Guided by the strategy of building a strong country in transportation, transportation colleges and universities should adapt to the needs of the country’s economic and social development, give full play to the school’s advantages in running schools, and conduct specialized training for postgraduates in architecture to meet the needs of high-quality international talents in China’s transportation construction. A survey of the training programs of architecture graduate students in eight domestic transportation institutions finds that theoretical courses and design internships seldom explore the problems of transportation construction, international education limited by school system and student status management is not systematic and characteristic, research and practice do not combine the cutting-edge issues of transportation construction and are lack of innovation. Therefore, combining the requirements of high-quality training of postgraduates and the strategy of building a strong country in transportation, on the basis of in-depth analysis of relevant domestic and foreign research, a characteristic cultivation mechanism of architecture graduate students in transportation colleges has been proposed: construct a multi-disciplinary, theoretical and practical graduate course system; establish a postgraduate training mechanism for collaborative education of government, industry, university and research; adhere to an international joint training mechanism emphasizing both bringing in and going out. This is of great significance to the characteristic cultivation of architecture graduate students in transportation colleges.