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The John A. Volpe National Transportation Systems Center (colloquially, the Volpe Center) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is a center of transportation and logistics expertise in the Research and Innovative Technology Administration of the United States Department of Transportation (U.S. DOT).
The center's work includes 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 helps federal, state, and local governments, industry, and academia in various areas, including human factors research, system design, implementation and assessment, global tracking, strategic investment and resource allocation, environmental preservation, and organizational effectiveness.
Volpe differs from most federal organizations in that it receives no direct appropriation from Congress. Instead, its roughly $200 million annual budget is funded by fees for its work.
The center is named for John Volpe, a former Massachusetts governor and U.S. Secretary of Transportation.
Volpe 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 subway stop.
In January 2017, MIT signed an agreement with the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) to redevelop the John A. Volpe National Transportation Systems Center, with the state aim of turning the 14-acre parcel into a more vibrant mixed-use site. [1]
In October 2017, the Cambridge City Council approved MIT’s rezoning petition for the site and a team of architects and landscape planners have been working to imagine a new home for the Volpe Center. [2]
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of modern technology and science.
The United States Department of Transportation is one of the executive departments of the U.S. federal government. It is headed by the secretary of transportation, who reports directly to the president of the United States and is a member of the president's Cabinet.
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John Anthony Volpe was an American businessman, diplomat, and politician from Massachusetts. A son of Italian immigrants, he founded and owned a large construction firm. Politically, he was a Republican in increasingly Democratic Massachusetts, serving as its 61st and 63rd Governor from 1961 to 1963 and 1965 to 1969, as the United States Secretary of Transportation from 1969 to 1973, and as the United States Ambassador to Italy from 1973 to 1977. As Secretary of Transportation, Volpe was an important figure in the development of the Interstate Highway System at the federal level.
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