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As a kid, Eric Plosky ’99, MCP ’00 took the New York subway to all the city attractions on the map with his grandmother. “Every time someone asks me how I got on public transport, ‘How did you survive?’ I ask,” he says. “Every little kid loves trains, subways, buses, cars and planes, and they ‘grow up’ for a reason. I never did.”
Now, as chief of transportation planning at the Volpe National Transportation Systems Center in Kendall Square, Plosky and his team put their imaginations to work to reimagine what transportation could be. “It’s not just steel and concrete. “These are people, decision making, history and culture,” he says.
PERMISSION PHOTO
At MIT, Plosky earned two degrees in Urban Studies and Planning; He also took humanities classes and wrote for The Tech. The internship at the Volpe Center turned into a 20-year career.
Despite being part of the US Department of Transportation, Volpe is funded entirely through direct consulting projects with other agencies and private organizations seeking unconventional solutions to complex problems. His team’s recent projects include autonomous vehicle systems in Yellowstone National Park and Wright Brothers National Monument; an analysis of the national agricultural freight road network; and a series of Millennium Challenge Corporation-funded efforts to streamline complex urban transport systems in places like Kenya and Sri Lanka. “Every time someone talks about a weird, far-flung transportation project that nobody knows about, that’s when we get involved,” says Plosky.
After Hurricane Katrina, Plosky spent months working with affected communities in Louisiana. The resulting guidance documents he wrote have since become part of the National Disaster Recovery Framework, guiding covid-19 recovery efforts. “If you restore things, it’s just restoration; Real healing requires something different,” he says.
After work, Plosky teaches a sustainable transportation course at Harvard Extension School, serves as a judge for the Lemelson-MIT Student Award, and mentors first-year MIT Terrascope students. He also writes by posting a daily series of short stories on Infrequent.com.
Plosky says he is encouraged by the growing momentum at the federal level to address infrastructure challenges that exacerbate racial inequality and climate change. “I am really hopeful that we can find a transportation system that meets the needs of today and tomorrow, rather than just the perceived needs of yesterday,” he says.
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