Dr. Karl Kim welcomes all to the inaugural issue of Transportation Research: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (TRIP).

Posted on Nov. 5, 2019

Swim lanes, stovepipes, and inside baseball: Fostering interdisciplinary transportation research

Welcome to the inaugural issue of Transportation Research: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (TRIP). I'm pleased and honored to present the first issue of our new journal. The intent of this publication is to promote the interdisciplinary exchange of ideas on transportation research. As swimmers understand, the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. Keeping your head down with focus and concentration is essential to research and writing. While narrow specializations or “swim lanes” are useful for building knowledge, information can become trapped within disciplinary stovepipes. Specialized language, terminology, and jargon related to methods, measures, stats, and acronyms are understood only by those “inside baseball” or deep into a specialization within transportation research. Although data and methods may be shared, there is more need for cross-disciplinary exchange among not just those working on transportation problems, but in other scientific, social, and environmental domains. We can learn from neuroscientists, spatial modelers, optimization experts, sociologists and others working on complex social problems entailing adaptive, “messy” systems. TRIP seeks to engage authors, reviewers, editorial board members, and others interested in crossing boundaries, sharing data and methods, and grappling with the intersections between science, government, industry, academia, and society. TRIP is about the movement of ideas as well as the transport of people, goods, services, and systems across space and time. To read the Full Editorial, go to https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590198219300235