Dr. Nigel H.M. Wilson, civil and environmental engineering professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will present "Using Automated Data Collection Systems to Improve Public Transport Performance: Applications at Transport for London" on Wednesday, March 6, during Volpe's next Straight from the Source event

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Finding a dream home and then hearing a loud highway just beyond the property line is a common complaint from potential home buyers. Staff at Volpe, The National Transportation Systems Center, are conducting research to understand how to reduce the amount of motor vehicle noise from roadways.

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A study recently published by Volpe, The National Transportation Systems Center, provides a deeper understanding of the broader trends that impact the severity of runway incursions. Runway incursions, which are the unauthorized presence of vehicles, pedestrians, or aircraft on runways, can range in severity from creating a tarmac delay to causing a collision.

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Dr. Aviva Brecher shares an interest in rail electromagnetic emissions and the impact of exposure on safety and health with Dr. Masateru Ikehata, a senior researcher with Japan's Railway Technical Research Institute (RTRI). Electric rail, like most electrical equipment, produces electromagnetic fields that can interfere with other electrical devices and can affect humans.

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An evolving maritime domain awareness tool is helping countries on the western coast of Africa combat human traffic smuggling, illicit drug trade, piracy, and illegal fishing on their waterways.

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Terrence M. (Terry) Sheehan, community planner and emergency transportation expert in Volpe's Center for Transportation Logistics and Security, will present "Lessons Learned from Sandy, Irene and Katrina: Restoring Normalcy to the Transportation System through Effective Emergency Response" on Thursday, February 28, during Volpe's next Transportation Trajectories event. Sheehan is a U.S. DOT Regional Transportation Representative and the lead Federal Emergency Support Function-One Official for New England, New York and New Jersey.

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Dr. Stephen Flynn, professor and founding co-director of the George J. Kostas Research Institute for Homeland Security at Northeastern University, will present "Shock and Consequences: The Case for Bolstering Infrastructure Resilience" on Tuesday, February 12, during Volpe's next Straight from the Source event.

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Volpe recently completed its first-ever Innovation Challenge, a competition for staff to receive funding to develop unique solutions to emerging transportation issues. Recognizing that today's challenges are complex, the Innovation Challenge encouraged staff to work together in multidisciplinary teams, leveraging Volpe's unique breadth and depth in expertise.

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More than 500 people die each year while trespassing on rail lines. In West Palm Beach, Florida, one particularly dangerous stretch of rail is currently the subject of a Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) and local community-based project being led by Volpe, the National Transportation Systems Center.

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Wake turbulence—the disturbed air immediately behind an aircraft—is potentially hazardous to following and nearby aircraft if not operationally accounted for. To ensure safety, wake separation standards are devised to alleviate the adverse effect of wake turbulence. This has increasingly become a significant issue at the crowded space on and above runways, as it negatively affects capacity.

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The U.S. DOT's Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program seeks innovative research proposals from small businesses to address specific research challenges facing the modal administrations. The SBIR Program Office at the Volpe Center has posted the first of two SBIR Program solicitations for fiscal year 2013, inviting small businesses to submit research proposals that address high priority goals within the U.S. DOT.

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There was a time when travel safety could be improved by training drivers and designing crash survival into vehicles. That is no longer the case, said Dr. Qi Van Eikema Hommes, senior electronics engineer in Volpe's Center for Advanced Transportation Technologies. "Your car is no longer a simple mechanical system—it may be controlled by dozens of microprocessors."

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Researchers who conduct naturalistic driving studies to understand driver performance face the proverbial needle-in-the-haystack problem. Cars outfitted with sensors and video cameras record driver behavior and road and traffic conditions, providing massive amounts of naturalistic data. To shed light on driver safety, researchers must comb through huge datasets to locate the safety-critical events.

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During Hurricane Sandy, Volpe community planner Terry Sheehan assisted in disaster relief efforts. Sheehan, a part of Volpe's Center for Transportation Logistics and Security, was responsible for coordinating the transportation of life saving and life sustaining supplies such as food, water, blankets, and generators to affected areas, coordinating the movement of utility crews from other states to affected areas, and assisting in organizing housing for responders who were sent on-site.

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International cooperation between the United States, Japan, and the European Union is helping accelerate the research and development of intelligent transportation systems (ITS) standards and technologies by fostering collaboration between professionals on three continents. Volpe transportation planner Elizabeth (Eli) Machek recently traveled to Japan as part of the cooperative efforts of the U.S.-Japan ITS Task Force.

