Chair of Transportation Research Committee Completes Successful Term
Ms. Anya A. Carroll, the Volpe Center's National Expert in Multimodal Surface Transportation Operations, is wrapping up a productive six-year term as chair of the Transportation Research Board (TRB) Committee on Highway-Rail Grade Crossings. The committee deals with the safety and related characteristics of at-grade highway intersections with both heavy and light rail lines – such as economic factors, traffic flow and countermeasures.
Anya A. Carroll, National Expert in Multimodal Surface Transportation Operations. (Volpe Center photo)
The Highway-Rail Grade Crossings Committee also serves as a focal point for promoting safe, cost-effective and efficient traffic control technological innovations and strategies. It identifies and prioritizes research needs; promotes research into new systems and strategies; and fosters cooperation, coordination and the sharing of information among researchers, government agencies and the railroad industry, nationally as well as internationally.
The committee recently re-established a web site with over 900 citations from the highway-rail grade crossing literature. The group has also grown to over 30 members and now includes more than 100 friends of the committee from North America and overseas in its information distribution community.
In addition to sessions at the annual TRB meetings, the committee has also held midyear meetings with the Institute of Transportation Engineers, Operation Lifesaver, Inc. and regional conferences. Special sessions have been held at various locations around the world including Melbourne, Australia; Sheffield, United Kingdom; Paris, France; and Montreal, Canada.
There are several additional recent and current Volpe Center chairs of TRB committees and groups. Bob Dorer, Director of the COI for Physical Infrastructure Systems, chairs the Rail Group, which is one of the eleven TRB groups to which committees report. Other TRB committee chairs include Doug Lee of the COI for Multimodal Systems Research and Analysis (Transportation Economics), and Gregg Fleming (Director) and Dr. Judith Rochat of the COI for Environmental and Energy Systems (Transportation-Related Noise and Vibration).