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WHEELER:

Welcome to the Econews Report. I'm your host this week, Tom Wheeler, Executive Director of EPIC, the Environmental Protection Information Center. Joining me is my friend and colleague, Colin Fiske of the Coalition for Responsible Transportation Priorities. Hey, Colin.

So Colin, we have a very special guest with us today. I think that perhaps you would like to introduce her.

FISKE:

Sure, absolutely. So we have with us today, the founder, I would say, of the Week Without Driving, which has become this big national event, and also an author of a recent great book that, that everybody should read called When Driving is Not an Option. We have with us Anna Zivarts.

ZIVARTS:

Hi, great to be here.

WHEELER:

And, and Colin, and it's going to be in the community. You want to give a little plug for her talk?

FISKE:

Absolutely. So just in a couple of weeks here on Thursday, July 17th at seven o'clock at Arcata's D Street Neighborhood Center, Anna will be giving a talk about the non-drivers in every community and how we should be accommodating non-drivers and including them in the planning process and all sorts of other important stuff. So encourage everybody to come out. It's a free public talk.

WHEELER:

All right, so non-drivers as a percentage of our community is probably a larger number than most people would anticipate. Anna, roughly what percent of folks in the United States are non-drivers?

ZIVARTS:

So I'm gonna share this, and then I bet many of your listeners are gonna think, oh, no way, that can't be right. And so I actually usually like walk people in a little slow, but let's go there and then we'll back up and explain the why. So it really is about a third of community members across our country. It can be higher than that in places that are low income, where there's a lot of immigrant communities or seniors, or folks who can get around easily without driving. Sometimes that looks like our denser cities have higher percentages of non-drivers and also some of our rural areas as well. So it's a big number, but if you want, I can explain a little bit more about who I mean when I say non-drivers so that you understand.

And as I'm doing this, what I always love to do is ask audience members and my listeners and people who read the book to think about in their own lives, who they know who is a non-driver. Whether that's someone in your household, someone on your block, someone at your school or community center, someone who is perhaps an extended family member. So just consider that. And I don't know, Tom or Colin, if you have anyone in your lives you want to start with by sharing and then we can kind of get into, yeah, who are non-drivers. Yeah.

WHEELER:

Totally. I mean, I have been a non-driver at points in my life, and I would say I'm a light driver anymore as well. And I think that probably most of us at some point in our lives will also be a non-driver, right? I was a non-driver prior to having a license, prior to being able to have a car, which I needed to get around. I was a teen, I was a child, but I still had independent transportation needs that I, you know, I had to get to school. I had to get to soccer practice. I had to do things in the community. So that was a period.

I also had a good four-ish years between college and after college where I just couldn't afford a car. Car ownership is terribly expensive. And thankfully, I was living in Seattle then, where you live now, and getting around Seattle without a car was very functional. I didn't see it impacting my ability to have a career or my ability to go to law school. It was something that helped keep costs down. And I appreciate that now as I'm paying off my student loans that I was able to not have car insurance or a car payment.

And I should say, I will anticipate that someday I will probably be a non-driver again, looking at my grandparents, thinking about my parents who are now aging into that time when maybe they shouldn't get behind the wheel. I think that all of us are going to experience at some age, or hopefully all of us will be able to experience at some age, that period in the golden years of our lives when we are going to not be able to drive or will be more constrained in our ability to drive. So I have been one, but then also just friends of mine who have disabilities of some sort, who have physically prevented them from driving, whether it was epilepsy and not being able to drive for that reason, or issues with vision being vision-impaired in some fashion, that has required people throughout the entirety of their lives to be non-drivers.

Colin. Colin's basically a non-driver, too.

FISKE:

I drive as little as possible, which I'll say that's by choice, which is a little bit different from folks who are non-drivers because they don't have an option.

But yeah, I think I would repeat everything that you said, Tom, and I wanted to also call out that CRTP works with a lot of folks who are non-drivers. So we work with Tri-County Independent Living, a lot of the local organization, and they provide services to folks with disabilities, many of whom are non-drivers and many of their staff are non-drivers. So a lot of the folks that we work with and our allies are non-drivers. We also work with sometimes folks who work with the unhoused community, and a lot of those folks can't afford a car or are non-drivers for economic or other reasons. And so I think a lot of the people that we work with are non-drivers or are part of those extended networks that include a lot of non-drivers.

