The TRB Standing Technical Committee on Bicycle Transportation has been in existence for about 45 years, founded in 1974 as the Bicycling and Bicycles Committee. We had an early name change to the Committee on Bicycling and Bicycle Facilities shortly after our birth and became the Bicycle Transportation Committee in 1996. The committee's existence closely parallels the history of bicycle transportation research in the United States. Very little was done prior to the mid-1970s, when a surge of interest in...

Cyclists and noncyclists have a wide range of perceptions of on-street bicycling facility designs — including sharrows, bike lanes, and buffered bike lanes — along a variety of roadway types, with and without curbside automobile parking. The TRB National Cooperative Highway Research Program's NCHRP Research Report 941: Bicyclist Facility Preferences and Effects on Increasing Bicycle Trips provides insights from communities where on-road cycling for transportation is less common, particularly in the South...

University of California Pavement Research and National Center for Sustainable Transport have postponed the International Symposium on Pavement Life Cycle Assessment from June 3-6, 2020 to January 13-15, 2021 in Sacramento, CA. TRB is pleased to cosponsor this event. The symposium will focus on the implementation of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) for pavements. The workshop address the implementation of LCA in pavement operations at the network and project levels.

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, face masks have been in high demand. One company decided to take an eco-friendly approach to manufacturing and supplying the public with protective masks. The Professional Association of Diving Instructors (PADI) partnered with the sustainable sportswear company Rash’r to turn plastic pollution found in the ocean into face masks.

All proceeds from the masks go directly back into the manufacturing of more masks to help recycle plastics from the ocean. The masks feature a number of ocean-themed designs and include special sizes for kids. The company has received more than 15,000 mask pre-orders in just a few weeks—which has helped recycle more than 1,300 pounds (590 kg) of ocean pollution. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) now recommends that people wear cloth face masks to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in public places. The masks made by PADI offer a sustainable alternative to the N95 respirator masks being reserved for health care workers.

Giant-scale physics experiments are increasingly reliant on big data and complex algorithms fed into powerful computers, and managing this multiplying mass of data presents its own unique challenges. To better prepare for this data deluge posed by next-generation upgrades and new experiments, physicists are turning to the fledgling field of quantum computing.