Developing Tomorrow’s Transportation Workforce

Highway agencies and their partners in the private sector face a challenge to building, operating, and maintaining the Nation’s transportation system: a shrinking workforce.

“The transportation industry and contractors are losing their seasoned workers,” says Virginia Tsu, director of the Center for Transportation Workforce Development, one of four centers in the Federal Highway Administration’s Office of Innovative Program Delivery. “They have not been able to recruit and retain enough qualified replacements.”

Using Advanced Technologies to Tackle Congestion

Drivers in the United States spend, on average, more than 40 hours stuck in traffic each year. The Advanced Transportation and Congestion Management Technologies Deployment (ATCMTD) program, a new program within the Federal Highway Administration, funds cutting-edge technologies that help reduce congestion, improve safety, lower operating costs, and maintain infrastructure.

A Home for ITS Application Development

In recent years, the U.S. Department of Transportation has increased focus on intelligent transportation systems (ITS), an area of rapidly emerging, transformative technology. With many stakeholders involved in the research and development of ITS technologies and related applications, the Department identified the need for a centralized source for applications, research, and data.

Supporting Intelligent Transportation Systems

Intelligent transportation systems (ITS) encompass a broad range of communications-based information and electronics technologies, and they are some of the most innovative and evolving technologies in transportation. ITS improve transportation safety and mobility and enhance the Nation’s productivity through the integration of advanced communications technologies into vehicles and the transportation infrastructure. These systems can enable road users of all types to make better, more informed decisions.

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).

Providing A Shoulder to Drive On

States are turning freeway shoulders into part-time travel lanes to relieve congestion as a cost-effective alternative to traditional widening.

The Times They Are Definitely Changing

Together, USDOT and FHWA are encouraging a multimodal approach for analyzing freight movements throughout the United States and across its borders.

New NHTSA.gov Aims to Make Roads Safer

Each year, hundreds of thousands of people visit the Web site of the U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, www.nhtsa.gov. These parents, driver educators, motor vehicle researchers, advocates, and the driving public are all in search of the same thing—information that will help create a safer driving environment for themselves, their loved ones, and the public.

Doubling Down on Safety Innovations

FHWA’s Every Day Counts program promotes proven but underutilized technologies to advance the transportation sector. Take a look at five successful initiatives from the four rounds of the program.

Understanding Transportation Planning

Transportation planning is a complex process involving many aspects, from data collection to coordination and public engagement. Transportation professionals may be knowledgeable about their part in the process, but may not understand how the other parts fit together within the Federal transportation planning process. New practitioners also may be looking for information about what needs to happen to get a transportation project implemented.