The transportation industry faces a wide range of plausible future drivers and scenarios that could affect standard practices over the next 30 to 50 years. Because the range of plausible futures over such a long-term period is very broad, making a focused prediction of the implications for highway infrastructure preservation, maintenance, and renewal (PMR) is quite challenging.
The TRB National Cooperative Highway Research Program’s NCHRP Report 750: Strategic Issues Facing Transportation, Volume 7: Preservation, Maintenance, and Renewal of Highway Infrastructure focuses on the issues affecting the PMR of highway infrastructure. The study places emphasis on preparing for plausible future scenarios and develops a pathway to guide transportation agencies in advancing the implementation of emerging PMR practices through a process involving awareness, advocacy, assessment, adoption, and action planning.
The appendices to Parts A and B of this report are available as part of NCHRP Web-Only Document 272: Existing and Emerging Highway Infrastructure Preservation, Maintenance, and Renewal Definitions, Practices, and Scenarios.
In addition, there are two guides included within the report that help with the understanding, identification, application, and implementation of emerging PMR practices. They are also available as standalone guides:
• Practitioner’s Guide to Emerging Highway Preservation, Maintenance, and Renewal Practices
• Leadership’s Guide to Emerging Highway Preservation, Maintenance, and Renewal Practices
Transportation is an essential component of a functioning society. Transportation provides access to jobs, education, health care, recreation and essential goods and services—all of which are aspects of the social determinants of health. Distribution of transportation goods and services across populations substantially contributes to the length and quality of life. The missions of state departments of transportation (state DOTs) typically include safety, efficiency, mobility, accessibility, and quality of life—and each of these have implications for public health. The missions of state health agencies include protecting, promoting and improving the health of people—these outcomes are affected by transportation systems and policies. A growing number of state and local transportation and public health agencies are collaborating to improve public health and transportation system performance; this collaboration can contribute to an improved economy and quality of life. The relationship between transportation and public health is complex, and manifests itself in a variety of ways and at various levels of decisionmaking. The transportation sector has conducted robust research to understand the impacts of transportation on air quality, safety, and noise. However, there are gaps in the understanding of transportation’s relationship to other areas of public health. Some of the under-researched areas include how transportation affects the social determinants of health, the health of underserved populations, equitable access to transportation services, and how performance measurement in both sectors can support better health outcomes. Addressing these gaps may require research in areas such as active transportation, multimodal connectivity, economic development, the built environment, land use, and how decisions made in each of these areas can improve public health outcomes. Research is needed to provide transportation agencies with the information and tools necessary for integrating public health considerations into transportation agency decisionmaking and performance measurement at the policy, program, project, and operations levels. Given the relative newness of this topic for transportation agencies, and the evolving understanding of the importance of the relationship between transportation and public health, state DOTs are interested in identifying a “research roadmap” to guide systematic inquiry in this arena. For purposes of this research, a research roadmap is defined as a type of strategic research plan that outlines the key opportunities and challenges associated with transportation and public health, identifies why they are important to transportation agencies, identifies gaps in knowledge and practice, and outlines and prioritizes specific research projects needed to address these gaps.
The objectives of this research were to develop a 10-year prioritized program of research—a research roadmap—that provides a broad overview of highly relevant research needs at the intersection of transportation and public health in the United States. The roadmap identifies research that will provide evidence to support practical and useful information, and implementable tools, for state DOTs and their transportation partners to use to integrate public health considerations at all levels of their agencies’ decisionmaking.
NCHRP Project 20-112 was published as NCHRP Report 932.
TRB’s National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Report 750: Strategic Issues Facing Transportation, Volume 2: Climate Change, Extreme Weather Events, and the Highway System: Practitioner’s Guide and Research Report provides guidance on adaptation strategies to the likely impacts of climate change through 2050 in the planning, design, construction, operation, and maintenance of infrastructure assets in the United States (and through 2100 for sea-level rise).
In addition to the practitioner’s guide and research report, this project also developed the following items:
• A software tool that runs in common web browsers and provides specific, region-based information on incorporating climate change adaptation into the planning and design of bridges, culverts, stormwater infrastructure, slopes, walls, and pavements.
• Tables that provide the same information as the previously mentioned software tool, but in a spreadsheet format that can be printed.
• Two spreadsheets that illustrate examples of the benefit-cost analysis of adaptation strategies discussed in Appendix B of Part I of NCHRP Report 750, Volume 2.
These three items are available on a CD-ROM that is included with a print version of the report. 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.
• Help on Burning an .ISO CD-ROM Image.
• Download the .ISO CD-ROM Image
(Warning: This is a large file and may take some time to download using a high-speed connection.)
NCHRP Report 750, Volume 2 is the second 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 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
• 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 1: Scenario Planning for Freight Transportation Infrastructure Investment analyzes the driving forces behind high-impact economic and social changes as well as sourcing patterns that may affect the U.S. freight transportation system. The report also introduces scenario planning as a tool that can be used in conjunction with other planning methods to improve the quality of long-range transportation infrastructure planning.
Four future scenarios were developed as part of the project that created NCHRP Report 750, as well as a detailed methodology that planners can follow to conduct their own scenario planning workshops. The scenarios and methodology are included in a DVD format with the print version of the report.
The DVDs are also available for download from TRB’s website as ISO images. Links to the ISO images and instructions for burning a DVD from an ISO image are provided below.
Help on Burning an .ISO DVD Image
Download the .ISO DVD Image 1: Data
Download the .ISO DVD Image 2: Videos
(Warning: These are very large files–more than 1.3 GB each–and may take about an hour to download using a high-speed connection.)
A detailed discussion of the driving forces analyzed in NCHRP Report 750, Volume 1 is contained in NCHRP Web-Only Document 195: Driving Forces Influencing Future Freight Flows.
NCHRP Report 750, Volume 1 is the first 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 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
• NCHRP Report 750: Strategic Issues Facing Transportation, Volume 6: The Effects of Socio-Demographics on Future Travel Demand
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
An abbreviated version of this document can be accessed at https://www.nap.edu/resource/25314/criticalissues/.
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.
Input, insight and previous knowledge from practitioners to address implementation issues and concerns. Feedback from the state DOTs on research implementation and their input on the following three questions.
1. What are the over-arching concerns or challenges facing research implementation?
2. What would you like to see as an end result of the study?
3. Are there any past ideas or topics that group can build on?
The agenda is attached. The meeting notes will be attached when completed.
This document provides a summary of the entire content of the Second EU-U.S. Transportation Research Symposium held April 10?11, 2014, in Paris, France; all presentations, comments, and
discussions are included. The summary is organized by symposium session or breakout session with a concluding section that synthesizes the suggestions that emerged from the symposium. This format was selected to give the reader a full understanding of the ideas expressed as well as to document the lessons learned and offer recommendations for successful
implementation of research outcomes.
The purpose of the Second EU-U.S. Transportation Research Symposium was to promote cooperation across the Atlantic and share best practices for the implementation of research outcomes in the field of surface transportation at the local, state, national, and international levels.
NCHRP 768: Guide to Accelerating New Technology Adoption through Directed Technology Transfer presents a framework and guidance on how to use technology transfer to guide and accelerate innovation within a state department of ransportation (DOT) or other such agency. The guidance will be helpful for agency personnel with any level of experience in adoption of new technology. The guide includes illustrative examples of innovations in organization and policy as well as design, materials, and operations.