects Brief, which summarizes the status of products being produced within the Safety area of SHRP 2. Safety research in SHRP 2 will apply advanced technologies to understand how drivers interact with and adapt to a variety of factors—the vehicle, the traffic, the roadway characteristics, traffic control...

TRB’s second Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP 2) has released a report that provides an analysis plan for the SHRP 2 Naturalistic Driving Study (NDS) to help guide the development of Project S08, Analysis of In-Vehicle Field Study Data and Countermeasure Implications, and to help assist researchers planning to use the SHRP 2 NDS data. This publication is only available in electronic for...

TRB’s Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, No. 2262 contains 23 papers that explore spacing between freeway ramps, three-dimensional alignment, sight distance, design consistency for two-lane highways, passing process on two-lane rural highways, reduced-conflict intersections, operational interactions between freeway managed lanes and parallel, general p...

TRB’s Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP) Web-Only Document 53: Operation of Light Rail Transit through Ungated Crossings at Speeds over 35 MPH presents the findings of a micro-simulation modeling study that explored the impacts of higher light rail vehicle speeds on intersection safety.

TRB’s Safety Innovations Deserving Exploratory Analysis (IDEA) Final Report for Safety IDEA Project 15: Determination of Longitudinal Stress in Rails explores longitudinal stress in rails using the polarization of Rayleigh surface waves as a means to reduce buckling and fracture.

TRB’s Commercial Truck and Bus Safety Synthesis Program (CTBSSP) Synthesis 24: Distracted Driving Countermeasures for Commercial Vehicles examines driving distractions, as well as any protective (safety-enhancing) effects of particular devices. Distracted driving for commercial drivers is defined as attending to tasks not directly related to operating the vehicle.

TRB Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, No. 2237 consists of 17 papers that address analysis of crash rates and surrogate events, aggregating indicators of traffic conflict, optimizing investments in local rural road networks, improved time-to-collision definition, mining microscopic data of vehicle conflicts and collisions, arterial signal coordination...

TRB’s Commercial Truck and Bus Safety Synthesis Program (CTBSSP) Synthesis 22: Safety Management in Small Motor Carriers explores small motor carriers' strengths and weaknesses in safety management, and identifies potentially effective safety practices.

TRB Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, No. 2258 consists of 17 papers that address spatial and temporal speed limit compliance, nighttime luminance of work zone drums, steady-burn warning lights, primary and precipitating factors in work zone crashes, motorist reactions to reduced work zone speed limits, truck-mounted changeable message signs, and work...

TRB’s Commercial Truck and Bus Safety Synthesis Program (CTBSSP) Synthesis 23: Operator Drug- and Alcohol-Testing Across Modes explores practices used to deter drug and alcohol use among operators within the U.S. Department of Transportation’s (DOT’s) regulated community. The report includes a brief history of the transportation workplace drug- and alcohol-testing program, the general approach,...

TRB’s Commercial Truck and Bus Safety Synthesis Program (CTBSSP) Synthesis 21: Driver Selection Tests and Measurement synthesizes information on the use of tests, measurements, and other assessment methods used by commercial truck and bus companies in the driver selection process. The report also identifies and describes driver selection methods and instruments and their potential usefulness in...

TRB’s Commercial Truck and Bus Safety Synthesis Program (CTBSSP) Research Results Digest 9: A Status Report describes the progress and status of the Commercial Truck and Bus Safety Synthesis Program (CTBSSP). CTBSSP is a cooperative research program sponsored by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) and administered by the Transportation Research Board. The program was authori...

TRB’s Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, No. 2241 consists of 13 papers that explore highway safety metrics implementation and evaluation, levels of safety at freeway exits, calibration of Highway Safety Manual predictive models, estimating crash modification factors for daytime versus nighttime work zones, and an evaluation of the Texas Department of ...

More than 7,000 crashes occur annually in highway work zones in Illinois, causing approximately 2,000 injuries. The number of work zone fatalities in the state reached a peak of 44, including 5 workers, in 2003. Speeding is one of the most important contributors, affecting the frequency and severity of work zone crashes. In 2004 the Illinois Department of Transportation deployed two self-contai...

TRB’s Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, No. 2238 consists of 13 papers that explore evaluating transit investments in developing countries; normalized volume measurement for nonmotorized traffic flow; location-based data for estimated traffic on urban arterials; same-day mode choice modeling; application of fuzzy roughness index to roads economic deci...