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TOM WHEELER:

Welcome to the Econews Report. I'm your host this week, Tom Wheeler, Executive Director of EPIC. Joining me is Colin Fiske, Executive Director of the Coalition for Responsible Transportation Priorities. We are also joined by Beth Burks, the Executive Director of the Humboldt County Association of Governments. Hey!

BETH BURKS:

Welcome. Thank you, thank you for having me.

WHEELER:

And we also have Sarah Schaefer, city council member at the city of Arcata. All right, so we are talking about the Week Without Driving, which just wrapped up. And so we're gonna give our reflections on how the week went and lessons learned, how we're gonna incorporate that into our lives, both in an individual capacity and making better, lower carbon transportation decisions, but also how we're gonna incorporate it into public decision-making processes.

So Week Without Driving, Colin, this was a project of the Coalition for Responsible Transportation Priorities, but it's part of kind of this bigger, larger nationwide week as well. Tell me about the Week Without Driving and why CRTP brought it to Humboldt County.

COLIN FISKE:

So the Week Without Driving started a few years ago in Washington State, started by a disability advocacy organization. The idea was to really bring to the fore the fact that there are lots of members of every community that are non-drivers, and that includes lots of folks with disabilities. It also includes lots of kids and older folks and kids who can't afford to drive, lots of different types of folks who are non-drivers but have to live often in communities that are designed around drivers or designed in ways that assume that everybody drives. And so the idea was to get decision makers to experience, just for a little bit, some of what it can be like for folks who are non-drivers and have to get around the community in other ways. And so it's a challenge that folks take voluntarily to try to get around their community for a Week Without Driving.

Last year it went national, and CRTP brought it here to the North Coast, and we had a bunch of participants in Humboldt County. This year we were joined by HCAOG and the Humboldt Transit Authority, as well as Tri-County Independent Living in co-sponsoring the challenge here in Humboldt. And we also, as part of the week, hosted a couple of walk audits in Eureka to further highlight some of the challenges for pedestrians in the area.

WHEELER:

So Beth, you run HCAOG, which is a local government authority. Can you tell us about HCAOG and the interest of HCAOG in a Week Without Driving?

BURKS:

Yeah, thanks. Yeah, so HCAOG is a joint powers agency who are made up of all the cities in the county here in Humboldt, and we are focused on transportation planning at the regional level. So we really set some policies to look at multiple things. One is a lot of mode shifts. So how can we get people out of their cars, walking and biking? How can we do that safely? So those are some of our priority areas. And then also just reducing carbon from the transportation sector is another large priority area of ours. So we look at, in addition to the mode shift on that, we look at conversions to zero emission vehicles and those kinds of initiatives. And we do that on this regional scale and help our member agencies achieve those goals on their individual scales as we go about our business.

One reason we were interested in the Week Without Driving is one of our, one of the kind of mode shift things we are always focused on is transit. And so really thinking about like, okay, if we're getting out of our cars and all the different ways we get around, how do we encourage that and look at all these different modes? And so I think the Week Without Driving speaks to all the different things we're working on and how we can just have more ways to get around safely in our community.

WHEELER:

Sarah, you are an elected official. You represent the city of Arcata. You're a city council member. Why participate in the Week Without Driving? Because I imagine it makes your life just more difficult.

SARAH SCHAEFER:

Yeah, it is an interesting just change in perspective, I guess, as somebody that lives in Arcata and when I'm here in Arcata, I usually am walking or biking places, but I work in Eureka and pretty South Eureka in the Pine Hill area. And so being able to change that perspective and see what other folks who are not necessarily driving for whatever, the whole list of reasons that Colin listed and how it is to, to get out and be out of the car, but also to really inform a lot of decisions that we make at the council level as well, just in regards to being more aware of things like safety for, for bike lanes, for pedestrians, but also understanding like how the schedule of our buses impact people's abilities to get places, frequency, location of bus stops, and thinking about all of that and actually a real practical on the ground way definitely was very eyeopening.

And so that's one of the reasons I wanted to participate just because I'm not a person that rides the bus very often in this county. I think that it gave me some good insight.

