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COLIN FISKE:

Welcome to the Econews Report. I'm your host this week, Colin Fiske, Executive Director of CRTP, the Coalition for Responsible Transportation Priorities. I'm joined this week by three local elected officials, Humboldt County Fourth District Supervisor Natalie Arroyo. Also joined by Rio Dell Mayor Debra Garnes.And also joined by Eureka City Councilmember Mario Fernandez.

Thanks, everyone, for joining me today. We're here to discuss the National Week Without Driving, which just happened last week from October 2nd through 8th, and which all of you participated in, along with a couple dozen other local leaders. And this year, organizations from across the country, including on the North Coast, CRTP, hosted the first National Week Without Driving. The idea of this challenge is for elected officials and planners and other decision makers to get some firsthand insights into the experiences of people who can't drive. It's important that we start out by acknowledging that a lot of folks might assume that people in our region, everyone drives and everyone has a car, but that's actually not true. We know that nationally, about 30% of Americans can't drive because of age, disability, or because they can't afford to. This was a week about acknowledging the experiences of those folks, and we just wrapped it up.

So I wanted to start out by giving each of you a chance to just reflect generally on the experiences that you had. Natalie

NATALIE ARROYO:

Thanks, Colin. Well, one of the things that struck me the most as I was planning my week was that I live in Eureka, and most of my destinations that I go to every day are within a mile to a mile and a half from my house. It's really quite feasible for me to get around by bike, by foot, if I plan ahead. Also, most of my other trips are really close to transit stops.

So I will say I'm fortunate and privileged in that respect to to live close to where I want to go. That was intentional. When I chose where to live, I had the opportunity to think about that. I also noticed that I schedule things just so tightly in my life that I do plan my meetings and I have staff who help schedule things for me. All of that happens in quick succession. And so I often really needed to think about allowing a little bit more time to get from place to place.

That said, one of my observations about the week was that getting around by bike was really fast, sometimes faster than than getting from place to place and thinking about where to park. And even though parking is readily available in all the places I want to go within a short block or two at most, I still just found that it was it was pretty quick and efficient to get around. I really noticed the lack of bike racks that are publicly available. It was pretty exasperating at times, and that definitely seems like low hanging fruit and something that I can make a commitment to work on with my colleague Mario here on the Eureka City Council. So it seems like we have the opportunity to address that to make it just that much easier for folks to get around by bike.

G. MARIO FERNANDEZ:

Yeah, I wish this had occurred when I was in better health because it would have been a lot easier to get around. It's just my mobility has definitely decreased over the last month or so since I got a knee injury in a mosh pit. But beyond that, I've been alternating between crutches and a cane.

I'll be candid, that very first day, Monday, we had the one of the cruise ships come through and I'd missed the one that weekend. And so I thought, okay, this should be pretty simple. And I believe it was at 10 or 10:30 in the morning. And it was just like, Oh, well, I don't know anybody else who has this availability this time of day for me. All right, I'm just going to have to drive myself to this. And I know the goal wasn't to do absolutely no driving, but to take into consideration what it's like in the resources that you have access to. So I had a bit more availability that morning, our fantastic mayor had ridden her bike there. And it was just like, okay, well, way to put me to shame, I feel a little bad right now.

But beyond that, I did try my best for the remainder of the week. And unfortunately, like I said, I have a knee injury, very fortunate with where I live, very much like Natalie, and that I'm near Henderson Center. So getting to what would be that kind of transit center over there at F and Harris is remarkably simple. But I'm also not ADA eligible for paratransit, just because I haven't gone that route with a temporary disability or anything. It's just you don't really give that much thought until you're like, Oh, wish I qualified for paratransit right now, I could definitely plan my day a lot better. J

ust those like little surprises that came up through the day as much as like, Natalie, I know you said that you plan your day very tight, but very well, I'm on the cancellation list for my eye doctor, my dentist and everything else I need right now, one of those popped up and it's like, not saying no. So now got to drive my car, which if I didn't have, I wouldn't have been able to do that. There is a luxury to it because I been in the situation in a more densely urban area where I had to share my car or my parents car with myself or my parents here, I don't have to so much my partner has her own, I have my own, but I very much try to acknowledge that that privilege to have the ownership of that private vehicle. And that's something that even though you had pointed out, we're not saying no to driving, but to help recognize that.

