Appendix B
Stakeholder Input

As required by the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users, this Transportation Research, Development and Technology Strategic Plan incorporates input from a broad range of Departmental stakeholders, including State and local transportation agencies, not-for-profit institutions, academia, and the private sector.

Primary outreach occurred through the posting of a working draft of the plan on the Department’s Docket Management System at http://dms.dot.gov. At this site, stakeholders were able to access the draft and submit comments. To obtain further stakeholder input, the Department published a Federal Register Notice on July 12, 2006. The Department also announced the availability of the draft plan through RITA’s website (with a link to the Department’s Docket Management System) and disseminated a notice of availability for comment on July 11 through TRB’s E-Newsletter. Through these mechanisms, the Department requested comments from stakeholders in the following specific areas:

• The relevance of the Department’s emerging research priorities to the Nation’s most pressing transportation challenges.
• Future directions for Departmental research.
• Ways to minimize unnecessary research duplication. The comments received are posted at: http://dms.dot.gov/search/searchResultsSimple.cfm (Docket #25247)

Comments included the following:

Overall Comments

• Commend DOT for preparing a multiyear strategic RD&T plan.
• Multiple comments on options for organizing or connecting RD&T programs and projects to goals and strategies.
• Continue emphasis on standards development, transit safety, and emergency preparedness.
• Place greater emphasis on RD&T supporting infrastructure preservation and durability.
• There is no obvious duplication of highway research with that of State DOTs.

Requests for Additional Information

• Provide more information on collaboration with other departments. Addressed in Chapter 9.
• Provide more information on DOT internal RD&T coordination. Addressed in Chapter 10.
• Provide more information on metrics and performance. Addressed in Chapter 10.
• Provide more information on the historical background for transportation RD&T.
• Provide information on the deployment of research results.
• Discuss DOT’s unique role in highway RD&T.
• Acknowledge constraints on strategic RD&T planning.
• Provide more details on RD&T programs that will support DOT’s emerging research priorities.
• Include the role of transportation libraries in information sharing and dissemination of research results.

Need for Additional Research

• Support further research in advanced vehicle technologies for safety.
• Support maritime and policy research.
• Accelerate development and deployment of fuel efficiency technologies for commercial aviation.
• Include research and development initiatives to advance real-time traffic data collection and dissemination.
• Further research on human factors in hazmat incidents, train control systems, standardized measurements for puncture-resistant tank cars, and remote monitoring.
• Research on transportation impacts on climate change.
• Research on unintended consequences to pedestrians of the reduction in sound emitted by hybrid and future vehicles.