WHEELER:

Well, let's talk about those insights. What, what did you learn from riding the bus? I, I also primarily rode the bus, I should say during this Week Without Driving. And I had a wonderful time and I hope you did too. So yeah, tell us about riding the bus and your gained experience from, from this.

SCHAEFER:

Yeah, I was pleasantly surprised with actually how easy it was, especially just because I, our school is located in very South Eureka in the Pine Hill area, but we do have a bus stop, like right in front of where our school location is. And I have a lot of students because we are a charter school. We don't have a school bus. So they take the bus to school. They take the city bus.

And it was a really nice opportunity to be able to like ... they were very shocked on the Monday when I walked in the bus and there was like six of them sitting in the back and they were like, what are you doing here? And so it just explained the whole Week Without Driving thing to them. And they were like, okay, cool. So they followed me through the whole week as well, which was really fun to have that like camaraderie and just like ability to see people I know on the bus and also get to like talk to different people that ride the bus.

It was a really cool experience, but I mean, I guess I would say like the number one thing takeaway for me would be like definitely the level of planning that needs to, and just understanding the bus routes and like the first two days, I definitely woke up earlier than I needed to and took an earlier bus than I needed to, which was fine. I got to get some coffee in old town and enjoy a little time between like my transfer. But then I realized I was like, oh, but if I took this other bus, then I could just immediately like step onto the gold route and go right to work and not have to wait. And actually like once I dialed it in and really figured out what I needed to do, it really only takes probably about 15 minutes longer than my normal commute in the car, which is not bad because instead of having to focus on driving, I get to catch up on emails and listen to my audio book and all of that stuff.

And so the, the biggest takeaway would be like, you definitely need to plan your day better and not, especially as somebody that is very busy and goes from work often to like council duties, my day gets very stacked. And so there's times where I'm like, actually, I can't be back in Arcata by four o'clock and I'm going to move this meeting or cancel this meeting or whatever it might be. And realizing that like the limitations of transit can prevent how you pack your day, which actually might be a good thing though, for the pace of our lives. And that was an interesting thing to think about of just how busy we stay because cars can get us so instantaneously where we need to go.

WHEELER:

Oh, well, I like that. The kind of duality of riding the bus. Colin, Sarah's reflection made me think of the importance of trip frequency. What is it called? Headway? Headspace? Headway. Headway between buses and how a lower headway, more frequent bus service, encourages more ridership. Can you just speak briefly on this phenomenon?

FISKE:

Yeah, so it has a lot to do with what Sarah was saying in terms of trip planning. And essentially the idea is if you don't really have to plan ahead, then folks are much more likely to choose to take transit in order to not have to plan. The bus needs to come pretty frequently. The standard frequency is usually 15 minutes or less. It also has to come at all times of day so that folks can not have to worry about missing the last bus home or something. But if you have that frequency and that span of service where you can just, without thinking about it, walk to the bus stop or bike to the bus stop and know that there will be a bus within the next five or ten minutes, that is really, really what you need to get a lot more folks riding the bus.

WHEELER:

Beth, how did the Week Without Driving impact your transportation choices?

BURKS:

Yeah, well, I did primarily carpooling and I was traveling for part of it. So I was at a conference, so I was down in Riverside. And when I was there just for the conference schedule, the bus did not work out that great. And so similar, even though it was a much bigger area, it really like made me kind of proud of our local bus service and how well we do provide because even in bigger areas, they struggle with the same issues of headway and things like that. So it did do some ride hailing, which I never do here, but, but I did that with a conference schedule and then, and then coming back, it was a lot of carpooling.

I don't live in a location that's really served by a bus. I live semi-rurally and I think that planning ahead really still, like even with the carpooling, I've got kids involved. We got to get to lots of different locations. And so just like planning out our days. And I think the other thing it really did was make me think of like, what am I going to put off? It's like, okay, well, this isn't a good day to go to the grocery store, even though I normally would, or like rearranged constantly trying to think like, okay, we're trying to coordinate more schedules and being just one vehicle all the time. So, so yeah, I think, I think just that planning ahead and then also realizing like how isolating it can be. Like if I really ... what it made me like realize more than anything is if I didn't have a car, if my family didn't have a car, I really couldn't live where I live. I mean, it's just, it just, it wouldn't be feasible. It would be very isolating.

