On behalf of COPPE/UFRJ Board, I would like to invite you to the 13th WCTR, which is to be held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on July 15-18, 2013. Beforehand, we will have the WCTRS Young Researchers’ Conference, which will be held on July 14, 2013 and will be free to young researchers who are also participating in the main conference. What are the attractions, you might ask. Well, Rio de Janeiro is a very nice city. And Brazil is a very nice country. We have a population of almost two hundred million, we have the Amazon River and the well known Amazon rainforest, 8,000 kilometers of beautiful beaches, samba, a spectacular carnival, Pele, football that is still pretty good, good coffee, the list just goes on. Now let me explain why is the 2013 WCTR being hosted by Brazil? Since 1987, the Brazilian National Association for Transport Research & Education – ANPET, has been holding an annual meeting, gathering over four hundred papers from all transport fields. I am proud to have been their first chairman. Brazilian academia is already engaged and committed to presenting the state of the art of our transport research at the 13th WCTR. Moreover, we have strong and friendly academic links with researchers from across Latin America, in countries such as Argentina, Chile, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Costa Rica and Ecuador. We also have links with African researchers, many of whom were master’s/doctoral students at Coppe/UFRJ. We are very proud of this friendship. The 13th WCTR is expected to be a milestone, gathering together important experience from the wide diversity of transport research and encountering solutions for transforming societies. We would like to express our gratitude to the WCRT Society for its faith in our capacity to organize this conference. We are waiting for you in Rio, with all of our professional and academic efforts to show you, but also with a little bit of samba and bossa nova. Welcome to the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, welcome to COPPE and welcome to Rio.