As a sign of growing cooperation, the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP) signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the China Urban Sustainable Transportation Research Center (CUSTReC) on July 14, 2014 in Beijing, China.

“The agreement opens wider opportunities for CUSTReC and ITDP to work together, not only in information sharing and capacity building, but also in developing joint proposals for a larger program to better implement the national strategy of public transport priority and to meet the needs of Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) development under new situations and circumstances,” said Jiang Yulin, Director of CUSTReC, following the signing.

ITDP’s Managing Director for Policy and Founder, Michael Replogle, who co-signed the agreement, said, “We have forged a strong relationship working with CUSTReC over the past eighteen months. I was personally invited as a team member working with CUSTReC in 2013, developing recommendations with other top experts for the Chinese Ministry of Transport and State Council to promote green urban transport. We look forward to building on these efforts at both the city and national level in coming years.”

“This cooperation is already proving useful,” said ITDP’s Regional Director for East and Southeast Asia, Karl Fjellstrom, speaking from ITDP’s China office. “National policy work can be most fruitful when it supports effective outreach and communications to cities,” he said.

CUSTReC, as part of the China Academy of Transportation Sciences (CATS), is the leading research institute charged to support the China Ministry of Transport in the area of urban transport. Based in Beijing, CUSTReC has multiyear support from Volvo Research and Education Foundation, the Chinese Ministry of Transport, and others to support its work.

ITDP is a non-profit organization headquartered in New York, with offices across the world. In 2004, Fjellstrom set up the Chinese office of ITDP in Guangzhou, which in 2010, was established as the Guangzhou Bus Rapid Transit and Sustainable Development Institute, cooperating with the Guangzhou Municipal Engineering Design and Research Institute. ITDP is working across the world to help cities and national governments take to scale world-class BRT supported by effective public transport oriented development, smarter traffic management, and safer and more attractive conditions for cycling and walking, learning from best practices now found in Guangzhou and other cities worldwide.