The Collector
June 20, 2025
CRTP Publishes Bike Safety Audit Report
Following up on last month’s bike safety audit in Eureka’s 4th and 5th Street corridor, CRTP has published a report of findings that documents the issues identified by audit participants and suggestions to make the corridor safer for biking. We already knew that 4th & 5th Streets were dangerous for biking, but the audit report identifies specific problems and specific solutions.
Perhaps the biggest idea to come out of the bike safety audit is to turn one lane on 4th Street and one lane on 5th Street into protected bike lanes. This single design change could address a lot of the safety issues by providing a safe place to ride on the street, reducing the distance to cross the street, lowering traffic speeds, and mitigating the unpredictable driver behavior that comes from having three general vehicle lanes going in the same direction.
Take the Vision Zero Survey
As we mentioned last week, the Humboldt County Association of Governments is developing a Vision Zero Action Plan for the county, and they want to hear from you. Click here to take their survey about transportation safety. And don’t forget to keep making reports on Street Story about crashes, near-misses, and hazardous locations as well. CRTP is making sure that Street Story reports are considered as the plan is developed.
Trails! Trails! Trails!
The Humboldt Bay Trail Grand Opening Celebration is coming up in just over a week, and people are definitely getting excited.
In other good trail news, at its meeting next week the California Transportation Commission is slated to allocate construction funding for Arcata’s Annie & Mary Trail Connectivity Project (a new trail from the Sunset Avenue skate park all the way past Valley West to the first pump station on Baduwa’t), as well as a new financial contribution toward the project from Caltrans. The regional commuter trail network is growing before our eyes!
Bike to the Juneteenth Day Festival!
Black Humboldt’s 7th annual Juneteenth Day Festival is taking place this Saturday at Halvorsen Park in Eureka. CRTP is providing bike valet, so we can watch your bike while you enjoy the festival. See you on Saturday!
Affordable Housing and Parking in Arcata
Some current residents of Arcata’s Bayside neighborhood have been speaking out recently against the “Roger’s Garage” affordable housing project, which proposes to build 53 new affordable housing units on Old Arcata Road. Some of the complaints have to do with the fact that the site’s soil is contaminated from its former use as a mechanic shop, although the site has been contaminated for many years and the housing project would be required to clean it up. But a lot of the complaints, as usual, are about parking.
Here are a few things to remember about parking and housing development: First, there is a direct tradeoff between parking and housing. The more parking is provided, the less housing can be built, and the more expensive that housing is. Second, many people make car ownership and driving decisions based in part on residential parking availability, so a housing development with less parking will almost certainly result in residents with fewer cars. Third, if there is ever a real parking “shortage,” there are effective management tools to address that situation, like a residential parking permit system.
The Roger’s Garage project is not exactly in a walkable location, but it will be quite bikeable once Caltrans completes safety improvements to the US-101 interchange. Given the dire need for more affordable housing in our region, CRTP supports this project, and encourages the city to coordinate with other agencies on bike, pedestrian and transit improvements to better serve the neighborhood as it develops.
News from Beyond the North Coast
California Transportation Commission Looks to Fund More Highway Expansions
The commission is notoriously pro-highway and autocentric, and rarely objects to big projects proposed by Caltrans. Advocates are increasingly frustrated as enormous sums of money flow toward highway expansions that undermine the state’s climate and safety goals, and have called out a number of boondoggles in advance of next week’s meeting – including a multimillion dollar project to add lanes to a state highway that could be under water in less than ten years due to sea level rise.
Tellingly, the Trump administration hasn’t uttered a peep about this kind of “waste, fraud and abuse,” despite making the state’s biggest mass transit project into a culture war topic and focus of the president’s feud with Governor Newsom.
If Every City Were Like Copenhagen, We’d All Be a Lot Healthier
A new study quantifies some of the benefits of biking at a societal scale. One striking finding: if cities around the world all got up to the levels of biking currently found in the Danish capital, it would reduce global auto emissions by 6% and save nearly half a trillion dollars in health care costs every year.
The Collector is CRTP’s weekly transportation news roundup, published every Friday. We focus on North Coast news, but we also include relevant state, national and international transportation news – plus other items that we just find kind of interesting! To submit items for consideration, email colin@transportationpriorities.org.