Development

To spur the conversation on implementing new technologies to improve transportation and to face the unprecedented challenges facing the transportation sector in its critical role in society and the economy, the Transportation Research Board (TRB) identified and organized an array of important issues under 12 key topics. In each of these areas, TRB posed a series of crucial questions to help guide thinking, debate, and discovery during the next 5 to 10 years. These 12 topics are neither comprehensive nor mutually exclusive, and no one can know how the future will unfold. But TRB thinks that asking the right questions, even if they cannot be fully answered, helps to motivate the analysis, discussion, and debate required to prepare for the potentially unprecedented changes ahead.

These 12 key topics are as follows:

1. Transformational Technologies and Services: Steering the Technology Revolution
2. Serving a Growing and Shifting Population
3. Energy and Sustainability: Protecting the Planet
4. Resilience and Security: Preparing for Threats
5. Safety and Public Health: Safeguarding the Public
6. Equity: Serving the Disadvantaged
7. Governance: Managing our Systems
8. System Performance and Management: Improving the Performance of Transportation Networks
9. Funding and Finance: Paying the Tab
10. Goods Movement: Moving Freight
11. Institutional and Workforce Capacity: Providing a Capable and Diverse Workforce
12. Research and Innovation: Preparing for the Future

This document is an abbreviated version of a more thorough discussion of the critical issues in transportation, which can be accessed at https://www.nap.edu/catalog/25314/critical-issues-in-transportation-2018.