The Collector
May 1, 2026
May Is Bike Month!
There are lots of ways to celebrate Bike Month, from joining a group ride or the annual Bike Celebration, to signing up for the friendly Bike Month challenge, to patronizing a local bike-friendly business. The month kicks off with car-free day on Newton B. Drury Parkway on Saturday and an Arcata Explorers weekly ride on Sunday. Later in the week, Cal Poly Humboldt Bike to Work/School Day is on Wednesday, or you can join a daily morning commute ride on the beautiful Humboldt Bay Trail from Arcata to Eureka on Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday. Check out the full event calendar here. And wherever you’re riding this month, don’t forget to report any biking hazards, near-misses or even (we hope not) crashes on Street Story.
May Is Also Voting Month!
Technically Election Day is June 2nd, but voters will start receiving their ballots in the mail next week. In addition to the high-profile state and federal elections, there are also local races on the ballot. Our elected officials make decisions every day about whether or not our streets get safer, our buses get more funding, our communities get more walkable, and our climate crisis gets addressed. If you haven’t made a plan to vote yet, now is the time!
Join the CRTP Team
We’re looking for a new Outreach Specialist who is passionate about safe, equitable, climate-friendly transportation and wants to join our small but mighty team. If that sounds like you, send in your application today! The full job description and application instructions can be found here.
Want to do more, but not quite ready to apply for a job at CRTP? Here are some other opportunities to get involved:
- Share your transit story. Send us a paragraph or two about why you ride transit, how transit makes your life better, what you couldn’t do without it, how it could be better with more public support, and any other thoughts you want to share. Your story could help build support for more transit investment in our region!
- Sign the petition for safer 4th & 5th Streets in Eureka. If you’ve already signed, share it with a friend! We’re also looking for endorsements from organizations, businesses, and elected officials.
- Become a member of CRTP. Without our members, CRTP wouldn’t exist!
McKinleyville vs. Amazon
McKinleyville residents turned out to a public meeting this week in large numbers to make it clear that they do not want an Amazon distribution center in their community. Community members cited many reasons for their opposition, from environmental impacts to harm to the local economy to workplace safety conditions.
CRTP also opposes the project. As we have previously noted, a new distribution center in the region would drive up levels of carbon pollution, undermine the emissions reductions that we could otherwise achieve through building more walkable communities, and likely make local streets and roads less safe.
If you’d like to offer ideas for projects that might actually have a positive impact, Humboldt County is holding public meetings Saturday (in person) and next Tuesday (online) to get input on how to “improve the community’s livability” with Community Development Block Grant funds. Proposed projects must be in unincorporated parts of the county, including McKinleyville.
Arcata to Consider Adopting Climate Plan
The Arcata City Council will consider adoption of the Regional Climate Action Plan at its regular meeting next Wednesday. The plan has already been adopted by the county and by Eureka. That means that, following Arcata’s adoption, 86% of Humboldt County’s population will be formally covered by the plan, even before the smaller cities adopt it.
Of course, adoption is just the first step. The county and the cities will next have to agree on how to fund a regional climate coordinator staff position, likely housed at the Redwood Coast Energy Authority, and then get to work actually implementing measures to tackle climate pollution. We’ll be pushing to make sure the work begins quickly.
Make Sidewalks Safer & More Accessible
Improperly parked cars, utility poles, mailboxes and other objects often make sidewalks impassable, especially for people with wheelchairs or strollers. To make things worse, tree branches, wires, and other objects often jut out over sidewalks, threatening the safety of pedestrians – especially people who are blind or have low vision. In a recent op-ed in the Times-Standard, accessibility expert and CRTP Board Member Peggy Martinez explains the importance of addressing these problems to make sidewalks safer and more accessible for everyone.
News from Beyond the North Coast
Will California Give Critical Public Transit Funding to Oil Companies Instead?
California’s “cap and invest” (formerly called cap and trade) program brings in billions of dollars in state revenue that are meant to fund programs that reduce carbon pollution. Some of the cap and invest revenues go to grant programs that local agencies in Humboldt have relied to fund the new EaRTH Center transit hub, the transition to zero-emission buses, the Linc Housing and Sunset Heights affordable housing projects in Eureka, and many other transit, bike, and pedestrian investments.
Now, however, the California Air Resources Board is proposing to divert billions of dollars from the program to subsidize oil and gas companies, responding to threats from those companies to close refineries in the state. Independent analysis shows that the proposal would both undermine climate progress and eliminate funding for those crucial transit and housing programs. CRTP joins with transit, housing, climate, and environmental justice advocates from around the state in condemning the proposal and asking the Board to reject it.
Pollution Doesn’t Just Come from Tailpipes
New research shows that asphalt is constantly emitting toxic air pollution. Meanwhile, Humboldt Waterkeeper and Wiyot Tribe Shawir Darrudaluduk have found high levels of toxic, salmon-killing tire chemical 6PPD-q in local waterways. Count these as two more reasons to dramatically reduce our dependence on cars (even EVs) and the infrastructure that supports them.
That Device You Bought May Not Be an E-Bike
As we have previously reported, high-powered, unregulated “e-motos” are the real cause of many safety hazards that have been unfairly blamed on legal e-bikes. The problem is that many manufacturers have been marketing e-motos as e-bikes, and it can be hard to tell the difference just by looking at them. California Attorney General Rob Bonta recently issued a consumer alert on the topic.
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.