And again, that's one of those privileges that I've had to think about this entire week.

FISKE:

I think it's a great reminder that everyone is in a little bit of a different situation. Sometimes those are not predictable from day to day and week to week. Debra, would you like to talk about your experience a little bit?

DEBRA GARNES:

Sure. As the person farthest away from everything, the ability to get around, it was actually a lot more difficult. I had a meeting in Eureka that I did a Zoom because there was no way the first bus out of Rio Dell was at nine o'clock and the meeting was at nine o'clock in the far side of Eureka. So I had to call and say, can you schedule, put me on Zoom? And you had to do the agenda item because I wasn't there. So I was called for a couple of doctor's appointments the prior week that could have been that last week. I actually said, that's good. And then all of a sudden it came into my head, oh no, I can't drive. So I pushed it out. So it went from last week to the 18th.

So those kinds of things where you can see the schedule, the transit, those things have to come together for someone who doesn't have a car. So if there's something that nine o'clock and you don't have anyone to bring you and it's in Eureka, you pretty much have to spend the night in Eureka. You have to find someone where you can stay in Eureka so that you can be there at nine o'clock if you're coming from Rio Dell. I took to heart the instructions of if you get a ride from someone, you need to figure out what you owe them.

So Elizabeth had a retainer. I paid her a dollar to take me to the city council meeting. It was going to be dark. Now I have an electric scooter and that was really fun. And I did go. I went down to city hall during the day on my scooter, went down to the community resources center on my scooter. I scooted around town if anything I needed. But I had told myself the prior week, go to the market before the end of Saturday and get food in your house for the week. I forgot to do that. Well, Elizabeth works. So now he's like, what's in the freezer? Oh, there's nothing. I wasn't prepared for this. So there are just numerous things that you find.

I think the biggest thing is planning. Your timetable is so important that if mass transit is your only means of transportation, you really have to look and be very focused on the times that the buses come through Rio Dell, the time you're scheduling your appointment, how long it's going to take you to get from Rio Dell because it's not an express route to Eureka or Arcata, wherever your appointment might be. Because if it's going to take two hours to get there, you have to pretty much make sure that you schedule your appointments that much farther out than you might have originally. And you also have to consider coming home, right? So it isn't just getting there, it's now you're getting back. So now you can't have an appointment that's too late because if it's too late, you can't get back home.

So all of those things actually come into play. It's interesting for people who have to go to work if they don't have a car, how they get to work, if they carpool. I had joined a gym. I did a lot of stuff the prior week. And then I called the instructor who was actually the Mayor Pro Tem and I was like, Amanda, you can carpool because she teaches the class. Can I go with you? She's like, oh, I'm not coming back to RIo Dell right after. So I couldn't even go with her to carpool there.

So it was very interesting in that sense of just trying to schedule yourself and remember things that needed to be done prior so you didn't have to deal with it during the week. But overall, I liked riding my scooter. I can get down to that. I loved riding my scooter.

FISKE:

Natalie, did you want to follow up?

ARROYO:

Yeah, I think onsistent with both the comments from Debra and Mario, I was really reflecting during this last week on times in my life when I've lived in Humboldt and haven't been able to necessarily have as many transportation options. I will admit like this last week, I did take a couple of car trips and those were a result of poor planning on my part and destinations that were difficult to get to from transit or a combination of bicycling and transit, and I thought a lot about what it would be like to be utilizing transit and perhaps ride sharing services or cabs.

