TRB Continues to Bolster International Strategy with UITP MOU 

TRB and UITP: The International Association of Public Transport solidified their partnership with an MOU signed during this month's Transport Research Arena (TRA) conference in Dublin, Ireland. Pictured are TRB Executive Director Victoria Sheehan and UITP Secretary General Mohamed Mezghani.

RFP to Support Highway Capacity Manual

Submit your proposal to provide hosting, maintenance, and upgrades to the existing HCM Volume 4 website and support the chapter review and editorial process for updates to the HCM7. This contractor will work closely with TRB staff and the TRB Standing Technical Committee on Highway Capacity and Quality of Service. Employers of any of the committee members are not eligible for this opportunity. Proposals are due May 31.

ACRP Graduate Research Awards

Calling all graduate students! Submit your idea using applied research to help the public sector continue to improve the quality, reliability, safety, and security of the U.S. civil aviation system. Submissions are due May 15.

Each awardee receives a $12,000 stipend as well as the opportunity to present their work at the 2026 TRB Annual Meeting and the possibility to have their final research paper published in TRB’s journal, Transportation Research Record (TRR). Awardees are also assigned a panel of experts to advise them throughout their research.

U.S. DOT OST-R Has an Opening to Direct Automated Safety Center

The U.S. DOT's Office of the Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology (OST-R), Highly Automated Safety Systems Center of Excellence (HASS COE) is hiring a Supervisory Transportation Specialist - Director. Applicants must submit materials by May 13.

High-speed Rail is Happening and TRB Can Help

Ground was broken this past week on a high-speed train line that will transport passengers as soon as 2028 in two hours between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. Officials called it "the beginning of the high-speed rail era in the United States of America."

TRB has many valuable resources to help the rail industry make that happen. These include publications and opportunities with our Standing Technical Committee on Passenger Rail Transportation.

New TRR Article Details How Rail Technologies are Adapting 

As commuter railroads consider new propulsion technologies to reduce the carbon footprint of their operations, early 20th-century experiences with electrification offer useful perspectives for tomorrow's technology choices. An article in TRB's Transportation Research Record journal finds that choices by railroads of their current and voltage, as they consider the technologies available, appear to correspond closely today to the ways they corresponded in the past.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently announced new requirements to limit harmful PFAS chemical compounds in drinking water. Airports are among potential PFAS sources, and Aviation Pros reports that they are prepared because of a TRB Airport Cooperative Research Program report that provides "a practical, data-driven approach to build lines of evidence as to whether activities at the airport, or from other sources, may have contributed to PFAS found on or near the airport property."

TRB's "future of the interstate" concensus study was mentioned in three articles:

• The Trucker cites the 2019 report in an article about the Baltimore bridge collapse, noting that U.S. interstates have "a persistent and growing backlog of physical and operational deficiencies as a result of age, heavy use and deferred reinvestment, and [are] in need of major reconstruction and modernization."
• Medium reports that regional air mobility depends on better roads to airports and "an increase in combined state and federal expenditures to sustain our interstates ... from $20-$25 billion to $40-$70 billion annually."
• For Construction Pros added, "That sounds like a huge leap, except that the Infrastructure and Jobs Act signed into law on November 15, 2021, committed $350 billion in highway and bridge funds over a five year span, ending in 2026."

The California grid will require major upgrade to meet EV demands, costing between $6 billion and $20 billion, according to a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reported on in The Hill.