Profile: Joel Volinski, Director, National Center for Transportation Research

When Joel Volinski accepted a job as the interim director of Florida’s Broward County Transit Agency in 1983, he had never ridden on a public transit bus. “Here I was, the person who knew less about the subject than anyone, and suddenly I was directing the biggest agency in county government,” he tells me, leaning back in his leather chair. “So you have to have a sense of humor, and you have to be kind of a quick study.”