And then the other thing that I just want to mention is we actually did a little calculation a year or two ago, just comparing the population of Humboldt County with the number of driver's licenses that the state has issued in Humboldt County. And by that calculation, at least 36,000 people in Humboldt County don't have a driver's license. And that doesn't encompass all non-drivers, but I think that gives some idea of the scale of it locally. So I just wanted to mention that.

ZIVARTS:

That's really cool you did that local research. I think some of the thing that I've enjoyed most about having written this book and getting invited places to come talk about it is when communities then go out and get these numbers. I was just in Montreal or in Ottawa where they could pull the numbers. And I think it is surprising to people, but all those communities you both mentioned, it's children who are not old enough to drive. It's young people who are perhaps old enough to get a license but haven't gotten one yet, perhaps because of cost, perhaps because of just that pressure of driving is not something they want to deal with.

There's actually been a big decrease in driving among young people, which I don't have good research on the why. But from when I was a teenager in the 90s till now, when I was a teenager, about 50% of 16-year-olds in the US got a driver's license. Now it's 25% in 2020, so big, big decrease.

And I think in some ways that's encouraging because I think it shows that perhaps there are better options, other options for transportation, or that people are being a bit more aware of that high cost, both financial and the emotional burden of that responsibility of being responsible for traveling fast in a vehicle that could really have serious consequences if something goes wrong. So those are part of the non-driver community, young people, children, people with disabilities. I'm someone with low vision and tried to get a driver's license when I was 16. I could not. And so I've never been able to drive, at least not legally. I have tried to learn how to drive and had some unfortunate experiences with a tree in a parking lot, thankfully.

But yes, so people with disabilities. Tommy mentioned epilepsy, vision disabilities, sometimes mental health disabilities, chronic health disabilities, mobility disabilities, sensory disabilities, some neurodiverse folks. It can also be something that's not permanent, right? You could be able to drive some days or not other days, some weeks, sometimes in your life, and not other times. And then people who are aging out of driving, right? We talked about already as well, but my parents are at the point where night driving is difficult, right? And so driving isn't the freedom that it perhaps once was or the inevitable sort of ability to get places. Now there's a little bit of a hesitation about whether they can come see me in the evenings, right? And then there's the economic reality of people who can't afford to drive or perhaps have accrued fines and fees on a license, gotten license suspension, perhaps folks who are undocumented and don't have licenses because of that reason. Lots of pieces there. And car ownership, right? It's expensive. It's another thing that, especially if you are financially stretched and you're struggling to afford health care or housing, it's just one more pretty significant chunk that you have to think about in your budget. So all of us all together, right, around a third of the population. And yet, so many of our communities are so car dependent. And that, I think, reflects the fact that for many non-drivers, we don't have a lot of, first of all, we're not super visible. And part of that is because we're stuck at home more often than not.

And then also, we tend to be from communities that don't have as much political power, right? It's poor people. It's because of the racialized nature of poverty in our country. It's black and brown communities. It's immigrant communities. It's seniors. It's people who are too young to vote, right? And so we're not necessarily at the table making sure that our needs are visible. So that's non-drivers.

WHEELER:

Well, maybe this is a good segue to the Week Without Driving so that we can talk about ways that we can expand our moral imagination as drivers to start thinking about the ways that other people have to get around and the difficulties, particularly in a rural community like ours, that these folks experience. Colin, would you like to introduce the Week Without Driving and CRTP's efforts to promote this weekly event or this yearly event in Humboldt?

FISKE:

Yeah, so Anna can talk much more about history and the details of it, but CRTP has been participating since 2023, which I believe is the year that it became a national event. And it's a week every year where we encourage people, especially people who are decision makers or in a position to influence decisions about transportation or land use or other similar impacts, to take this challenge and do the best they can to not get behind the wheel for a week and to sort of reflect on what that experience is like and some of the things that they may or may not have anticipated if they're a person who normally drives in terms of barriers to mobility or access, economic and social costs, all those kinds of things. And I will say, too, that the last couple of years we have had some of the participants locally on the Econews Report to share some of their reflections, so maybe we can link those episodes in the show notes so people can go back and check those out, too.

