Photo courtesy of the U.S. Department of Transportation

What: Volpe National Transportation Systems Center
Where: 220 Binney St., Cambridge
Built: 2019-2023
Owner: U.S. General Services Administration

The federal government’s new Volpe National Transportation Systems Center includes new simulator labs designed to improve the safe operation of commercial airliners, locomotives and 18-wheelers.

The U.S. Department of Transportation will continue to partner with universities and private researchers at the new 305,000-square-foot Volpe Center tower, which includes 26,000 square feet of laboratory space.

Simulators developed for the Volpe Center’s Transportation Human Factors team analyze tractor-trailer drivers’ behavior at railroad grade crossings, locomotive operator performance, alcohol detection technology and pilot interaction with the Boeing 737 NextGen flight deck.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology is scheduled to acquire 14 acres for a 3 million-square-foot private development for $750 million in early 2024. The federal government retained 4 acres for the new Volpe tower, which is nearing final completion.

They Said It:

“We were sitting on a lot of prime real estate, but had some suboptimal uses, frankly, of that prime real estate: 14 acres in the middle of downtown Cambridge, a lot of it surface parking lots and many old buildings. It definitely had outlived its useful life for the mission of the Department of Transportation. We did an exchange of the 14 acres, 10 of those are being conveyed to MIT. In return, the government received this building, a $750 million, state-of-the-art lab and research facility. So that’s a win for taxpayers.”
— Robin Carnahan, administrator, U.S. General Services Administration