[EELISA] THNS 2024, back to the 17th International Symposium on Sustainable Urban Transport Systems

From November 5 to 7, the 17th International Symposium on Sustainable Urban Transport Systems (abbreviated as "THNS 2024") was held in Paris. This 2024 edition took place at the Ecole nationale des ponts et chaussées. The Forum especially fosters the East-West exchange of knowledge advances: research outcomes, innovative technologies, implementation reports etc.

It brings together academics, policymakers, and business representatives (operators, constructors, consultants), creating a vital platform for collaboration. The THNS Forum was initiated in 2008 through a joint effort by Tongji University, ParisTech, and the French Ministry for the Environment. Over the years, it has received support from the Chinese and French Ministries of Transportation, Environment, Housing, Urban Planning, Rural Construction, and Ecological and Solidary Transitions.  All along its successive yearly editions starting from 2008, the major THNS topic has been the development of high-quality transport solutions: high quality to people as users, combined to high quality to the environment, with special emphasis on the urban environment including the relation to local dwellers. BRT and LRT lines make a prominent theme.

This conference is one of the series of activities of Tongji University to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and France. It is jointly hosted by Tongji University and the Ecole nationale des ponts et chaussées (ENPC), and co-organized by Tongji University's School of Transportation, Sino-French School of Engineering and Management, School of Architecture and Urban Planning, School of Automotive Engineering, and School of Electronic and Information Engineering, and is supported by many international universities, academic institutions and enterprises.

This year’s edition marks another significant step toward the THNS Forum’s international recognition, with an impressive lineup of over 40 speakers from China, France, Côte d'Ivoire, Senegal, Italy, Greece and Camroon. The theme of the conference was "Transforming Transport", with 9 sub-topics, and it was conducted in a combination of online and offline methods. A total of 40 keynote reports and speeches were published at the conference, and more than 100 experts from China, Europe and Africa attended the conference. Tongji University sent a delegation of 20 teachers and students from multiple colleges including transportation, architecture and urban planning and civil engineering to visit the Ecole nationale des ponts et chaussées in France and attend the conference on its Paris campus.

This month also marks EELISA Days, with EELISA European University for Engineering sponsoring this conference and extending its reach across a network of 200,000 students and 50,000 researchers in Europe, all dedicated to redefining the profile of responsible European engineers for a sustainable society. This China-Europe connection has the potential to strengthen longstanding collaborations, between our two institutions, École nationale des ponts et chaussées and Tongji University.