(Reporter Lei Pengcheng, Gao Wei) On September 21st, the World Sustainable Transport Symposium of 2016, jointly organized by the World Sustainable Transport Award Committee and the Volvo Foundation, was hosted by the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (hereinafter referred to as ITDP) in Yichang. Hundreds of experts and scholars from 18 countries gathered in Yichang, discussing the world sustainable transport development strategies. Huang Chuping, the provincial Party committee member and municipal Party secretary, attended the opening ceremony and delivered a welcoming speech. Ma Xuming, deputy secretary of the municipal Party and mayor of Yichang, introduced Yichang’s experience.

Clayton Lane, CEO of ITDP, and Anders Branstrom, director of Volvo Foundation (VREF) attended the meeting and made a speech. The meeting was hosted by Michael Korjus from ITDP.

On behalf of Hubei provincial government, Yichang municipal Party committee and municipal government, Huang Chuping expressed warm welcome and sincere greetings to guests and friends from all over the world. He said that city was the carrier of beautiful life of human beings and traffic was the lifeblood of the healthy operation of cities. The "sustainable transport" concept advocated by the international community was in accordance with the Chinese cultural gene that stresses respecting nature and cherishing history and life, thus, it was widely recognized and actively practiced by the Chinese people. As China's important regional transportation hub, Yichang, with "people-oriented and people-centered" guiding mentality, focused on the improvement of modern integrated transport system, gave priority to the public transport and advocated green travel. With the accelerated construction of "integrated transportation, livelihood transportation, intelligent transportation, green transportation, safety transportation and legal transportation ", Yichang had achieved the fusion of and coordinated development of transportation and the city.

Huang said: “the World Sustainable Transport Symposium, which shows Yichang people’s broad mind of cooperation, carries the beautiful dream for Yichang to build a green city. It not only provides a valuable opportunity for Yichang to learn the world advanced urban and traffic development concepts but also creates an important platform for us to make oversea friends to strengthen the international cooperation. We will take this symposium as an opportunity to create a higher level of ecological civilization demonstration city and sustainable transport development model city with the strategic height of constructing ecological civilization and promoting urban sustainable development. We hope that we can establish interactive relationships with cities all over the world and organizations as well as experts and scholars committed to promoting sustainable development to expand cooperation and exchanges, and promote mutual benefits.

Clayton Lane thanked Yichang for providing ITDP with an opportunity to show themselves and appreciated Yichang’s exploration in the proper design of the public transport system, which greatly facilitated people's daily travel and made BRT a beautiful scenery. It set a good example for the world and proved feasibility of the development of sustainable transport in large or medium-sized cities. It was an important objective of this symposium to gather the world experts in Yichang for their suggestions for the better development of cities. Apart from learning Yichang’s experience, we hoped we could learn from each other and make contributions to promoting the world sustainable transport development.

Anders Branstrom said in his speech that the success of BRT system in Yichang demonstrated its outstanding leadership in the design of the public transport system. The success of this symposium had not only collected practical experience and research findings from other countries, but also provided an opportunity for the majority of researchers to witness the first-class infrastructure construction experience of Yichang in practice. We hoped the results of this symposium can be delivered to different countries for the better development of regional transportation.

When Ma Xuming introduced Yichang’s experience, he said that at present, the total road mileage of Yichang has reached 29,800 km, and the public transport share rate has reached over 30%. In central urban area, Yichang has built the urban ecological space with Yichang New District being the representative, and the ecological projects like Moji Mountain Forest Park, Canal Park Renovation, BRT system, Yichang Olympic Sports Center, Public Bicycle System, etc., highlighting the charm and the taste of the city. Among them, for one thing, BRT System is the longest single line with the most complete functions and the most complicated construction in the downtown areas in China, and it is also a demonstration project of comprehensive reconstruction of urban roads; for another, the public bicycle system is a value-added project of Yichang public transport system and BRT system. He said: “We sincerely look forward to deepening transport cooperation, exchanging cultures, expanding tourism exchanges, etc. to achieve mutual benefits and win-win cooperation.

Reporters learned that the 2016 World Sustainable Transport Symposium will last three days with the theme of "sustainable transport to make the city better", and it will focus on topics including "opportunities in complex urban environment", "improvement of reliability and attractiveness of transportation services" and "sustainable development of population and cities", etc.

Yuan Weidong and Xu Wei, leaders of the city, attended the opening ceremony.