Transportation Dialogue

INTRODUCTIONS

John Shores

Greetings GreenRiders! I'll be playing message moderator, list lackey, and forum facilitator for this GreenRide discussion -- officially known as the "Environmental Impact of Transportation Conference." Welcome aboard!

I grew up in a small town on the periphery of a rapidly expanding metropolitan area on the Atlantic coast of North America. As a small boy, I roamed about in my own "wilderness area" -- actually a large farm that had ceased operations. The fields and pastures were growing up in secondary forest -- until the highways were widened, the urban expansion surrounded us, and my "forest" was bulldozed to make room for high-rise office buildings and endless parking lots. Population and transportation seemed to be taking over the world. This probably shaped my career choices...

By academic training, I am a natural resource planner and resource management specialist. My concentration area was wildland management: national parks and other protected areas. Early in my career I worked primarily on individual national parks, then I worked on national systems of protected areas, and finally as a consultant and advisor on parks and protected areas in a number of countries. Over the years, I expanded the scope of my work in any particular location, broadening the focus to include neighboring communities, community organizing, adjacent land uses, rural development, and regional planning. Park professionals have been involved in all of these arenas since the creation of the first national parks, but restrictive funding and government policy too often limited their visibility and prohibited any mention of these activities in official documents.

My interest in transportation is both academic and personal. I recognize the environmental hazards that transportation poses to people and the planet. Transportation corridors destroy habitat, alter drainage patterns, create noise, increase air pollution, and pollute surface and groundwater. Airports (and air transport) create noise, add to air pollution, and pollute surface and groundwater. River transport leads to air and water pollution, and to dams and locks that destroy habitat and alter aquatic systems, particularly interfering with migration paths. And probably the most disturbing aspect of the environmental impacts of transportation is the pervasive influence of transport on climate change -- so many individual sources, and the impacts may be felt thousands of miles away.

My personal transportation preference has long been the bicycle. For more than 30 years, I have been able to keep my residence and my primary work site within walking or biking distance. When forced by the weather, I do on occasion resort to public transportation. But unless I am hauling heavy luggage or cargo, I generally avoid using a private vehicle to get to work. And all grocery shopping and errands, up to approximately 20 kg in weight, I do on my bicycle.

My transport record is by no means unblemished. My consulting and advising work has carried me to more than 40 countries (mostly to developing countries in South and Central America and the Caribbean, Africa, Asia, and the Pacific Islands, plus transition economies in Europe and Asia, and one overnight stop in New Zealand. I didn't get there by pedaling my bicycle. But I was an "early adopter" of e-mail and have happily applied information technology to improve information exchange and reduce the need for travel. Sometimes through the use of e-mail and electronic document exchange, I have completely avoided the need for more air travel. (I should add that this international telecommuting usually involves countries that I have already worked in.) But how can we have travel and tourism in the world if we are championing a move (ever so slowly) toward more sustainable modes of transport? The obvious answer is to encourage tourism within the radius of currently available modes of sustainable transport: walking, hiking, biking, camping, canoeing, kayaking, rowing, sailing -- essentially any form of self-powered mobility. Not only is it much more healthy from an exercise point of view, but it seems to increase the business for restaurants. <grin>

I am delighted that other members of this discussion forum have highlighted air transport as "the elephant at the table" in our deliberations about sustainable tourism. Earthscan kindly provided me with complimentary review copies of two of their recent publications on transportation for this forum. (I'll provide more information on those books in a separate posting.) The unfortunate conclusion is that we're not likely to make air transport environmentally sustainable -- ever. Eliminating the financial subsidies from air transport would help reduce the slewing of the transportation market, but we'll need to move even faster toward sustainability in the other modes of transport to compensate for the damage done by air travel.

