Virginia Transportation Research Council

A partnership of the Virginia Department of Transportation 
and the University of Virginia since 1948

Headquartered in Charlottesville, Virginia, adjacent to the
U.Va. Grounds for the mutual benefit of VDOT and the
university

Bringing innovation to transportation

Among the nation’s leading transportation research centers, specializing in basic and applied transportation research and providing:

Promotes advances in:

More about VTRC:

• Responsible for all research at the Virginia Department of Transportation
  
  
• Funding primarily from VDOT and Federal Highway Administration
  
  
• FY 2005 budget just over $16.2 million – state and federal revenues and grants totaled approximately $12.9 million; other ancillary programs contributed about $3.26 million.

U.Va. benefits from its partnership with VDOT through VTRC’s state-of-the-art labs and equipment, the teaching expertise of its staff and the financial support for U.Va. faculty and graduate and undergraduate students, primarily in the engineering school.

VDOT, in turn, gains from U.Va.’s broad array of academic resources that can be applied to the very complex problems and issues that characterize transportation in the 21st century.

VDOT’s corporate tenets recognize RESEARCH as one of its core businesses. This means VDOT will develop and deliver a transportation research program that results in saving lives, saving time and saving money.

While not all of VTRC’s research projects lend themselves to estimating monetary benefits, for even a few of the projects it completed in FY 2005 that can be easily quantified, the total annual benefit is conservatively estimated at approximately $19 million.

These projects more than pay for the entire research program and provide a return on VDOT’s investment of nearly 50 percent in terms of its cost. The results of these projects, when fully implemented, will account for almost $100 million in returns over a five-year period.