And so I think just thinking of others in that same boat and what we can, what we can do to provide services, what services make sense to provide in those, in those circumstances, really had a chance to think through all of that and how fundamental it is like to have a, to be able to age in place or to think about like, okay, we might even have to move to town as we age, because this is not going to be viable in the long run.

FISKE:

I think that that's a really important point and a lot of folks forget that there are plenty of people who live in really very rural parts of the county who either can't drive or don't have access to a vehicle. Anecdotally a lot of those folks probably do rely on getting a ride from someone else and that creates a whole other social and economic dynamic. So I was wondering did you have that experience like socially like arranging rides and how what how did what did that feel like to you?

BURKS:

Yeah, actually, I'm someone who really hates to ask for help. So I think, honestly, there were things I just skipped. Like, there were activities and get-togethers I just didn't go to that week that I just put off. And it made me think, like, OK, there's probably a lot of people on that boat where they have cultural things they'd like to do or activities in town that it's just like, yep, can't get there. But yeah, I think my neighbors are all pretty elderly. And I heard a statistic recently that men outlive their ability to drive by six years and women by a full 10 years. So just thinking about that demographic and our geography here in Humboldt is, I think, the Week Without Driving was a good opportunity to reflect on that and maybe some of these needs that we have in many different areas of our community.

WHEELER:

Well, that, that sounds a lot like my, my folks, my, my wife's parents as well. They, they both, after we were out of the house, retired to more rural area, they're finally going to be able to have that property that they've always dreamed of. And it was great for 10 years. And now they're in their seventies approaching their eighties and it becomes more and more difficult to make those trips. So my wife and I have pledged to each other that we're going to do the opposite as we get older, we're going to continue to move towards more intense areas, towards more services, towards more bus lines because it's going to facilitate our ability to have community in many respects. And we won't be isolated in the same way because we'll have better transportation choices.

BURKS:

Absolutely, I think so too.

WHEELER:

So I also did the Week Without Driving. And so I will unprovoked give some of my perspectives here. I have been a bus rider in Humboldt County for about 10 years now. And I took this moment, I took this week to reflect on how much better it's gotten in those 10 years. And the bus service has been relatively the same, but it's become easier to ride the bus in some respects. We have new payment systems for the bus that are so much easier. Yeah, you can tap your phone or you can tap your card to pay. So you no longer have to carry around like loose change or have like a weird card that gets reused and never has the correct fare amount on it for some reason.

There's also new apps that help to know when the bus is coming. So the transit app has real time transit information about when your bus is showing up. So if you're feeling anxious and you're wondering if you're going to be late for work, you can look at it and be relieved because our buses run remarkably on time in Humboldt County, too. That's something else that was a constant was I would show up for when the bus was supposed to be there and the bus would be there. And I -- having come from larger urban areas -- that was never really a given.

So riding the bus in Humboldt, even though it can be difficult, the rural challenges and whatnot for someone like me who lives in a pretty urban area that works in a pretty urban area, it was always fairly easy to get to and from work. That's wonderful. So we had as part of the Week Without Driving some walk audits, walk on it might be a new term for folks. Colin, can you briefly describe what a walk on it is? And then we can talk about this experience of doing a walk on it and what we've learned.

FISKE:

Yeah, so a walk audit is pretty simple. It's basically getting together in a group or you could do it by yourself and just walking a predetermined route in a slow and intentional way and taking note of all of the things around you that might affect the safety or the comfort of the environment for pedestrians are also the accessibility of the environment for a wide variety of different kinds of pedestrians, folks with kids, folks with wheelchairs, folks who have low vision, all the whole wide spectrum of folks that we have in our community.

We did two of these in the Week Without Driving. Both of them were focused on the Fourth and Fifth street corridor in Eureka. That was intentional because that's one of the busiest places for bikes and pedestrians and also for cars and for transit and also frankly known to be not that, not that comfortable or safe for people walking and biking. So we wanted to have people experience that and get some of the details. And so it was pretty successful. We had good turnout and we're working on writing up the observations that that folks had and we'll be providing those to the city of Eureka and to Caltrans who manages those streets.

