Commissioned research is by order of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (MOLIT) and local government.

[1] KOTI was founded through Article 32 of the Civil Act in November 1985[2] and official began operation August 1987 under article 24 of the Urban Traffic Readjustment Promotion Act.

[3] In 1999 it joined the National Research Council for Economics, Humanities, and Social Sciences (NRCS)[4][5] and moved to the Construction & Transport Research Complex in Goyang City until it moved to Sejong City in December 2014.

KOTI consists of 300 personnel of which 230 are in research positions and a total of 99 are Ph.D. holders.

Researcher exchange programs exist with Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Asian Development Bank (ADB), and the World Bank.