Depending on the route, air travel may be as much as 50% tourism. For a different destination without much tourist traffic, the role of air transport may be almost entirely family, business, and cargo. At the other end of the travel chain, we have transportation at the tourist destination. I hope we will have time to explore and discuss the full spectrum. So let's get started

Ron Mader

I host the Planeta website. Originally, I am from Indiana (USA) and for the past ten years I've made Mexico my home ... when I'm not on the road! This month I will be traveling quite a bit, attending the Green Festival in Austin and the Expo Ecoturismo in Venezuela. That said, I'll be curious to see how much these travels impact the environment ...

My background in tourism goes back more than a decade, which is more than some and less than others. I've written the Mexico: Adventures in Nature guidebook, and I am the Latin America correspondent for Transitions Abroad magazine. What I'm very excited about is that in 2004 the Planeta website celebrates its 10th anniversary! (Imagine, NAFTA, Zapatistas and Planeta all share the same birthday).

Last year in consultation with friends and colleagues, I decided that Planeta would host a conference on transportation. Why? It made sense. We've already had discussions in our Forum on green hotels, community tourism, certification (sigh ...), financing, marketing ... and the one missing piece was precisely the way we get from here to there. That said, I recognize this is not a particularly sexy topic.

There are two areas that interest me. The first is airline travel. Personally, I am very interested in learning what the impact of airline travel, but I'm not ready to forgo flight and walk to all the places that interest me. In fact, this month I am negotiating a contract with an airline consolidator which Planeta would feature for those buying airline tickets.

In terms of airline travel, my biggest question is not the environmental impact alone, but rather, why is the field so crazy? Ticket prices confuse everyone. Safety is a concern as is courtesy. With the exception of Southwest Airlines in the US, I have yet to fly on a plane the past two years in which I feel welcome.

The second area of interest for me is local eco travel (a.k.a. the "green ride") -- how we develop and promote travel such as biking, kayaking and hiking? What are the lessons learned around the globe that can be shared?

What I hope we can achieve in this conference is to shine the light a bt on the questions that have eluded many traditional forums. If we can collect the various articles and references and books and create a recommended reading list, we will do ourselves and others a great service.Finally, I'd like to thank again the co-sponsors of this discussion: Channel View Publications, The Shores System, ECOCLUB.com, Eldis and Sustainable Sources. Their support of the work in this conference is much appreciated.

Andres Hammerman and Michelle Kirby

Michelle Kirby and I built, own and operate the Black Sheep Inn, an Ecologically Friendly Hotel in the rural Ecuadorian Andes. See our website for details about our ecological practices and the various recognition that we have received. Today we celebrate nine years in Ecuador! I want to address a few different points during this conference.

Before moving to Ecuador we both worked for the Green Tortoise Adventure Travel Company. I mostly drove bus trips across the USA. I have also been a truck driver, limo driver, sail boat deliverer and tractor driver before moving here.
Transportation for tourism is more than just moving people from place to place, but also logistics of obtaining merchandise and food products. This will also address how people get to the Black Sheep Inn, and what transportation we rely upon.
Comparing different types of travel methods and looking at society as a whole... this will be a philosophical look at transportation and our new view of the world.

I will start with #1... My wife Michelle and I met while working for the Green Tortoise, an alternative bus company based out of San Francisco, California. In some ways the Green Tortoise is a throw back hippy communal way to travel, but it was also a cheap way to see some of the fantastic back road sites in the Americas. When we worked for them (1991-1992) they ran trips across the USA, to National Parks, up to Alaska and down through Mexico and Guatemala. They used old 1948 GM buses with Detroit Diesels and Alison Transmissions. Remember the photo of Jackie Gleason in the Honeymooners grabbing his lunch bag out of the window of the city bus that he drove? That is the style of bus that the Green Tortoise runs.

