TRB's Rail Safety Innovations Deserving Exporatory Analysis (IDEA) program has released Safety Report 32: Railroad Bridge Inspections for Maintenance and Replacement Prioritization Using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) with Laser Scanning Capabilities. Measuring bridge movement under trains in the field is difficult and expensive because a fixed reference point is not normally available, thus c...

TRB's Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP) Research Report 195: Broadening Understanding of the Interplay Among Public Transit, Shared Mobility, and Personal Automobiles explores the effects of app-based transportation network companies on the cities in which they operate, including on public transit ridership, single-occupancy vehicle trips, and traffic congestion. Built upon the findin...

TRB's National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Research Report 879: Optimal Replacement Cycles of Highway Operations Equipment acts as a handbook on equipment replacement concepts and an instruction manual for making cost-effective replacement decisions. The research report presents a process for determining replacement needs for highway operations equipment, identifying candidate ...

TRB's Airport Cooperative Research Program (ACRP) Synthesis 89: Clean Vehicles, Fuels, and Practices for Airport Private Ground Transportation Providers documents effective approaches and reviews best practices employed by airports to encourage different types of private ground transportation providers to run more environmentally friendly operations. The report summarizes the experiences of pub...

TRB's National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Synthesis 515: Practices for Preventing Roadway Departures identifies and summarizes practices being used by state departments of transportation (DOTs) to prevent roadway departure crashes and to identify the data-driven advantages and disadvantages of these practices. More than half of all traffic fatalities result from roadway depart...

TRB’s Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board has released 18 early access papers addressing vehicles and equipment topics, including: An Investigation of Battery Electric Vehicle Driving and Charging Behaviors Using Vehicle Usage Data Collected in Shanghai, China ( link ) Modeling Surface Temperatures for Snow-Covered Roads: A Case Study for a Heated Paveme...

TRB's E-Circular 232: Automated Vehicle Symposium 2017: Summary of a Symposium highlights the themes from an event that took place on July 11–13, 2017 in San Francisco, California. The event explored the development, testing, building, and deployment of autonomous vehicles (AVs). The 2017 AVS provided the opportunity for communication, collaboration, and information sharing on a wide range of t...

TRB's Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP) Web-Only Document 71: A Transit Agency Guide to Evaluating Secondary Train Detection/Protection Systems in Communications-Based Train Control Systems provides a practical approach to evaluating the appropriate level of secondary train detection/protection systems (STD/PS) for a given communications-based train control system application. In term...

TRB's Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP) Synthesis 130: Battery Electric Buses—State of the Practice documents current practices of transit systems in the planning, procurement, infrastructure installation, operation, and maintenance of battery electric buses (BEBs). The synthesis is intended for transit agencies that are interested in understanding the potential benefits and challenge...

To keep pace with accelerating rate of research distribution, the Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board is now publishing articles as soon as they are finalized. The latest papers to be published are as follows: Use of a Laser Diffractometer to Obtain the Particle Size Distribution of Fine-Grained Soils Interstate Speed Profiles Conditioning and Testing Pr...

TRB Special Report 324: Designing Safety Regulations for High-Hazard Industries, examines key factors relevant to government safety regulators when choosing among regulatory design types, particularly for preventing low-frequency, high consequence events. In such contexts, safety regulations are often scrutinized after an incident, but their effectiveness can be inherently difficult to assess w...

The full edition of the July–August 2017  TR News  magazine is now available.  Moving research into practice is the theme of feature articles in this edition. Authors describe today’s successes, present a systematic approach that has proved effective at a state department of transportation, describe federal programs encouraging innovations at the state level, discuss initiatives ...

TRB's National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Research Report 862: Guide to Deploying Clean Truck Freight Strategies provides decision makers with a guide to assist in the potential deployment of fuel-efficient and low-emission truck freight strategies. The guide includes an analytical tool  and a user manual to identify and evaluate appropriate strategies that can be deploye...

The full edition of the May-June 2017 TR News is now available. This edition explores the role of transportation in economic development. Articles feature information about benefit-cost analysis, freight production models, transportation satellite accounts, and right sizing strategies. The TR News is TRB's bimonthly magazine featuring timely articles on innovative and state-of-the-art research ...

TRB's Airport Cooperative Research Program (ACRP) Legal Research Digest 32: Evolving Law on Airport Implications by Unmanned Aerial Systems provides guidance to enhance understanding of the basic legal and operational issues presented by civil unmanned aerial systems (UAS), and evaluates best practices for managing these issues. The digest covers background on UAS uses, applications, regulation...

