In a city with as many as millions of people, it is inevitable for the ground traffic, no matter private cars or publish transit, to face increasing traffic jam in commuting rush hour and the naturally reducing urban efficiency. So how could we effectively mitigate the condition?

To ease the commuting rush hour, we must give full consideration to the role of commuter rails and thus lead the development of metropolitan areas in Beijing in the model of commuter rails plus land development.It is Prof. Rong Chaohe from School of Economics and Management, Beijing Jiaotong University(SEM, BJTU) who presents this proposal, and he is also an expert of Beijing Comprehensive Transportation Development Institute, BJTU. While presenting the proposal, he is in a forum organized by Beijing Committee of Communist Party of China and Beijing Municipal Peoples Government. The meeting has invited 14 experts and scholars of relevant fields and receives opinions and suggestions of constructing an effective megacity governance system. The forum is hosted by Cai Qi, the municipal party secretary. Prof. Rong, on behalf of Beijing Comprehensive Transportation Development Institute, BJTU, one of the first 14 high-end think tank pilot units in the capital acknowledged by the municipal authority, deliverers his speech.

The development of traditional subway and ground transportation follows a road-to-people pattern, while for suburb commuting rail we need a people-to-road pattern. Listening to Prof. Rong, the leaders and experts nods their continual approval. In Rongs view, only by implementing the TOD model of rail + ground(or + community) can we decentralize the downtown population to a jobs-housing balance on a reasonable scale and make full use of urban land resources to help people get rid of the dependence on private cars, optimizing the spatial-temporal form of the metropolitan area.

Of each accurate datum and every conclusive case, based on detailed analysis and data research of big cities at home and abroad, Prof. Rong finally proposes, the development model of suburb commuting rails plus ground is crucial to the future development of Beijing, but we need to break the institutional barriers with a reform spirit. The sooner we take action, the much initiative we will get.  

As a well-known scholar of transportation economics theory, Prof. Rong has published over one hundred papers and several monographs as well as textbooks, hosted or participated in up to 38 research projects including national key scientific research projects, and repeatedly received research achievement awards. In the latest ranking list of the most influential scholar in economics of the first level discipline published in 2017, Prof. Rong ranks 130th with a high score of 675.51. In the overall distribution table of the economics discipline listed scholars affiliations, BJTU ranks 21th, and based on the sort of the table-listed scholars major, Prof. Rong ranks first on our campus. Although now over sixty years, he has been continuously engaging in the frontier of educational profession and scientific research with his tireless teaching and industrious work. Prof. Rongs latest monograph, namely Economic Spatial-Temporal Analysis: Fundamental Framework and Its Application, has been published by Economic Science Press. This book is the embodiment of the fruitful results accomplished by Prof. Rongs team in their recent year of consistent exploration and the publishment has also drawn extensive attention from academics together with teachers and students. 

The achievements made by Prof. Rong is just an epitome of SEMs comprehensive construction of high-end think tank in service of the countrys economic and social development in recent years. As Prof. Rong has mentioned, many of his research outcomes are inseparable from the numerous basic and cutting-edge researches in related fields carried out by the school and institutes over the years. As a school with strong discipline advantages in areas of economics and management, SEM, BJTU has always been targeting at the needs of national strategies and industrial progress, giving full play the advancement of our complete disciplines in the field of economics and management. Through intellectual support, talents guarantee and professional service we actively devote ourselves to industrial progress like national transport, modern logistics, capital finance, information technology, construction real estate and tourism health, becoming a great strength that supports and leads the development of Chinas industry. On annual average, over the past five years, SEM has been approved more than 53 million RMB as research funds, the projects has accumulated to more than 1,200 items, and our research results have obtained 23 awards of provincial or ministerial level or above, ranking top among our counterparts on nationwide. Whatsmore, for essential issues of economics and peoples livelihood like electronic commerce, rail transportation, state-owned assets management and housing security, we have 26 expert proposals collected in Beijing social science funds result summary, national social science funds result summary, colleges and universities think tank journal of the Minister of Education or internal reference of Peoples Daily and many other publications, and among the proposals there are 8 instructed by the central and regional leaders, playing an important role of policy think tank.