I mostly drove trips from San Francisco to Boston and back. Each way lasted between 10 and 14 days with a group of 35 to 40 passengers. Michelle was the manager of the 140 acre property in Southern Oregon that was the breakfast, dinner and sauna hub for the overnight commuter trip from San Francisco to Seattle. The Green Tortoise buses have all been converted so that passengers can sleep lying down on a giant foam platform. Where typical buses store day luggage, the Green Tortoise built bunkbeds. There were two booths with tables that also converted into sleeping space. For longer adventure trips we carried our own food and cooking supplies and prepared both dinner and breakfast with the help of the passengers. Meals were included (mostly vegetarian) and planned by the two drivers/tour leaders, but always prepared with the help of the passengers.

We drove through the night so that every day the passengers could enjoy hiking, horseback riding, white water rafting, hot springs, National Parks, monuments and other spectacular scenery. The passengers paid approximately $40 per day which included their transportation, 2 meals and a place to sleep. Beer was extra. The majority of passengers were European and a high percentage were women. The trip was far more than transportation. We took people down the back roads to secluded, unknown ghost towns, hot springs, Native America bars and cafes, Blues and Jazz Clubs, and swimming holes.

In general, I think bus transportation is relatively ECO, because small car and private transportation burns more energy per person than a bus does. When we worked for the Green Tortoise we did not think of ourselves as working for an Eco Travel Company, but we did recycle, we tried to leave no trace in the rural areas we visited, we purchased organic and bulk food supplies whenever possible, and we shared expenses in order to provide high quality service for a low price.

Before moving to Ecuador I was also a truck driver for an Organic Foods Co-op in New England and I spent time in their warehouse driving an electric fork lift putting together different co-op grocery store orders. For a brief period I drove stretch Limousines in Seattle. In Massachusetts, while a group of Jamaican migrant workers picked apples, I drove a tractor in the orchard moving giant bins of apples to a refrigerated warehouse for selection and sorting.

I also helped to deliver luxury sailing vessels from the Caribbean to the USA. The owner of the boat would not be able to spend the time that it takes to deliver the boat where he or she wants it. Therefore, the owner spent the money for a one way air ticket for me to be part of the delivery crew. Sometimes we were out at sea for 7 days taking shifts at the helm and watching for other boats.What is more ECO? Burning diesel to deliver organic produce to small grocery stores? Using rechargeable batteries or propane for a forklift and warehouse operations? Burning diesel to move a bunch of drinking dancing fun loving Europeans across the USA? Or burning gasoline in unwieldy low riding cars to move immature adults with allot of money across a hilly city with difficult parking opportunities? Burning diesel to move apples to make delicious cider? Or using the wind to move a luxury sailboat very slowly from one place to another?

Out of all of these examples, what is the MOST ECO method of transport? I truly don't know.

Mike Robbins said ""the elephant at our table" in these discussions over the Environmental Impact of Transportation is air transport" which I will address in a later post.

Antonis B. Petropoulos

It is my great pleasure to join you from Athens, Greece, in my capacity as the director of ECOCLUB.com - International Ecotourism Club, a worldwide membership-based ecotourism network, and a proud Co-sponsor of this conference.

First of all, I would like to thank Mr. Ron Mader and Mr. John Shores for organising and moderating this conference on an often neglected, but important topic in tourism circles. By way of introductory remarks, I note that Tourism and Transport are twins, and wonder if one should similarly expect Ecotourism and Sustainable Transport to be twins too? I wish the answer was a clear yes. Instead I present to you this true incident: A couple of years ago (long long time ago by Internet standards), we used to offer cheap flights at our website through an "affiliate solution" as we thought they complemented our self-booking services to independent travellers. And in any case other websites were offering it.

Then one day I received an angry email from an apparent deep ecologist working in an organic farm in Cornwall, who was protesting at our audacity to combine ecotourism with cheap flights, that were "the result of unfair airport and gasoline subsidies to large airlines, the source of pollution, the cause for mass tourism", and apparently of many other evils that plague this world. I replied that I respected her point of view, and that I appreciated that tourists visiting her farm in Cornwall would not have to fly there (although I suspected that most would have driven a car to get there).

