U.S. Secretary of Transportation Chao’s Volpe Center Homecoming

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Volpe Experts in the Field

Volpe staff engaged in the following noteworthy activities in April:

• Connected and Automated Driving: Dr. Scott Smith and Eli Machek represented U.S. DOT at the first European Commission-sponsored event on connected and automated driving. Dr. Smith was the U.S. speaker in an impact assessment session and Machek co-chaired the automation in road transportation meeting.

• Freight Data Collaboration: Luisa Paiewonsky facilitated the sixth of eight Federal Highway Administration and American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials’ regional freight workshops. Volpe has been delivering and documenting regional freight workshops on freight data collaboration and standardization.

• Rail Safety: Officials from the Federal Railroad Administration asked Brian Marquis to help with an equipment investigation related to recent derailments. Volpe has been studying these issues and also participates in two rail safety advisory committees formed to address safety issues. These groups are looking into whether regulations regarding track inspection and rail integrity should be revised or augmented to increase safety.
  
  
• Rail Innovation: Volpe staff recently presented technical papers at the American Society of Mechanical Engineers' Joint Rail meeting. Michael Carolan discussed recent impact tests and simulations of rail vehicle fuel tanks. Patricia Llana discussed locomotive retrofit and test preparation for crash energy management locomotive coupling tests. Dr. Hailing Yu presented her paper Finite Element Analysis of Contributing Factors to the Horizontal Splitting Cracks in Concrete Crossties Pretensioned with Seven-Wire Strands.

• Maritime Domain Awareness: Lauren Gentile and William Quintana trained the U.S. Navy’s 6th Fleet on SeaVision 2.0. Volpe recently released its new version of SeaVision to the U.S. Navy’s Fleet Forces. SeaVision, a Volpe-developed system, was selected as the U.S. Navy’s unclassified maritime information sharing system.

• Global Navigation Satellite Systems: Karen Van Dyke participated in the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Transportation Working Group (TWG) meeting in Taiwan. Van Dyke co-chairs the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) Implementation Team, which focuses on the application of the U.S. Global Positioning System, GPS augmentation systems, and emerging GNSS systems from other nations, for safety and mobility applications in all modes of transportation.

• Multimodal Mobility: Mike Dinning gave a keynote presentation about making mobility work at the New England Intelligent Transportation System Annual Interchange. Dinning provided examples of innovative applications of technology that improve access to multimodal mobility options.

 Motor Carrier Safety

• FMCSA Safety Program Effectiveness Measurement: Carrier Intervention Effectiveness Model (CIEM), Version 1.1: Report for Fiscal Year 2013 Interventions

 Transit Planning

• National Park Service Digital Transit Data Sharing Pilot Results and Discussion

 Transportation Planning

• Kaua‘i National Wildlife Refuge Complex: Kīlauea Point National Wildlife Refuge Comprehensive Transportation Planning Study
• Regional Cooperation and Bike/Ped and Transit Connections: A Regional Models of Cooperation Peer Exchange Summary Report
• TMA Certification Review State-of-the-Practice Review Report: 2016