So when I moved to Humboldt County, I lived in Petrolia first and I had a couple issues where my car broke down and I actually pretty frequently hitched a ride to and from Petrolia. Definitely not something that I would necessarily recommend as the primary source of transportation. Mostly I was picked up and given a ride to and from by people that I, that I recognized or knew from that small community. I just, just simply didn't have so many options in those far flung parts of the county and I think a lot about the residents who are even further out than Rio Dell and the lack of options that are available to them and just how much planning it does take to get around here.

FISKE:

Really great point. Mario

FERNANDEZ:

Yeah, hitchhiking, I've only had to do that once myself when I was stuck in the Bay Area well after hours in a more remote town. And it's something that I've learned from and empathize with. So I do pick up hitchhikers occasionally, especially in our area during daylight hours in particular, because the weather out here can be off. And especially if you're driving down to the Bay Area, it can be it can be wet, it can be hot, it can be anything. And just to have that understanding of let me at least get you to the next town. It's something to do right by them. Of course, I only recommend that if you feel safe in that situation. I'm certainly glad you knew the folks in that community and they knew you Natalie.

I do want to say though, going back to what was being mentioned earlier about being able to ride the bike, that was one of the first things I did when I moved out here. It's definitely a bit chaotic in a newer community. And to some extent in Eureka just because we don't have a lot of designated bike lanes, something I would like to see more of. But we do have a very navigable city simple to get around as much as I would have liked to have participated in that this week, it was not something I was up for. I do have to emphasize that yeah, we do lack quite a bit in terms of bike racks outside of the Old Town area. That's something that we can easily remedy. And I know I've brought it up to at least a few other folks in the community about bike racks on our buses, local buses, I mean, for Eureka Transit in particular, because as easy as it is to navigate within the city, if you get injured, or you get tired, well, how are you supposed to get your bike back now.

And it's just one of those things that I noticed even even in particular when I was on the bus earlier this week. It's one of those things that I've noticed like how would I get my bike back if I weren't in the mood to take it or I need to go as for the bus system itself. It's simple in terms of getting around town we have color coded system I think there are the four and then you've got the gold route on the weekend. The one thing I found difficult is reading the schedule because the stops are a little different. Yeah, the first one was the red route over to the general hospital and I'm like, okay, there's a bus stop right across the street. That's the bus I'll be taking back. No, it's the purple route that you take back. Because I'm reading it and it's giving me all the routes and all the stops. I'm like, hold on now I have to find general hospital, but it's not the one I thought it would be. It's again that preparation. And if you're not prepared for it, it's going to throw you off and make you feel a little lost there.

FISKE:

Yeah, I think often things we really don't think about, particularly for riding transit, if you're not used to it, it's not part of your routine, just those little things can be a big deterrent or hurdle. Actually, the Eureka transit routes are a little bit notorious for being hard to follow if you're not used to it. In any case, another question I had, since you're all elected officials, I wondered if getting around in a different way for a week allowed you to connect with any constituents that you wouldn't normally have or other folks, seeing people on the bus or on the sidewalk or that kind of a thing, if you had that experience and maybe learned anything from other folks or made any more connections in that way. Anyone have any thoughts on that?

GARNES:

Rio Dell is pretty small, so we have Main Street, and then you have some neighborhood streets, but you do actually, if you're on foot, I can walk my dog. If you're anywhere, you kind of run into people. I did go down to the Community Resource Center. I took my electric scooter and I went inside because there was nowhere to put it. It was interesting that they were so excited that I had this electric scooter. So I ended up talking with more people than normal because now I have this thing to talk about. So then I talked about a week without driving and what that meant. So I don't know that it gave me more of an opportunity because it's pretty simple here. It definitely, the topic gave me something different to talk about and something that's vitally important in this area.