However, I called on her to consider that flying in some occasions could be the lesser of two evils, if for example an ecotourist would decide not to visit a community ecotourism project because it is was so remote and inaccessible, and there was not enough holiday time available.After all there could not be tourism without tourists. I also pointed out that we make efforts to include all possible ways to get to a Lodge in our website (by rail, by bus, by boat etc), and that lodges in the third world did not have the luck to be close to affluent 1st world tourists.

From the point of view of the needy in the third world, first world over-sensitivities about carbon emissions may seem rather bizarre. Also, the idea that you can somehow repent for your carbon-emissions ("offset your carbon with your credit card - click here now") is scientifically dubious, and spins the "polluter pays" principle on its head to "he who can pay can pollute." I have been called a cynic about this view, but I feel I am no more a cynic than those who peddle these tricks to the gullible. Of course there are exceptions, when for example the "carbon-emission" funds go directly to meaningful social projects rather to planting trees.

The pessimistic view seems to be that there is no completely benevolent transport mode, for example walking is sustainable, but what about walking outside a path, and on rare plants? The optimists believe that technology will give, as always, the solution, in the future, with solar aircraft, solar cars etc. My view is somewhere in the middle, sustainable transport is also an art of the possible, but possibilities tend to increase.

Our role as proponents of ecotourism, is to make these possibilities known, accessible and affordable to the public. This is, I believe, the spirit of this on-line conference and I look very much forward to hearing and learning from the distinguished participants.

Claudia Townsend

Eldis is pleased to be one of the co-sponsors of this conference. For those who don't know the website, it's a portal to development and environment information; we find, summarise and synthesise the latest research and news on major development issues and all of our content is available free online or by email for those with limited web access.

We are based at the Institute for Development Studies in Sussex, UK.I have a background in tourism and have developed an online tourism resource guide with over 200 documents relating to tourism, environment and development as well as links to organisations. One of the first features I did for the site was on tourism and climate change. The page has summaries of and links to a number of useful documents on this subject for those conference participants looking for further background reading.

The page is based on the premise that transportation for tourism has significant impacts on climate change and vice versa: some of the world's most beautiful and popular sites are being affected by climate change. Indeed climate change, its impacts and how to deal with them was a huge topic of discussion at September's World Parks Congress in Durban (for background reading on that subject see the section on climate change). Protected Areas are worried about this issue, and much tourism relies heavily on Protected Areas. My feeling is that the industry has accepted that it has a responsibility to minimise its environmental impact locally (debatable I know, but operators in PAs at least are generally aware of these issues), but has not begun to consider either its global impacts or its
global environmental responsibilities.

For me, the big question is over aviation, flying is the one consumer item that has actually decreased, possibly around tenfold, in relative price since 1960. To expect significant numbers of people to stop buying cheap flights out of environmental concern seems to me unrealistic.

However, despite concerns over its environmental usefulness, I do like the work of climate care and others, at least in raising awareness of the impacts of flying. That increased awareness may begin to pave the way for public acceptance of fairer and more sensible pricing mechanisms for flights that take environmental impact into account. It's a thorny and political issue and I look forward to hearing others' ideas.

Sami Grover

I am very pleased to be joining the "Environmental Impacts of Transportation" online conference as the commissioning editor for Channel View Publications' tourism and environmental studies lists. Channel View Publications, another proud co-sponsor of this conference, is an independent academic publishing house based in North Somerset in South West England.

In addition to our book series, "Aspects of Tourism" and "Tourism and Cultural Change", we also publish "the Journal of Sustainable Tourism", "Journal of Ecotourism" and "Current Issues in Tourism". we will also be starting two new journals this year, "The Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change" and "the International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability. Perhaps of most interest to fellow delegates of this conference would be our forthcoming "Tourism, Recreation and Climate Change", edited by C.Michael Hall and James Higham which will be out in late 2004.

