Volpe Journal 30th Anniversary - A Special Edition
Winter 2001
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Transportation plays a major role in America's economy. An efficient, modern transportation system both creates and supports engines of economic growth. One of the DOT's primary goals is maintaining a comprehensive and integrated system that serves citizens and businesses and keeps our economy competitive. Achieving this goal requires innovative thinking from a skilled, committed, and energized transportation community. The Volpe Center works to foster this environment by offering opportunities to share knowledge and information, encouraging development and application of the latest technologies, and supporting professional capacity building. By fostering a climate of innovation, the Center's activities help the nation's transportation enterprise to address changing demands and explore new opportunities.
The Volpe Center understands the value of knowledge, particularly how knowledge can translate into making our transportation system more efficient and more cost effective. The Center's systems approach allows comprehensive information sharing across all of its functional areas, and its commitment to ongoing staff development exemplifies the ideal of a "learning organization." The Center strives to implement this philosophy externally as well, conducting educational training and outreach efforts to support continued learning and a valuable interchange of ideas. The Center has a long history of involvement with conferences and symposia. In the late 1970s, it supported the Harvard Business School Symposium on Government, Technology, and the Automotive Future. More recently, the Center hosted the Spirit of Innovation in Transportation Conference, designed to facilitate technological innovation in transportation. These forums provide opportunities for transportation professionals from government, industry, and academia to gather critical information on research, new technologies, policy implementation, and future trends. A highly skilled transportation work force is also important, and the Volpe Center contributes to many continuing educational programs. The Center works with the DOT's Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) Professional Capacity Building Program to design and implement nationwide training on new ITS technologies. In addition to developing the existing work force, the Center supports future talent. The Garrett A. Morgan Technology and Transportation Futures Program links students with transportation professionals to create a new generation of talent that can meet tomorrow's challenges. In sum, through the dissemination and application of knowledge and technology, Volpe successfully improves our economic competitiveness by enhancing the transportation system, its efficiency, and its cost effectiveness. |
Working Together to Create Better Transportation
Pooling intellectual and technological resources through public-private sector partnerships spurs innovation and expedites the transfer of technology into commercial applications. This not only benefits our transportation system's performance, it also helps make the United States more economically competitive. In accordance with this collaborative model, the Volpe Center studies ways to stimulate partnerships in the transportation sector. It recently prepared three reports that examined a variety of partnership models and assessed their potential.
The Volpe Center has been active in fostering research and development relationships with businesses and universities. These relationship have been formalized with arrangements such as CRADAs, or Cooperative Research and Development Agreements, which are a type of public-private partnership in which private companies and government agencies agree to work together on a specific R&D project. These agreements allow the partners to make the most of their resources and reduce expenses by sharing the costs of research, pooling personnel, services, facilities, or equipment. The Center further supports innovation and economic growth by facilitating the entry of new players into the transportation sector and providing incentives for small business, thereby strengthening competition, fostering greater efficiency and lowering the cost of transportation.
Setting the Standards for Transportation Performance
Developing and applying uniform standards and protocols supports the transfer of transportation knowledge and technology both nationally and around the world. It also ensures enhanced systems functionality. In the 1970s, the Volpe Center worked with agencies, industry, and academia to develop motor vehicle fuel efficiency and safety standards. Today, Volpe teams are working with similar groups to harmonize ITS architecture.
Robust international trade is a key determinant of success in an increasingly global economy. The Volpe Center is consulting with several agencies to coordinate safety and environmental standards with U.S. trading partners under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
The Center also supports initiatives to encourage adoption of international standards and operational protocols. The Volpe Center assists DOT agencies in adopting the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) protocol, which is becoming recognized worldwide as the accepted standard of quality in products and services. The Center also works with the International Civil Aviation Organization to better integrate operation of the global positioning satellite navigation system.
Sustaining economic health in a changing world presents continual challenges. As we forge ahead into the 21st century, the Volpe Center's efforts to nurture a culture of knowledge and innovation ensure that we have a state-of-the-art transportation system that supports our economic vitality.
Transportation's Role in Economic Growth
Public-Private Partnerships Make the Most of Resources and Cut Costs
Public-Private Partnerships pool the capacities of different organizations in government and the private sector to accomplish a common purpose. These partnerships build on the different information, technology, and human assets of each partner while sharing the expenses, which allows participants to make maximum use of resources and eliminate duplication of effort. The Volpe Center actively facilitates these arrangements by hosting symposia, publishing reports, developing innovative tools and processes, and supporting specific initiatives.
