Human Factors and Ergonomics have made a considerable contribution to the research, design, development, operation and analysis of transportation systems which includes road and rail vehicles and their complementary infrastructure, aviation and maritime transportation. This book presents recent advances in the Human Factors aspects of Transportation. These advances include accident analysis, automation of vehicles, comfort, distraction of drivers (understanding of distraction and how to avoid it), environmental concerns, in-vehicle systems design, intelligent transport systems, methodological developments, new systems and technology, observational and case studies, safety, situation awareness, skill development and training, warnings and workload. This book brings together the most recent human factors work in the transportation domain, including empirical research, human performance and other types of modeling, analysis, and development. The issues facing engineers, scientists, and other practitioners of human factors in transportation research are becoming more challenging and more critical. The common theme across these sections is that they deal with the intersection of the human and the system. Moreover, many of the chapter topics cross section boundaries, for instance by focusing on function allocation in NextGen or on the safety benefits of a tower controller tool. This is in keeping with the systemic nature of the problems facing human factors experts in rail and road, aviation and maritime research– it is becoming increasingly important to view problems not as isolated issues that can be extracted from the system environment, but as embedded issues that can only be understood as a part of an overall system.

The purpose of this research is to investigate the state of ferry transit operations in North America and to develop practitioner guidance for the planning, marketing, operation, and management of ferry transportation systems. The research is intended to present a uniform understanding of the status of ferries as well as options for how to approach planning and operational activities. This guidebook is intended for use by operators large and small, in publicly or privately owned operations, for the development of ferry operations as a solution to a transportation need. This research was developed through literature searches of previous studies, reviews of existing government and state documents, telephone interviews with a broad selection of ferry operators, in depth case studies of eight ferry operators and ferry systems geographically dispersed across the North American continent, and peer review of the interim documents. The main body of this report contains the case studies and a guidebook. Two appendices provide additional information to support the work documented within the main body of the report. Appendix A provides a listing of literature review sources, and Appendix B documents the results of a survey of ferry operators that was developed and implemented in this research.