Following Spain, Japan will preside over the International Transport Forum and its annual summit in 2012. The 2012 summit on "Seamless Transport: Making Connections" will take place on 2-4 May 2012 in Leipzig, Germany. Our first duty as those responsible for this sector is to respond to this challenge in an appropriate manner. The panel sessions and discussions at the 2011 summit again provided ample proof of this. The range of issues which the Forum has been working on since its creation, and on which it has given interesting recommendations, reflect the challenges faced by transport in relation to society's demands.