ARROYO:

Yeah, I would say I was just so pleased to be walking and biking around and running into people. I saw a lot of old friends, a lot of colleagues, past and present. Just the chance to socialize with people in a different way, to give that little, like, friendly nod to passing bicyclists and pedestrians was just really lovely. I wasn't thinking ahead about how much that would feel like an opportunity to connect with people. I also definitely talked to people at every meeting I was at, and in every context I was kind of throughout the week about the week without driving, about why I was walking or bicycling or using transit. It was nice to ride transit since I am on the board of the Humboldt Transit Authority, and to really experience some of the routes firsthand.

I would say that, lastly, something that I was able to communicate with constituents about was the transit app, which can help with routing locally and help people see in real time where the bus is going to be, and just experience that level of confidence in the system. So it was a great opportunity to experience those tools firsthand, but also just to see other people and feel like part of the human experience. I would say driving a car, it can be really isolating. A lot of times, in my case, it's even more isolating because I kind of take that opportunity to listen to a podcast or music, and I'm even further detached from what's going on around me. I do everything I can to make sure that's not distracting while I'm driving, but it does make me feel more in my bubble. So that opportunity to be completely without a bubble for most of the week was really impactful.

FISKE:

This is he EcoNews Report, we're talking with Humboldt County Supervisor Natalie Arroyo, Rio Dell Mayor Debra Garnes, and Eureka City Council Member Mario Fernandez about the National Week Without Driving. Did you get any insights into the transit system through riding this week?

ARROYO:

I think similar to Mario, I was reminded that the Eureka transit routes are a little bit circuitous or sometimes a little bit hard to navigate or trip planning takes a little bit of extra thought. I was just reminded of like how considerate our drivers are, especially these days. I feel like we just have like such a wonderful batch of drivers who really care about providing the best possible service to help people get around. And so it was just nice to have those friendly moments interacting with the drivers and even with other passengers. It was just pleasant to use the system and insightful to think about how to make it even more clear and straightforward for people to use transit without having to do too much kind of mental work to make it happen.

FISKE:

Debra, you're also on the HTA board, right? Any observations?

GARNES:

One thing I just did want to point out is for people to really recognize that even though it might seem difficult and even though, like I said, in Rio Dell first bus doesn't go until nine and so that's an inconvenience for someone wanting to go to work or something. HTA is really trying their best to work these things out, to figure out additional routes, to figure out earlier routes, to figure out later routes, to figure out ways to make the routes that exist even better. And that's not just me saying it, it's factual and people can go to public meetings, so anyone can come to the meeting or zoom into the meeting to see that the HTA board is trying their best to improve the system that exists now.

I didn't realize because I am the alternate, but for reasons I needed to step up and be primary in this moment, I was really kind of taken aback at how not only difficult is it to figure these things out, to try and get drivers, to make sure that we can retain drivers, but actually how hard the board is working to try and make it better. And I guess if you're riding the bus and you're not getting the results that you want or things aren't as available and so it's frustrating and you might feel that you're not being heard or you're not being taken seriously or you don't matter, but the truth is when you're sitting in that meeting and you listen, that board is actually really trying their darndest to improve this service and to make it so, and not just for people who have to ride it, they're trying to make it available so that if you don't have to ride it, you can choose to ride it because it's convenient enough, there's enough routes available that you can ride it and get to where you need to go.

Like I said, I've just been actually going, going to the meetings recently, but it's really something that people really should hear and recognize is that this board is trying their best to improve the system.

FISKE:

I appreciate you bringing that up. And I'll just get on my own soapbox for a second and say, I do think that HTA does for the most part, a pretty incredible job with very limited resources and challenging environment for running transit, we want to and need to improve transit. That means we need to invest more. Okay. So another question I had, and maybe I'll go to you, Mario, is based on this experience of trying to go this week without driving, if something changed in your personal life where you couldn't drive over the longer term, how do you think that would affect your life in terms of your job, your office, your time, your money, all those kinds of things. Would you be able to keep doing what you're doing now?

FERNANDEZ:

In the short term, I'd be able to make do. As it stands right now, my job is on East Coast Hours. It's remote. Very fortunate in that, yet, when it comes to what I like to do here, organizing the community, as much as I am involved in the community, I could see myself acclimating to that.

