Volume 8: January 2002

Going Virtual
This is the eighth issue of TR Update. It is also the last issue that will be produced as a paper edition. But don't worry! We have had such a consistently positive response to the newsletter over the past four years that we will continue to publish it. However, all future issues will be made available online only. If you want to be alerted as each issue appears, let us know!

Research into Practice
To introduce this issue, I offer some wise words extracted from the vision papers compiled in TRB's "Transportation in the New Millennium: State of the Art and Future Directions" (Washington DC: Transportation Research Board, 2000). In his article on "Transportation Education", Peter A. Manning, on behalf of A1A04: Committee on Transportation Education and Training, tells us that for the transportation professional, "it is no longer sufficient to have a technical background or to view transportation education as just a series of college courses. It is and will continue to be a multidisciplinary and lifelong endeavour", while educators "must bridge the gap between the academic, the public, and the private sectors …they need to market their success to academics and nonacademics."

Meanwhile, in "Transportation Research: Current Practice and a Look Forward", by Christopher Hedges, Kathryn Harrington-Hughes, and William P. Carr (report of A5001: Committee on the Conduct of Research), we learn that "The benefits of applied research will be realized only after the research products are implemented in the field. … Technology transfer has a tremendous potential to optimize the operation of transportation systems cost-effectively, by reducing or eliminating duplicated effort and by facilitating the implementation of best practices and relevant technologies."

The point is that transportation is an applied field, and that both professionals and researchers stand to benefit from transferring research into practice; and this provides our theme for this issue. To open the centre section, Update On: Research into Practice, Chris Brown gives us an individual consultant's view. Also, learn about the US's LTAP program, probably the largest systematic government-sponsored endeavour at transportation technology transfer. Professional societies such as IHT, also featured, have a role to play in this process as well, in educating and promoting the professional development of their members.

The integration of research and practice is particularly well exemplified in the KonSULT project centred at the Institute for Transport Studies, University of Leeds, and further by the integration in turn of KonSULT and (subject to contract) of IHT's series of practitioner Guidelines with the extensive research information held in TransportConnect.

I hope that you find this issue of TR Update thought-provoking, and that you will sign up to continue to read it in its 'virtual' incarnation.

Chris Pringle
Senior Publishing Editor