On May 20-23 2019, the Emperor Alexander I St. Petersburg State Transport University was held IV International Scientific and Technical Conference «Transport construction in cold regions» (TRANSOILCOLD 2019), dedicated to the 210th anniversary of the University and the 100th anniversary of the Faculty of «Transport Construction».

Solving the most difficult tasks of transport infrastructure objects in particular, railways and roads, in the Arctic regions is impossible without the use of advanced international experience.The choice of PGUPS as the location for the next conference confirms its status as a competent international scientific center for the transport industry.

The purpose of the TRANSOILCOLD 2019 conference is to highlight a wide range of problems for designers, builders, infrastructure owners that emerge during the design, construction and operation of transport facilities in cold and arctic regions.

The International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnics, including technical committees: TC202 «Transport Geotechnics», TC215 «Geotechnology and Ecology», TC216 «Geotechnics of frozen soils», International Society of Geosynthetic Materials, International Permafrost Young Scientists supported the conference.

On May 21, a plenary meeting of the conference TRANSOILCOLD 2019 took place in the Assembly Hall. The Rector Alexander Panychev addressed to the participants. According to his words, the place for such representative scientific forum was not chosen by chance. In recent years, University employees have provided and continue to provide scientific support for big transport investment construction projects implemented in the east, south and north of our country. We are also a technical expert of the «Northern Latitudinal Railway» project. Alexander Panychev noted that, despite of the world experience in the construction of railways and highways in cold regions, there are and still remain unsolved problems of ensuring the reliability of buildings and structures erected and operated on eternally frozen and on weak water-inundated soils. In particular, more than 60% of the Russian territory is located in permafrost areas and swamps. At the same time, in the nearest future the development programs of transport network are planning a large-scale transport development of the territories of the Far North of the Russian Federation. Moreover, the priority project today is Northern Latitudinal Railway, the implementation of which has already begun; it is the construction of a new Salekhard-Nadym railway. In light of this information and according to the invincible belief of the Rector, TRANSOILCOLD 2019 conference is could not be more relevant, and its solutions will bring tactile benefits for the transport builders.

Specialists from Germany, Kazakhstan, Canada, China, Pakistan, Poland, Russia, USA, Czech Republic and South Korea took a part in the conference.

At the sectional sessions were held discussions about the usage of geosynthetic materials in transport construction, the development of geo-protective materials, structures and technologies for transport, stabilization of transport facilities, soil dynamics, design, construction and operation of transport infrastructure in cold regions, modeling, design, construction and operation of groundwork and highways and geotechnical structures, the effects of permafrost on the transport facilities. There were speeches and reports on engineering surveys and field experiments, problems of freezing and defrosting, laboratory studies of soils and underground construction in cold regions.

The conference hosted a meeting of the Russian branch of the International Geosynthetic Society.

The conference collected works will be published in electronic form in the public domain and included in scientometrical databases — Scopus / Web of Science.