By Kirk Steudle, national transportation advisor with Steudle Executive Group and former director of Michigan DOT, highlights how discussions and themes from the TRB Annual Meeting – the major US transportation event that started 2024 – will help to inform new strategies in transportation over the next year and beyond
While attending the Transportation Research Board’s (TRB) 103rd Annual Meeting at the start of the year, I came away with a new level of enthusiasm for the future of transportation. As I reflect on the event, I wanted to highlight some of the important takeaways that will drive the themes for my columns this year.
It was very encouraging to witness a confluence of strategies from varied and traditionally disparate entities that are focusing on larger societal and quality of life objectives to deliver more sustainable, community-centered, and future-proof mobility.
“The vision is for a transportation system… delivered as a partnership between state departments of transportation and other public, private, and civic organizations”
It was apparent that there was a rational synergy of independent missions and parallel developments from an international mix of associations for the advancement of transportation, including from TRB, the American Associations of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO), USDOT, and PIARC (World Road Association). This was a clear indication of the critical and overarching need to collectively develop and implement a global vision for transportation.
Through this transportation vision, an interweaving aspect for DOTs and infrastructure owners and operators (IOOs) is to actively collaborate with non-traditional engagements and performance measures with a wider range of dimensions in all planning. By building these concepts into strategies moving forward, it helps create the vision to make truly transformative mobility gains and achieve societal performance outcomes that have historically been out of our reach.
An example is the AASHTO-accepted Moonshot Project. The project established a cohesive national vision for the US: “The vision is for a transportation system focused on connecting communities, moving people and goods, and meeting customer needs at all scales – from local to global – delivered as a partnership between state departments of transportation and other public, private, and civic organizations.”
It included a spectrum of actions for the next era of transportation. At the TRB meeting, 13 collaborative projects were green lighted. Many of these projects include innovative technologies and robust digitized infrastructures that look to leverage shared data and synergies of open-source architectures to advance mobility.
I’m looking forward to discussing many of these projects in future columns, and I am hopeful of the momentum recently displayed by IOOs, DOTs, and public/private firms. Stay tuned and travel safe.
This article first appeared in the March 2024 edition of TTi magazine
