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TOM WHEELER:

Welcome to the Econews Report. I'm your host this week, Tom Wheeler, Executive Director of EPIC, the Environmental Protection Information Center. And joining me are some of my favorite people, Humboldt County Supervisor, Natalie Arroyo. Hey, Natalie. And the Executive Director of the Coalition for Responsible Transportation Priorities, or CRTP, Colin Fiske.

COLIN FISKE:

Hello to both of you and everybody out there.

WHEELER:

So this episode, we are going to catch up on how the Week Without Driving went for a couple of its participants and for the lead organizer of the Week Without Driving, which is Colin Fiske and the Coalition for Responsible Transportation Priorities. So Colin, tell us, if you've been living under a rock, what is the Week Without Driving? What is this kind of experiment that folks have done in the community? And why does it matter?

FISKE:

Yeah, absolutely. So the Week Without Driving just passed. It was September 29th through October 5th this year. And this is the third year of the national Week Without Driving. And also the third year that we've been doing it here in Humboldt. CRTP is the local sponsor, but also I want to give thanks to the other co-sponsors locally, which are HCAOG, the Humboldt County Association of Governments, the Humboldt Transit Authority, and Tri-County Independent Living.

And the idea of this, it actually, it came out of a disability mobility initiative in Washington state originally several years ago. And the idea is that a lot of times community members, but especially decision makers in transportation, whether that's elected officials or people who work for transportation agencies, those kinds of folks, a lot of times, most of the time they are drivers themselves, and they're mostly hearing from people who are drivers. And they may not be thinking about, or even necessarily know that there are a lot of non-drivers and what their experiences are.

WHEELER:

It's a substantial amount of non-drivers. This is something that shocked me. Colin, what percentage nationally are non-drivers as part of the population?

FISKE:

It's about a third of the population are non-drivers, and actually NRDC just came out with a national report just during the Week Without Driving that quantifies it more than we have had that information in the past, and I believe that they found that 16% of Americans over the age of 10, and I think they sort of chose that age cutoff because those are kids who might be able to have some independent mobility of their own, 16% of Americans over 10 have no ability to drive, and then 30-some percent, I forget the exact number, are in households that have limited access to vehicles and may not be able to drive, and so it's a large proportion of the population, and especially when you include kids who I think often are ignored but do benefit from the ability to have some independent mobility, not to mention their parents benefit from it.

So here in Humboldt County, we just did a simple calculation where we looked at the number of driver's licenses issued to county residents, and you just compare that to the population of the county, and we find that at least 36,000 people in the county do not have a driver's license, and so those are certainly people who are not driving, and of course there are lots of people with a driver's license who don't drive, either because they have a temporary disability, or they have aged out of driving, or they just simply can't afford to maintain a vehicle, or to pay for gas, or any of that kind of stuff. So it's a very large proportion, even in our rural area, of folks who are not drivers.

So essentially the Week Without Driving, it just allows people to take on this challenge to try to not drive themselves during that week, and just get some sense of how folks who are non-drivers all the time experience our communities and get around.

WHEELER:

And in particular, the Week Without Driving, CRTP targets and tries to get participation from elected officials. Because elected officials, like Natalie Arroyo, play an important role in making the decisions that influence how easy or how hard it is to get around.

So Natalie, I'll bring you into this conversation. This wasn't your first Week Without Driving. You've done it before. And you are also an elected official. You were on the Eureka City Council. Now you are a Humboldt County Board of Supervisor. So why do you agree to do this? And what do you gain from the experience of attempting to do a Week Without Driving?

NATALIE ARROYO:

Absolutely. Well, like many people, I often find myself relying on driving more than I would like to. So first and foremost, I really like to set goals for myself to drive less. And sometimes I think I've, I've read some of the reflections of participants in the Week Without Driving this year, who spoke to getting from thing to thing really quickly and flexibly. And how that is one of the reasons why they, why they do ultimately end up driving.

So I, in the past have really benefited from thinking about the intentionality with which I approach my week and thinking about how I'm getting from place to place, planning head. It has helped me do things like bring meals for myself when I might otherwise like not do that. And, and otherwise like plan out my week a little bit better and have a sense of calm and uncertainty going into the week. There's always plenty of uncertainty in these jobs as elected officials, lots of dynamism. But that is actually one benefit that I really, that I really appreciated in the past in particular.

