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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 we are celebrating Transit Month this week. And who better to celebrate with than my friend and colleague, Colin Fisk of the Coalition for Responsible Transportation Priorities. Hey, Colin.

All right, so happy transit month to you.

COLIN FISKE:

And to you.

WHEELER:

Thank you. It is one of my favorite months to celebrate. In fact, as Virgos, we love our transit month. So while, while it is a joyous month because transit is wonderful, it's also maybe somewhat conflicted month because not all transit news is good news. These days, we are seeing attacks on transit at both the federal and unfortunately the state level and even local level. So let's get into where we are with transit these days and let's go from big to small federal to local. All right. So what's going on in the federal level that is impacting transit?

FISKE:

Sure, so the federal government historically does provide a fair amount of funding for public transit, especially for rural transit agencies, including the Humboldt Transit Authority. And you might not be surprised to know that the Trump administration is not very interested in funding transit, and in fact has proposed pretty much completely cutting federal transit funding. Of course, budget negotiations in Congress being what they are, we don't know what will happen in the end, but there's a transportation reauthorization bill that's being debated and negotiated in Congress right now, which is something that happens every five years. And historically, this agreement has been that 80% of federal funding goes to highways and 20% to transit, but we're in a new environment now, and it's getting harder with this administration to defend and ensure that we do get the transit funding.

WHEELER:

All right, so it sounds like we should all be contacting our representatives and letting them know that fighting for transit is going to be important, even if they're not in the majority party in Congress right now. I imagine the fight that they put up is going to be influential in some sort of future negotiation. Yes.

FISKE:

I would say we don't need to get into all of it here, but there are also some policy fights going on around transit at the federal level, including the administration trying to roll back some sort of foundational civil rights rules about transit. Listeners may recall that some of the most famous civil rights battles in American history were fought on buses, like the case with the Montgomery bus boycott, and some of the rules that came out of those fights, which protect civil rights on public transit, the administration is trying to repeal. And actually, we have a speaker who's going to be coming during transit month to talk about that and other issues. That's Laurel Paget Seekins, who is an expert in transit funding and transit civil rights matters. And she works at Public Advocates, which is a nonprofit law firm in the Bay Area. And she'll be coming up here to talk about protecting transit's role in multiracial inclusive democracy. So really want to encourage folks to check that out. All right.

WHEELER:

I know that in this Trump administration, tying transit to multiracial democracy is precisely the way to get transit better attacked. I don't think the Trump administration particularly likes multiracial democracy.

FISKE:

I think that's the idea, they're attacking that particular aspect of it, including the funding and everything else.

WHEELER:

But let me be clear, we here at the Econews Report, we are not only pro-transit, we are pro-multiracial democracy.

Amen. All right. Oh, so that's an exciting talk. So this talk, I'm excited to attend. When is it? Where is it? Where can I find more information?

FISKE:

It is on Thursday, September 10th. It's at 5.45 p.m. and it is at the McKinleyville Family Resource Center. And we have made that time because it should be relatively convenient for folks from the South, from Arcata and Eureka and Fortuna to take the bus to McKinleyville to arrive in time for that talk at 5.45 p.m.

WHEELER:

I kind of like having to go to McKinleyville for something, right? I feel like all you McKinley villains always have to travel, uh, to point south for your cultural affairs. Now we are coming.

FISKE:

And I really want to thank the McKinleyville Family Resource that are co-sponsoring that, so thanks to everybody.

WHEELER:

Well, and I think that this is appropriate too, for the topic of the discussion to have the McKinleyville Family Resource Center be the host, because they are often dealing with people who are living at the margins, who are being impacted because of this lack of funding for, for social programs. Yeah. So it seems like a good host and sponsor for this, this talk. Okay. So not all is well at the federal level. Usually we're not all as well at the federal level. We get to report that, but here in the state of California, we're doing better and we're fighting for the right things, but that may be not the case either. As I understand it, what's going on in Sacramento that has you tearing your hair out.

