Document Library

This research roadmap for rural transportation identifies a series of research needs statements and projects encapsulated within a long-term research vision. Their studies reflect the opinions of a number of different rural transportation stakeholders and communities, and the topics include everything from aviation & marine transportation to transportation administration & management to intercity transit & active transportation. The purpose of this research is to support policy-driven investment and improve the safety and efficiency of the US rural transportation network.

This publication is intended to help decision-makers with their processes for prioritization of public transit projects.

Governments, including transportation agencies, are increasingly adopting performance-based approaches to management and decision making to help achieve desired outcomes, and to encourage fiscal responsibility, accountability and transparency in
governance. As financial resources become more limited and governments focus on obtaining value for money, transportation agencies are increasingly required to make investments using cross-asset trade-offs and optimization methods to improve transparency and credibility using a performance-based approach to decision making.

Despite recent progress, there is still much to learn about performance-based decision making and the best techniques to ensure success. Many public transportation agencies seek practical examples and tools that could be deployed to advance their asset
management practices, improve the transparency of decision making, and optimize network investments. This report helps close that knowledge gap by synthesizing lessons learned with respect to performance-based decision making, and by developing a toolkit
that can help practitioners identify tools to implement for different needs within the asset management process.

This research report, published in 2021, highlights the knowledge gaps within the transportation industry pertaining to transportation system resilience strategies and plans. The report outlines a five-year research plan to address these shortcomings and presents the critical resilience-related issues facing practitioners today.

This research report develops a toolkit for transportation practitioners to measure the effectiveness of an agency's public involvement. A score is developed based on a couple different indicators and the agency's own perceptions. The toolkit may be used to compare different public involvement strategies and track an agency's performance over time.

Transportation resilience comes in many forms, including natural disasters, unexpected infrastructure failures, and cyber attacks. Transportation agencies and the executives who lead them must be prepared to act quickly and efficiently to restore service to the system when adverse events occur. This brief report covers how CEOs can improve the resiliency of their organization through operational and strategic planning and strong understanding of the technical and policy factors.

The condition of the transportation infrastructure in the United States is an issue of national importance. State Departments of Transportation (DOTs) and transit agencies are facing tough choices with limited finances. These transportation agencies are having to make decisions about how and when to keep the assets safely open to the public. Transportation agencies that are recipients of federal formula grant dollars may need the funding agency to be involved in any decision to repair the asset(s) or whether to improve, rebuild, or close them.

The condition of the transportation infrastructure in the United States is an issue of national importance. State departments of transportation and transit agencies face tough choices as they make decisions about how and when to keep their assets safely open to the public.

The TRB Transit Cooperative Research Program and National Cooperative Highway Research Program's TCRP Legal Research Digest 57/NCHRP Legal Research Digest 84: Fix It, Sign It or Close It: State of Good Repair in an Era of Budget Constraints addresses the legal ramifications to transportation agencies that have to decide whether to repair, improve, or rebuild assets that are in poor repair.

This special report presents new methods and best practices for measuring transportation resilience and prioritizing resilience projects. Several methods for improving the resilience of an asset include strengthening the asset, adding redundancy to the network, or moving the asset entirely. Readers can find examples of resiliency metrics used by various agencies, a discussion on functionality recovery curves, and a decision-support framework for applying resilience analyses.

This report details a prototype ArcGIS visualization tool that integrates infrastructure, traffic, demographic, and other data and displays that information in interactive maps and infographics.

This report updates the Critical Issues in Transportation 2019, placing a renewed focus on correcting racial and social inequalities in the US transportation system and scrutinizing the systemic racism the transportation enterprise contains. While equity was mentioned in the 2018 report, the Black Lives Matter movement of 2020 and 2021 shed light on the breadth and depth of the social problems in the US. This report covers five areas of focus: access to transportation; institutional issues and decision-making; equity in planning and public participation; land use, affordable housing, and displacement; and Native American equity challenges.

This UN/DESA-UNCDF Handbook brings global visibility to infrastructure asset management as a critical, high impact area for investing in local capacities to mobilize and manage financing for sustainable development, including in emergencies. Old assets often go neglected, while new ones are built without putting in place effective asset management frameworks. Underinvestment in infrastructure maintenance has been estimated to cost some developing countries up to 2 per cent growth in GDP.
The Handbook calls national and local governments to action and provides them with guidance on how to ensure the resilience, sustainability and accessibility of existing and planned infrastructure investments. It contains practical tools to improve infrastructure asset management, plus recommendations on how to adapt them to socio-economic and environmental challenges, including climate change and public health emergencies.

This guide contains a self-assessment tool for gauging the status of transportation system resilience by incorporating resilience concepts into the decision-making framework.