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Volpe Center Highlights - May/June 2003

Director's Notes

Director's Notes | Focus | Safety | Mobility and Economic Growth
Human and Natural Environment | Organizational Excellence | Homeland Security
Awards | Papers and Presentations

Transit Safety and Security - An Evolving Role

For emergency response plans to succeed, there must be a seamless flow of information between people and agencies responding to disasters. Ensuring that this coordination is in place takes advanced planning. This issue of Highlights features the Volpe Center's support of the Federal Transit Administration, as it responds to the challenge of ensuring that communities can effectively respond to emergencies.

The 'Connecting Communities' forums--developed and administered for the FTA by Volpe--encourages a community's emergency response personnel to meet, to share information, and to learn how to tackle problems together. These forums exemplify the Volpe Center's ability to provide a link for different organizations that need to come together to develop a unified perspective.

This issue of Highlights also describes how the Volpe Center helps transit agencies to include safety and security concerns in their planning. Volpe teams provided such support recently in San Juan, Puerto Rico for a new rail transit system and in 2002 for the transit system that was used to transport Olympic games spectators in Salt Lake City, Utah. Volpe Center engineers are also playing a leading role in providing guidelines for transit agencies that are planning to introduce alternative fuel vehicles. In another important safety effort, the Center has published a well-received assessment of FTA's Drug and Alcohol program.

The Volpe Center's support to FTA began in the 1970s when it was called the Urban Mass Transit Administration. The achievements of space exploration created a new sense of possibilities for solving the nation's other challenges. In urban and transportation arenas there was an interest in developing transit solutions, especially in providing fast urban transit links that would help alleviate congestion, noise, and air pollution, and a strong focus on how urban transportation could influence how cities thrive. New mass transit systems were being planned and built; Volpe developed methods for stabilizing soils and instrumenting underground structures to detect ground motion, and evaluated tunneling methods for slurry wall construction. A major engineering effort was devoted to urban rail noise reduction. Volpe staff also helped transit authorities investigate electromagnetic interference on new subway lines; this has become critical to the safety of modern control systems. The transit portion of the Transportation Technology Center, a research and testing facility in Pueblo, Colorado, was developed and run by Volpe Center staff.

At the same time, advanced, innovative technologies for urban transit were emerging. Volpe teams performed engineering evaluations and socioeconomic assessments for automated guideway systems, such as people movers that introduced driverless vehicles that operate over exclusive guideways--in congested downtown areas, such as Los Angeles, St. Paul, Detroit, and Miami--and took the lead in developing and testing prototype high-speed transit systems such as the Urban Tracked Air Cushion Vehicle.

Inexpensive ways to improve service and expand ridership were in high demand. In the 1970s and 1980s, the Center served as the evaluation arm for FTA's Service and Methods Demonstration Program. More than 70 demonstration projects and case studies of innovative management and service approaches in use throughout the country were evaluated. The demonstrations covered accessibility for elderly and disabled riders, user subsidies, paratransit variations, fare and pricing policies, reserved lanes for buses and carpools, and transit malls. During this time, the Center established its reputation as an impartial technical resource.

As new technologies and issues emerge, the Center keeps pace. In the areas of operations, environmental streamlining, and intelligent transportation systems, Volpe teams supply FTA with a range of services as diverse as analysis, vehicle testing, policy development, outreach, and training. The Center's comprehensive approach and multidisciplinary capabilities will enable our staff to continue meeting the evolving needs of FTA and other agencies.

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