Official US Government Icon

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure Site Icon

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

United States Department of Transportation United States Department of Transportation

thought leadership

Forecasting Freight Transportation Rates with MIT’s Chris Caplice

The market for buying freight transportation services is complex and can be challenging to forecast. There are traditional statistical forecasting models, and there are models that use artificial intelligence. MIT Center for Transportation Logistics Executive Director Chris Caplice, PhD, recently discussed how the freight transportation market works as part of the Volpe Center’s 2018 series, Transportation in the Age of Artificial Intelligence and Predictive Analytics.

How Much Time Do Americans Spend Behind the Wheel?

U.S. DOT Volpe Center Chief Economist Don Pickrell and a team of Volpe Center data experts recently completed an in-depth study for the Federal Highway Administration to produce detailed statistics on travel speeds and vehicle hours traveled that can provide new levels of insight into how the nation’s roads are performing.

Leveraging the Space Above Our Heads and the Emergent eVTOL Market

Getting stuck in traffic isn’t just a nuisance. On an aggregate level, traffic can have major financial impacts for cities and countries. Aviation innovator Carl C. Dietrich, PhD, co-founder and chief technology officer of Terrafugia, explains the potential to use the space right above our heads to relieve automobile congestion.  

Putting Safety in the Driver's Seat

Technology is advancing, societal trends are changing, and new visions for self-driving vehicles are emerging. Harry Lightsey of General Motors provides the manufacturer's perspective on how self-driving cars are putting safety in the driver's seat as part of The Ongoing Transformation of the Global Transportation System speaker series.

Rethinking the Human-Autonomy Architecture

With automation appearing more and more across daily life—including in air and ground travel—tasks we think of as belonging to humans may soon be taken over by computers, and there could be consequences that haven’t yet been imagined, said Amy Pritchett, professor and head of the Department of Aerospace Engineering at Pennsylvania State University, who recently spoke as part of Volpe's 2017 speaker series.

Autonomy for Humans in the 21st Century City

Jeffrey Schnapp kicked off Volpe’s new speaker series, The Ongoing Transformation of the Global Transportation System, with his human-centric vision for the autonomous vehicle revolution.