This year I was a little hesitant to sign up for the Week Without Driving because I knew that just based on the scheduling, I was going to be out of town at a conference and it was in Monterey and it was the American Planning Association Conference. So a conference for planners and people who think about transportation all the time, and quite, despite the fact that there are transit options to get there, I spec'd it out and it was going to be quite a lengthy journey.

So I did not opt to do that. I did drive there, but I ended up actually spraining my ankle right before going to the conference. And so I was attending this conference using a temporary mobility device, an e-scooter. And it was also a real eye-opener thinking about accessibility. And, you know, I realize it sounds a little trite to say that it was just this eye-opener based on this very temporary limitation, but it was truly insightful and showed me, as has happened before to me when I've had temporary disabilities, that things are, things are a lot harder to navigate than, than we often think. So I did use transit while I was in Monterey and needing some little, some accessibility modifications. And I attended this conference where it was real, a real eye-opener.

WHEELER:

So it's something that ... oh yeah, Colin, go ahead.

FISKE:

Just going to say, I really appreciate this thoughtful comments, Natalie. And I think one thing that we do try to emphasize is that there's, there are a broad range of people who are non-drivers, as we were talking about earlier. And the Week Without Driving is not, it's not an attempt to simulate a disability or pretend that we're poor or something. We're not, we're not lots of, everyone has a different experience of it, but we all come in with our, with our own preconceptions and our own experiences and our own needs. And so, I really appreciate you kind of going into some of those details of how you come in with a certain expectation and maybe something happens and, and that changes your experience and, and it reflects kind of the diversity of non-drivers that exists in the community. So I just wanted to point that out. Thanks.

ARROYO:

Definitely, yeah.

WHEELER:

So Colin, the Week Without Driving I always think is pretty funny because we both want to show people that not driving can be fun, right? And there were a lot of wonderful reflections posted on the Lost Coast Outpost from folks like Caroline Griffith or Matt Simmons that talked about how they got joy out of riding the bus or riding their bike. And having the Bay Trail is a fantastic new thing in our community so that we can get from point A to point B safely and have a wonderful view of Humboldt Bay.

And there were also a lot of reflections about how the Week Without Driving kind of sucked and was hard for people and they needed to figure out new ways to get around and it was a challenge and eye-opening for them as folks who are drivers to experience life as a non-driver. Perhaps you could reflect briefly on that duality here and it seems just kind of a funny event in this way because what is the purpose here? What are we trying to promote? Is it trying to be that we're showing that riding your bike is fun and great and riding the bus can be this good time? Or are we showing that, oh my God, actually this is kind of a pain in the butt to be a non-driver?

FISKE:

Yeah, I mean, I think the point is kind of to, to open people's eyes a little bit about the diversity of experiences that are out there. And this is part of what I was trying to get at just now is that, for example, if you live in a place where, say, you're near a bus stop, or you're near a good trail, then you have a very different experience than if you're living somewhere where you don't have access to those things, or maybe there's not even a sidewalk. And so there's a real diversity of experiences.

And I think the main point of the Week Without Driving is to give folks some idea of, again, what some of the experiences of folks who are non drivers be, you're not going to get the exact experience of any particular non driver. But you know, say, if you're not someone who rides the bus very much, you might get an experience of what it's like to ride the bus. Or if you're someone who really drives pretty much everywhere you go, you might get the experience of what the what the bike infrastructure is like if you hop on your bike.

So yeah, I mean, I think the main purpose, from my perspective, is that in the future, when folks are thinking about policy decisions or infrastructure decisions, that they might think back and not just think about their experience, kind of like driving to that meeting or driving to work that day or something, but also think about their experiences getting around without a vehicle. And often that does involve major challenges. But of course, it can be great to get around without a vehicle. It can be extremely freeing. And we want it to be even more so.

So, you know, one of my conclusions from just looking at people's reflections, the positive and the negative, is that most of what we can do, I mean, pretty much all of what we can do to make life better for people who are non drivers, also makes life better for people who are drivers. And might choose to get out there and walk or bike or roller ride the bus, because those are incredible options, even if you do have the choice to drive.