ZIVARTS:

That is so cool. I'm like, that's why EcoNews sounds familiar to me, because I definitely have spent a fair amount of time going through some of the media coverage from around the country for Week Without Driving. And it's, I don't know, it's just awesome to get to hear the stories. And I think one thing that, as we've been thinking about Week Without Driving, we launched it in 2021 in Washington state as a way to educate lawmakers and our state legislature about the needs of non-drivers as they were considering a big transportation investment package and where they were going to be spending money. Was it going to be on sidewalks or transit? Or was it going to be on highway expansion? And trying to sort of shift that dynamic a little bit. And since then, it's grown. It's become, now last year, it was in all 50 states, over 500 co-hosting organizations.

This year, it continues to grow. We've had a lot of interest from Canada and Australia, I think other places that have car-dependent land use patterns. And what we started to think of it as, in some ways, is a way to tell the story of non-drivers, to raise that visibility, and to have people who normally can drive and haven't really thought about not having that access very much to pause and consider for a moment, what would it be like to get around my community the way that the people who can't drive or can't afford to drive do? And what does that mean? And that can be, in some ways, we also, it can really reflect what the built environment is and what sort of access to resources someone has as well. And we want them to think about that, right? Because if you can afford to take a ride hail or a taxi everywhere, that's one thing. But if that's not in your budget or you don't live somewhere that has transit or safe places to walk or bike or roll, like your experience could be really different from someone who lives in, say, a city with rich and reliable transit and smooth and connected pedestrian network. And so, yeah, reflecting on those pieces.

And I think I was just blown away by the amount of media coverage you all had in Humboldt County from 2023. And the really thoughtful ways that people were talking about Week Without Driving and the experiences of non-drivers and what it meant to reckon with that. I thought that was super impressive. So I don't know what you did right, but part of why I'm so excited to come and do this event with you all is because I feel like you've got some sort of secret sauce where you figured out how to have this conversation around transportation access in a really powerful way.

WHEELER:

I think that secret sauce is Colin Fiske, and I would love to plug the Coalition for Responsible Transportation Priorities. I think Colin and CRTP, pound for pound, dollar for dollar, are the most effective environmental organization in Humboldt County, and I include my own. CRTP runs on a shoestring budget, and Colin gets so much work done for virtually nothing. So if you want to see transportation diversity improve in Humboldt County, give CRTP your love.

FISKE:

Well, thank you so much for that plug, Tom. That was very, very kind of you.

WHEELER:

You are listening to the Econews Report. We're talking with Anna Zivarts about how to get around if you can't drive the world of non-drivers.

FISKE:

I also want to just give credit to the participants, people who signed up. And we have some really great elected officials and agency staff and folks who are really thoughtful about this kind of thing. And many of those folks participated. And I think we talk about, in the transportation world sometimes, I think people assume that you're at a disadvantage if you're in a rural area. You know, maybe the population isn't as big, the transit isn't as frequent, all that kind of thing. But one advantage we have is that it is a small area and we can get to know our decision makers and we can develop those relationships. And in the case of CRTP, they can hear us talking about this stuff over and over and over again. And hopefully that does start to get through to folks who might not have been thinking about it in the first place. Another thing that, and I just want to plug this in here, because it's something that I like to point out is that there's a bit of a spectrum.

And I think you hinted at this earlier, Anna, when you were talking about sometimes non-drivers, you can drive sometimes or not others. But also I think there's a lot of folks in an area like this where they do drive, but it's a huge financial burden and they would be a lot better off financially if they were able to get around without a vehicle. Or folks who drive, even though maybe legally they shouldn't or be, but again, that's the way they get to their job or that's the way they get to the grocery store. And so I think addressing that and making sure that there are safe and convenient and dignified ways to get around without driving encompasses non-drivers, but also sort of this, what I suspect is a pretty large group of people who do drive, but it imposes sort of burdens on them. And it would be better if they had other options.

ZIVARTS:

My grandma was one of those people. Actually, both my grandmas were non-drivers. One of them moved to a place where she could walk everywhere. And the other one lived in rural Indiana, Southern Indiana in a small community. And she had a heart condition and that heart condition would make her sort of pass out unexpectedly, but she couldn't get anywhere without driving 20 miles to the nearest town to get groceries. And so she just kept on driving and kept on passing out. And I think the cops and folks in the area were okay with that because it was so rural. She didn't hurt anyone. She didn't kill herself. And it was her only way to not have to move into supported housing and have to leave the community that she loved. And that's a terrible choice that people are faced with.