FISKE:

To put this in a little bit more context, the historical source of most state transit funding has been from gas and diesel taxes in the state, and those revenues have been declining pretty steadily for a long time. And so there's a steady decline in transit funding going on at the background level, at the same time that, of course, costs to run transit are increasing. Then we encountered this problem at the state level just a couple of months ago, where Governor Newsom encouraged the California Air Resources Board to pass a new rule pertaining to the Cap-and-Invest program, which is the state's carbon marketplace. Formerly Cap-and-Trade. Exactly. And the revenues from that program have historically funded a number of important transit programs, as well as affordable housing and clean air and water programs. But because of this new rule, which essentially gives a bunch of additional allowances to pollute to refineries and other oil companies and polluters, that will reduce the revenues that come into the state, and is expected to essentially completely defund these transit and housing and clean air and water programs. And these are programs that, for example, the Humboldt Transit Authority has relied on to build the Earth Center, which is just now breaking ground, and to buy new buses that are zero emission, and to upgrade bus stops, and any number of other things have been funded by these programs. And so it's really disheartening and disturbing to see the state unfunding them at this moment.

WHEELER:

And it feels very Newsom administration, if I'm being blunt to, to defund this stuff in the way that he is doing in advance of what everyone anticipates to be a presidential run. I think that he is very desperate to, to seem to be more moderate, or to be seen as trying to tackle high gas prices. And it means that the most vulnerable folks in the community are going to suffer. It means that our climate's going to suffer. And so I'm just really looking forward to a period of time when Newsom is not running for office. Maybe when we have a new governor and we can start to get some more sane management in Sacramento.

FISKE:

And I will say, Tom, the ironic thing is, as everyone's so focused on the price of gas, as gas costs go up, more and more people can't afford to drive and need public transit. So really, defunding transit at this point is the most counterproductive thing you could do.

WHEELER:

Indeed, that's very true. I am glad to see in part more people riding the bus these days. I ride the bus into Epic relatively frequently, and I've been noticing my bus rides are becoming fuller, even in the summer, I've been noticing a good trend increasing of increasing ridership. So maybe for a bad reason, people are feeling the economic pinch, but I'm glad that there's this resource available to folks who are feeling that.

FISKE:

And I should add, as we record this, there are debates going on in the state legislature about partially backfilling some of this lost funding. When this airs, we will probably know whether that has been successful or not, but so it's possible these programs won't be completely eliminated if the legislature allocates some money to them, but they certainly will lose a lot of money and don't have a secure future.

WHEELER:

All right, so kind of in the same way, often when things aren't going well at the feds, the state's doing better, or when things aren't going well at the state, we can feel pride in local decision-making relative to whatever issues come up, but, but here we, we again, have some sad transit news during transit month of all months, which is how Polly Humboldt seems to be pulling back from its historic investment in local transit for both its students and the broader community. So Colin, tell me what is happening at the university.

FISKE:

So this is a real gloom and doom episode here. So during transit month, during transit month, well, we'll pull it back to the, to the happy news after this, but so yeah, Cal Poly Humboldt has for many years funded evening bus service on the Arcata Mad River transit service during the school year. So that's from seven to 10 PM roughly. And that of course provides transit for their students to get to and from evening classes and homes and jobs and groceries and social events and all the things. And in fact, as of last count, about 72% of, of evening riders in Arcata are students, but it also serves the broader community and they have, they, let's say they announced or we found out the public found out in August that they had just announced they were cutting that funding and that basically the Humboldt transit authority has no budgeted funds to run it so that we were going to lose evening service in Arcata. Also lose the green and gold route, which the university funds and that actually we are losing that that has stopped running. Thankfully, those stops are also served by other routes, albeit less frequently. But this evening service, CRTP was able to kind of make a big fuss about it, let's say, and a lot of folks I know contacted the university president and other folks to express the need for continuing the evening service. HTA also sort of stepped in to negotiate on some of these issues. And the result has been that the university has agreed to continue funding some evening service in Arcata for the fall semester only. It's not the full service that you have during the day. It's about half of that. But there will be evening service at least through December. Now we are continuing the fight to try and preserve that service for the future.

