Over the past decade, highway and urban congestion have garnered the attention of commuters as well as government entities. Facility joint-use, by expanding public transit using existing rail corridors, is one approach to solving the constellation of problems occurring as offshoots of congestion. The potential and feasibility of shared use of rail corridors, between light rail vehicles (associated with public transit) and freight railroads, to function compatibly are still being investigated, even as current "near shared-track" operations are evolving.

"TRB's Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP) Report 117: Design, Operation, and Safety of At-Grade Crossings of Exclusive Busways explores planning, designing, and operating various kinds of busways through roadway intersections. The report examines at-grade intersections along busways within arterial street medians; physically separated, side-aligned busways; busways on separate rights-of-way; and bus-only ramps. The intersections highlighted include highway intersections, midblock pedestrian crossings, and bicycle crossings. Appendixes A through I of the contractor's final report were published as TCRP Web-Only Document 36"--Publisher's website

The architect's primary source for information on designing for egress, evacuation, and life safety, Egress Design Solutions, Emergency Evacuation and Crowd Management Planning, is written by proven experts on egress issues. Meacham and Tubbs are engineers with Arup, an international firm with a stellar reputation for quality design and engineering. Their book examines egress solutions in terms of both prescriptive and performance-based code issues. A portion of the book focuses on techniques for providing egress design solutions and for coordinating egress systems with other critical life safety systems. Another part reviews historic and recent tragic life-loss fire events. As such, this is easily the most comprehensive take on the subject, written especially for architects.

TRB’s Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP) Report 153: Guidelines for Providing Access to Public Transportation Stations is intended to aid in the planning, developing, and improving of access to high capacity commuter rail, heavy rail, light rail, bus rapid transit, and ferry stations. The report includes guidelines for arranging and integrating various station design elements.

This Guidebook will aid states in developing public-private partnerships with private freight railroads to permit operation of passenger services over shared-use rail corridors. The Guidebook should encourage the broad acceptance of improved principles, processes, and methods to support agreements on access, allocation of operation and maintenance costs, capacity allocation, operational issues, future responsibilities for infrastructure improvements, and other fundamental issues that will affect the ultimate success of shared-use passenger and freight agreements between public and private railroad stakeholders.