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  October 23, 2026
  Kimberly Vachal named director of NDSU’s Upper Great Plains Transportation
  Kimberly Vachal named director of NDSU’s Upper Great Plains Transportation Institute. Vachal will begin as director on November 2. She has been with UGPTI for nearly three decades conducting research focused on agricultural safety and traffic safety. She succeeds Denver Tolliver who is retiring after more than 40 years at NDSU, including 14 years as UGPTI’s director.
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  September 17, 2026
  A Mobility Priority Index for Data-Driven National Bridge Preservation Prioritization
  This study develops the Mobility Priority Index (MPI), a relative composite screening measure that integrates pavement roughness, bridge deck condition, current traffic exposure, and projected traffic growth.
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  August 3, 2026
  Evidence of a Highway–Rail Grade Crossing Safety Plateau Through Regime-Transition Analysis and Explainable Machine Learning
  Recent national trends, however, suggest that these gains may have slowed, raising the question of whether HRGC safety has entered a persistent plateau. This study investigates whether the historical decline in U.S. HRGC incidents has transitioned into a statistically distinct safety regime and whether the factors associated with casualty occurrence have changed following that transition.
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  July 23, 2026
  Persistent Highway–Rail Grade Crossing Incidents
  Highway–rail grade crossing (HRGC) incidents in the United States declined substantially for several decades before stabilizing in recent years. Understanding this persistence is important because future safety improvements may depend on identifying locations where incident occurrence remains resistant to further reduction.

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