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Transportation Research Board (TRB)

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The Transportation Research Board (TRB), organized in 1920 as the Highway Research Board (HRB), is a private, nonprofit organization. It operates within the Commission on Sociotechnical Systems of the National Research Council, which, in turn, is a part of the National Academy of Sciences National Academy of Engineering. TRB is supported financially by all the state transportation and highway departments, FHWA, UMTA, FAA, and FRA, numerous transportation and trade organizations, and many individuals.
The board's primary function is to encourage research in transportation and to provide a forum for the presentation, discussion, and publication of the results. This is done primarily through about 150 committees made up of roughly 1800 administrators, engineers, social scientists, and educators. Its annual meeting is by far the largest single gathering of specialists in transportation.
Another area of board activity is arranging workshops and conferences on special subjects of short-term or long-term importance. These provide a neutral forum where various viewpoints can be presented. The board has also, over the years, carried out a number of sponsored research projects, the most notable of which probably was the $27 million AASHO road test.



Board publications total some 6000 pages per year. Included are the Record series (which in 1962 succeeded the HRB Bulletin series and the annual Proceedings), the Special Report series, a magazine Transportation Research News, which reports six times yearly on current happenings, and a series of Circulars on specific topics. There are also publications on railroad, water, and air transportation topics.
In 1962, the board was assigned direction of the National Cooperative High way Research Program under which the NCHRP staff administers contracts fof research on specific topics selected by AASHTO. Results are published in a ries of NCHRP Reports, NCHRP Syntheses, and NCHRP Research Results. A parallel effort for transit, called the National Cooperative Transit Ro. search and Development Program (NCTRP), was undertaken by TRB Beginning in 1978, with financial support from the Agency for International Development (AID) it produced a series of Compendiums and Syntheses under the title of Transportation Technology Support for Developing Countries.
TRB also operates a computer-based Highway Research Information Services (HRIS) and cooperates in an on-line, computer-based Transportation Research Information Service Network (TRISNET). Through them, abstracts of past research and of research in progress can be obtained quickly. Among other outputs from this system are summaries of reports of completed projects and research in progress.'0 Indexes of TRB publications, compiled at possibly four- year intervals, also come from this data base. These are reported by subject author, and title of each paper.
Without question, the publications of TRB are the most fruitful single source of advanced knowledge concerning highway and public transportation. References in this book are predominantly from its publications.

Title Post: Transportation Research Board (TRB)
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