Government and Private Organizations Pool R&D Resources
The Volpe Center participates in a number of CRADAs, including the Advanced Public Transportation Systems (APTS) Mobile Showcase in which Volpe collaborates with the Federal Transit Administration and several manufacturers to showcase new technologies. The expandable Mobile Showcase trailer travels around the country to demonstrate the latest in transit technology and equipment to transit officials and consumers in an interactive environment. The Center has also worked collaboratively with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Volpe's Center for Human Factors Research in Transportation is a model of cooperative R&D.
 The APTS Mobile Showcase demonstrates innovations in transit technology and equipment all over the country. |
The lab pursues joint projects with local businesses and universities under CRADAs. The Volpe Center also participates in the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles, which explores strategies to achieve federal mobility goals while protecting natural resources and the environment.
Facilitating Research to Promote Technological Progress
Since 1982, the Volpe Center has directed DOT's Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program, whose mission is to stimulate technology innovations in transportation programs by facilitating the research efforts of small businesses in the United States. The Volpe Center was chosen to host the SBIR Program Office because of its extensive background in technology transfer, cooperative R&D agreements, outreach projects involving a cross-section of the transportation community, and technical assistance to state and local governments, as well as to private organizations.
Training and Education: Encouraging New Ideas
The Volpe Center is dedicated to the idea that fostering a climate for innovation through training and education will stimulate important advances in transportation. For example, the Center manages the new Transportation Executive Leadership Institute, established in early 2001 as a way of educating senior DOT officials. Twenty or thirty upper-level DOT leaders will share their knowledge of transportation management issues and techniques in several short sessions each year. The sessions will provide case studies, curricula, and training scenarios culminating in group discussions on various themes.
Volpe actively supports DOT's University Transportation Centers program, which consists of learning centers integrated into universities and colleges, and is designed to provide training and support to future transportation professionals. The Center also works closely with DOT to develop professional capacity building programs in the areas of ITS and metropolitan transportation planning. These comprehensive programs provide assessments, curricula, web-based learning, case studies, and peer-to-peer exchanges to transportation officials, organizational leaders, and other stakeholders in the transportation enterprise.
Transportation and the Global Economy
As globalization grows and transportation issues take on an international flavor, harmonizing technical standards can ease the transfer of technologies and systems among different countries, facilitating trade. For instance, Volpe has been involved in developing ISO criteria for public transit, and it has explored ways to make ITS technologies mesh with overseas systems.
In the area of international safety and environmental standards, the Volpe Center provides significant expertise. For example, the moratorium on Mexican trucks and buses is expected to be lifted by January 2002. The Volpe Center is developing an environmental assessment to help the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration formulate rules for certifying carriers operating under NAFTA.
Volpe Fosters Innovation by Bringing Experts Together
The Volpe Center recognizes that one of the best ways to stimulate new ways of thinking and new approaches to problems is by bringing together the people who are most involved in specific transportation issues, and providing them with a way to share ideas, ask questions, explore different scenarios, and reach new conclusions. In that spirit, Volpe has, since its inception, been host to many conferences, symposia, and workshops on topics that affect the transportation world.
Motor Vehicle R&D Conference
A conference on basic research directions for advanced automotive technology, which took place in 1979 and featured DOT Secretary Brock Adams as the keynote speaker, was an early example of the Center's ability to facilitate this kind of event. It focused on generating new ideas for improving existing technologies and adopting new ones to improve the performance of motor vehicles. Two decades later, the Volpe Center continues its work in this area by conducting research in renewable energy sources, fuel cells, and highly energy-efficient vehicles.
Moving America
In the early 1990s, a new national transportation policy, entitled "Moving America," undertook an ambitious agenda: to stimulate the progress of U.S. transportation into the next century, by emphasizing the pooling of resources through a partnership approach. The Volpe Center's ongoing commitment to gathering experts from every branch of transportation to share ideas and experience played a key role in advancing this policy throughout the 1990s.
Spirit of Innovation in Transportation
 Former Secretary of Transportation Rodney Slater checks out a hybrid electric bus at the Spirit of Innovation conference. |
The Spirit of Innovation in Transportation conference held at the Volpe Center in 1999 again demonstrated the Volpe Center's value as a catalyst for the exchange of ideas. The underlying theme of the conference was that transportation advances require creativity, cooperation, and hard work among all members of the transportation network. Discussions highlighted four major areas: cybertechnology, alternative fuels and vehicles, nanotechnology, and the education and training of the transportation workforce. Each of these areas continues to be a focus of research and innovation at the Center.
National Symposia on Transportation
Recently, the Center hosted the National Symposia on Transportation, a series that addressed three transportation topics of national interest: public-private partnerships, education and the workforce, and enabling technologies. The Symposia brought together public officials, academics, transportation professionals, members of the financial and legal communities, manufacturers, and vendors. Besides providing valuable background information, the presentations used real-world examples to illustrate innovative technologies and techniques.