[sustran] Regional focus of the list

[Paul Barter]

The material on the sustran-discuss has been very interesting to me so far
and useful. Thanks everyone!  But I thought I should send a reminder and
clarification on the focus of the list.

I am a little concerned that discussions may become dominated by North
American (and to some extent European) issues, concerns and viewpoints.
One reason is that so many more people use e-mail in North America than
anywhere else, so by weight of numbers there is a danger that North
Americans will dominate any e-mail discussions.   All of the other
transport-related lists that I know of focus on North America or Europe.

One major purpose of this list is to provide a forum with a regional focus
on Asia (from Turkey to the Philippines and the Arctic to Indonesia) and
the Pacific (by which we meant actually the islands of the Pacific along
with Australia and New Zealand - I guess "west pacific" would have been
more specific). Unfortunately "Asia and the Pacific" is something of an
ambiguous term!

One thing that most of the countries of this very diverse region (except
Aust. and NZ) have in common is relatively low levels of motorisation (and
often high vehicle growth rates). Even Tokyo has less than 300 cars per
1000 people and most places in the region have MUCH less than that.  So our
regional focus also implies a focus on less motorised societies and cities.
Other regions with relatively low motorisation, such as Latin America,
Africa, and Eastern Europe are therfore also highly relevant. You could say
our focus in on what the car industry calls, the "emerging markets" which
they hope will save them as "mature markets" saturate with cars.

Having said all that, I am certainly NOT banning discussions on North
America, western Europe, etc!!!  I just want to remind everyone to please
think about the relevance of their postings for Asia and the western
Pacific. If possible, highlight the relevance of your comments for this
region.  And bear in mind that initiatives and policies which might get
dismissed as impractical in low-density, car-dependent USA, could possibly
be roaring successes in places like Bombay, Hong Kong, or Seoul which have
urban densities about 10 to 20 times those in American cities and where car
dominance is not built into the urban fabric.

Australians and New Zealanders of course may "fall through the cracks".
They are definitely part of the region but with transport issues more like
North America's.  Oh well.. can't be helped. (by the way, I am an
Australian).

For discussions of alternative transportation issues in highly motorised
societies, there is already an excellent forum which you may like to join
as well.  The alt-transp list has consistently high quality discussions.
To subscribe to alt-transp: Send e-mail to
<Majordomo at flora.org> with the following command in the body of the message:
subscribe alt-transp <your e-mail address>.

In setting up this list, we have been hoping that sustran-discuss can come
to complement alt-transp by having a slightly different regional focus.  I
am not keen to duplicate their efforts or to inadvertently drain energy
from that list.

Best wishes,
Paul.

A. Rahman Paul Barter
Sustainable Transport Action Network for Asia & the Pacific (SUSTRAN)
c/- AP2000,  PO Box 12544,  50782 Kuala Lumpur,  Malaysia.
Fax: +60 3 253 2361,  E-mail: tkpb at barter.pc.my