TTI Celebrates 50 Years with NCHRP by Dennis Christiansen Agency Director In 2012, we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP). As I’m sure you know, NCHRP sponsors research in a wide range of topics critical to state departments of transportation. Doing so saves time, effort and resources in solving […]
editorial
Partnering for Texas
Better, Stronger, Together: TTI and the Texas Department of Transportation by Dennis Christiansen Agency Director Shortly after it was formed in 1917, the Texas Highway Department came to the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas looking for answers. Can we make this road last longer? Can we save taxpayer dollars and still do a better […]
The Future Requires Original Thinking
When I became director of the Texas Transportation Institute (TTI) in 2006, I inherited a number of initiatives from our Director Emeritus Herb Richardson. Herb built on the accomplishments of previous directors and left TTI in excellent shape, especially in terms of our relationships with the academic sector. Before becoming agency director, Herb served as […]
Making the Most of a Fixer-Upper
Transportation and Sustainability in the 21st Century Nothing lasts forever. For researchers in transportation, that particular cliché presents a challenge. If nothing lasts forever, how can we build a better, more efficient, longer-lasting network? Bang for the buck. More from less. As stakeholders in transportation, you no doubt know these phrases by heart. The key […]
Progress Isn’t Always Pretty
On the cover of this issue of the Texas Transportation Researcher, you see two very different photographs of the same stretch of road. Taken in 1957, the first shows U.S. Highway 81 as it was known then, leading north into Austin. The cars, what few of them are on the road, are made of steel […]
Envisioning a Traffic Safety Culture
Vehicles are more protective than ever before. The roadway environment is far more forgiving. Traffic laws have evolved and become more effective over time. By almost any measure, roadway safety has advanced remarkably in a relatively short time, but engineering and enforcement will take us only part of the way. To move forward, meaningful safety […]
Bringing Balance to Transportation Finance
What It Takes Is Dollars and Sense Getting where you’re going costs money. Whether that’s bus fare, filling up your gas tank or keeping our transportation system operational, it all costs money. And it’s getting more expensive. How much we pay at the pump might be the most visible reminder that transportation isn’t free, but […]
TTI Research: Making Things Better
Or, Why Transportation Research Is More Important Than Ever It’s hard to tighten your belt when you run out of holes in the leather. But when you can’t afford a new belt, you just have to work with what you’ve got. In a nutshell, that’s what the Texas Legislature is facing in the current budget […]
Making Goode Sense: The Way Ahead with TTI
Last year the David R. Goode National Transportation Policy Conference published Well Within Reach: American’s New Transportation Agenda. The bipartisan conference, cochaired by former Secretaries of Transportation Norman Mineta and Samuel Skinner, suggested that without a fundamental change in direction, our nation’s transportation system simply will not meet our future needs. The Goode report recommends […]
A Horse of a Similar Color
Things change. Technologies, economies, living conditions — thanks to human ingenuity and entrepreneurial spirit, they change over time. And yet there’s also truth in the axiom that the more things change, the more they stay the same. So what makes both of these seemingly contrasting ideas true? In his well-known article in The Freeman in […]
TTI Has You Covered — Weather You’re Coming or Going
There’s an old joke in Texas: if you don’t like the weather here, wait five minutes. Texas weather varies greatly across the 268,820 square miles of the state. We have five distinct regions, conveniently named North, South, East, West and Central Texas, and each one is known for a unique weather aspect — frozen roads […]
Tightening Your Beltway in Tough Times
Perhaps the single greatest challenge to transportation today is funding — funding to build, funding to operate, funding to maintain. Budgets are shrinking, but the driving population isn’t. One way to address these competing challenges is through innovation. Research and economic projections tell us that our future transportation needs far exceed our current funding levels. […]
It’s Not Easy Being Green—But It’s Worth the Effort
It used to be that the solution to practically every transportation problem was to build, build, build. As more drivers took to the road, testing the system’s limits, we mainly added more capacity to address those needs. Some good things came out of this approach, notably the Interstate Highway System, which encouraged urbanization and spurred […]
The Lone Star City, 2030
Sixty years and more than $1.8 trillion have given our country the world’s most advanced highway and aviation systems. With more paved lane-miles and bridges than any other state, and airports rivaling the best in the world, Texas’ unprecedented mobility today fosters more economic firepower than that of most states and many countries. But federal […]
An institute by any other name…
Understandably, we at the Texas Transportation Institute (TTI) focus our research on Texas issues…it’s right there in the name, isn’t it? But often, the results of TTI‘s research reach far beyond the borders of the Lone Star State. TTI conducts research for national and international, as well as state and private-sector, sponsors. The Institute is […]
A Different Perspective
Transportation, like many things in life, is easily taken for granted. As part of its bid to stimulate the national economy, the Obama Administration is focusing on improving our national transportation infrastructure. This discussion, while new to some, is actually part of a lengthier dialogue as old as the United States itself. Though there was, […]
Moving toward a CULTURE OF SAFETY
Motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death for citizens from 4 to 34 years of age. Even though progress has been made in the reduction of traffic fatalities in this and other age groups, many in the traffic safety community believe that we may have reached the point of diminishing return in terms […]
There are many alternatives
Even without record gas prices, the days of heavy dependence on “one driver, one car” are numbered. Many can no longer afford the luxury. Across much of the state, there are simply too many people, with too many vehicles, attempting to go too many places at the same time. The resulting congestion is only one […]
Actively sharing research knowledge
Recall the experiences from just about any year of your formal education. Most of the time, we observed passively while teachers tried to share knowledge with us. At other times, we were actively engaged and mutually involved in the process of learning. Each method worked, but certainly the latter produced the clearest understanding, the strongest […]
Innovation through research
Consider for a moment light bulbs, plastic and transportation. An unusual mix, but they share two important common characteristics. Each, in some way, impacts every day of our lives, to the point that we can scarcely imagine doing without them. And each evolved from crude beginnings, with the original idea bearing little resemblance to what […]