Tufts civil engineering student turns passion for public transit into career experience

Nearly every day, hundreds of thousands of passengers ride the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA). In 2025, the WMATA rail system averaged roughly 400,000 entries per day according to daily ridership data on the WMATA website. Although it is safe to ride, some areas of the aging system do not meet the latest stringent fire safety standards. As a lifelong D.C. area resident and a self-described fan of rail and transit systems, Tufts undergraduate student Oakley Winters, E26, recently played a role in helping to upgrade the system to modern standards.

A pilot project on the Red Line

Winters got involved through an internship with the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) Office of Infrastructure. For the past few years, the office has worked with a consultant team to modernize tunnel ventilation between Woodley Park and Cleveland Park and bring it up to the National Fire Protection Association’s NFPA 130 standards. Winters joined the project during the implementation phase and spent over a year building their project management skills with the agency.

There is less than a mile on the Red Line between the Woodley Park and Cleveland Park stops. The tunnel is on a steep incline that makes clearing smoke ventilation particularly challenging. After a thorough evaluation of the current system and possible solutions, the team decided on several design improvements to allow directional smoke control and clean evacuation airflow without reducing train speed in tunnels or requiring tunnel reconstruction. Some of the updates included upgrading the vent shafts into powered fan shafts, enabling push-pull fan operation in emergency mode, and replacing station electrical switchgear to support larger fans.

Winters observed construction at several phases of the process. “When I first saw the site, most of the mechanical equipment had not been installed yet. On my last visit, the project was mostly complete, except for the necessary electrical work. That work is now almost complete, and the commissioning phase should begin shortly.” Seeing the project evolve over time was incredibly rewarding for Winters, who is in their final year of a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering at Tufts.

They credit their years on the Tufts Steel Bridge Competition team for giving them a framework to understand the design process. “Steel Bridge taught me the basics of the design to construction to final implementation timeline, albeit at a much smaller scale,” said Winters. They have been a member of the team for three years, most recently serving as the fabrication lead for the 2024-25 school year, where they contributed to a second-place finish in the AISC regional competition. At WMATA, they saw the design process carried out in a real-world scenario.  

Presenting promising results

The WMATA team hopes their process can be replicated in other areas of the D.C. transit system and in systems throughout the country. To help get the word out, Winters wrote a paper about the project alongside their supervisor Reza Ghotbi, a WMATA project manager. As the primary author of “WMATA Red Line Tunnel Ventilation Improvements– A Case Study,” Winters familiarized themselves with the existing system, design objectives, alternatives, and final design. They spoke about the pilot project to the WMATA executive team and recently presented a poster at the Transportation Research Board (TRB) Annual Meeting in Washington D.C.

Their time at Tufts proved useful for developing skills they needed in the internship. “All of my classes (especially across the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department) have prepared me for the level of technical writing and communication skills that were required, both for the presentation and for my career,” said Winters. “CEE department classes also laid the technical foundation and critical thinking skills necessary to understand a project with so many different elements,” they continued. “This project had significant structural, mechanical, electrical, construction, and scheduling aspects, and the CEE coursework prepared me well to integrate with this project despite not fitting neatly into a certain specialty or discipline.”

At the conference, Winters felt inspired by the connections they made with others who were interested in their project. “We had a number of people across backgrounds, careers, and companies engage in meaningful conversations with me and the project team during our presentation, which felt amazing!” they said.

Attending the conference also gave Winters a new perspective on possible career opportunities in civil engineering. “I had never considered that research could be incorporated into my career. I assumed that work was left to academia, but my trip to TRB showed me that isn’t the case.” they said. “The research being presented across the conference was extremely interesting and targeted real-world problems that face different sectors of the transportation industry.” 

Motivated by their experience at TRB, they hope to continue blending their love of transit with their desire to make real-world improvements through research. In their final year at Tufts they are participating in a design competition for a hypothetical new MBTA subway station on the Blue Line. The Construction Industries of MA – Labor Relations Division (CIM-LRD) holds the competition each year between schools. Bringing their experience from the WMATA, Oakley is working with a group of fellow CEE students to create an entry to the competition for their group capstone project.