TRB’s Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP) Research Results Digest 107: Developing Partnerships between Transportation Agencies and the Disability and Underrepresented Communities includes best practices and outreach strategies and suggestions that can be used by transit personnel to develop and maintain partnerships with the disability and underrepresented communities. The guide include...

TRB’s Innovations Deserving Exploratory Analysis (IDEA) annual program announcement solicits funding proposals for the upcoming review cycles.  The announcement explains the IDEA programs, describes the types of eligible projects and their funding structures, suggests general areas for which IDEA proposals can be submitted, and provides guidelines and forms for submitting proposals. NCHRP ...

TRB’s National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Report 740: A Transportation Guide for All-Hazards Emergency Evacuation focuses on the transportation aspects of evacuation, particularly large-scale, multijurisdictional evacuation. The guidance, strategies, and tools in NCHRP Report 740 are based on an all-hazards approach that has applicability to a wide range of “notice” and “no-no...

TRB’s National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Web-Only Document 196: Final Research Report: A Transportation Guide for All-Hazards Emergency Evacuation documents the development of the  NCHRP Report 740 that focuses on the transportation aspects of evacuation--particularly large-scale, multijurisdictional evacuation.

TRB’s Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP) Synthesis 103: Transit Station and Stop Adoption Programs explores transit agency programs in which local organizations, individuals, or other partners “adopt” a transit station or stop and receive recognition or incentives in exchange for, periodically, performing duties such as removing litter, maintaining vegetation, or reporting suspicious a...

TRB’s Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP) Web-Only Document 59: Using Pictograms to Make Transit Easier to Navigate for Customers with Communication Barriers explores whether pictograms–picture-based communication tools that use illustrations with few or no words–can be effective in communicating emergency information and behavioral modification to people with communication challenges&n...

TRB’s Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP) Report 161: Methods for Forecasting Demand and Quantifying Need for Rural Passenger Transportation: Final Workbook presents step-by-step procedures for quantifying the need for passenger transportation services and the demand that is likely to be generated if passenger transportation services are provided. The report is supplemented by two produ...

TRB’s Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP) Web-Only Document 58: Methods for Forecasting Demand and Quantifying Need for Rural Passenger Transportation supplements TCRP Report 161 by describing how the research team developed the report’s need and demand estimation methods, the findings of the analyses, and recommendations for functions to be used in estimation of need and demand. TCRP R...

TRB's Review of the Federal Transit Administration’s Transit Economic Requirements Model (TERM) examines whether TERM provides reasonable and appropriate estimates of condition and investment needs for its intended purposes. The report also examines TERM’s reliance on a backlog of capital investments as an appropriate basis for developing future capital funding requirements. The U.S. Federal Tr...

TRB’s Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP) Synthesis 102: Integrating Passenger Ferry Service with Mass Transit examines the integration between land- and water-based transit systems and explores successful aspects of seamless integration.

TRB’s Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, No. 2317 consists of 16 papers that explore the impact of bus rapid transit systems on road safety; busway design; buses as low-carbon mobility solution; motorized vehicle purchases; car ownership policies in megacities; models of auto and motorcycle ownership and mode choice; and the characteristics of mixed tr...

TRB’s Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, No. 2322 contains 14 papers that address aspects of travel behavior including composition of vehicle occupancy for work trips; hybrid choice sets in semicompensatory models; integrating walkability with planning practices; the influence of environmentalism and variety on mode choice; behavioral insights models; ...

TRB’s Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, No. 2307 summarizes 15 papers concerned with aspects of transportation planning including road investments to support oil and gas production and distribution; a new approach in community-based transportation planning; transportation-induced agglomeration effects and productivity; potential high-speed rail routes...

TRB’s Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP) Report 95: Traveler Response to Transportation System Changes: Chapter 1 -- Introduction contains a four-level “Table of Contents” for the 16 published TCRP Report 95 chapter/volumes, describes the Traveler Response Handbook and its development, offers guidance to the prospective Handbook users, and includes two Handbook appendices plus known er...

A featured article in the November-December 2013 issue of the TR News helps celebrate the 20th anniversary of TRB’s Innovations Deserving Exploratory Analysis (IDEA) programs, which offer early-stage funding for promising but unproven innovations for highways, transit, and railroad safety and performance. The programs’ goals are to promote innovations that can progress to next generation techno...