The long term, my family in the Bay Area would take a huge hit. Right now, I'm the respite worker for my mom and developmentally disabled brother, who's not on the phone in my lifetime. I'm the respite worker. I'm the one who gives my mom a break because we haven't been able to find a care worker to help alleviate that situation. It would really hurt in the long run for the work that I do outside of Humboldt. Here, I might be able to get around, but our experience with the local transit runs from, what, seven to six, not even 12 hours. If I had to be anywhere after six o'clock, it'd be very difficult to get back home, especially if I were in any other area of Humboldt.

Debra, I think you hit that nail on the head right there. If the first bus isn't leaving or getting out of Rio Dell until nine o'clock, I can't even imagine what it's gonna be like if I have to go somewhere else outside of Eureka. If I were going to live the rest of my life here, I think I could make do, but I don't turn 40 until next year, so I have plans to at least enjoy what I can, but it would hurt as much as I think I could make it work. Having been in a similar situation, again, when I lived in the Bay Area, where you had, at least where I lived, you had Alameda County Transit, you had the BART system, you had more considerable bike lanes, you had more of a paratransit system.

I'm not saying we have to emulate all of those. Certainly, I don't see us having any sort of Bay Area Rapid Transit up here anytime soon, but there are definitely strides that we need to make to improve our paratransit services as well, because I believe those run on the same hours as Eureka Transit Authority, and so that would be from about seven to six, and it doesn't run on Sundays, so it's like, well, if you have a disability or a mobility issue, how are you going to get around? If you're a working class person, especially in retail, how are you going to get around town after six o'clock, or if you're doing anything before 7 a.m.? Yeah, I might be able to function for the time that I have in front of me, but I wouldn't be able to do what I do each day, let alone each week.

FISKE:

Thanks. Yeah, I appreciate those reflections and also you mentioning some of the potential solutions in terms of improving the transit and paratransit services as well. You also mentioned bike lanes. So I thought maybe I just would give everybody an opportunity to reflect on how this experience might change your approach to your jobs as elected officials or other roles that you have in the community and how you might think about future plans or projects or your constituents or any of those things. Does anyone want to take the start here? How about you, Natalie?

ARROYO:

Well, I can say it was really meaningful to be really intentional about this week and to think about the folks who, who can't drive in our community or choose not to drive and how they're getting around and to be, to be one of those folks for a week. I definitely feel really motivated about the transit decision-making that I'm doing with Humboldt Transit Authority. Ooh, we're getting a little tiny dog participation.

To Mario's points, one of the things we're working on doing and working to make clear and to roll out in a really sustainable and clear way to people in the community is actually utilizing those dial-a-ride vehicles that have so much capacity and are being somewhat underutilized to serve more people. So making this available as a form of microtransit on demand and helping people kind of with the learning curve that's involved with that about essentially calling for one of those vehicles the way that you would use ride share, ride hailing services. So that's something on the horizon I'm really excited about, but thinking about how to address those gaps in transportation that we have while working with the resources that are available, something that's really important to me.

And then we are hiring a lot of drivers. We're fortunate to have a lot of folks in the queue and that's been one of the major limiting factors for us being able to expand the hours for transit. So it's certainly something we hear a lot for listeners know that we're working on expanding those hours and we'll continue to do so. That's definitely been one of the top requests from the community that we're striving really hard to meet.

With respect to my own decision-making moving forward, I'll definitely be thinking carefully about bicycles, pedestrians, wheelchair users, and transit users in my decision-making. I already strive to do that and sometimes it feels like an uphill battle when it comes to public perception because there is such a fierce reliance on cars here that I don't quite fully understand. I think there's a lot wrapped up in the American psyche of attachment to cars and some of that is just going to take some time to change. But I am really optimistic about what kinds of policy decisions we can make and what kinds of resources we can put in place for people to have more options.