I came to this job as someone with no background in tourism or tourism studies and, whilst I do see a lot of encouraging debate, and some action, around the issues of sustainability, I have been surprised and disappointed by how focussed this is on localised impacts on specific destinations. As Claudia Townsend from Eldis has pointed out, there is much less recognition of the huge impact tourism is having on a global scale and, conversely, of how large a threat this global impact may pose to tourism itself.

To my mind also, air travel must be the main focus when it comes to looking at the impact of tourism related travel. Whilst we can and should promote cycling, walking, public transport etc once tourists reach their destinations, this seems fairly futile if we do not also address the huge emissions involved in transporting them there. It seems to me that the advances in high-speed trains and other terrestrial forms of transport for short to middle distance journeys, combined with a greater focus on cleaner air-craft technologies could significantly improve on the current situation. If this were combined with a serious effort to encourage domestic tourism, a re-thinking of the way planes are routed to avoid too many transfers, and a fairer fuel taxation system that accurately reflected the environmental and social costs involved then we could be a great deal nearer the goal of truly sustainable travel. I realise that the above would take time and would represent a huge shake-up for this and many other industries, not to mention the political status-quo, but I do believe that we have reached a point where in-action is no longer an option. How we get from here to there, both actually and metaphorically, and how do we take others with us, well that's for the conference to thrash out!

I also share Antonis' and Claudia's reservations regarding carbon offset. There is certainly a huge risk in encouraging guilt-free pollution at the swipe of a credit card. However, if marketed correctly and honestly I too believe that some of these schemes, particularly those based around transferring cleaner technologies to those in developing countries (e.g. Climate Care), can be a useful awareness raising tool and a valuable source of revenue for worthy projects.

Mike Robbins

I am a tourism consultant based in Toronto, Ontario Canada. I am pleased to be able to participate in this on-line conference. I am the founding Partner in the Tourism Company, a management and marketing consulting firm specializing in tourism. My educational background was in Resource Management and I started out as an environmental consultant, working with a large multi-disciplinary consulting firm in their Tourism & Environmental Planning Department almost 25 years ago. I gradually moved into the tourism arena full time and worked for a number of large multi-disciplinary firms in Canada and in New Zealand. I started my own practice in 1993 forming the Tourism Company. the Tourism Company specializes in ecotourism and more sustainable development approaches in rural and remote areas. A significant portion of our current workload is with native peoples and communities. We work throughout Canada and internationally.

I am also an investor in a solar technology company here in Canada, called Enerworks, and I sit on the Board of Directors. I am also involved in conservation and ecotourism through philanthropy. My partner and I have set up a philanthropic fund called the 7th Generation Fund through Tides Canada, and we are currently involved in a major conservation project trying to protect the Taku River Watershed, the largest intact, unprotected wilderness watershed in North America.

I agree that "the elephant at our table" in these discussions over the Environmental Impact of Transportation is air transport. Mass tourism is the "elephant at our table" when we discuss more sustainable models for tourism in general. We cannot hope to succeed in tackling the whole transportation sector in the same way we cannot hope to tackle the entire tourism industry with the movement towards ecotourism. That being said I always wonder if the relatively small improvements we strive to achieve when we assist a client in developing the concept for a remote ecolodge, when a large portion of their eventual customers will be flown in by air resulting in far more environmental impact than we can hope to mitigate with the more sensitive design of the ecolodge. I look forward to the ongoing discussion over air transport. I will not address air transport in this submission but rather will focus on the broader application of sustainable transport principles in a sensitive ecosystem -- the Great Lakes Heritage Coast.

Last year we were involved as part of a multi-disciplinary consulting team to develop a Coastal Protection and Tourism Strategy for the Great Lakes Heritage Coast. The Great Lakes Heritage Coast is one of the key signature sites identified under Ontario's Living Legacy program administered through the Ministry of Natural Resources. Stretching over 4,200 km, the Great Lakes Heritage Coast includes pristine coastal environments and ecologically diverse protected areas. Weaving in and amongst these areas are cultural heritage areas, alongside abundant potential for recreation. This vast area is also home to 25 First Nations and more than 22 communities with a total population of approximately 300,000 people.