WHEELER:

You are listening to the Econews Report. We're talking about the Week Without Driving, an experiment where local decision-makers attempt to navigate Humboldt County without their car. So Beth, I know HCAOG has sponsored other walk audits in the past. For someone like you who is involved in regional transportation decision-making, how do walk audits get incorporated into some of these decisions?

BURKS:

Yeah, I mean, I think the first step is just like that, those like eye-opening aha moments, and really because we don't, not everyone is like experienced in like crossing 4th and 5th street as a pedestrian, just having that, that, and especially having folks like public works directors and things like that. Like they're, they're experiencing the system that they managed from that different perspective, I think is really valuable. And when it comes to how that can get built into infrastructure decisions, I think first it's like that, that awareness raising, right. Of everybody like thinking of like, okay, not just cars need to get through this intersection, but, but people in various modes need to get through this intersection. And then how do we build that into our funding? And as, as we have funding come up, we can make sure that we're using that, those funds to create projects that have mobility included for, for everybody on the roadway.

I think it's also like having the walk audit. Like Colin was saying, in terms of like writing up the observations and results and having that community involvement can be something really powerful if we're seeking grant funding or trying to like push a project to go a little faster because it can show that motivation of the community and the needs being documented, which is always beneficial.

WHEELER:

Sarah, you are a government decision-maker. How will this experience, how will this week reflect back in your decisions as a city council member?

SCHAEFER:

Yeah, I mean, I think it's just important, as I said before, to just kind of change that perspective and see what people need to get around, whether it's, like Beth was saying, you have your intersection and there's cars going through it, but who else is going through that intersection or who else is walking on this sidewalk trying to get from point A to point B, and to really just widen the scope and really be able to tap into those things like the city has been doing, like adopting a complete streets policy, for example, to really see when we're improving roadways, what is actually going to make it safer for everybody, especially if we're really, as a city here in Arcata and countywide, trying to have this mode shift to get people out of their cars, get them living closer to services, get them being able to move around the county, not relying on cars. It's important to just have that experience within decision-making and to be able to tap into all these different resources and talk to people that participated in these walk audits.

And I remember, especially like last year, when Dan Burden, the transportation guru, came and got the opportunity to participate in some of the walk audits that he did here in Arcata, just to even be able to seemingly think streets that I drive on all the time that are perfectly fine in a car, that, oh gosh, I haven't thought about how this bus stop is impacted or what it would be like to actually bike on this corridor and to really look at it from a different perspective and bring all those voices in, because that's really what being a local decision-maker is about, is to not necessarily what I do and what I want, but to bring the community into it and get that feedback to really see how our decisions about transit, about transportation, about complete streets are impacting Arcata.

FISKE:

Sarah that brings to mind for me in addition to an elected official you're an educator and you mentioned earlier that you had run into some of your students on the bus and I was wondering if riding the bus or any other changes that you made during the Week Without Driving allowed you to connect with other stakeholders or constituents that you might not have otherwise met with or talked to or provided other kinds of feedback that you might not be getting at a typical City Council meeting.

SCHAEFER:

Well, it was funny too, just like talking to students and again, trying to like change their perspective on why somebody would ride the bus because they're like, Oh, is your car broken? No. And then another person was like, I had to shut him down. I was like, well, you can't say that. Cause they were like, what? You're not poor. And I was like, yeah, but I'm, I'm, I'm doing this. I'm participating in this to get, get the perspective, try to lower my carbon emissions, all these different things that I brought in. And it got them kind of thinking about like, yeah, they're riding the bus right now. Cause they're kids that don't have their driver's licenses and their parents are going the other way for work, but that there's a lot of different reasons why people ride the bus.

And so I think like that was a pretty valuable conversation just to have with like young people about why you would ride the bus and then not necessarily stakeholders, but just like the opportunity to just talk to random people that you would never talk to and sit down next to somebody on the bus and actually have a nice conversation or like just what we assume about people and then get to break those things down and chat with them. And so I just not necessarily anything yet that has led to like direct feedback. That's going to maybe help Arcata's transit system or, or the County, but just that ability to connect with people cause you're in the same place at the same time, I think is really powerful and just humanizes people.