ARROYO:

I'd certainly noticed this year too, I had a couple of folks that I connected with about their experience, tell me that because they hadn't in their case, ridden transit recently, and I'll take a moment to share some transit thoughts as the chair of the Humboldt Transit Authority and someone who cares a lot about transit, we've had some changes in the last several months. And the system is a lot more streamlined, unified, there's a more common fare structure and people can tap to pay with their credit card or, you know, a chip card, and it's just very convenient for, for folks who, who hadn't used those systems before, who had some apprehension about riding transit because, you know, maybe they didn't know the exact fare for where they were trying to go and, realizing that it was a simplified structure was really pleasant for them and, you know, made them more likely to choose that option, and so I think if people hadn't engaged in those systems recently, it was a good reminder.

Same with the Bay Trail, the Humboldt Bay Trail now being complete, I hear it all the time from people about how much they're enjoying it, often for recreational purposes, but people who tried commuting on it during the Week Without Driving or recently, for the first time, really talked about how it was easier to get from one side of the Bay to the other than they were anticipating even, and they had, you know, allowed more time than they needed, and it was more joyful or more beautiful than they were even expecting, so I think that's one thing that's been fun to hear about, is people having these experiences that some commuters have all the time, and others are just having the opportunity for the first time.

WHEELER:

Natalie, I will reinforce what you said about the changes to the transit system and how much easier it is now to ride. The tap-on with your credit card is so nice. I've been riding the bus here in Humboldt County for 11 years, and back in the day when you used to have to buy the prepaid little passes and it'd be $20, but the bus would charge you $2.10, so you'd never actually spend the correct amount of money. My wallet would just stack up with a bunch of passes that would have 75 cents on them or something. Then I'd have to use a bunch of them at once. It was a pain.

As minimal as that is, it was enough of an irritant to be irritating, and now you don't have to worry about having cash in your wallet. You don't have to worry about having correct change or the anxiety of not knowing how much you should try to put into the thing and holding up the bus or whatever else. It's so easy. If you haven't ridden the bus in a while, folks who are listening, try it out. It goes lots of places. Go up to Trinidad, take a hike, go to College Cove, and then ride the bus back home. It's wonderful.

ARROYO:

One thing that I also wanna just shout out that was a big change and thanks to Measure O, one of the additional services that we were able to offer was expansion of existing service but a later departure to go down to Sohum. So for people who take the bus from Southern Humboldt to other parts of the county on the Redwood Transit line or kind of Highway 101 essentially line, now have the option to take a later departing bus that goes home kind of after the kind of typical nine to five work hours, and that has been already such a boon for folks, as well as the Redwood Coast Express route that gets folks through what used to be a gap between two systems, between Humboldt and Mendocino. Now there's a connection there and it's super inexpensive and that'll be expanding in the near future as well.

So those are some things that I think people didn't know about. They're pretty new and if they're giving it a shot as far as commuting without a car, even just now and again, that they might not know about. So it's always good to tell folks.

WHEELER:

You are listening to the Econews Report, and we're talking about the Week Without Driving, the annual experiment to see how folks do living a carless life. So Colin, you, as the organizer of the Week Without Driving, hear from a lot of the participants about their experiences. Was there anything that surprised, shocked, maybe you found funny or poignant or memorable in some way from participants this year?

FISKE:

Yeah, I think one of the things that honestly did surprise me a bit was how many people, how many positive things there were, how many people just really loved it. And I say that surprised me. I really do think that I would argue like empirically speaking, walking and biking and riding the bus are like better experiences than driving, but healthier and all those things. Good for you, not always safer, but generally speaking. But we have spent a lot of money and a lot of time building car infrastructure and building communities that kind of make it hard sometimes to get around other ways.

So the fact that folks were able to really find some of that joy and freedom was really heartening to me. And I do think it's kind of interesting the way we talk about these things because as human beings, we tend to focus on the negative no matter what it is. Of course, with all the enormous sums of money and time we've put into the car system, people still complain about their driving experiences all the time. And of course, we've spent much less investment in these other ways of getting around and there are major, major problems. But I think another thing that I would say, I guess, is this issue of time is really interesting to me and that people both found that time was a really big problem for getting around without a car because we've built things so far apart and we've built up these cultural expectations of being able to get from one place to another really quickly in ways that can be hard without a car.

But at the same time, people also found people also found that not driving gave them time that was really valuable to them, time where they could reflect or where they could relax or where they could just kind of enjoy the scenery in a way that they didn't have when they were driving everywhere. So that sort of two-sided nature of the time issue was really interesting to me.