FISKE:

All right, Debra, any final reflections?

GARNES:

I think with regard to constituents, I think it's important for me to interact more with the folks that need, that need, need transit, and to try and fight that battle for them so that they extended out that when drivers are hired and they extend hours, that that reaches to Rio Dell as well, not just Eureka and Arcata and McKinleyville, because, well, it's just necessary that that happens. And so from my perspective as an elected, I think that's a fight that I need to step up to and keep that on the front burner and in the front of people's thought. Get perhaps one of the most important things, because there was just an unmet needs hearings over the last few weeks at council meetings. At the Rio Dell City Council, there was one person who spoke up and said something. So it's important to get the people in my community to actually to speak up, to let their voices be heard to HTA so that HTA knows, because when those extended hours do happen and they have to figure out whose route to put them on, if no one from Rio Dell has stepped up and spoken up and said, we need to get out of here earlier, then they're not going to know. It is very important for both myself and for the people who live here to step up and make that voice and make that need known. Not just once a year at a hearing, but hey, zoom in, speak up at an HTA meeting, or just let me know so that I can say and not just make up a number and say, hey, 15 people told me I have actual people tell me so that I can come to the meetings and put that forward. I think it is very important.

I know they know already. I know that it's a known factor that Rio Dell only has going on at nine o'clock, but to make it very clear that we need to go out earlier, that we have people that would ride transit that could go to work from my perspective as an elected, I think those are the most important things that I can do at this juncture for my community is to just keep putting us out there, keep letting people know what's happening in Rio Dell and what our needs are. That's then important for me to go to the community center and say, hey, you guys got to talk to me. You've got to let me know. I think that it's going to be happening, so they'll be hearing from me.

FISKE:

Great. Thank you, Debra. Mario, any final thoughts?

FERNANDEZ:

Council's been reminded at meetings by the public, occasionally that they'll jab at us because the bike racks empty, because clearly not a council has ridden their bike down there. I will remind folks that that staff I've seen staff ride their bikes out of City Hall after council meetings, and I commend them for that. But again, it's one of those efforts that we have to emulate to the extent that well, if this is what we're going to be decreeing or dictating to some extent, that we have to be able to participate in those myself, I might not have been able to ride my bike, but I certainly was able to partake in transit as best as I could.

Council Member Contreras Deloach, she was able to post to social media as best as she could. She got around town. And then of course, as I said, Mayor Kim Bergel was out there on her bike as well. In between her workout, somehow she does it. She's amazing to that extent. Our Eureka Transit Authority can be a little difficult to navigate at times. And that's just those additional decisions, those additional mental resources that you have to apply throughout the day to try and figure out where am I going? How am I getting there? How am I getting back?

And it weighs on you and it takes away from what you could be doing otherwise. So until that becomes memorized, you're just having to expend those additional resources in addition to the physical resources to get around. So if anything, I think my level of empathy has increased with folks without vehicles, especially in a rural and remote area. And as often as I would like to encourage the union members I would once have, just take it up with your elected officials, they have to be the one to come up with a solution. It's like, now I'm the one who's stuck on the solution. Not all by myself, but granted, we have staff and such, but I don't have anyone to pass the buck to. So it's got to rest with us here in figuring out what are the best methods that we have to increase our transit services. I'm not on HTA, but that doesn't mean that isn't something that we couldn't discuss in open council. How do we make these improvements? And it's certainly something I'd like to see in our community.

FISKE:

Well, thank you. Thanks to all of you. And of course, you can all come to CRTP anytime you need suggestions of ways to improve transit or bike and pedestrian infrastructure. In any case, thank you again for participating in the first National Week Without Driving. Thanks for joining us today to share your reflections. Thank you, Colin. Ciao. Thank you. Thank you all. I also want to just thank all the other participants who weren't on the show today.

This has been another issue of the EcoNews Report. So join us again on this time and channel next week for more environmental news from the North Coast of California.