AST&L and China Academy of Transportation Sciences
will jointly set up a Sino-US Transportation Safety Institute

The Fourth Sino-US Strategic Economic Dialogue was held in the city of Annapolis, Maryland on 2008 Jun 17-18. Mr. Weng Mengyong (Vice-Minister of China Ministry of Transportation) and Mr. Thomas Barnett (Deputy Minister of US DOT) signed the joint statement of China-US transportation cooperation on behalf of their respective departments. They agreed to develop ¡°US-China Transportation Forum¡±. Under the ¡°US-China Transportation Forum¡± framework, started the communication and cooperation in infrastructure construction and creative financing£¬transportation technology, urban traffic, supply chain logistics, disaster rescue coordination and highly-efficient transportation, safety and sustainable development.

In the same year, US-China Transportation Forum was held on Dec. 3 by Ministry of Transport of the People¡¯s Republic of China and Senior Transport department officers from both American and Chinese transportation departments, senior management from major transportation corporations and senior specialists from research institutes discussed deeply about high-efficient use of transportation infrastructure and the importance of new technology, city traffic, creative infrastructure construction financing, disaster rescue coordination. They also signed the joint statement of first conference of US-China Transportation Forum. The joint statement emphasize: high-efficiency and comprehensive transportation system is a key basic to develop capacity of trade relationship for a country.

The signing of ¡°Joint statement of Sino-US Transportation Cooperation¡± and ¡°the joint statement of US-China Transportation Forum First Meeting¡± became an important opportunity for establishing the ¡°Sino-US Transportation Safety Institute¡±. AST&L and CATS decided to take this opportunity to set up the Sino-US Transportation Safety Institute (TSI) in Beijing and Shanghai. The strategic positioning of Sino-US Transportation Safety Institute is to create an exchange platform for the cooperation between China and America in transportation safety; the strategic objective is to promote closer cooperation between China and American transportation, driving the efficient, safe, modern and sustainable transportation and the formation of logistics system in China.

TSI will be initiated by ASTL-China and the Information and Technology lab of CATS. It comprises of two main sections, the Research Center and the Training Center.

The Sino-Us Transportation Safety Institute - Research Center
The Research Center will be established at Beijing. The Research Center will develop the research and consultant work in transportation safety field, to promote and coordinate the technology communication between American government, American logistics companies and Chinese government, Chinese logistics companies; enhance Chinese government and Chinese logistics companies¡¯ knowledge on American technology, products standard and service, to promote new technology and methods of American transportation safety field in China, and improve the safety of Chinese dangerous transportation in further.

The Sino-Us Transportation Safety Institute - Training Center
The Training Center will be established at Shanghai which best meets the training needs of the transportation industry. The Training Center will develop education and training programs and materials, deliver training to industry on-site and off-site throughout China, offer internationally recognized certifications, offer international regulations compliance training, conduct seminars to increase public awareness, translate available materials to Chinese and develop local instructors.