WHEELER:

All right, so there'll be more to come, I'm sure. And I will commend CRTP. You sent out an email to your membership. Lots of folks participated, took action, emailed the university president, and it was evidently felt and heard in Cal Poly Humboldt. And so put another notch in your belt there, Colin. I think that that was a win for CRTP. I was one of those people who took action, got an email back from the president's office thanking me for raising this concern to them. So I'm glad that they seem to have listened to the community members who have written to the university. So thank you to Cal Poly Humboldt. And if the president is listening, just know that we are going to continue to bother you after December 2, right? So don't think you're off the hook now. Well-

FISKE:

And leading up to December, because students need to know whether there's going to be service next spring and community members, too. Right.

WHEELER:

When planning classes and when planning where to live, I'm sure that this is an important consideration for students. And again, if we don't have the service, then it's only gonna become more expensive for students and for the general public to live in Arcata, to go to school at Cal Poly Humboldt, because it might force people into car ownership, which as you know, is a terrible burden.

FISKE:

Yeah, the average cost of car ownership now is up around $12,000 a year. So that's, it's a lot. It's a lot for a lot of people. And I should mention too, that another transit month happening is we will be organizing a gathering of transit riders to let transit riders who are interested in, in advocacy, get to know each other. And also to sort of strategize about how to preserve this evening service in Arcata and also the rest of the service that's provided locally and also how to get more investment so we can improve the service.

WHEELER:

You are listening to the Econews Report. And we're talking about transit month with Colin Fisk, Executive Director of the Coalition for Responsible Transportation Priorities. You know, I always, whenever getting off the bus, I think one of the most fun things to do is to yell thank you loudly from the back of the bus. As you should. As you should. Our bus drivers, God bless them, are doing a valuable public service. And now I get to go meet my bus drivers, which sounds very fun.

FISKE:

Yep, that's another event that we're having, a bus driver meet and greet, and that will be on Monday, September 14th in the evening, 5.30 to 7.30 I think. That is at Humber's and that's part of the Friends of the Eel River's monthly solidarity gathering that they've been holding, so thanks to Friends of the Eel River. Also thanks to AFSCME, Local 1684, which is the union that represents the bus drivers and other folks at HTA. They are co-sponsoring this event with us and really appreciate them having some drivers come out and answer questions that folks have about the bus system and demystify it for folks who aren't riders, even folks who are riders and have questions. So please come out, meet the bus drivers, say hi, thank them for their work. It'll be fun.

WHEELER:

All right, so now we've covered the negative news, but now let's cover the positive happenings in the transit world. So again, we are recording in August, and so just before the start of transit month, and today you were there at the groundbreaking for the Earth Center. Remind us, what is the Earth Center, and what's its role in helping to facilitate better transit here in Humboldt County?

FISKE:

So the EARTH Center stands for the Eureka Regional Transit and Housing Center, and that is what it is. It is a transit center on the bottom floor, along with some business space and retail space, and then several floors of homes above that. And so it's very exciting because Eureka has never really had a real transit center, and this will serve that need. It will allow better coordination between all the different bus services and bus routes from the Eureka Transit Service, the Redwood Transit Service, the Amtrak bus, all those kinds of things. It will also just provide a nice, safe, warm, comfortable place for people to wait for buses and wait for transfers. Bathrooms, that's a thing that often bus riders need, you know, we don't think about, but that's important.

WHEELER:

And I think that that'll be just a valuable addition to the city of Eureka. Like Friday night market, you know, how often are people walking around looking for a place to use the restroom? Now there'll be another set of public restrooms. That's fantastic.

FISKE:

Yeah, and I think maybe one of the most exciting things about it is that there are going to be, I think it's 44 homes right above the transit center. That will make them the best transit served homes in the whole county, arguably in the whole region. They'll be able to just step out their doors and get on a bus, which is super exciting. And there will be protected bike parking. There will be a bike share station there. There will be ways for people to get to and from the bus, make it all that much easier to use the bus service. So a lot of exciting things there. And to the point, too, that the folks who live there and the transit riders, I think will be a real stimulus to Old Town and Downtown, providing more customers for shops and restaurants and all that kind of stuff. So it's a really exciting thing.