TRB’s Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP) Report 160: Paratransit Emergency Preparedness and Operations Handbook includes guidance, strategies, tools, and resources to help paratransit service providers plan and prepare for, respond to, and recover from a range of emergencies. The guidance has applicability to urban, suburban, rural, and tribal paratransit operating environments. The pr...

TRB’s Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP) Research Results Digest 106: Synthesis of Information Related to Transit Problems is a digest of the progress and status of TCRP Project J-7, “Synthesis of Information Related to Transit Problems,” for which the Transportation Research Board is the agency conducting the research.

The November-December 2012 TR News features articles that commemorate significant research and planning milestones. The National Cooperative Highway Research Program is celebrating its 50th anniversary and the Transit Cooperative Research Program its 20th in 2012; in addition, the Innovations Deserving Exploratory Analysis (IDEA) programs are completing their 20th year. 2012 also mark...

TRB’s Innovations Deserving Exploratory Analysis (IDEA) Final Report for Transit IDEA Project 57: Independent Wheelchair Securement explores development of an aisle-side containment device to enable users of wheelchairs to safely and independently use rear-facing containment on large buses, in lieu of the current standard--a four-point tie-down wheelchair securement system.

TRB’s National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Research Results Digest 379: Selected State DOT Cost Reduction Initiatives for the Administration of State Public Transportation Programs explores the potential impact of employee layoffs, furloughs, and hiring and travel freezes on the administration of public transportation programs. The report also examines costs incurred by state d...

TRB’s Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, No. 2276 consists of 19 papers that examine world transit research; the optimal length of a transit network; location methods for urban public transit networks; dynamic transit accessibility; stop aggregation models; the activities of smart card data transit users; bus timetables for multiple vehicle types; seco...

TRB’s Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP) has released its annual report, which provides background and an overview of the program, status of each of TCRP’s projects, and a summary of some of the program's accomplishments.

TRB’s Innovations Deserving Exploratory Analysis (IDEA) program has issued its New IDEAS for Transit: Transit IDEA Program Annual Report , which summarizes recent investigations conducted under the Transit IDEA program. The U.S. Federal Transit Administration (FTA), the U.S. Federal Railroad Administration, the U.S. Federal Highway Administration, and the member states of the American Associati...

TRB’s Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, No. 2283 consists of 14 papers that explore a heuristic scheme for heterogeneous vehicle routing problems; stochastic multicommodity emergency inventory management models; path-constrained traffic assignment; welfare effects of congestion pricing; stochastic model for estimation of time-varying arterial travel t...

TRB’s Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP) Report 159: Transforming Public Transportation Institutional and Business Models offers strategy for defining and implementing transformative change in institutional and business models, thus facilitating the operation and maintenance of public transportation systems. The report identifies the components of transformative change and examines pot...

TRB’s Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP) Legal Research Digest 42: Transit Agency Intergovernmental Agreements: Common Issues and Solutions explores transit-related issues that have the potential to require intensive and time-consuming negotiations related to the development of intergovernmental agreements (IOMs) and memoranda of understandings (MOUs). The print version of the digest i...

The TRB Standing Committee on Intercity Passenger Rail has released the latest issue of its Intercity Rail Passenger Systems Update. The online newsletter is published intermittently and is designed to disseminate information about current research and developments in intercity rail passenger systems. Articles in this issue review the current state of federal funding and the treatment of passen...

TRB’s Innovations Deserving Exploratory Analysis (IDEA) Final Report for Transit IDEA Project 50: Developing Regional Mobility Management Centers explores how transit agencies might seamlessly integrate the information and capabilities of multiple software applications for scheduling and dispatching paratransit services.

TRB’s Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, No. 2277 consists of 10 papers that explore bus rapid transit, emissions from bus rapid transit and conventional bus systems, faulty automatic vehicle location and control units, spacing of transit stops, and the grouping of bus stops. This issue of the TRR also examines discount curbside bus operators, hum...

TRB Transportation Research Circular E-C168: Artificial Intelligence Applications to Critical Transportation Issues describes artificial intelligence (AI) applications in transportation and includes opinions on the future of AI by members of the committee that produced the report. The circular also contains 12 individually authored articles that describe five general AI areas: traffic operation...