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Page 71
Suggested Citation:"Chapter 7." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2014. Tools for Communicating Railroad-DOT Mitigation Strategies. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/22250.
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Page 71
Page 72
Suggested Citation:"Chapter 7." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2014. Tools for Communicating Railroad-DOT Mitigation Strategies. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/22250.
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Page 72
Page 73
Suggested Citation:"Chapter 7." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2014. Tools for Communicating Railroad-DOT Mitigation Strategies. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/22250.
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Page 73

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CHAPTER 7 Next Steps: Care and Feeding of the Products in the Future The care and feeding of the products include keeping the lessons and the content updated to reflect current issues and solutions. It will also include keeping the contents in the library updated and ensuring that the COI is active and collaboratively engaged in healthy discussions and in finding win-win solutions to issues. The relationship between transportation agencies and railroads is similar to the relationships between other organizations that have different objectives. In this case, the business differences are even more prominent because one is a public agency and the other is a private entity. The partnering and collaboration that have been established will need to be nurtured for a few years until the majority of the practices are integrated into daily activities and become routine, and partnering and collaboration become second nature to both parties. The continuation and fostering of the collaborative environment are essential to facilitate and expedite the implementation of several of the project innovations to address most of the current issues being faced by the parties. Moving forward, one can realistically expect that (1) with the right support and facilitation, several of the common issues currently being faced by transportation agencies and railroads can be resolved, and the innovative practices addressing these issues can become part of routine activities; (2) some of the challenges may transform into other challenges; and (3) other new challenges will arise. Keep Information Pertinent and Updated Ensuring that the materials in the Collaborative Solutions Suite (lessons and library) remain pertinent is important. The contents in the virtual library will need to be regularly updated to reflect current solutions to the challenges faced by the transportation agency and railroad community. Continuing the COI and supporting the continued collaboration and brainstorming of issues will help ensure that current successful solutions are included in the lessons and library. COI members should continue to be engaged in discussing issues and solutions. Resources should be allocated to facilitate the brainstorming of solutions to new challenges, and technical support and funding should be provided to championing and implementing these new solutions. The solutions can be improved through pilot testing and the incorporation of feedback from the results of such pilot testing and early adopter experiences. Using such feedback, existing training lessons can be updated, and new training lessons should be developed and shared nationally. Information and resources pertaining to the challenges and the related solutions should be added to the library. In-person training can be held to expose stakeholders to these new solutions. As appropriate, variations to the approach suggested in Chapter 6 can be adopted to meet specific needs and different situations. 65

Spread the Collaboration Systematically To catalyze the successful adoption of best practices, the collaboration and partnering should be catapulted to the national level. Achieving a national scope will require that the collaboration that has been created between COI members is spread to a majority of states and to the major railroads in each of those states. The strategy proposed in the final report on communication and collaboration (1) can be very effective in spreading the environment of partnering and collaboration. The report discusses establishing the COI that was formed as part of the present project as a central COI. With the right facilitation and support, this central COI could continue to keep alive the partnering and collaborative discussions between the stakeholders. The COI was created to intentionally include members from all AASHTO regions. The report recommends that new members be added to this group incrementally, in a way that will extend the collaboration to the new members. The report also recommends the creation of four regional COIs to represent the four AASHTO regions (or some variation of that model). These regional COIs would include members from the central COI that are part of that region. The regional COI discussions would allow for more states and regional representatives of railroads to participate. Figure 7.1. Central and regional COIs. The interactive and collaborative model of central and regional COIs illustrated in Figure 7.1 will help create the necessary environment to discuss national issues, but it will also be conducive for the discussion of regional issues. One of the disadvantages of having a very large group is that having productive brainstorming discussions becomes difficult. The two-tiered approach ensures that all states get to participate in the conversations through regional COI discussions. Such regional groups will have fewer members, a situation which will allow for 66

more interaction and more members to contribute ideas and be heard. Successful ideas developed within these regional interactions can be recommended to the central COI for national dissemination and adoption. When major issues are identified through the regional and central COI sessions, funding could be sought for technical support for identification and detailing of the problem and issue resolution. The solutions could then be incorporated as new lessons in the web suite of products, and materials addressing the new issues and all available resources on the topic could be added to the virtual library. The in-person training supported by the web lessons will accelerate the adoption of new solutions and help institutionalize the solutions. FHWA has already considered the innovations identified by the R16 project as a candidate for support through its Every Day Counts initiative. If this initiative continues, a methodical process such as the iterative approach suggested in Chapter 6 should be considered. Rushing to get players engaged may not be the best strategy. The web suite of products should be treated like any other asset and be appropriately maintained, preserved, and enhanced. Reference Varma, Shobna, StarIsis Corporation, Gordon Proctor & Associates, Inc., and Michael L. Bradley & Associates, LLC. 2015. SHRP 2 R16A Report: Communicating Railroad–DOT Mitigation Strategies. Transportation Review Board of the National Academies, Washington, D.C. 67

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TRB’s second Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP 2) Renewal Project R16B has released a prepublication, non-edited version of a report titled Tools for Communicating Railroad-DOT Mitigation Strategies. This report summarizes the background, approach, and activities conducted in the R16 Report, along with the tools developed during the final phase of an earlier SHRP 2 project, Strategies for Improving the Project Agreement Process Between Agencies and Railroads.

SHRP 2 Renewal Project R16 also developed another supplemental report about establishing a collaborative forum between transportation agencies and railroads.

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