WHEELER:

So Colin, you are also invested in advocacy to try to make roads safer, to try to make these experiences more pleasant, to try to get more people on bikes, on foot, on buses, everything. You recently came out with a new report that looks at Fourth and Fifth Streets in Eureka and some of the safety hurdles that pedestrians and other road users have to face when navigating these streets. Would you like to talk briefly about this new report and how it kind of fits in with the Week Without Driving?

FISKE:

Sure. So I think pretty much everyone who lives around here has known for a long time that the 101 corridor through Eureka, which includes Broadway and 4th and 5th Streets, is not very safe, especially for folks who are walking and biking and rolling. And CRTP has really been focusing our advocacy for a number of years on Broadway and trying to advocate for Caltrans to make that safer, which they have now started to do with the South Broadway Complete Streets project, which is under construction and which we're trying to advocate for funding for planned projects that would improve safety in the rest of that Broadway corridor.

But 4th and 5th Streets just haven't gotten as much attention and there's really no plan in place for that corridor to improve safety. And so we really wanted to bring attention to it by looking at the crashes that have happened over the last decade and also looking at the reports on the Street Story platform that folks have made and also reviewing the findings from some walk audits and a bike audit that we did in the corridor over the last year.

And it's really striking to me because, you know, one of the findings was that for pedestrians ... so this corridor amounts to about 0.2 percent of the road miles in the county, when you count all the different, you know, the state highways and the county roads and the city streets, but it accounts for 18 percent of pedestrian serious injuries and deaths. And so that is, it's 90 times the rate per mile of the county average, so it's just enormous. And the rates are also quite elevated for bicyclists and for motorists also, but pedestrians really stand out as being just so much higher. And I think that the reason for that is that it goes right through downtown and there's no way for pedestrians to avoid that, whether you live in that area or you work in that area or you're shopping or you're going to a government building, pretty much everybody in the region has to be in that corridor every once in a while at least, if not every day.

And so you've got to cross the street at some point. So making that safer for pedestrians is so important. And I think, if I would just hazard to guess, the reason that the rates are not higher for bicyclists, even though they are quite high, is that most bicyclists avoid that corridor if they have the choice, because there's just no bike infrastructure at all. And so we looked at all that, we tried to quantify it a bit, and then we provide suggestions for improvements. And there are a lot of intersection designs and things that could really improve the safety. I would say that the top recommendation for the whole corridor is to transition or convert one of those general car-truck lanes into a protected bike lane. And that would accomplish a lot of things at once, but certainly it would provide protection not only to bicyclists but also to pedestrians and have a major traffic calming effect. And we know that traffic speeds are like the number one predictor of crashes and the number one predictor of serious injury and death when a crash does occur. So really calming traffic, making it a little more predictable, making it easier to cross the street, providing that physical protection, those are things that we really think need to happen in the corridor.

WHEELER:

Natalie, as an elected official, how do you go about thinking about your responsibility towards non-drivers and the sort of interventions that we're able to make in local government to make roads safer, particularly when we're kind of dealing with something like 4th and 5th Street, which might be out of local jurisdiction? It's a road maintained by Caltrans, so the city of Eureka has kind of limited ability to influence its operation.

ARROYO:

Yeah, it's difficult when a state highway bisects your community and the community I've represented both in Eureka when I was on Eureka City Council and now the district I'm in is largely the City of Eureka faces that challenge.

WHEELER:

Natalie, you have so many interesting hats that you can bring to a conversation like this. You were a planner at RCAA. You were a Eureka City Council person, and now you're at the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors. You're on the HTA board, you're chair of the Humboldt Transit Authority board. How do you think about your role and responsibility and the difficulties of making improvements for non-drivers in a rural community like this, especially when there's something like Fourth and Fifth Streets, which run through Eureka, which are outside of the jurisdiction of local governments. You know, that's Caltrans Roadway. So how do you think about your job as a local elected official in making these sorts of improvements?

ARROYO:

Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, I definitely, I think in part because of my prior experience, do think about centering the needs of people who aren't in cars, that isn't to neglect the importance of people getting around on our roadways, using motor vehicles and the motor vehicle transportation sector and all that.