WHEELER:

This is my prediction and I'll make it here on the radio. So it's very public and you can hold me to it. I think all this new housing coming into Eureka is going to be a real benefit to the city, as you said. So we have the Earth Center. We also have the two we developed affordable housing projects being constructed immediately. And now we have the imminent opening of the three link housing units. So over 200 units of housing in total is being put into the city of Eureka. Most of it is being put right in the heart of old town downtown, where most of our local shops and businesses are housed. So now we will have a bunch of new people who are enjoying new affordable housing in the most prime real estate in our city, who will be able to access their housing via public transit, who will benefit from new crosswalks that were funded by the affordable housing development itself. I think that this is really going to be a game changer for Eureka. We haven't built this level of housing in decades, and now we're to see a sudden new increase in housing. And I predict that it's going to have an impact on on housing prices in the city. So it will be felt beyond just those folks who were lucky enough to win the lottery to get a spot. It will be felt by all housing, all folks who are looking for a good affordable rental. I think it will have a knock on effect for all of them, too, by by changing kind of the market dynamics, by increasing supply. So, yay.

FISKE:

It's an exciting time for Eureka. It is, isn't it?

WHEELER:

Exciting time for Eureka. I like to be a Eureka booster. I feel like there's not enough of us. I think Eureka is really the crown jewel of the North Coast. Fight me about it, Arcade and Fortuna and McKinleyville.

FISKE:

I'm in favor of all communities.

WHEELER:

Oh, boo. All right. So the earth center is now, I think maybe we can say officially under construction with that, with that.

FISKE:

There was a groundbreaking, so it's official, I think.

WHEELER:

Shovels in the ground, right? We're moving dirt.

FISKE:

I will say, they hadn't yet cracked the pavement, but there was dirt, so that...

WHEELER:

Yeah, yeah. Good enough. All right. When do you anticipate the Earth Center to be completed by?

FISKE:

You know, construction timelines are not my specialty, but I would guess that probably late next year or the following year.

WHEELER:

And with the Earth Center will hopefully be a new fleet of clean hydrogen powered buses. And I understand that HTA has received a number of these buses. Want to give us an update on the future of our fleet?

FISKE:

Yeah, as I understand it, HTA has received most of their order of hydrogen buses, and they're still sort of working out some of the snags with the fuel supply and other things, but fingers crossed, those buses will be on the road before long. And just to point out, it's exciting that they are zero emission buses, but also HTA just needs buses in order to provide good service, and some of their older diesel buses are kind of aging out, so it'll be really important to get those buses on the road soon.

WHEELER:

Yeah, well, that's a wonderful point. I mean, we are paying for the infrastructure that we need through measures designed to improve our climate, but it's also going to just improve the character and quality of the buses themselves. I'm not sure if folks listening have ridden the electric bus, the new electric bus that, it's not even that new at this point, that HTA has in their fleet. It's the nicest bus that they have. It is a clean, quiet ride.

FISKE:

Nice. Yeah.

WHEELER:

All right, so we were talking about the Earth Center and how it's going to have a big benefit to the city of Eureka together with other developments, but transit itself I think has a positive economic effect on our local region. And as I know it, CRTP has a new fact sheet out to help explain this benefit. Colin, do you want to talk about this?

FISKE:

Yeah, we do. So we now actually have two fact sheets out, one for 2025 and then this latest one for 2026, which looks at the number of transit riders over the previous fiscal year and the purposes for which people were riding transit. And then you can extrapolate from that about the importance of transit to our local economy. So for example, in 2026, we know that 189,000 work shifts in Humboldt County were accessed by transit. So that's the equivalent of 757 full-time jobs, but we know that in reality, it's likely many more jobs than that where people are relying on transit at least part of the time to get to work. So we're talking about thousands of jobs dependent on transit in Humboldt County. We also know that even more than that, over 200,000 school and college days were accessed by transit, which is, that's the full-time equivalent again of over 1100 students. But again, it's almost certainly thousands of students who are relying on transit to get to school, to classes at least some of the time. So allowing people to get an education. And we have all these other numbers. We know almost 50,000 medical appointments were accessed by transit last year, almost 55,000 shopping trips, which translates into more than $7 million in spending by transit riders at local businesses. So these are big impacts that the existing transit system is having. And we talked earlier about the transit funding cuts and if some of those go through and we lose service, we're talking about people losing jobs and employers struggling to fill jobs. We're talking about people having to drop out of school. We're talking about people not getting medical care that they need. So really just a huge impact. And one of the reasons that it's so important to preserve the service we have and also to invest more and improve service. On that particular point, we did this other little analysis looking at what's the maximum you could spend by riding transit in Humboldt County in a year and how does that compare to the average cost of owning a car. And so you will save at least $10,472 in Humboldt County every year if you are able to ride transit instead of owning a car. So providing that kind of service where people can feasibly not own a car saves people a lot of money that they often can't afford to spend.