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The findings from a decade of wake turbulence research are helping reduce airport delays, shorten final approaches to airports, and reduce fuel burn and emissions. Wake turbulence, the movement of air created by an aircraft in motion, may be an esoteric field of study, but the body of knowledge from this field of research has enabled the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to make operational changes in the National Airspace System (NAS), allowing for smaller minimum aircraft separation distances in some situations and increased rates of takeoffs and landings on runways.

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Dr. David Y. Jeong, senior mechanical engineer in the Center for Infrastructure Systems and Engineering at Volpe, The National Transportation Systems Center, will present "Cracked Up—Broken Rails are Serious Business" on Thursday, December 6, during our next Transportation Trajectories conversation.

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You are cordially invited to join us in person or via webinar for our next Transportation Trajectories conversation, "Advancing Aircraft Wake Turbulence Research to Achieve Aviation Capacity and Safety Objectives," with Steven Lang, Director of the Center for Air Traffic Systems and Operations at Volpe. The event is at 12:00 noon on Wednesday, November 28, and is a part of Transportation Trajectories, Volpe's ongoing seminar series featuring Volpe experts.

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Victor M. Mendez, U.S. Department of Transportation Federal Highway (FHWA) administrator, recently spent a day at Volpe, The National Transportation Systems Center, to learn about Volpe's FHWA work portfolio and talk to staff about innovation. During the administrator's visit, Volpe experts briefed Mendez on a variety of efforts, including Volpe's role in the second Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP2) and efforts in economic analysis, professional capacity building, transportation planning, environmental stewardship, and program evaluation.

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The need for improved traffic incident management is urgent. Each year, dozens of emergency responders, highway workers, and tow operators are killed while responding to traffic incidents; countless more are injured or experience near-miss situations. Moving traffic threatens the safety of first responders as they provide medical assistance to victims and investigate the cause of a crash. Highway workers and tow operators are similarly at risk as they clear the scene and work to resume normal operations. Unexpected slowing, stopping, or distraction caused by the primary crash scene represent hazards to other drivers as well.

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We are currently experiencing an explosion of "big data." Big data is "a collection of digital data sets so large and complex that it is beyond the capabilities of current database management tools," said Robert C. Johns, associate administrator and director of Volpe, The National Transportation Systems Center.

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In August, over 100 representatives from the airline industry and government gathered for the Air Transport Association's communications and navigation information exchange. Hosted for the third year by Volpe, The National Transportation Systems Center, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, participants from across the U.S. and abroad engaged in topics ranging from the technical—for instance, the human factors considerations of data communications technologies—to the broad—including the status for Japan's air traffic management system.

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You are cordially invited to join us in person or via webinar for our next Transportation Trajectories conversation, "Better Means to Anticipate What May Go Wrong," with Dr. Qi Van Eikema Hommes, Senior Electronics Engineer, Center for Advanced Transportation Technologies at Volpe at 12:00 noon on Wednesday, November 14, 2012. Featuring Volpe Center experts, Transportation Trajectories is a new dialogue on advancing transportation innovation for the public good.

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Fires in vehicles can pose a significant threat to life and property. Fires may result from vehicle crashes or may ignite within engine compartments or wheel wells when mechanical systems fail. With its focus on safety, the U.S. Department of Transportation is interested in mitigating the risk to life and property from vehicle fires.

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You are invited to join us in person or via webinar for our next Straight from the Source presentation, "Every Day Counts: An Innovation Initiative," with Federal Highway Administrator Victor M. Mendez, at 12:00 p.m. on Thursday, October 25. Every Day Counts is designed to identify and deploy innovation aimed at shortening project delivery, enhancing the safety of our roadways, and protecting the environment.

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It's no secret that small businesses are critical to the U.S. economy. The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) reports that small businesses represent over 99 percent of all U.S. firms and create over 60 percent of the net new jobs in the U.S. The entrepreneurial spirit of small businesses provides a thriving hotbed for innovation, but many lack the funding and resources to compete with large companies.

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Volpe, The National Transportation Systems Center, was recently showcased on a new cable TV series, Your Federal Government. The 30-minute episode features Director Robert Johns discussing Volpe's history and our unique role in the federal government, functioning as both a consultant and a federal agency.

