John A. Volpe National Transportation Systems Center

The John A. Volpe National Transportation Systems Center (colloquially, the Volpe Center) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is a center of transportation and logistics 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), the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's SafeStat Online, the Maritime Safety and Security Information System (MSSIS), and SeaVision.

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.

The older of the two main building on site was designated as the NASA Electronics Research Center. By direction of President John F. Kennedy after his pledge for America to go to the moon, it was to become Mission Control for all US space missions. Extensive work was completed within the main building and massive amounts of communications equipment and cabling was installed around the site, under the streets leading to it and in the countryside. When Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963, Vice President Lyndon Johnson, a Texan, was sworn in to take over the Presidency. Within 2 months, all work on Mission Control in Massachusetts was halted and a new site was named in Houston. The Research Center was phased out and all of the communications installations were abandoned in place. The building sat idle before being named the Volpe Center.

The original building shown with the vertical window lines in the first photo above had a serious design flaw. The building was constructed with an interior steel frame and an exterior cladding of bricks that were fastened to the interior steel with rigid brackets every foot or so. With the temperature fluctuating between the 80's in summer and below freezing in winter, the steel structure expanded and contracted substantially over the height of the building. The brackets holding the brick facing could not accommodate this movement and as a result, portions of the brickwork would crack and fall off without notice. It became so dangerous that all entry to the building was either through armor covered walkways or underground.

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]

• Aircraft Situation Display to Industry

• Official website

42°21′50.67″N 71°5′8.16″W / 42.3640750°N 71.0856000°W / 42.3640750; -71.0856000