RSG’s Isaac Old is presenting this week at the 8^th International Conference on Wind Turbine Noise in Lisbon, Portugal.

The conference, organized by the International Institute of Noise Control Engineering (INCE) – Europe, brings together researchers and designers from around the world to share and discuss the latest information on noise and vibration from wind turbines.

RSG’s Erica Wygonik at the 2019 International Conference on Transportation and Development (ICTD) today in Alexandria, Virginia. She’s on a multi-disciplinary panel on drones and will be talking about the environmental impacts of drone use for deliveries.

The conference, sponsored and organized by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), brings together experts from the public sector with leaders from the high-tech world to discuss the impact, challenges, and opportunities in engineering smart mobility for the smart city.

We're looking forward to sharing some of our work and learning from others at the 2019 Planning Applications this week in Portland, OR. We’ll be leading 23 presentations at the event, covering a range of topics—from a case study on the first large-scale survey of TNC users to our work on the behavioral-based national freight model.

The 2019 Planning Applications Conference is a four-day event giving attendees the opportunity to showcase and learn from practitioners and academics on new transportation planning techniques and methods emphasizing practical, innovative, and timely technical and policy approaches to transportation planning. We are proud to be a sponsor of the event.

We are proud to sponsor and attend the 2019 ITE Northeastern District Annual Meeting this week in New Haven, CT.

RSG Director Steve Gayle will present at the meeting alongside John Sterbentz of the Binghamton Metropolitan Transportation Study on the benefits of using smartphone surveys with smaller metropolitan planning organizations. The use of RSG’s smartphone survey application rMove™ on the Broome-Tioga Household Travel Survey showed more trips were captured and a higher level of accuracy than a traditional paper travel diary approach. Steve will also be moderating the session “Lessons Learned on Data Collection and Applications.”

The George Wright Society has honored RSG Sr. Director Steve Lawson with their Social Science Achievement Award. The award is given in recognition of excellence in social science research, management, or education related to parks, reserves, and other protected areas.

Steve stands in a unique position at the intersection of theory and practice in public lands planning and management. He has conducted research in some of the United States’ most iconic national parks and has published extensively in the field’s most prominent journals, authoring and co-authoring dozens of influential papers. Though he secured a tenured faculty position in academia, he chose to transition to a consultancy where he could focus on applied projects—putting ideas into action at national parks, national forests, and other protected lands.

To celebrate his dedication, he will receive a Social Science Achievement award plaque, a year’s complimentary membership to the GWS, and recognition at a future GWS award ceremony.

We are looking forward to learning from others and sharing our work with three presentations at the 2019 Innovations in Freight Data Workshop this week in Irvine, CA.

The workshop is a two-day event to bring together freight data users and decision makers to learn and share the latest applications of emerging freight data sources, development of value-added features, integration of data sets, and other innovations.

In December of 2015, President Obama signed into law the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation (FAST) Act—the first federal law in over a decade to provide long-term funding certainty for surface transportation infrastructure and investment. It expires in September 2020 which, in legislative terms, is right around the corner.

Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) International President Bruce Belmore just appointed RSG Director Steve Gayle to serve on a new ITE Reauthorization Task Force around this legislation. Steve, a past president of ITE, has been asked to contribute his policy expertise and knowledge of transportation planning and the federal requirements that govern MPOs.

The Task Force will deliver specific bill recommendations to the ITE Board of Direction later this year. They will use these to develop the official policy of ITE and both organization and individual members will then use this policy as a basis for talking to Congress.

We are proud to have played a key role in the report Who’s on Board 2019: How to Win Back America’s Transit Riders published by TransitCenter, an organization committed to improving transit through innovation. The study, released last week, draws on results from focus groups and a survey of 1,700 transit riders in New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, Seattle, Denver, and New Orleans. The findings provide insight into the causes of declining transit ridership and shape solutions for transit agencies aiming to win back riders.

The report and its findings have already been featured on Wired and StreetsBlog USA, among others.

RSG-led research for the National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) is featured in the latest issue of the Transportation Research Board’s TR News. The article, “Research Offers Insights on Highway Noise,” highlights two of RSG’s research projects, NCHRP 25-52 and 25-44.

Traffic noise from highways can negatively affect human health and quality of life. Though federal legislation has required state DOTs to anticipate and mitigate noise effects of proposed new highways and expansion projects since the 1970s, they continue to receive traffic noise complaints. These two NCHRP reports offer new insights for noise specialists, project designers, and policy makers.

We're looking forward to sharing some of our work and learning from others at the 2019 Transportation Research Board (TRB) Annual Meeting in Washington, DC next week. We’ll be moderating four sessions and giving sixteen presentations at the event, covering a range of topics—from meteorological effects on highway noise to the impacts of delivery drones on transportation.

The TRB Annual Meeting program covers all transportation modes, with sessions and workshops addressing topics of interest to policy makers, administrators, practitioners, researchers, and representatives of government, industry, and academic institutions. The program is expected to attract over 13,000 transportation professionals from around the world. We are proud to be a sponsor.