Born in Brighton, Salvucci graduated from Boston Latin School in 1957. He then attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he received his Bachelor of Science in 1961 and his Master of Science in 1962, both in civil engineering with a specialization in transportation. At MIT, he was a member of Chi Epsilon and the American Society of Civil Engineers. From 1964 to 1965, he spent a year abroad as a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Naples Federico II, where he studied investments in transportation to stimulate economic development in high poverty areas of Southern Italy.