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...

TRB has released Critical Issues in Transportation 2019 . In this report, which is updated periodically by the TRB Executive Committee, a series of challenging questions are posed to explore issues and opportunities that may arise 10 to 20 years into the future. These questions, 63 in all, have been organized into 12 topic areas and provide a way to frame future areas of research, policy analys...

TRB's E-Circular 239: Arterial Roadways Research Needs and Concerns: Informing the Planning, Design, and Operation of Arterial Roadways Considering Public Health explores the planning, design, and operation of arterials considering public health. This report presents a series of descriptive examples where arterials and health concerns appear in practice and identifies how and where health could...

This annual report presents a summary of progress on investigations conducted as part of the Rail Safety Innovations Deserving Exploratory Analysis (Rail Safety IDEA) program sponsored by the Federal Railroad Administration and overseen by the Transportation Safety IDEA Program Committee. The Rail Safety IDEA program provides funding for projects that promote innovative approaches to improving ...

TRB Special Report 329: Renewing the National Commitment to the Interstate Highway System: A Foundation for the Future explores pending and future federal investment and policy decisions concerning the federal Interstate Highway System. Congress asked the committee to make recommendations on the “features, standards, capacity needs, application of technologies, and intergovernmental roles to up...

TRB's Airport Cooperative Research Program (ACRP) Legal Research Digest 36: Legal Issues Related to Implementation and Operation of SMS for Airports provides a review of potential legal issues, an in-depth analysis of identified issues, and the benefits experienced by airports that develop and operate a Safety Management Systems (SMS). Implementation of SMS in the airport and aviation sector ha...

A featured article in the November-December 2018 issue of the TR News examines the implementation and results of various designated driving programs to deter alcohol-impaired driving. The TR News is TRB's bimonthly magazine featuring timely articles on innovative and state-of-the-art research and practice in all modes of transportation. It also includes brief news items of interest to the trans...

TRB's Airport Cooperative Research Program (ACRP) latest Impacts on Practice explores the impact ACRP Synthesis 39 : Airport Wildlife Population Management has had on integrated wildlife management plans at airports. A wildlife biologist at Orlando International Airport utilized this report to develop a holistic approach to mitigating bird strikes with a specific species of heron that thrives i...