APEC Transportation Youth Forum
June 20-24, 1997, Victoria, British Columbia (Canada)

During the APEC Transportation Ministerial, the ministers focused on safe and environment-friendly transportation systems, the use of transportation systems to facilitate trade, more competitive transportation operating environments, infrastructure development, human resources development and new transportation technologies.

The APEC Transportation Youth Forum was planned around two main themes: transportation planning and environmental issues related to transportation. Discussion of these two themes led to the following issues being raised:

Environmental Impact and Planning Coordination - Transportation planning and environmental impact assessment go hand in hand. This means that when making plans to change transportation systems, planners should be taking the environment into consideration.

Stakeholder Participation - For the youth delegates, this means communicating with all kinds of people (business people, community members, governments) during the planning stages of a transportation project.

Environmental and Social Costs - Delegates proposed that the full costs of developing transportation infrastructure be identified as part of the planning process. This includes the environmental costs (such as lost habitat to extinct species because of a new airport, for example) and social costs (such as the loss of the park where kids play to make way for a superhighway). The true cost of building needs to be known before a project begins so that time and money are not wasted when long-term needs are sacrificed for short term development.

Policy Coordination - The youth delegates called for policies to be coordinated amongst the member economies. Differences in regulations and standards often result in time delays and lost money. For example, if a shipment of frozen lobster sits at the docks for a few days while the captain changes the emission standards equipment to suit the rules of the next port he is entering, this results in lost time, money and could even result in spoilage. This kind of situation is a deterrent to using existing transportation systems to move goods from one economy to another. This is why the youth delegates suggest a set of standards that are the same for all member economies.

Incompatibility of Technologies - This issue is similar to the issue of policy coordination. If a group of people do not all have access to the same tools to do a job, how can they possibly do the job the same way? The youth delegates recommended standardization of technology so that all economies are able to work together in making their transportation systems compatible.

Questions for Discussion:
1. Which theme matches the transporation concerns in your community?
2. If your community suddenly had no roads, no trains, no airport, no boats, what would happen? What would happen to businesses? How would it affect you?
3. Have you ever participated in the process of consulting with transportation planners? How do transportation planners communicate with the public in your community?

A glimpse of some of the youth discussion:

Balancing economic, social and environmental issues in transportation planning

When making plans to change transportation systems, there are many issues that need to be explored.

For example, when planning to increase the number of buses running in a city, planners take into account the effects this change can have on animal and plant habitats, human quality of life, and how much it will cost to build and maintain roads that have heavy bus traffic.

These are only some of the areas planners have to research before actually starting to work on a proposed transportation project. Balancing these priorities is very important for the environment, the people who live there and the future of every living thing in an area where transportation projects are being proposed.

Questions for Discussion:
1. What are some examples of the environmental costs of transportation in your community?
2. What are some examples of the social costs of transportation in your community?
3. How could transportation planners in your community be encouraged to consider environmental and social as well as economic costs?

Click here for a youth perspective.

 

The role of communication in transportation planning

Communicating with all of the people who will be affected by proposed changes in the transportation system is a huge task.

APEC Transportation Youth Forum participants stressed the importance of talking and planning with all of the people involved. In particular, they focused on sharing experiences about difficulties and successes amongst all APEC members, having more public involvement in transportation decision-making and creating public transportation education programs.

Questions for Discussion:
1. How could members of your community become more involved in transportation planning?
2. How could you increase awareness of the impact of transportation (social, environmental, economic) in your community?
3. What are some of the successful, or not so successful, transportation projects in your area? How could they have been improved?

Click here for a youth perspective.

 

Efficiency and transportation planning

Participants at the Youth Forum were concerned that while new transportation plans are being developed, the old systems are being ignored. This can be expensive, time consuming and wasteful. Making the "best use" of existing transportation systems was described as a top priority.

For example, building an entirely new bridge close to where an old bridge is already standing may not be the most efficient way to solve the problem of having too much heavy traffic on the older bridge. Transportation planners consider how the old bridge can be changed to handle more traffic, like maybe adding reinforcements to the foundation or building another lane onto the old bridge so that heavier traffic is not dangerous. In this simplified example, using the structure of the old bridge solves the problem efficiently, saving dollars, time, energy and raw materials.

 

Questions for Discussion:
1. How could planners in your community use existing transportation more effectively?
2. Can you think of an example in your community where short-term goals were more important than long-term planning? What could have been done differently?

Click here for a youth perspective.