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When sleep takes a back seat for a railroader, the on-the-job consequences can be fatal. A new interactive, multimedia website aims to reduce on-the-job fatigue by educating railroad employees about the importance of healthy sleep and helping them make informed decisions about sleep to improve workplace performance.

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The sun is shining, skies are clear, and you remember seeing a weather map free of storms. Yet your flight sits on the taxiway for what seems to be a long time, queued for takeoff. A recent study completed for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) suggests that your delay is likely caused by another flight's missed departure or arrival.

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Imagine that a car ahead of you on the highway sends an alert to your vehicle, warning you of upcoming slippery conditions that are causing drivers to slam on their brakes. This situation is an example of wireless technologies currently being tested that could transform automotive safety by enabling vehicles to exchange messages.

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Transportation planning in the United States is facing a compelling need to add a significant focus to meet the growing demands of "megaregions." According to the Center for Quality Growth and Regional Development, megaregions are typically defined as "large networks of metropolitan centers and surrounding areas connected through cultural, environmental, [and] economic characteristics, as well as infrastructure," said William Lyons, principal technical advisor for transportation planning at Volpe, The National Transportation Systems Center.

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The results of a pilot program intended to increase nonmotorized transportation showed that people walked or biked an estimated 32 million miles that they would have otherwise driven, suggesting that community planners should seriously consider "active" transportation as an integral solution for reducing congestion and improving the environment.

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Craig Middlebrook, Acting Administrator for the U.S. Saint Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation (SLSDC), recently spoke as a part of Volpe's Straight from the Source transportation thought leadership lecture series. Middlebrook discussed the tradition of innovation that flourishes at the Seaway, where leading-edge engineers and stakeholders respond to the many geographical and international challenges they encounter.

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"The worst experiences give you the best stories," said Cynthia Lee, an electronics engineer at Volpe, The National Transportation Systems Center. For over 20 years, Lee has been involved with many of Volpe's acoustics measurement projects, collecting, analyzing, and modeling acoustic data for over 40 National Parks to assess noise impacts from flights overhead

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Video highlights and a summary report of Volpe's recent expert panel on human-machine interactions are now available online.

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Last week, officials from the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), Research and Innovative Technology Administration (RITA), and Volpe, the National Transportation Systems Center traveled to Pueblo, Colorado, to visit Transportation Technology Center, Inc. (TTCI), the test track used by FRA.

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Automated or autonomous? That is the question, said Gary Ritter, director of the Center for Advanced Transportation Technologies at Volpe, The National Transportation Systems Center. Ritter recently spoke to the transportation community during Transportation Trajectories, a lecture series featuring Volpe experts.

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More than 30 million older drivers will be on our roads, and one in four drivers will be age 65 or older by 2030. Today's older drivers face significant lifestyle, environmental, and motor vehicle changes, making the need for robust driver education courses critical. The AARP, in collaboration with MIT AgeLab, created the National Older Driver Safety Expert Panel to advise on curriculum content and serve as a sounding board in the development of a new AARP Driver Safety course.

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You are cordially invited to join us in person or via webinar for our next Transportation Trajectories conversation, "The Challenge of Transportation Planning for Megaregions" with Bill Lyons, Principal Technical Advisor for Transportation Planning at the Volpe Center, at 12:00 noon on Tuesday, July 24, 2012. Featuring Volpe Center experts, Transportation Trajectories is a new dialogue on advancing transportation innovation for the public good.

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To reduce the probability of airport accidents, Volpe recently completed the technical performance on-site testing of a new low-cost ground surveillance system at Manchester-Boston Regional Airport. In June, a Volpe human factors expert will collect data from local air traffic controllers—daily users of the system—to provide a comprehensive user and operational evaluation of the system in the air traffic control environment.

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A recent analysis has shown that the Federal Railroad Administration's (FRA) Confidential Close Call Reporting System (C3RS) program has made significant improvements in both safety and safety culture since its introduction in 2007, including a 31 percent decrease in derailments at one demonstration pilot site. The decrease in derailments improves safety as well as productivity since an increase in the number of cars moved between incidents means more work is being performed.

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Developing an efficient and effective multi-modal freight system in large metropolitan areas requires collaboration and coordination among many stakeholders, as well as concerted, focused efforts to support this coordination. Working for the Minnesota Department of Transportation and the Metropolitan Council on freight collaboration in the Minneapolis-Saint Paul region, Volpe produced a number of reports that can provide guides to other states and metropolitan regions on how to improve freight efficiency, effectiveness, and collaboration among freight stakeholders.

