To spur the conversation on implementing new technologies to improve transportation and to face the unprecedented challenges facing the transportation sector in its critical role in society and the economy, the Transportation Research Board (TRB) identified and organized an array of important issues under 12 key topics. In each of these areas, TRB posed a series of crucial questions to help guide thinking, debate, and discovery during the next 5 to 10 years. These 12 topics are neither comprehensive nor mutually exclusive, and no one can know how the future will unfold. But TRB thinks that asking the right questions, even if they cannot be fully answered, helps to motivate the analysis, discussion, and debate required to prepare for the potentially unprecedented changes ahead.
These 12 key topics are as follows:
- Transformational Technologies and Services: Steering the Technology Revolution
- Serving a Growing and Shifting Population
- Energy and Sustainability: Protecting the Planet
- Resilience and Security: Preparing for Threats
- Safety and Public Health: Safeguarding the Public
- Equity: Serving the Disadvantaged
- Governance: Managing our Systems
- System Performance and Management: Improving the Performance of Transportation Networks
- Funding and Finance: Paying the Tab
- Goods Movement: Moving Freight
- Institutional and Workforce Capacity: Providing a Capable and Diverse Workforce
- Research and Innovation: Preparing for the Future
This document is an abbreviated version of a more thorough discussion of the critical issues in transportation, which can be accessed at https://www.nap.edu/catalog/25314/critical-issues-in-transportation-2018.
TRB’s National Cooperative Highway Research Program Report 750: Strategic Issues Facing Transportation, Volume 4: Sustainability as an Organizing Principle for Transportation Agencies includes an analytical framework and implementation approaches designed to assist state departments of transportation and other transportation agencies evaluate their current and future capacity to support a sustainable society by delivering transportation solutions in a rapidly changing social, economic, and environmental context in the next 30 to 50 years.
NCHRP Report 750, Volume 4 is the fourth in a series of reports being produced by NCHRP Project 20-83: Long-Range Strategic Issues Facing the Transportation Industry. Major trends affecting the future of the United States and the world will dramatically reshape transportation priorities and needs. The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) established the NCHRP Project 20-83 research series to examine global and domestic long-range strategic issues and their implications for state departments of transportation (DOTs); AASHTO’s aim for the research series is to help prepare the DOTs for the challenges and benefits created by these trends.
Other volumes in this series currently available include:
• NCHRP Report 750: Strategic Issues Facing Transportation, Volume 1: Scenario Planning for Freight Transportation Infrastructure Investment
• NCHRP Report 750: Strategic Issues Facing Transportation, Volume 2: Climate Change, Extreme Weather Events, and the Highway System: Practitioner’s Guide and Research Report
• NCHRP Report 750: Strategic Issues Facing Transportation, Volume 3: Expediting Future Technologies for Enhancing Transportation System Performance
• NCHRP Report 750: Strategic Issues Facing Transportation, Volume 5: Preparing State Transportation Agencies for an Uncertain Energy Future
• NCHRP Report 750: Strategic Issues Facing Transportation, Volume 6: The Effects of Socio-Demographics on Future Travel Demand
TRB’s National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Report 750: Strategic Issues Facing Transportation, Volume 6: The Effects of Socio-Demographics on Future Travel Demand presents the results of research on how socio-demographic changes over the next 30 to 50 years may impact travel demand at the regional level. It is accompanied by a software tool, Impacts 2050, designed to support the long-term planning activities of transportation agencies.
The print version of the report contains a CD-ROM that includes Impacts 2050, the software user’s guide, a PowerPoint presentation about the research, and the research brief. The CD-ROM is also available for download from TRB’s website as an ISO image. Links to the ISO image and instructions for burning a CD-ROM from an ISO image are provided below. This is a large file and may take some time to download using a high-speed connection.
• Help on Burning an .ISO CD-ROM Image
• Download the .ISO CD-ROM Image*
NCHRP Report 750, Volume 6 is part of a series of reports being produced by NCHRP Project 20-83: Long-Range Strategic Issues Facing the Transportation Industry. Major trends affecting the future of the United States and the world will dramatically reshape transportation priorities and needs. The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) established the NCHRP Project 20-83 research series to examine global and domestic long-range strategic issues and their implications for state departments of transportation (DOTs); AASHTO’s aim for the research series is to help prepare the DOTs for the challenges and benefits created by these trends.