TRB's National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Innovations Deserving Exploratory Analysis (IDEA) has released Final Report 181: Development of Small Specimen Geometry for Asphalt Mixture Performance Testing. The use of small specimen geometries in Asphalt Mixture Performance Tester (AMPT) offer a means to measure as-built pavement layers. Small specimen geometries may improve the e...

TRB's National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Web-Only Document 239: Impacts of Laws and Regulations on CV and AV Technology Introduction in Transit Operations explores the potential barriers imposed by operating policies, agency regulations, and governmental laws relative to the transit environment. Without adjustment, the combination of new technology with old rules could result...

TRB's National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) has released  Strategies to Advance Automated and Connected Vehicles: Briefing Document. It is intended for state, regional, and local agency and political decision makers who are framing public policy making for these transformational technologies. The briefing document makes the case for taking action in spite of uncertainties a...

TRB's National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Research Report 845: Advancing Automated and Connected Vehicles: Policy and Planning Strategies for State and Local Transportation Agencies assesses policy and planning strategies at the state, regional, and local levels that could influence private-sector automated vehicle (AV) and connected vehicle (CV) choices to positively affect s...

TRB's Airport Cooperative Research Program (ACRP) Synthesis 85: Alternative Fuels in Airport Fleets is designed to assist airport operators in analyzing complex procurement, operational, and environmental decisions when considering alternative fuels in airport fleets. Airports own and contract fleets to transport passengers, staff, and goods by on- and off-road vehicles. Although most transport...

A featured article in the May-June 2017 issue of the TR News examines how to develop appropriate evaluation frameworks that account for the integration of new technologies into the infrastructure in order to accurately value the current highway system. 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 trans...

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine has released a report that examines the effectiveness of the use of the percentile ranks produced by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s (FMCSA’s) Safety Measurement System (SMS) for identifying high-risk carriers, and if not, what alternatives might be preferred. In addition, this report evaluates the accuracy and suff...

TRB's Transit Innovations Deserving Exploratory Analysis (IDEA) program has released Report 82: Active Safety-Collision Warning Pilot in Washington State that involved field testing and evaluation of the collision avoidance warning system placed on buses in revenue service over a three-month period. The system provides alerts and audible warnings to the driver about traffic conditions that coul...

TRB’s Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, No. 2625, includes 7 papers that explore information related to connected and automated vehicles, including: Analysis of the Effects of Connected–Automated Vehicle Technologies on Travel Demand Driving Mode Decision Making for Intelligent Vehicles in Stressful Traffic Events Lane-Changing Feedback Control for Ef...

TRB has released its requirements for submitting papers for presentation at the 2018 TRB Annual Meeting and/or publication in the Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board . This guide covers the organization and formatting of manuscripts for peer review and for publication, as well as instructions for submission. Papers that do not follow the guidelines will ...

The latest of TRB's National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Ready Results examines an update to fuel usage factors. NCHRP Report 744 : Fuel Usage Factors in Highway and Bridge Construction provides guidance for more than 1,000 new fuel usage factors and guidance on implementing them, along with a tool for calculating factors for specific contracts and situations.

TRB’s Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, No. 2613 consists of 10 papers that explore traffic and equipment maintenance, especially with regards to weather, including: Use of Calorimetry to Measure Ice-Melting Capacity Investigating Safety Effectiveness of Wyoming Snow Fence Installations Along a Rural Mountainous Freeway Relating Public Opinions of Roa...

A featured article in the March-April 2017 issue of the TR News highlights photos from the 96th TRB Annual Meeting, January 8-12, 2017. The article features photographs of sessions, workshops, committee meetings, and awards. Bruce M. Smith, Apperson Crump PLC, and General Counsel, Memphis Area Transit Authority, delivered the delivered the 2017 Thomas B. Deen Distinguished Lecture on “Ethical I...

A featured article in the March-April 2017 issue of the TR News highlights photos from the 96th TRB Annual Meeting, January 8-12, 2017. The article features photographs of sessions, workshops, committee meetings, and awards. Bruce M. Smith, Apperson Crump PLC, and General Counsel, Memphis Area Transit Authority, delivered the delivered the 2017 Thomas B. Deen Distinguished Lecture on “Ethical I...

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine has released a report provides an overview of the structure and management of the U.S. DRIVE Partnership as well as the major achievements associated with the goals of the Partnership. This report follows on four previous reviews of the FreedomCAR and Fuel Partnership, which was the predecessor of the U.S. DRIVE Partnership. Since th...