FISKE:

Yeah, that's great. And I think the conversation with the kids is interesting too because I like to bring up the statistics sometimes that there's about 36,000 people at least in Humboldt County without a driver's license. Now, about 15,000 of those are adults, which means the majority are kids. Often when you say that, people are kind of dismissive. It's like, well, of course, kids don't have a driver's license. But if you think about what that means in an environment like ours, kids, certainly older kids, should have some freedom of movement, right, some autonomy, some way to get around safely. I think that's a whole other perspective that sometimes gets a little bit lost.

SCHAEFER:

Especially with teenagers, too. Yeah, they like to have that freedom. They hop on the gold route and they go down to the mall after school. That's what they like to do. And it's nice to see how that manifests here in Humboldt County and where younger people are going on the bus and how stoked they are during the summer when the bus is free and that they don't need bus cards and taking out that level of it, too. And so really, yeah, it was cool to connect with my students on that level.

WHEELER:

Did anyone have an experience? And Beth, I think you've already kind of touched on this, where you weren't able to do the thing that you wanted to do, or you found yourself having to take a car, even though this is a Week Without Driving, but life demanded that you use a car to get to your final destination. Yeah, I used a car.

BURKS:

One day, I had a medical appointment and I needed to do some follow-up after that and I needed to get my kid to, it was a party we were both going to but she'd been looking forward to it for months and so it just felt like, okay, do I really turn this down in order to uphold that? So there was a day that I drove and I thought about what it would be like if I chose not to drive. One, for all the medical stuff, I would've needed probably my husband to also take that day off of work, right? So that he could've got me all the places I needed to go and the timeframes I needed to do it. So that would've been that loss of like, okay, it's not just me missing work this morning but now my other person is also missing. You know, so just the complicated factors of that. And so I think that, Sarah, you were talking about earlier, you stack your days a little differently and so it's like when you have those timeframe crunches where it's like, oh, these are important things that I wanna be able to get to. It's hard to get appointments here. You still wanna miss it. So yeah, in the end, I was just like, I think this just is a driving day.

SCHAEFER:

I had two like, I won't say emergency, but semi like, ooh, this is very inconvenient, which actually neither resulted in me driving myself, but I did like, I had an event last Saturday for my campaign and my caterer, we just had a miscommunication and so I needed to go to Costco. And I was ready, I was about to get in my car, but then my friend was like, I gotta go to Costco too, I'll take you. And I was like, phew, okay, perfect, we can both do Costco and I still technically didn't drive.

And then also I had left work one day and I was on the bus, everything was seemingly fine when I left, but there was still an event going on at the school. And then things went south pretty quick and if I was in my car, I would have turned back and went immediately back to school and dealt with the situation. But instead I was like answering phone calls on the bus and be like, sorry, if you can't hear me, I can't really talk right now. And I'm like, should I just get out here and start walking back? And I like thought all these things in my head of like, how would I get back to school right now if I had to? And then I was like, I just can't, I'm already on the bus and almost to Manila, it's not gonna happen, I'm almost back to Arcata. And so that was an interesting experience of how, and it wasn't emergency per se, but in semi-emergency situations, when you're on the bus, you can't really turn around or you can't really, if you forget something at work, go back as easily.

And so it makes you really, make sure all your ducks are in a row, check that checklist off before you leave because once you're on the bus, you're on the bus and you're enjoying the ride. So that was definitely a semi-stressful situation, which still I didn't get in the car because I was already on the bus, but.

FISKE:

I appreciate you all sharing those stories and I do want to just emphasize for any other decision makers who may be listening that if we do this, which hopefully we will in future years, no one's going to get in trouble for not making it all week. We just want folks to think about it and reflect on what would that be like if you didn't have the option, basically. I don't know.

WHEELER:

I think that this is like the confessional booth and we're like confessing our sins here.

FISKE:

Well, no one's listening, right?

WHEELER:

It was.

FISKE:

booze.

WHEELER:

Totally anonymous. Yeah.

SCHAEFER:

I drove the school van, okay, but there were students in it, so it was part of my job. That's transit, isn't it? It's transit, right?

