Transportation Research Board 2020 Annual Report (2021)

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TRB • 2020 Annual Report 11 GOAL 4 Collaboration Communities of Interest TRB’s standing committees bring together individuals who share an interest and expertise in various aspects of transportation. TRB also brings experts and practitioners together through panels to work on various reports and products. All modes of transportation are represented, as well as nearly every discipline that contributes to transportation. A dedicated body of volunteers with a wide array of experience brings perspectives from across the country and around the world. To better address critical and emerging transportation issues—along with perennial research needs in transportation—TRB restructured its standing technical committees, tightening up the structure and adding new committees where needed. Throughout the year, TRB implemented a strategic alignment of its standing committees’ volunteer structure to ensure that the talent of TRB’s thousands of volunteers can focus on 21st-century critical and emerging transportation issues within an organization that is flexible enough to respond to rapidly changing circumstances. After a year of consultation with volunteers, sponsors, and staff, a newly aligned volunteer structure was implemented, complete with new committees, refocused existing committees, and mechanisms to promote and support multimodal and multidisciplinary collaboration. Developing this new structure was an innovative and unprecedented effort of TRB volunteers and staff, who braved the challenges of systemic change to unleash new energy, spark innovation, and open new possibilities. As TRB begins its second century, transportation is undergoing a period of rapid and transformational change. TRB serves as a big tent in which everyone can come together as equals—government, industry, and university; young people starting their professional journey and the profession’s leading lights; and CEOs and technical experts. The committees are an environment in which any and all ideas can be proposed, debated, and tested on the basis of their merit.

12 TRB • 2020 Annual Report Strengthening Domestic and International Partnerships The transportation industry is complex and made up of a wide range of actors. TRB partners with other organizations to ensure its advice, research, and collaboration includes all voices. TRB has entered into memoranda of understanding or letters of intent with several U.S. and international transportation organizations, and the Board participates in information sharing and sponsored sessions at major conferences and identifies opportunities to coordinate international research on common topics. Considering the Future To share perspectives on the biggest issues surrounding automated vehicles and shared mobility, TRB offers the Forum on Preparing for Automated Vehicles and Shared Mobility Systems. Long-term goals of the program are increasing safety, reducing congestion, enhancing accessibility, increasing environmental and energy sustainability, and encouraging economic development and equity. Forum members met privately in 2020 and offered two public events: one focused on scenario planning and one focused on expected impact in technology deployment from COVID-19. Many supply-chain shifts were under way before the pandemic hit. Responses to COVID-19 are “accelerating those tremendously,” said Paul Bingham of IHS Markit during TRB’s Marine Board spring meeting, COVID-19 Impacts on Global Shipping.15 He stressed that, in terms of funding and infrastructure, “we’ll need to look at . . . what is going to be important to serve the economy looking toward the future, not the one from 2019 or before.” My vision for TRB and the transport industry 100 years from now is that we will have transitioned to better, more efficient, and accessible modes of transportation that also take into consideration the complex utility needs of its users. The more technologically advanced society becomes, the greater the desire for community and human connection. I hope we, as transport- industry professionals, reimagine and build a transportation system that better accommodates all of us for a truly cohesive sense of community and oneness as a human race—if aliens aren’t a thing by then. Winnie Okello, Senior Civil Engineer, Pennsylvania DOT, Harrisburg