John A. Volpe National Transportation Systems Center
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The John A. Volpe National Transportation Systems Center or simply Volpe Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is a center of transportation and logistics expertise, operating under the United States Department of Transportation.
The Volpe Center's work includes a broad mix of projects that cut across traditional transportation modes and technical disciplines including the Federal Aviation Administration's Enhanced Traffic Management System (ETMS) and Safety Performance Analysis System (SPAS), and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's SafeStat Online.
The Center assists federal, state, and local governments, industry, and academia in a number of areas of consultation including human factors research, system design, implementation and assessment, global tracking, strategic investment and resource allocation, environmental preservation, and organizational effectiveness.
The Volpe Center is part of the Department of Transportation's Research and Innovative Technology Administration. However, they differ from most federal organizations in that they receive no direct appropriation from Congress. Instead, they are funded 100% through a fee-for-service structure in which all costs are covered by sponsored project work (approx. $200 million annually).
The Volpe Center is located on the campus of NASA's former Electronics Research Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, across the Charles River from Boston, across the street from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and next to the Kendall/MIT MBTA Red Line stop which is two subway stops from Harvard University.
