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Public Roads

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Public Roads

Fostering a Culture of Innovation

The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) has a long history and well-established culture of creating, finding, and sharing innovations. This tradition can be traced to the establishment of the agency as the U.S. Office of Road Inquiry in 1893. In the early days of road building, the office supported the Good Roads Movement by identifying best practices in the industry and helped spread those practices from State to State.

Mobile Apps Bring Flexibility To Emergency Response

When responding to highway incidents involving hazardous materials, such as a gasoline spill, time is of the essence. Fast action is often critical to minimizing hazards, but emergency personnel must take time to gather enough information about the situation to ensure an appropriate response. To help, the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) publishes a crucial resource for responders called the Emergency Response Guidebook (ERG).

The Journey Toward Solutions

Who could have predicted that a slide rule, typewriter, telephone, weather gauge, camera, and watch would morph into the modern smartphone?

Free Webinar Series Offers Practical Solutions

Practical solutions to help field personnel do their jobs more effectively day to day are an essential component of efforts to train the current and future transportation workforce. The National Highway Institute (NHI) developed the Real Solutions seminar series to facilitate the quick and effective transfer of industry knowledge among transportation professionals. The series consists of webinars covering topics that have included road safety audits, roadway tunnel design, evacuation planning, and bridge preservation.

Management and Administration

Along the Road is the place to look for information about current and upcoming activities, developments, trends, and items of general interest to the highway community.

Communication Product Updates

Below are brief descriptions of communications products recently developed by the Federal Highway Administration’s (FHWA) Office of Research, Development, and Technology. All of the reports are or will soon be available from the National Technical Information Service (NTIS). In some cases, limited copies of the communications products are available from FHWA’s Research and Technology (R&T) Product Distribution Center (PDC).

Everyone Is a Pedestrian

According to data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), 4,432 pedestrians were killed in traffic crashes in 2011--an 8-percent increase since 2009.