Series contains records created and maintained by the front office of the Transportation Department (TPD), successor offices, and divisions. The records relate to managing transportation research, policy, sector program work, oversight and business planning, and collaboration with external institutions.

Types of records comprising the series include: internal memoranda sent or received by Bank transport directors, senior advisers, sector staff, and staff from other Bank units including its superior, Operations Policy Vice Presidency (OSPVP) and regional units; letters with external organizations; internal and external reports; drafts and published articles and working paper; proposals; minutes and meeting notes; Board papers; handwritten notes; newsletters; and external brochures and publications.

The earliest material in the series dating from 1969 and the early 1970s relates to highways, transport regulation, aviation, and railway subsectors. Railway sector information is organized by country including European countries and developing countries.

Many records relate to transport sector projects and sector work. There are memoranda and reports about the transport sector support strategy paper by the Transport and Water Department (TWD) in 1983 and operational reviews of the Bank's transport sector work in the late 1980s. Correspondence and reports relate to urban transport, traffic simulation, transport pricing, construction industry, generalized road roughness index for worldwide use, road roughness measurement and application in Australia, traffic flow theory, and rural road user costs; some of these reports are country-focused. Files related to research include a paper presented by Director Christopher Willoughby on Transport Research in Developing Countries, discussion paper "Transportation Research at the World Bank: Opportunities for Collaboration," and memoranda discussing transport research program, future needs, impact on Bank policies and operation, and TRP strategy objectives.

Other topics covered are project success cases, transport project completion reports (e.g., Nepal Second Highway Project - P010112, Yugoslavia Fifth Railway Project -P009180), project implementation reviews and performance audit reports (PPARs), involuntary resettlement in Bank-financed transportation projects,structural adjustment lending (SAL) operational features paper, comments on Operations Evaluation Department (OED) annual review of PPAR transportation chapter and lessons learned from PPAR review, and other matters. Four volumes of problem project reviews are mostly copies of memoranda between regional vice presidents (RVPs) and senior vice president (SVP), Operations (SVP), or regional unit staff with copy to the transport sector unit director. These volumes pertain to railway projects, inland waterways,and various other sector projects.

There are also correspondence, reports, publications, and other records that relate to the Bank's liaison with external organizations in the transport sector, primarily through Senior Adviser Vincent Hogg. Organizations include the International Maritime Organization, International Road Federation, International Road Transport Union, national research institutions and others. Records pertain to conferences or annual meetings about transport policies, research about transportation systems, and other collaborative activities.

Records in the series also relate to the sector's business plans, work programs, and budgets, and transport sector units' comments and responses to several Bank-wide initiatives including organization manual statement on Bank financing of recurrent costs, SAL, and SAL procedures. Some files contain widely distributed information about Bank sector departments' initiatives and collaboration with other sectors and Bank departments such as environment and Economic Development Institute (EDI). In terms of environment, the records concern drafting environmental guidelines for port and harbor projects, training course, environmental procedures in Bank operations, and comments on key environment papers.