The New England Transportation Consortium (NETC) is a research cooperative between the state DOTs of Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont. VTrans is currently the state lead.The NETC is a valuable regional partnership for the identification, prosecution and dissemination of shared transportation research initiatives. The NETC represents:
- Financial leveraging opportunities and regional partnerships.
- Stronger partnerships between university faculty and state DOTs.
- User-defined, diverse research topics.
- Opportunities for research dissemination and training to practitioners in the field.
Now entering its third decade, the NETC was developed to help New England states meet their special research needs by pooling resources and expertise. The NETC is now a well-established successful multistate partnership. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) jointly managed the program through December 1994, at which point the Region I Office of the Federal Highway Administration ( FHWA) assumed management of the program until the states developed a permanent management structure for the program in 1995. Grant management and coordination has been housed at a number of institutions in the past 15 years including the University of Connecticut and its home through Summer 2011, the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth. Since the Fall of 2011, the University of Vermont Transportation Research Center has provided coordination services for the NETC.