Other volumes in this series currently available include:
• NCHRP Report 750: Strategic Issues Facing Transportation, Volume 1: Scenario Planning for Freight Transportation Infrastructure Investment
• NCHRP Report 750: Strategic Issues Facing Transportation, Volume 2: Climate Change, Extreme Weather Events, and the Highway System: Practitioner’s Guide and Research Report
• NCHRP Report 750: Strategic Issues Facing Transportation, Volume 3: Expediting Future Technologies for Enhancing Transportation System Performance
• NCHRP Report 750: Strategic Issues Facing Transportation, Volume 4: Sustainability as an Organizing Principle for Transportation Agencies
• NCHRP Report 750: Strategic Issues Facing Transportation, Volume 5: Preparing State Transportation Agencies for an Uncertain Energy Future
TRB’s National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Report 750: Strategic Issues Facing Transportation, Volume 5: Preparing State Transportation Agencies for an Uncertain Energy Future examines how the mandate, role, funding, and operations of state departments of transportation (DOTs) will likely be affected by changes in energy supply and demand in the next 30 to 50 years.
The report also identifies potential strategies and actions that DOTs can employ to plan and prepare for these effects.
In addition, the report describes how robust decision-making techniques can be used to help navigate the potential risks and rewards of different policy and management responses under differing surface transportation energy supply-and-demand scenarios.
An extended summary of NCHRP Report 750, Volume 5 is available for download. A 4-page brochure and a 2-page brochure that further summarize the research results are also available for download.
NCHRP Report 750, Volume 5 is the fifth in a series of reports being produced by NCHRP Project 20-83: Long-Range Strategic Issues Facing the Transportation Industry. Major trends affecting the future of the United States and the world will dramatically reshape transportation priorities and needs. The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) established the NCHRP Project 20-83 research series to examine global and domestic long-range strategic issues and their implications for state departments of transportation (DOTs); AASHTO’s aim for the research series is to help prepare the DOTs for the challenges and benefits created by these trends.
Other volumes in this series currently available include:
• NCHRP Report 750: Strategic Issues Facing Transportation, Volume 1: Scenario Planning for Freight Transportation Infrastructure Investment
• NCHRP Report 750: Strategic Issues Facing Transportation, Volume 2: Climate Change, Extreme Weather Events, and the Highway System: Practitioner’s Guide and Research Report
• NCHRP Report 750: Strategic Issues Facing Transportation, Volume 3: Expediting Future Technologies for Enhancing Transportation System Performance
• NCHRP Report 750: Strategic Issues Facing Transportation, Volume 4: Sustainability as an Organizing Principle for Transportation Agencies
• NCHRP Report 750: Strategic Issues Facing Transportation, Volume 6: The Effects of Socio-Demographics on Future Travel Demand
TRB’s National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Report 750: Strategic Issues Facing Transportation, Volume 3: Expediting Future Technologies for Enhancing Transportation System Performance presents the systematic technology reconnaissance, evaluation, and adoption methodology (STREAM).
STREAM is a process that transportation agencies can use to identify, assess, shape, and adopt new and emerging technologies to help achieve long-term system performance objectives. The process reflects relevant trends in technologies and their applications and is designed to help transportation agencies anticipate, adapt to, and shape the future.
NCHRP Report 750, Volume 3 is the third in a series of reports being produced by NCHRP Project 20-83: Long-Range Strategic Issues Facing the Transportation Industry. Major trends affecting the future of the United States and the world will dramatically reshape transportation priorities and needs. The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) established the NCHRP Project 20-83 research series to examine global and domestic long-range strategic issues and their implications for state departments of transportation (DOTs); AASHTO’s aim for the research series is to help prepare the DOTs for the challenges and benefits created by these trends.
Other volumes in this series currently available include:
• NCHRP Report 750: Strategic Issues Facing Transportation, Volume 1: Scenario Planning for Freight Transportation Infrastructure Investment
• NCHRP Report 750: Strategic Issues Facing Transportation, Volume 2: Climate Change, Extreme Weather Events, and the Highway System: Practitioner’s Guide and Research Report>
• NCHRP Report 750: Strategic Issues Facing Transportation, Volume 4: Sustainability as an Organizing Principle for Transportation Agencies
• NCHRP Report 750: Strategic Issues Facing Transportation, Volume 5: Preparing State Transportation Agencies for an Uncertain Energy Future
• NCHRP Report 750: Strategic Issues Facing Transportation, Volume 6: The Effects of Socio-Demographics on Future Travel Demand