But I think about multimodal users. So people who are walking and biking and a combination of being pedestrians and transit users, or using mobility devices, getting around with strollers, all of the folks who are, who are not driving their own vehicle to get from place to place or, or doing that as part of their day, because sometimes we're all of the above, so I do really think about those needs and living in a community and representing a community for the last over a decade that is bisected by a state highway is a challenge. And I do appreciate that Caltrans in particular has put some focus on communities that are divided state highway and cognizant of the impact their infrastructure has had on, on communities and this, you know, both the safety consequences of that and the, the social consequences of that and the impacts on, you know, local businesses and all of those kind of connected pieces.

So I appreciate that there's an effort towards that. And I have regular conversations and meetings with Caltrans and have seen some movement in being more responsive to community needs. And so I'm really hopeful with this report from CRTP. I reviewed it and see some really exciting and interesting recommendations in here, including some of the like little, but little, but big things like fewer driveways where people can come in and out that intersect with places where people might be walking or biking that that's one common practice when looking at routes for pedestrians and bikes is to think about how many crossings are there.

And, and when you look at that as an, as a driver, you probably don't really think about all of those driveways where cars may or may not be pulling out and the, the grade changes that that, that causes and all of the complexities there, but to try to minimize those where possible is a really great recommendation and not one that I've seen put forward before, but it makes a lot of sense.

So I think there's a lot of great stuff in here. I've taken the time to review the report and I'm in a position to kind of elevate some of those recommendations, including some of the ones that are lower costs and easier to implement right away, the sort of quick build type recommendations, as well as planning for those longer term ones in my conversations with Caltrans. Cause I meet with them really regularly. So I think about the most vulnerable users of our roadways, people that are, that need additional safety in their, in their lives to be able to get from place to place, as well as, you know, how I can use my positionality to kind of advance some good things for our community.

WHEELER:

So the Week Without Driving is fascinating because it forces you into the shoes of someone else and someone who can't afford to drive, who cannot drive for some reason. I would really encourage folks, even though the week is over for 2025, to try little experiments like these, to put yourself in the position of someone who might have a sight impairment or someone who might have, because of their age, mobility issues and it's unable to drive and to kind of think through the world from their perspective. And I think that that will make us all better humans, will make us more empathetic humans, will probably stop more at crosswalks as a consequence, and we'll be like better neighbors to each other.

Colin, any last thoughts before we go?

FISKE:

I just wanted to briefly mention that along with this report, in the vein of allowing people to get a little bit of someone else's perspective, we did put together several videos from the point of view of various pedestrians and bicyclists in the fourth and fifth corridor using wearable cameras. So, you know, you put that camera on your head and walk around or bike around or roll around. And I really encourage people to check those out. There's a link on our website. They're posted on YouTube and it kind of gives you a certain perspective of what different folks experience when they're using those streets.

And one thing that I just want to really quickly address, because, you know, I would say the number one thing that I hear from drivers when you talk about Broadway, Fourth and Fifth street is that pedestrians or bicyclists are behaving irresponsibly and like jumping out in traffic. And I want to point out that as a pedestrian or a bicyclist, one of the things you can see in these videos is often you can't see vehicles coming because of parked cars or other obstructions until you're out in the street. And so the experience kind of goes both ways and you're seeing things from a certain angle as a driver and it can help to kind of change your perspective a little bit.

And another thing that just as a little PSA for anyone who drives, the faster you go and you don't have to be going very fast, but the faster you go, the less peripheral vision you have. And so if you're going 30 miles an hour through the city, you really do not have the ability to see or process things in your peripheral vision, like someone stepping off the sidewalk. So what might appear to you to be someone appearing suddenly in the lane might have been someone coming out that you just didn't see.

And so I think it's just really important to get those other perspectives to understand that what we perceive is not always just the objective be all end all of everything. We're all coming at it from different angles and we're all humans. And hopefully we're all trying to save each other's lives and trying to make each other's lives better. So whatever you think about about other folks in our community, hopefully you don't want them to get hurt or killed. So let's let's work to make it safer.

WHEELER:

All right, let's work to make it safer. And I want to thank both of my guests, Colin Fiske, the Executive Director of CRTP, and Natalie Arroyo, Humboldt County Supervisor, because both these folks work to make it safer. And I really appreciate that about both of you. So thank you.

ARROYO:

It's nice to be here.

WHEELER:

All right, join us again on this time and channel next week for more environmental news from the North Coast of California.