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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.
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...
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 that we are all...
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.
More than 500 people die each year while trespassing on rail lines. One particular stretch of rail in West Palm Beach, Florida that has had a high incidence of trespass-related deaths over two decades, is currently the subject of a Federal Railroad Administration and local community-...
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...
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...
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 Volpe, The National Transportation Systems Center, has...
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...
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...