Youth Initiatives
MTC offers a range of programs to raise youth awareness of climate change and inspire the next generation of transportation planners.
MTC has worked for decades to engage the Bay Area's young residents through a range of initiatives and programs — from inspiring the next generation of transportation planners through our High School Internship Program to raising awareness about climate change through our Spare the Air Youth Program.
MTC is partnering with other Bay Area regional agencies to host a summer program just for high school students.
Spare the Air Youth educates and inspires Bay Area youth and their families to walk, bicycle, carpool and take transit to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Safe Routes to School programs build safer routes for walking or biking to school, offer training and education to students on safe travel behaviors, and more.
Learn about the Spare the Air Youth Program's signature event.
Recognizing the need to elevate youth voices, MTC partnered with Y-PLAN in a year-long process of equitable, authentic engagement of young people in long-range regional planning.
Y-PLAN is an award-winning educational strategy and action research initiative that empowers young people to tackle real-world problems in their communities through project-based civic learning experiences.
Recognizing the need to elevate youth voices, MTC partnered with Y-PLAN (Youth - Plan, Learn, Act, Now!) in a year-long process of equitable, authentic engagement of young people in long-range regional planning.
This effort resulted in the Horizon Y-PLAN Pilot Partnership Research Brief, which identifies lessons for engaging Bay Area youth in our planning work—particularly Plan Bay Area 2050. Most recently, planning staff partnered with the Spare the Air Youth Program on a series of Cocoa Club meetings, where students came together to identify their priorities for implementing the strategies in the Plan Bay Area 2050 Final Blueprint.
Based at the UC Berkeley Center for Cities + Schools, Y-PLAN has engaged thousands of young people, schools, teachers and civic partners around the globe over the last two decades.