HSRC News Briefs

UNC Highway Safety Research Center honored with two awards

The University of North Carolina Highway Safety Research Center (HSRC) was recently recognized with two awards — the 2007 Founders' Award from the North Carolina Transportation Hall of Fame (NCTHF), and Outstanding Web site from the Web Marketing Association.

The North Carolina Transportation Hall of Fame was founded in 2003 to recognize and promote past, present and future transportation accomplishments in North Carolina by honoring individuals, agencies, organizations and businesses. The Founder's Award was established a year later to honor excellence in transportation among any mode or field.

Additionally, the Web Marketing Association recently honored HSRC with an Outstanding Web site WebAward for outstanding achievement in Web site development.

The WebAwards is the premier annual Web site award competition that names the best Web sites in 96 industries while setting the standard of excellence for all web site development.

UNC Highway Safety Research Center contributes to the establishment of the Eastern Transportation Knowledge Network

A distinguished group of transportation librarians met at the University of North Carolina Highway Safety Research Center (HSRC) in Chapel Hill and via Web conference to establish the Eastern Transportation Knowledge Network (ETKN).

The network was created to pool resources and expertise in the transportation field in order to provide improved, more efficient library and information services to researchers and consumers by developing a cooperative library partnership across multiple organizations.

Through collaboration and resource sharing, the network aims to reduce individual organization's library operating costs, deliver new and improved services and tools to benefit the transportation community, and to ensure access to and preservation of transportation information products.

As their first project, the group voted to adopt the creation of a Digital Collaboratory of ETKN documents contributed by member libraries, to be accessible through the National Transportation Library. Goals for the Digital Collaboratory include the creation of more full- text electronic content, especially for in-demand transportation monographs and technical reports through a cooperative, selective digitization program.

The meeting was held November 9, and included representatives from the Transportation Research Board, National Transportation Library of the U.S. Department of Transportation, AASHTO, USDOT Volpe Center, Federal Highway Administration, Virginia Transportation Research Council, Transportation Connectivity Pooled Fund, Midwest Transportation Knowledge Network and Departments of Transportation from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, and Massachusetts.

For more information on the ETKN, visit http://ntl.bts.gov/networking/index.html.

Michigan Department of Transportation receives James L. Oberstar Safe Routes to School Award

The National Center for Safe Routes to School, a federal clearinghouse maintained by the UNC Highway Safety Research Center, awarded the 2007 James L. Oberstar Award to the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) for the exemplary establishment of the Michigan Safe Routes to School Program.

The award is named for Congressman James Oberstar (D-MN) to honor his dedication to America’s school children as the pioneer for the National Safe Routes to School (SRTS) Program. Oberstar, current chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, sponsored the federal Safe Routes to School legislation that strives to create safe settings where more parents and children can walk and bicycle to school.

The Michigan SRTS Program demonstrated a number of key program elements that allowed them to lay the groundwork for effective program development. Currently, 60 percent of Michigan's counties have a total of 256 registered schools that are in various stages of completing the planning process to establish SRTS programs. Registered schools then become the pool of applicants for Michigan's SRTS funding and each schools’ action plans are the basis for projects for which they request funding. MDOT maintains an open call for applications with no deadline for submittal, allowing each school to proceed at its own pace.

Established in May 2006 through funding from the Federal Highway Administration, the National Center for Safe Routes to School assists communities in enabling and encouraging children to safely walk and bicycle to school. The Center strives to equip Safe Routes to School programs with the knowledge and technical information to implement safe and successful strategies.

For more information on the James L. Oberstar Award, please visit www.saferoutesinfo.org/news_room/oberstar_award/.