WHEELER:

Yeah, so to follow up on what you were saying, absolutely, I think these situations in which we are forced to then drive are sometimes the most illuminating because that's really where we have critical gaps in our transit system when we can't do the thing that is like necessary for us to do. Particularly for me, it's often I'm in Eureka and I want to go to Arcata in the evening. Grindbus might not be available because of the time of day and riding my bike on the 101 corridor just doesn't feel safe in the dark. So you have to choose and making those choices suck.

FISKE:

It does, and that reminds me of something that I think is relevant to that conversation, which is if we don't have a super frequent all day, all night service, which currently we don't, there's times of times a day when there's no service or certainly where it's not frequent, that one of the things that can be really helpful, especially for an employer who wants to encourage their employees to ride transit, is to provide a guaranteed ride home program, which is basically for those times when some emergency arises, when someone has to get their sick kid from work or has to make a run to the hospital or whatever, some emergency, which doesn't happen that often, but happens sometimes, that can be a real help in just giving people the confidence to actually take the bus for the 99% of the time when that's perfectly fine.

I guess one question, and we've touched on it a little bit, but were there any specific experiences that you had during the week that changed your perspective, whether it was on a particular piece of infrastructure or on the transit service or on, I don't know, cars? It's just something that sort of stands out to you that was an aha moment.

SCHAEFER:

I would say that my aha moment was actually probably not necessarily realizing a problem with our transit system, but actually realizing how easy it was for me to get there. And like Tom was saying before, with how on time our buses run, I never had an issue with like making the transfer that I had to make. It was like totally just seamless. I walked right halfway down the block and just got right on the next bus. And honestly, I hope with realizing how easy it was, I already drove to work today, but that I actually will at least a couple days a week incorporate riding the bus into my routine because I have a lot of coworkers that live in Arcata. It's easy to carpool back because the bus ride home was a little more difficult than the bus ride there. But that morning commute, I mean, was seamless and it was really quite easy. And now that I realize that it makes me want to be able to plan that into my routine more often and use it as a resource.

FISKE:

Awesome.

BURKS:

Yeah, well, I just say, just to follow up, I love to hear that. I think, you know, one thing I want to give a little plug for Humboldt Transit Authority, because they are working so hard to make sure that our bus system is wonderful for our community. There are so many, like you mentioned, the ease of paying, um, they've simplified their, their fare structure. They've made it much cheaper. I mean, they're just going all out in addition to soon to be arrived hydrogen buses, like just really hitting it from every angle in terms of ease of use and reducing their carbon emissions. So I just want to give a plug to Humboldt Transit Authority because they definitely really work hard to make sure we have a great service up here. And I think for as rural and remote as we are, it's a pretty phenomenal service they're providing.

WHEELER:

And the buses are clean too. I think that there's this perception that the buses are, are gross or they're filled with like undesirable people or something, right? Like nothing is further from the truth. The buses are filled with like, with folks just like me who are riding the bus. And yeah, the buses are new. They're clean. They have great, nice bus drivers. If you ride the bus, remember X out the back door and yell, thank you to the bus driver, because that's always the most fun part about riding the bus is getting to yell, thank you to the bus driver.

FISKE:

Yeah, just to reiterate, Humboldt Transit Authority was one of the co-sponsors of the Week Without Driving. And because they know that a lot of their riders don't have cars, a lot of their riders do have cars and do have other options. But I totally agree with what Beth said. And I think when we're talking about gaps in service or things that could be better, it's really not a criticism of the Transit Authority. I think they do an incredible job with a very small budget for such a huge region that they have to cover. We should really be giving them more money so they can do even more.

WHEELER:

And slight improvements in funding can really create pretty significant improvements in coverage.

FISKE:

Yeah, absolutely. It doesn't cost that much compared to some of the other major costs the government has to provide pretty good transit service. So if they got what I would say would be their fair share of the budget, I think they could do incredible things.

WHEELER:

Well, thank you to my three guests here for participating in the Week Without Driving and thank you for everyone else who also participated in the week. Thanks.

FISKE:

Thank you.

WHEELER:

Thank you. Whoo. Hopefully you listener will be inspired that in the 2025 Week Without Driving, you will also throw away your car keys and hop on the bus. I look forward to seeing you there. So again, thank you. And thank you listeners. Join us again next week on this time and channel for more environmental news from the north coast of California.