From October 28 to 29, 2017, the fifth international conference of Transportation and Spatio-Temporal Economics ForumUrbanization and High Speed Railway Economics was successfully held in Beijing Jiaotong University(BJTU). Guan Zhongliang, vice president of BJTU and Zhang Qiusheng, secretary of the party committee and dean of School of Economics and Management(SEM) attended and addressed the meeting.

Guan Zhongliang expressed his warm welcome to the guests and introduced the development and achievements of BJTU at its 121 anniversary in regards of personnel training, discipline construction, social service and so on. He also mentioned that SEM has a long historical inheritance and profound academic accumulation in the field of transportation economics. This conference was held to provide an inspiring academic platform for scholars to exchange their ideas, communicate with each other and hence build consensus. At the end, Guan wished the forum a great success. Zhang Qiusheng, on behalf of SEM, expressed his sincere gratitude for the support and participation of our guests. He said that Transportation and Spatio-Temporal Economics Forum, being one of SEMs representative academic forums, is loaded with our preponderant disciplines academic achievements and cutting-edge ideas of over one hundred years tradition. He hoped that we can jointly contribute to the promotion of the countrys big transportation and big logistics together with domestic and foreign experts in this sector.

The theme of this conference is Urbanization and High Speed Railway Economics and the procedures consist of conference report, industry seminar and special session. In the conference report, our guest speaker delivered their speech of Industry 4.0 and transportation development, urban transportation and humanism, the social benefits and externalities of high speed railway economy, the competition between high speed railway and civil aviation, Japans urban rail traffic and metropolis construction, urban smart transport and traffic economy, railway multimodal transport and efficiency improvement, etc., sharing their frontier knowledge in theoretical research. In the industry forum, we invited professionals from bike sharing company OFO, institutes of blockchain and transportation economy, car parking company ETCP, freight logistics sharing company ymm56 and so on to display the development trends of practical and business model innovation. As to special session, we discussed specific topics like the development and reform of railway transportation, the European transport network and the Silk Road, urban road pricing and the integration of high speed railway and economy as well as society, presenting the latest advancement news of transportation economy at home and abroad.

We had invited well-known experts and scholars in the area of transportation economics from all over the world to this conference, including famous domestic transportation economists like Rong Chaohe, Zhao Jian, Ou Guoli and Wu Jianhong, SEM professors, Huang Chengfeng, deputy president of Chongqing Jiaotong University, and Prof. Xiao Xing, general manager of department of transportation management, SINOTRANS&CSC HOLDINGS CO., LTD., together with famous transportation economists like Prof. Anthony May, former chairman of WCTR, academician of Royal Academy of Engineering, former president of University of Leeds(UK), Prof. Werner Rothengatter, former chairman of WCTR, academic pioneer of transportation externalities, Li Guoquan, expert of Japan railway, principal scientist, Yoshiharu Takamatsu, former vice president of East Japan Railway Co. and Japan Railway Construction Public Corporation, Prof. Takeshi Chishakii, senior railway specialist of Kyushu University(Japan), Prof. Jack Strauss, econometrician of University of Denver(US) and Prof. Eric Verhoef, researcher of Tinbergen Institute(Netherlands), professor of School of Business and Economics, VU University Amsterdam and head of the department of Spatial Economics.

The forum was hosted by SEM,BJTU, Chinese Society of Technology Economics and China Railway Society, and the relevant leaders attended the meeting and delivered their speech. This conference was an international meeting that brought together the frontier researches and practical innovation of transportation economics at home and abroad, completing an in-depth exploration of theoretical researches, practical application and transportation policies, reform of transportation mechanism and system and so on, drawing extensive attention from related government authorities, scientific institutes and social media, providing much significant potential for the rapid development of our countrys transportation economics discipline and also for our general economy, society and academy.

Transportation and Spatio-Temporal Economics Forum has been held five times in succession since 2013. The theme of the first conference is New Urbanization and Eco-traffic Construction, the second theme is Urban Form and Integrated Transportation System, the third Belt & Road and Transportation Development, the fourth Supple Side Reform of Transportation Section and this time the theme is Urbanization and High Speed Railway Economics. Transportation and Spatio-Temporal Economics Forum is committed to promoting the studies of integrated transportation and transportation economics and enhancing the international academic cooperation and communication of integrated transportation construction and thus to stand out among the worlds leading research areas.