NCHRP Research Report 1187: A Data-Driven Tool for Optimizing Maintenance Technician Staffing in Highway Fleet Operations, produced by TRB’s National Cooperative Highway Research Program, helps transportation agencies make transparent, consistent, and defensible workforce planning decisions. The Predictive Insights for Technician Staffing and Operational Planning (PITSTOP) tool supports data driven optimization of highway fleet maintenance staffing. Using vehicle inventory, maintenance history, and operational assumptions, it estimates technician-hour standards and converts them into full-time-equivalent staffing requirements. The tool integrates multiple datasets, provides a structured workflow for data preparation and analysis, and delivers dashboard-based results that identify staffing gaps and surpluses at the state, regional, and shop levels.

NCHRP Web-Only Document 460: Designing for Target Speed, Volume 1: Operating Speed and Road Elements, produced by TRB’s National Cooperative Highway Research Program, defined target speed as a speed selected for a roadway during the design process that guides planning, design, and operational decisions and results in a roadway with a driving environment that encourages drivers to operate at or below that selected speed. In addition to research that describes findings related to operating speed and factors that potentially influence it, the report looks at several state departments of transportation and cities that incorporate target speed into roadway design guidance. These agencies use context classifications based on roadway, multimodal, and surrounding land-use characteristics to help select appropriate target speeds and identify speed management treatments. Many also emphasize choosing achievable target speeds and evaluating treatment effectiveness over time.

The same project that produced NCHRP Web-Only Document 460: Volume 1 also developed NCHRP Web-Only Document 460, Volume 2: Implementation Guide for practitioners to help to incorporate target speed into the design process.