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For a number of years after the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) was created in 2002, the agency generally screened all passengers in the same way, following a model of risk-based security that screened general passengers to the same degree as elected officials or travelers with top-secret government clearance. "It didn't matter who you were then," said George Naccara, federal security director at Logan International Airport, "and now it just doesn't make sense anymore."

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Volpe, The National Transportation Systems Center, established the first Green Team within the Department of Transportation (DOT) in 2006, leading the charge to advance a culture of conservation, recycling, and reuse. Each year, Volpe's team orchestrates a campus-wide clean-up week, known as Green Week, which has helped boost Volpe's recycling from 3 percent of total waste in 2006 to over 60 percent of total waste today

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You are cordially invited to join us in person or via webinar for our next Transportation Trajectories conversation, "Automated Vehicles—Coming Soon to a Driveway Near You?" with Gary T. Ritter, Director, Center for Advanced Transportation Technologies at the Volpe Center, at 12:00 noon on Tuesday, June 26, 2012. Featuring Volpe Center experts, Transportation Trajectories is a new dialogue on advancing transportation innovation for the public good.

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Recently, a team at the Volpe Center partnered with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) to develop and launch the SaferBus app—the first mobile application developed by the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT)—to enable users to view the safety records of bus companies.

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During a recent technical exchange, Diana Gomez, deputy district director of operations at Caltrans, shared her perspectives on transportation system management and "practicing the pyramid," California's efforts to manage the transportation system from planning through operations and maintenance to improvement.

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Trains Magazine recently featured Volpe senior research engineer and train crashworthiness expert David Tyrell in an article on crash energy management.

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Increasingly, humans are being asked to interact with complex automated transportation management and control functions in all modes of transportation. A panel of leading experts convened at Volpe, The National Transportation Systems Center, on April 13 to discuss key safety and policy issues pertaining to the planning, implementation, and unintended consequences of automated transportation systems.

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Straight from the Source

An innovation information exchange for the transportation community

Risk-Based Security and Enhanced Behavior Detection/Analysis

with

George N. Naccara
Federal Security Director at Logan International Airport
Transportation Security Administration
U.S. Department of Homeland Security

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Volpe, The National Transportation Systems Center, recently hosted Eisenhower Fellows from Colombia, Indonesia, and China to engage on a number of critical global transportation issues. Each year, the Eisenhower Fellowships select two groups of outstanding mid-career Fellows drawn from nearly 50 countries to travel to the U.S. to participate in an intensive, individually designed program in the Fellows' field of expertise. Their goal is to link leaders from around the world and to help them "to achieve consequential outcomes across sectors and borders."

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Creating and maximizing a shared infrastructure like those used in carsharing ventures may hold an answer to low-cost transportation innovation.

In today's fast-paced information age, innovating with excess capacity—assets that have already been purchased but that sit idle when not in use—can achieve speed and scale in the transportation sector, said Robin Chase, founder and former CEO of Zipcar and GoLoco.

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The United States is at a challenging juncture for transportation infrastructure investment.

"Our transportation system, built largely in the '60s, '70s, and '80s, is deteriorating faster than our ability to keep up," said Kirk T. Steudle, president of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) and director of the Michigan Department of Transportation. In Michigan alone, the transportation system is deteriorating at a loss of $1 billion a year in asset value.

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Volpe, The National Transportation Systems Center, has released a new publication for 2012 entitled "Meet Volpe." This dynamic 18-page narrative provides an overview of Volpe's capabilities and expertise, showcases a sampling of Volpe's accomplishments from the past year, and illustrates some of the ways in which Volpe achieves its purpose of advancing transportation innovation for the public good.

"Meet Volpe" is available online as a 508-compliant, printer-friendly PDF (single-page view) and as a web-friendly PDF (two-page view), which appears best when viewed in Full Screen Mode.

To request printed copies of "Meet Volpe," please contact the Volpe Communications Team.

The DOT Safety Council is leading a transformative shift in DOT's safety culture by breaking down organizational silos and leveraging best safety practices throughout the department, according to Volpe's Dr. Stephen Popkin, an expert in the field of transportation human factors and an executive agent to the council. The council moves DOT's commitment to safety to a higher level by instituting cross-modal safety discussion and action. Chaired by Transportation Deputy Secretary John Porcari, this council, composed of the heads of each DOT modal administration, their senior safety officers, and senior OST officials, strives to be widely recognized as the world's leader for safety in transportation.