And I don't know, I think about it a lot in the context of where she was, where she actually lived in a town that had used to have a grocery store and a school and a pharmacy, right? And all these things that due to a lot of things, partially due to a freeway that got constructed, I think partially just due to the consolidation of those grocery stores and pharmacies and those left. And then the only option for people who couldn't drive was to get a ride or not have access. And so, yeah, what does it mean for, you know, some of our smaller towns and more rural areas and even big cities like where I live in Seattle, pharmacies are closing, right? Pharmacies are closing in my neighborhood. There aren't great grocery store options. What does it mean when you don't have that close access? And so I think part of it is that transportation piece, but also what does it mean to have the services or the people or the things that we need to connect to located more locally?

And I would, yeah, I haven't been to Humboldt County, so I don't know what it's like there, but I'm curious if that's also part of the conversation for you all.

WHEELER:

Land use is absolutely part of the conversation and something that I'm proud of our local environmental community for is a push for densification and for having or obliterating kind of our antiquated notions of segregated zoning to allow more mixed commercial into residential neighborhoods, to try to co-locate people next to jobs and services. That's been a movement that we've seen and are having some success.

So folks are probably, folks listening or may be familiar with discussions like the McKinleyville Town Center in which the county of Humboldt is trying to figure out ways that we can create a town center in McKinleyville, our third largest city in the county, so that we can co-locate people and services together and have density that would allow for rural transit.

So, Colin, perhaps you could talk a little bit more about the work of CRTP for folks who are unfamiliar and some of the things that you are working to promote to help solve the issues of of transportation access and equity in Humboldt County.

FISKE:

Sure. So yeah, some of it is what you're talking about, land use planning, trying to make sure that as we build new housing, particularly because we have a housing shortage and a housing affordability crisis here, that we're building that housing in places that is accessible to grocery stores and jobs and medical care and schools and all of that stuff without having to drive a car. So walking, biking and transit.

And so certainly the town center in McKinleyville, something that we've been working on for many years in advocacy and participating as a stakeholder in those public meetings. And then also things like the gateway plan and general plan update in Arcata, which just wrapped up last fall and efforts in Eureka to build housing on city-owned underused parking lots downtown, which folks will probably be familiar with in this area because there was that big contentious issue on the ballot last fall about it. But that stuff is just really important to just to allowing folks to be able to drive less or folks who are non-drivers to be able to live in ways that are more convenient, safer, etc. And another thing that I want to throw out is a lot of the work we do is about safety, particularly for people walking, biking and rolling, because we have so many streets and roads and highways that just don't have facilities for people who aren't in a vehicle. And often those are major barriers to getting places.

And so in particular, the US 101 corridor through Eureka, which is Broadway and then becomes 4th and 5th streets, is really kind of the focal point in the whole region for really high levels of serious injuries and fatalities for pedestrians and bicyclists. And so we've been working for a long time to advocate for Caltrans to improve the safety of those facilities. And I will say something I'm very proud of is that the first of those is starting under construction now on South Broadway. They're starting to build the region's first protected bike lanes and protected intersections and a bunch of improved pedestrian crossings. That's super exciting. But there's a long ways to go. And especially as we put more homes in that area near that corridor, we really need to make sure that it's safe for kids and for older folks and just for everybody to get around. And so that's another major aspect of our work.

WHEELER:

So and I want to focus on part of your lived experience, which I think is helpful to demonstrate kind of the need for an all and all of the above strategy for improving transportation in the community. So you are visually impaired, yet you are still able to ride a bike. I think that a lot of folks don't understand the spectrum of impairments and that something like a bike trail, we just had the grand opening of the Humboldt Bay Trail, which will connect or which does connect Arcata and Eureka. How improvements to trails is something that is also a way to help folks like yourself or other folks in the community who are able to use bikes or other forms of transportation, but can't drive. So perhaps you could just kind of talk about your experience as someone navigating this world.

ZIVARTS:

Yeah, and I'll just like start with that trails piece. I mean, we were just talking about sort of rural connectivity. And I feel like that is such a key piece. And it's such a game changer if you are trying to connect in between communities in a more rural area to have a facility where you can either walk or bike or roll where you're not on a rural road worrying if there's a driver that's not going to see you or is looking at their phone and going around a corner, right?

