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    <copyright>Copyright © 2026. National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.</copyright>
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    <managingEditor>tris-trb@nas.edu (Bill McLeod)</managingEditor>
    <webMaster>tris-trb@nas.edu (Bill McLeod)</webMaster>
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      <title>Quantifying and Benchmarking the Delivery Performance of U.S. Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) Transportation Projects</title>
      <link>https://rip.trb.org/View/1372384</link>
      <description><![CDATA[As policy makers and transportation officials seek alternative methods to supplement traditional funding sources to finance and deliver transportation projects, the number of public-private partnership (PPP or P3) projects in the U.S. has increased significantly over the past few decades. Scholars have compared the cost and schedule overruns of PPP projects against publicly funded projects in mature PPP markets in Europe, but the studies on the U.S. market have not been as comprehensive. The co-principal investigators (PI's) have completed a preliminary study comparing the cost and schedule overruns of 12 PPP highway projects in North America with previous research studies reporting on large-scale design-bid-build (DBB) and design-build (DB) highway projects. Preliminary results indicate that the PPP sample cost and schedule overruns were considerably smaller as compared to publicly financed large-scale DBB and DB highway projects. With the very limited sample size of the preliminary study, it is premature to draw explicit conclusions regarding the tighter control of highway construction costs and delivery schedules when projects are delivered using the PPP method. Several PPP projects have been completed in the last few years, which will allow to considerably increase the dataset in order to come up with statistically valid conclusions. The proposed study will leverage the extensive previous project delivery research completed by the co-PI's and will collect comprehensive performance data from PPP projects completed in the U.S. Project performance metrics that will be investigated include cost, schedule, safety, quality, and additional metrics that enhance economic value afforded to travelers. The quantitative PPP project performance data will be collected through a series of interviews with project executives, and then findings from previous studies of traditional delivery methods will be used for as a comparison. This study will provide statistically-valid empirical evidence for the advantages and limitations of the PPP project delivery method, as well as serve as a benchmark to compare the appropriateness of different methods to deliver transportation projects.]]></description>
      <pubDate>Wed, 21 Oct 2015 01:00:44 GMT</pubDate>
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      <title>Project 25 - Noise Exposure Response: Sleep &amp; Student Learning</title>
      <link>https://rip.trb.org/View/1364450</link>
      <description><![CDATA[Project 25's goal is to understand the impact of aircraft noise on sleep, and to develop models that predict sleep disruption for a given aircraft noise profile. Chronic sleep disturbance is associated with multiple health issues including cognitive difficulties, exhaustion, high blood pressure, diabetes, and depression. The amount of time spent in different sleep stages is important in terms of physical and psychological well being. What is not fully understood is how much aircraft noise impacts sleep in communities around airports, and how impacts due to aircraft noise compare with those due to other things (other noise sources, weight, age, stress, etc.) that are known to affect sleep. Models that predict the probability of being in different sleep stages given different profiles of night-time noise exposure are being examined, as are models that predict awakenings. The aim is to build on these and other models and incorporate a better characterization of how noise characteristics, for example, loudness and rate of onset, affect sleep and time spent in different sleep stages. By coupling the resulting sleep disturbance models with noise prediction tools, it will be possible to show, e.g., potential awakening patterns in communities for a wide range of different airport and air traffic scenarios. The model will be tuned to produce results that replicate those observed in field studies (usually conscious awakenings) and in laboratory studies (both awakenings and sleep structure). The community response simulation will help us quantify how much and what type of data should be collected in future sleep disturbance studies to fully validate the proposed higher-fidelity models. With the most recent U.S. field study dating back to 1996, and when compared to the sleep disturbance efforts of other, especially European, countries, U.S. research on the effects of aircraft noise on sleep has lagged over the past 15 years, while aircraft noise has continued to evolve. Within this period, air traffic has changed significantly, with substantial increases in traffic volume, on one hand, and significant improvements in noise levels of single aircraft, on the other. Due to inter-cultural differences, results from studies performed outside the U.S. may not be transferred 1:1 to U.S. domestic airports. Therefore, it is important that U.S. field studies be conducted to acquire current sleep disturbance data for varying degrees of noise exposure. It is one major objective of Project 25 to suggest an optimal study design for a U.S. field study on the effects of aircraft noise on sleep based on the current scientific knowledge in both the noise effects research and the sleep research area.]]></description>
      <pubDate>Sat, 08 Aug 2015 01:01:09 GMT</pubDate>
      <guid>https://rip.trb.org/View/1364450</guid>
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      <title>Impacts of Connected Vehicles and Automated Vehicles on State and Local Transportation Agencies--Task-Order Support. Evaluation Guidance for Automated Vehicle Pilot and Demonstration Projects

</title>
      <link>https://rip.trb.org/View/1359248</link>
      <description><![CDATA[No abstract provided.]]></description>
      <pubDate>Sat, 27 Jun 2015 01:00:48 GMT</pubDate>
      <guid>https://rip.trb.org/View/1359248</guid>
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