With the development of social production and commodity market, many countries and regions need large-scale transportation. /kloc-in the 0/8th century, the transportation industry gradually became an independent economic sector. As a continuation of the production process in the circulation field, transportation has become an important factor in social production. The development of urban and rural economy, the development of new areas and the development of domestic and foreign markets are all inseparable from transportation. Transportation has become a special investment field. More and more attention has been paid to the study of transportation economy. /kloc-in the 0/9th century, economists made a lot of discussions on transportation economy and published monographs. In Das Kapital, Marx also quoted the Russian book Railway Industry (1842 ~ 1908). In Das Kapital, Marx scientifically expounded some important economic issues, such as the nature of transportation, its promotion to the development of productive forces, its position and role in circulation, its value and its cost. Since modern times, the United States, the Soviet Union and other countries have published works on transport economics. D.P. Locklin, L.F. Marvin, R.E. Westminster and others in the United States all have their own books entitled "Transport Economics". They are concerned about the government's transportation laws and regulations and the government's control over the transportation industry, and are concerned about freight rates and costs, as well as financial and labor issues. In 1930s and 1950s, the representative works of Soviet transport economics were t. c. Khachaturov( 1906 ~)' s Transport Configuration, Railway Transport Economic Principles and Transport Economics. In the 1960s and 1970s, the Economics of Railway Transportation edited by Khanukov was popularized. The early works of transport economics in the Soviet Union mainly described economic geography and expounded transport economic policies, and later turned to systematic theoretical analysis, focusing on the economic analysis of the development law of transport productivity and the quantitative study of the economic effects of technical policies.

China introduced western transport economics from the late 1920s to 1930s, and published books such as Transport Economics and Railway Management successively, introducing the principles of freight rate, transport cost, financial accounting and transport statistics. After liberation, the new China's transport economy theory mainly draws lessons from the experience of the former Soviet Union and compiles a series of transport economy textbooks and monographs in combination with the reality of China. Around the 1980s, a number of works such as Railway Transport Economy, Highway Transport Economy, Shipping Economy, China Transport Layout, China Transport Economic Analysis, and China Transport Problems came out one after another, some of which discussed the transport economy, management activities and the internal system reform of various departments respectively, while others reflected the research results of comprehensive macro transport economic problems at that time.

In the western countries where the development of transport economics is the mainstream, great changes have taken place in the works and teaching materials of transport economics in the last 20 years, and one of its outstanding features is the use of standard economic methods. For example, in 1997, Kenneth D. Boyer of the University of Michigan published the book "Principles of Transportation Economics", which clearly established transportation economic analysis on the characteristics of transportation network economy for the first time, so it was often regarded as a sign that transportation economics began to mature. In addition, there are other textbooks published by some people in recent years, such as TransportEconomics (2nd edition) by Kenneth Barton (1993) in Britain. Applied Transport Economics: Policy, Management and Decision (2nd Edition) was published by Stuart Cole in 1998, Analytical Transport Economics: An International Perspective was published by J.B. Polak and A. Shilkin in 2000, and Transport Economics-Theory and Practice: Case Study Method was published by P.S. McCarthy in 2000.

In the 1990s, the theoretical system of transport economics was gradually formed. Representative works include: Introduction to Transportation Economics (edited by Xu Qingbin, Rong Chao He, Ma Yun, etc. , 1995) and Transport Economy-Practice, Theory and Policy (translated by Zhao, Rong Chaohe and Ma Yun, etc. , 1999). Qiao Lezhong's Transport Economics (Chengdu University of Technology Press, 1993), Zhao Xiduo's Transport Economics (Dalian Maritime University Press, 1998) and Guan Chudu's New Horizon Transport Economics (People's Communications Press, 2000