Such a such a game changer. And I know that it's kind of it's expensive to build new infrastructure. But compared to building highways, when you think about the overpasses and the amount of funding that we put into some of those highway projects, it shouldn't be unreasonable to think about some of that off off off road access for walking and biking and rolling. So really excited. I'm excited to get to check out that trail when I'm down there. And yes, I am someone who bikes for transportation.

I ... my eye condition, while I don't see well enough to drive a vehicle, it's totally safe for me to bike. I'm not going 30 miles an hour on a bike. But you know, I know my limitations and, and it provides a lot of additional access that I'm really grateful to have. Because transit can be unreliable transit doesn't always get you where you need to go. And so being able to combine biking and transit here in Seattle has really expanded my range and where I can get more quickly and more reliably. It gets trickier with a kid.

I have an eight year old now and we've had this sort of evolving setup of kid seats and then with the hills here ebikes which then you can't bring an ebike or at least not a cargo ebike on the on the bus too heavy and so how to how to figure out how how he can also get transported has been a challenge. Our latest is he's sort of outgrown the back of the bike seat fully and so now we have a toe a bungee toe cord, which we are working on learning how to use safely on the street. He's got to pay a lot of attention for things not to go south for him. Luckily, it doesn't tend to knock me over when he wipes himself out. So but yeah, that so you know, I would say that there are and I don't have numbers on this. I wish I did. I wish there was more research but many a surprising number of folks that I've met around the country who are people who are have some kind of vision disability and cannot drive but are able to bike and there's also other kinds of disabilities where that's true to like sometimes intellectual disabilities, epilepsy or mobility disabilities, people mental health disabilities right can safely be able to bike but cannot have a driver's license and so it really can provide expanded access to us and especially with ebikes right and some of that that technology is exciting and new and provides more range or more carrying capacity if you've got to carry kids or other heavy stuff.

I would say what scares me is some of the conversations around ebike regulation or ebike insurance requirements because that could really limit the mobility of someone like me, who can't legally get a license. And then I've had friends who are low vision who have tried to insure golf carts and because they didn't have a driver's license, right? They couldn't get insurance, and so if we set up a system where ebikes are going to have insurance requirements would that preclude people who can't get a driver's license from using those legally unintentionally, right, or other other requirements that would require a driver's license to to be able to use. So and then the other piece of it too, I'll just say, is like we know as much as it's great to be able to bike. I know that especially for folks who didn't grow up biking for transportation -- it can be really nerve-wracking to be with traffic, they can also be if you're in a low vehicle like a low recumbent bike or a recumbent trike or just a bike or trike that takes up more space, it can be really hard to do that without having the right protected infrastructure.

And so making sure that we're thinking about building bike infrastructure that can accommodate different kinds of bikes and that we're thinking also about secure storage because getting an expensive ebike or e-trike or cargo bike stolen is no one's idea of of fun so how do we make sure that people can if that is your form of mobility that you can ride it safely and store it safely

WHEELER:

Somehow we're out of time. A half hour just flew by, which to me suggests that everyone, if you found this conversation interesting, should come out to Anna's talk on July 17th. Colin, remind me more of the details.

FISKE:

Thursday, it's a Thursday. It's at 7 p.m. It's at the City of Arcata's D Street Neighborhood Center 7 o'clock free to the public. We just encourage everyone to come out learn a little something about Non-drivers learn about the Week Without Driving and yeah, come come here There's so much more to say and Anna has so much more knowledge to impart. So encourage everyone to come out and

WHEELER:

And of course is the author of when driving is not an option, steering away from car dependency, which is published by Island Press. Anna, where can folks find out more information about your book and where to purchase it?

ZIVARTS:

Yeah, you can get it through the Island Press website. You can also get it wherever else you get books. I also always encourage folks to try to get it from your local library and request it if they don't already have it on the shelves because that's a great way to make sure it gets out to more folks. So I'm looking forward to talking to you all on the 17th. I might even have a book to give away there. So come, come out. Come talk about non-drivers and Week Without Driving.

WHEELER:

Anna Zivarts and Colin Fiske, thank you so much for joining the Econews.

Thanks. And join us again next week for more environmental news from the North Coast of California. Until then, be well.