In June 1998, the United States Congress passed the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21). This bill, which reauthorized the federal-aid highway program, called for the Transportation Research Board (TRB) "to conduct a study to determine the goals, purposes, research agenda and projects, administrative structure, and fiscal needs for a new strategic highway research program." This congressional request was prompted by the success of an earlier Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP) and led to a proposal for a future SHRP or SHRP 2.

Development of SHRP 2 Concept and Strategic Focus Areas

TRB established the Committee for a Future Strategic Highway Research Program, which was composed of leaders from the highway community. After two and half years of study and outreach to the highway community, the SHRP 2 committee published TRB Special Report 260: Strategic Highway Research: Saving Lives, Reducing Congestion, Improving Quality of Life. Special Report 260 recommended a future SHRP encompassing the following strategic focus areas:

Renewal: Accelerating the Renewal of America's Highways
Safety: Making a Significant Improvement in Highway Safety
Reliability: Providing a Highway System with Reliable Travel Times
Capacity: Providing Highway Capacity in Support of the Nation's Economic, Environmental, and Social Goals

The SHRP 2 committee also outlined the administrative characteristics of the program and recommended a funding level of $450–500 million dollars, provided through a 0.25 percent takedown of federal-aid highway funds under the next surface transportation authorizing legislation.

Interim Planning for SHRP 2

Special Report 260 provided a strategic direction and general outline for SHRP 2, but before the research could be carried out, much more detailed research plans would have to be developed. In December 2001, the AASHTO Board of Directors passed a resolution supporting SHRP 2 and authorizing an NCHRP project to develop these plans. FHWA matched the NCHRP funds. Work began on the interim planning phase of SHRP 2 in January 2002.

The interim work was carried out as four studies, one for each research area and included tasks such as the following:

Perform in depth search of relevant efforts in the United States and abroad.
Develop detailed "roadmaps" of the research projects necessary to achieve the objectives identified by the SHRP 2 report for each topic area.
Obtain input on concepts, criteria, and general content of the research design from stakeholders and experts.
Identify any particular issues, problems, or opportunities related to the proposed research and recommend actions to be taken.

Five panels provided leadership and technical guidance for the interim work. The leadership guidance for the overall program was provided by an oversight panel of highway industry leaders. This panel functioned both as an NCHRP panel and as an AASHTO task force. They were responsible for the overall direction of the program, development of an administrative structure for SHRP 2, and decisions about overall funding and coordination matters. Technical guidance was provided in each research topic area by a technical panel with the appropriate mix of technical expertise. The development of the research plans was carried out by competitively selected, interdisciplinary contractor teams. The four technical panels provided oversight and guidance to the contractor teams throughout the duration of the interim work, with periodic reports to the oversight panel.

SHRP 2 Research Plans

This work is summarized in NCHRP Report 510: Summary Report: Interim Planning for a Future Strategic Highway Research Program. The Interim Planning Phase of SHRP 2 resulted in over 700 pages of research plans containing 106 research projects organized under 26 topics. These documents are provided as background information. The research plans have been substantially revised in each of the focus areas and the revised research plans are the relevant documents.