The overall objective in developing this strategy was to protect the natural beauty and the ecosystems along the Coast, while at the same time providing increased economic opportunity for people living along the Coast. User conflict and overuse in some areas was beginning to put the coastal ecosystems at risk. Our responsibility was to consult with the tourism sector and develop the Tourism Strategy, and secondly to work to involve the First Nations. The Strategy that resulted from our work over an almost two year period covered the following types of strategic directions:

* Focus on programs and partnerships that address coastal protection and restoration
* Actively support and encourage private sector led stewardship
* Develop a land acquisition strategy
* Improve crown land stewardship and develop a visitor management system
* Develop co-management relationships with First Nations and community-based groups to manage protected areas
* Support protected area designation like National Marine Conservation Areas and World Biosphere Reserves
* Support and expand public education and research along the Coast
* Initiate a Coastal Guardians program along the Coast
* Adopt ecotourism principles to guide the tourism strategy

It was the last point that really helped us define the tourism strategy. Despite political pressures to the contrary, we focused the tourism strategy on low impact tourism activities and opportunities along the Coast including for example:

* Sea kayaking (some of the highest value fresh water sea kayaking resources in the country)
* Canoeing (the historic highways of the First Nations along this Coast)
* Nature-based activities like bird watching and wildlife viewing
* Cultural heritage tourism focusing on Aboriginal and non-native cultural heritage
* Coastal hiking
* Sustainable sport fishing

These types of activities were easy to support. Where we had some difficulty was with regard to the following activities:

* Snowmobile touring (which has been developed as a major part of the Northern Ontario tourism industry)
* All terrain vehicle (ATV) touring (developing as a major tourism activity in Northern Ontario)
* Great Lakes Cruise Ships (making a strong comeback)
* Boat cruising (the North Channel is one of the highest value cruising areas in Canada)
* Motorcoach tours (the Coast is paralleled by major highways and motorcoach tourism is an important part of the urban tourism sectors in larger communities along the Coast)
* RV travel
* Car touring

We realized that this Tourism Strategy could have a major influence on the future directions for tourism along the Coast. We had to give major emphasis to protecting the Coastal environment but we also had to consider ways to increase economic opportunities for people living along the Coast. In the end we decided to focus the Strategy on the low impact activities and a select number of other transport modes with the following characteristics:

* Activities that were already a strong part of the tourism
industry
* Activities that could be pushed to become far more
environmentally responsible (i.e. marinas adopting the Green Marina standard)
* Activities that would provide opportunity for education of visitors, and where visitor behaviour could be influenced (i.e. families traveling the Coast by car or RV)
* Activities that support smaller group numbers
* Activities that would have a smaller impact on the sensitive coastal environment

Using these criteria we eliminated activities like snowmobiling and ATV touring as well as cruise ships and motorcoach travel. I believe this Coastal Strategy provides an example as to how we can incrementally improve the environmental impact of transportation. We need to focus on incremental improvement that is achievable rather than dwelling on the unachievable.

Tim Burford

I'm the author of various guidebooks such as Bradt's Hiking Guide to Chile and Argentina, and the Rough Guide to Romania. I'm British but cuurently partly based in Anchorage; like John, I rely on a bike and public transport, which works well in Cambridge but less so in Alaska. I'm updating the Romania book at the moment while a new guide to Chile is currently running ten months late, so I really have no time to spare for this conference -- but as I was partly responsible for setting Ron off thinking about the environmental consequences of travel and tourism, I'm obliged to contribute!

I've just come back from a slightly complicated trip to Romania with a sidetrip to Italy - I flew Air Berlin (low-cost/no-frills) London Stansted-Dortmund-Vienna, then took trains via Bratislava and Budapest to Sighisoara in Transylvania, did my stuff there, then took trains to Budapest and Florence, then back to Vienna and flew home again. In Romania we took trains and buses, and paid under ten dollars a night for hotels; in Italy, we toured by bike for a week, so travel was essentially free, but rooms were amazingly expensive (definitely still high season in mid-September!). My point is simply that this got me thinking about the relative costs of travel and accommodation -- it's a bit off-message, but it's all part of the equation that people process when planning travel - we'd hope that sustainability would be part of the thinking too, but that's less clear.

