Volpe Center Highlights - January/February 2004
Highlighting Volpe Experts
Director's Notes |
Focus |
Safety |
Mobility |
Global Connectivity
Environmental Stewardship |
Security |
Organizational Excellence
Highlighting Volpe Experts |
Awards |
Papers and Presentations
Ms. Anya A. Carroll presents at a poster session on Railroad Infrastructure Security Systems at the 6th World Congress on Railway Research in Edinburgh, Scotland. |
Anya A. Carroll:
Domain Expert in Surface Transportation Operations
This is the first in a series of articles about the Volpe Center's National and Domain Experts. In the Director's column of this issue, Dr. Richard R. John discusses this select group and how it benefits the Center and its sponsors.
Ms. Anya A. Carroll, a civil engineer and research scientist, is a Volpe Center Domain Expert in Surface Transportation Operations. Ms. Carroll joined the Volpe Center 23 years ago, after earning a B.S. in Civil Engineering from Tufts University. She is recognized as an international authority on surface transportation safety issues related to highway and rail operations. For 15 years, Ms. Carroll has led the Center's efforts to support the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) in finding ways to reduce the number of collisions between trains and road vehicles and the resulting deaths and injuries. Due in part to the Center's work, significant reduction in the number of incidents and fatalities have occurred from 1994 through 2002: 37 percent and 42 percent, respectively. These results move the Department closer to its Action Plan performance goals of reductions by 50 percent in both categories by 2004.
The Center's work has supported numerous legislative efforts by the FRA to include active signal systems inspection, maintenance and testing, locomotive and freight car conspicuity, and railroad horn systems. More recently, this work has included evaluating the use of Intelligent Transportation Systems at highway-rail intersections as well as evaluating other obstacle-detection and intrusion-detection technologies for railroad infrastructure security.
Ms. Carroll has played a significant role in national and international symposia, workshops, and seminars that have brought together academia, railroad industry experts, and stakeholders from different modalities and nationalities in the area of rail safety research. She has frequently represented the Center and the U.S. DOT at international events in Australia, the United Kingdom, and Canada to both share the results of her research and determine lessons learned from the approaches taken by other countries. She has led efforts to analyze and define highway-rail crash problems and characteristics and to thus provide insights regarding crash causation and prevention.
Ms. Carroll uses her management, research, and technical experience to further the safety needs of the transportation enterprise. She presides over the National Academy of Sciences Transportation Research Board's Committee on Highway Rail Grade Crossings and is actively participating in the International Organizing Committee for the 8th International Level (Grade) Crossing Symposium to be held at Sheffield University, England in April 2004. She not only provides technical advice to the Center's top management, but also takes great pride in mentoring and providing technical leadership to multidisciplinary teams conducting analytic and experimental research efforts.
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