She wants to ride out of town on a high-speed rail.

• Position: People

There times when Julie Hunt older than 32. "In the engineering world, years equal experience. So there are times I want to dye my hair gray and say, 'Look at my resume. I have the gray hair to prove it.'"

Her superiors at Fort Worth, Texas-based Carter & Burgess Inc., a consulting and management firm, didn't need to consider her age when choosing someone to shepherd North Carolina's high-speed rail project through federal environmental reviews. She has six years of experience, including documenting the environmental impact of stabilizing N.C. 12 on Hatteras Island.

For 10 years, North Carolina and Virginia have been planning a high-speed rail system between Charlotte and Washington. Carter & Burgess is one of the engineering firms designing the Richmond-to-Raleigh leg of the $2.7 billion project. The Federal Railroad Administration and the two states hope construction will be completed by 2010.

Hunt's job is to identify the system's potential impact on air and water quality, safety and community resources, then suggest measures to minimize them. If everything goes well, she says, the review will be completed by the beginning of 2005.

High-speed trains weren't what she had in mind growing up in Virginia Beach, Va. "I'd always wanted to be a marine biologist." That was the...