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The DOT Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program is seeking proposals from small businesses in eight high-priority research areas. The solicitation, to be released April 2, 2012, by Volpe, The National Transportation Systems Center, seeks innovative research proposals from small businesses to address specific research challenges facing the modal administrations.

The solicitation contains research topic descriptions from the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), and Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Research areas include in-vehicle warning technology to alert drivers regarding traffic conditions in temporary work zones, enhancing intersection safety in urban areas through the development of a pedestrian auto enforcement program, creating autonomous inspection technologies for rail track safety, and developing a spatial disorientation flight simulation prototype.

This program has been administered by Volpe for more than 25 years.

The DOT SBIR Program Office invites small businesses to submit research proposals that address the research problem statements described in the solicitation. The submission deadline is June 5, 2012.

The Federal Laboratory Consortium for Technology Transfer (FLC) Northeast regional meeting convened at Volpe, The National Transportation Systems Center, on March 20-22, 2012.

These regional and national meetings help accomplish the FLC's mission of promoting and facilitating the rapid movement of federal laboratory research results and technologies into the mainstream of the U.S. economy by bringing laboratories together with potential users of government-developed technologies.

A highlight of this year's meeting was the Volpe showcase tour, which featured key capabilities and projects: the Human Factors Laboratory, the Air Traffic Flow Management System, the Aviation Environmental Design Tool, the Cyber Security Laboratory, and the Maritime Safety and the Security Information System.

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It is well-accepted that safety culture and safety performance are inextricably linked. When the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) realized in 2004 that safety in rail had plateaued, they embarked on an effort to improve safety culture, and thus improve overall rail safety. FRA came to Volpe to assess the effectiveness of their Clear Signal for Action program, which was designed to help change safety culture at the grassroots level of an organization.

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Making a mistake at work is something everyone tries to avoid, but the reality is that it happens. People make mistakes all the time and most are minor, but occasionally the impact is significant. At four railroad carriers involved in a pilot safety program, employees are encouraged to report their mistakes in an effort to learn about unsafe conditions before they result in harm. Volpe currently manages the program's implementation and evaluation and serves as an independent and expert advisor.

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Professor Jose Gomez-Ibanez collects cities, "and I'll keep collecting until a find a solution to congestion," he said. The Harvard professor of urban planning and public policy recently spoke at Volpe's Straight from the Source series, where he revealed his insights on urbanization, modal shift, and congestion. Drawing particularly from his research in cities such as Jakarta, Ho Chi Minh City, and Mumbai, Gomez-Ibanez pointed to the inherent conflict between increasing urbanization and smart transportation planning.

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The aviation community is taking on ambitious goals for alternative jet fuels, tackling complex scientific, economic, and environmental issues to find sustainable alternatives to petroleum in the near future.

Among these ambitious goals, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) aims to achieve carbon neutral growth in the United States starting in 2020 and have one billion gallons of alternative aviation fuel in use by 2018, reported Dr. Kristin C. Lewis, an environmental biologist at Volpe, The National Transportation Systems Center. The global industry has similar aggressive goals, with the International Civil Aviation Organization aiming for carbon-neutral growth starting in 2020 and the International Air Transport Association targeting 10 percent replacement of aviation fuels with alternatives by 2017, said Dr. Lewis.

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"If you want to buy an American car, you need to buy it from a Japanese company," said Stephen Carmel, a Senior Vice President at Maersk Line Limited. Carmel spoke about the "made in" label's irrelevance in today's global economy during a February 16 Straight from the Source presentation at Volpe, The National Transportation Systems Center. Carmel explained that a recent Federal Reserve Bank study found that the Toyota Sequoia, from a Japanese company, was found to be made of 80 percent U.S. content and the Jeep Patriot, from a U.S. company was only 66 percent U.S. content.

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About Transportation Trajectories

Featuring Volpe Center experts, Transportation Trajectories is a new dialogue on advancing transportation innovation for the public good.

You are cordially invited to Join us in person or via webinar for our next Transportation Trajectories conversation. Join us as Volpe Center staff describe their work, share their knowledge of the transportation enterprise and respond to questions from participants.

About the Event

Weaving silos into tapestry: Cross-modal safety through the U.S. DOT Safety Council

with Stephen M. Popkin, Ph.D.
Director of the Center of Human Factors Research and System Applications at the Volpe Center

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