Editors' Introduction

We have several announcements to make in this issue. First, Mary Holcomb, Co-Editor-in-Chief of Transportation Journal, has finished her term and will be stepping down soon. Mary served as the Industry Note Editor for three years prior to being appointed as the co-editor of the journal. We very much appreciate her long-time service commitment to this journal. She has made a number of improvements for the journal. During her time as co-editor, the journal's statistics, including paper submissions and impact factor, have improved considerably. She has done a great job for the journal, and she will be missed by all of the editorial team members. We wish her the best for the next chapter of her career.

Second, David Swanson, a faculty member at University of North Florida, will be joining the journal's editorial team as the new Co-Editor-in-Chief, replacing Mary. David is a well-known transportation scholar, and we are delighted to have him join the board. He will be working closely with Mary for the next few months.

Third, Carrie Ann Johnson, Assistant Editor of Transportation Journal, will be finishing her two-year term and will be stepping down soon. Carrie Ann has done a great job of assisting the editors for handling papers. After completing her term, she will be concentrating on her Ph.D. program at Iowa State University to finish her degree. We thank Carrie Ann for her help during the last two years, and we wish her the best for her future career. Fourth, Michael Belding, a Ph.D. student in history at Iowa State University, will be joining the editorial team as the new Assistant Editor. Michael will be working closely with Carrie Ann over the next few months to ensure a seamless transition. Michael is expected to serve in this role until summer of 2021. We welcome Michael to the editorial team.

Fifth, it is time again to report the acceptance rate of the journal for the calendar year 2018. Our method of calculating the acceptance rate is to simply divide the total number of articles published in the year (2018) by the total number of papers submitted during the year (2018). Submissions of revisions are not counted as separate submissions to produce conservative acceptance rates. Using this method, the acceptance rate of research papers for 2018 was computed as 18.6%, or equivalently, rejection rate of 81.4%. In the past two years, the acceptance rates were 13.2% (2016) and 13.6% (2017), so the journal's acceptance rate seems to have increased slightly. This is mainly due to the fact that we published a larger number of articles in 2018 than in previous years. Had we published about the same number of articles in 2018 as the previous two years, the journal's acceptance rate would have been close to 13%. We understand that this may not be the most accurate way of calculating the acceptance rate, as this does not reflect the proportion of papers submitted in 2018 that survived to acceptance. However, this allows us to compute the acceptance rate relatively easily, and we believe that, in the long run, this rate will reflect the correct acceptance rate.

Finally, the due date of the Special Issue: "Transportation Challenges and Solutions for 2020 and Beyond" has been extended. The new submission deadline is May 31, 2019. Please submit your paper by this date for full consideration.

Respectively, Yoshi Suzuki, Mary Holcomb, and David Swanson, Co-Editors