I used to go to Romania by train (about 30 hours from London!), but then Rough Guides policy changed and they started flying me out there -- far quicker, of course, but I obviously feel more guilty about emissions etc, and I miss seeing the places in between. As for Chile and my other Latin American destinations (and Georgia/Armenia) there's obviously no real alternative to flying -- so I can't avoid the guilt of polluting, and encouraging thousands of tourists (I wish) to do the same. I can't see any way out of this, all I can do is to put this issue to one side and argue that what I do is of use in that people will go anyway and I can at least encourage them to be rather greener when they get there. In the medium term I'll probably just have to get out of the business. I certainly share the doubts already expressed about carbon offsets at the swipe of a credit card -- although I don't follow Antonis when he says he doesn't want the money spent on tree-planting.

Sergio Moraes

I have no much experience concerning tourist market issues but I have been studying, as urban and regional planner consultant, many tourist cities along the South Brazilian Coast. As I observe, the discussions are untill now, going around air transportation impacts and issues about local use of trails. These facts are really important and I agree with many points highlighted by the group, but I guess the discussion should go further because the transportation problems could not be dissociated from land use problems. The merchandise of the "eco-destinations" (and also of the traditional destinations) aims to bring crowd (and money) to regions. Willing set up a tourism-based economy working at full power, the city marketing points to a congestion of roads (and demand for new roads) and a "second residences" sprawl. Both of them often lead to rural and natural land consume and an increase of pollution and to an environment threat. Besides, the demand of an adequate infrastructure (what should follow the new roads constructions) rarely is set up by local political powers (by lack of money or political commitment).
Unfortunately, seldom local and regional govern around "eco- destinations" have concerns about transportation - land use - environmental impact relationships and (my knowledge is about Brazil cases but it happens everywhere) often set up a transportation plans over electoral short-term objectives. So:

* How could the cities and towns on the edge of "tourist and eco- tourist destinations" manage the intense and increasing flow of vehicular traffic? Should cars pay high fees to come through tourist areas and should not buses (actually gas-fueled buses)? What about freight transportation?
* How to avoid new paved roads and the urban sprawl (and land grabbing), avoiding congestion and preserving natural tourist attractions and keeping the economy vitality? As discussed at the chat, a new trail leads to a new road which leads to a new paved road, which leads to new houses, activities, waste, pollution…
* How can the international tourist companies, which work on in development countries and in underdeveloped countries, contribute to reduce the traffic congestion in the main destinations (eco and traditional)?
* How to involve communities, tour operators and politicians in a "master plan" committed to create an environment free from a massive and unnecessary construction of new roads, which shall attract more and more tourists in spite of the environmental impact they shall cause?

(For better references about this argument and some good political and community management examples see: Howe, Jim, MacMahon, Ed and Propst Luther. Balancing Nature and Commerce in Gateway Communities. Washington: Island Press, The Conservation Fund and Sonoran Institute, 1997).

Pam Wight

I've worked on planning and development projects where transportation was the main focus. For example:

- A transportation strategy in Banff National Park, for Parks Canada, where motorized vehicles as well as the volume of visitors is a severe problem
- cruise tourism strategies in the Caribbean, as well as expedition cruises in the Arctic
- and in many other projects, managing the vehicles is a key to managing visitors
- I also participated in the BEST Think Tank on Promoting Best Practices in Sustainable Travel and Tourism which included transportation as one of its two themes.

Besides all these activities, I sometimes find time to put pen to paper, to try to stimulate thoughts, or share information. Ron has uploaded my paper (Managing Sensitive Areas Through Innovative Movement and Transportation Tool)