WHEELER:

That's incredible. Again, the average person spends $12,000 per year on their car. Transit, transit saves you money. And it's also just nice. I really enjoy riding the bus. I think I prefer more than driving because someone else gets to drive for me and I get to look out the window and listen to a podcast and zone out and like enjoy my day and enjoy the view over Humboldt Bay instead of like being angry because somebody cut me off. I'll let the driver deal with that.

FISKE:

Couldn't couldn't agree more sometimes you even can talk to people or meet someone new

WHEELER:

One way that we can ensure that transit's well-supported is to ensure that politicians who make decisions regarding its funding have experienced transit. A lot of folks in our community just have only ever been car drivers or maybe rode the bus back in the eighties when they were in college at UC Davis or something like that. So CRTP has a program to try to get politicians and other folks who might have some sort of decision-making or influence in our community to ride the bus with the transit rider and to get a glimpse into their lives, talk to me about the ride-along program.

FISKE:

Yeah, so it's pretty simple. With the Ride Along program, we pair up a decision maker, someone who has, like you said, some influence over the transit system that could be an elected official. It could also be a staff at local cities or the county or other local agencies. It could even be a reporter or an editor at a news outlet. Anybody whose, their decisions are affecting how people look to look at transportation and transit, how much funding transit gets, how safe it is, all those kinds of things. So anybody who is a decision maker around transportation or someone with influence over transportation, if you reach out to us, we will work on connecting you to a bus rider. And the program is ideally, it's a door to door experience where you take a trip with a bus rider on, say, to work or to the grocery store or to a medical appointment or to school or whatever it might be, and you start out where they're starting out, their home or wherever they're starting, you figure out how they get to the bus stop. You walk along with them or ride along with them to get to the bus stop. You get on the bus, you wait, you take the bus, you go through the whole experience with that person. And it's meant to really give folks who are not bus riders, just a little bit of insight into what it is like for people who are bus riders and particularly people who might not be drivers, might not be able to drive or might not have access to a vehicle so that when you're making your next decision about the transit system or about where to invest your transportation dollars, you have that in the back of your head about those folks who are bus riders and what it means to them. All right.

WHEELER:

If I am an elected official or someone else in a position of influence, how do I participate? How do I sign up?

FISKE:

Reach out to CRTP. You can find contact information on our website, which is transportationpriorities.org. And I also want to say, if you're a bus rider and you'd like to lead an elected official or other decision maker on one of your rides, you can also reach out to us and we will work on setting you up.

WHEELER:

Colin, we are just about out of time. Anything else newsworthy for this transit month?

FISKE:

You know, I do want to say one other fun thing that we're doing during transit month is a ride contest where you can register and start logging your rides on transit during the month of September. And you'll get little badges for riding different systems or doing different things on transit. And every time you ride, you'll increase your chances of winning some prizes too, which HTA has generously donated, which include all sorts of fun Ride Humboldt swag, man, also some really good free bus passes. So this is a great time. If you're a transit rider to start logging your rides and get a chance to win something. And if you're not a transit rider, great time to try it out in this fun little game that we're doing.

WHEELER:

All right, yeah, so Transit Month, maybe if you haven't ridden transit here in Humboldt County or it's been a while, this is your opportunity. Step out of your comfort zone, give it a try.

FISKE:

Absolutely, and that you can find info on our website or at ridecontest.com

WHEELER:

All right, Colin Fiske, Executive Director of CRTP, the Coalition for Responsible Transportation Priorities. Thank you so much for joining the Econews Report. Thanks, Tom. And join us again on this time and channel next week for more environmental news from the North Coast of California.