The Collector
August 28, 2026
Is This the Last Nice Thing We’ll Get for Transit?
This week, the Humboldt Transit Authority and Danco officially broke ground for the Eureka Regional Transit and Housing Center, more commonly referred to as the EaRTH Center. Eureka has long needed a good downtown transit hub and more walkable housing, and this project provides both. CRTP has been advocating for the EaRTH Center for years, and we’re excited to see construction begin!
The EaRTH Center is one of many local transit projects made possible by the state’s Transit and Intercity Rail Capital Program (TIRCP). In fact, in recent years TIRCP has been the main source of funding on the North Coast for new buses, bus stop upgrades, and other transit infrastructure.
TIRCP is one of the critical transit and housing programs that is anticipated to be defunded by rule changes recently made by Governor Newsom’s appointees to the California Air Resources Board. If TIRCP funding dries up, it’s not clear where local agencies will get funding for the new buses they need, let alone bigger infrastructure projects – like, for example, a much-needed new transit center in Arcata, and a planned transit hub in the McKinleyville Town Center.
Let’s make sure this isn’t the end for transit infrastructure improvements in our region. Click here to email state leaders today and tell them to fully fund TIRCP and other transit and housing programs. Don’t wait! Legislators must take action in the next few days to avoid severe funding cuts starting this fiscal year.
Eureka’s Safety Crisis and Solutions
Last Friday, the Lost Coast Outpost published a “deep dive” into Eureka’s traffic safety crisis, and we’re grateful for the coverage. It’s critically important for the media to report on traffic safety as the systemic issue that it is, rather than simply re-publishing police reports and treating every crash as an isolated incident.
As CRTP Executive Director Colin Fiske notes in the Outpost article, the most effective, evidence-based strategies for making streets safer involve redesigning those streets to slow traffic, minimize conflicts, and provide safe places to walk and bike. In Eureka’s most dangerous corridor, Caltrans is taking baby steps in that direction with changes like the newly activated traffic signal at Broadway and Hilfiker Lane. This signal provides a safer crossing of Broadway at an access point to the Waterfront Trail, in a location where pedestrians and bicyclists previously had to make a half-mile detour to cross at a light.
But the self-congratulatory message Caltrans provides for the article is premature. Hiding behind selective and misleading statistics, Caltrans spokesperson Miles Cochrane argues that collisions in Eureka’s US-101 corridor have declined dramatically in the last decade. What he doesn’t mention is that there has been no significant, sustained decrease in the number of people actually injured and killed. Nor does he point out that, due to Humboldt County’s small population, there is significant random variation in injuries and deaths each year. In other words, you can create the illusion of a trend simply by selecting convenient years to start and end your comparison.
The most substantial safety upgrades on Broadway – like the new traffic signal – have all been made recently, so we haven’t had time to judge their effects. If studies of other locations are any indication, these improvements will make a difference in the immediate vicinity of where they are implemented. But to really move the needle, a corridor-wide overhaul is needed.
Another Serious Injury Crash in Eureka
On Thursday, a collision involving the driver of a vehicle and the rider of a two-wheeled device left the rider incapacitated with serious injuries. The only public information about the crash comes from a Eureka Police Department press release. The device involved is identified by EPD as an e-bike, but given the longstanding confusion and lack of clear labeling distinction between legal e-bikes and high-powered e-motos, we don’t know with certainty what kind of device it was.
We also don’t know the rider’s account of what happened, since he was incapacitated in the crash. What we do know, thanks to EPD, are some apparently irrelevant details about the rider that will surely color public opinion, such as the fact that witnesses said he was “smoking from a tobacco vape prior to the collision.”
It may very well be true, as witnesses reported, that the rider in this crash was breaking traffic laws and otherwise behaving dangerously. But making mistakes, even big ones, should not be a death sentence. The Vision Zero approach, adopted regionally in Humboldt County, acknowledges that all serious traffic injuries and deaths are preventable.
A cluster of reports on Street Story shows numerous near-misses and crashes at this particular intersection in the past, a clear indication of the need for safety improvements. Ultimately, regardless of who is legally at fault in a crash, traffic calming and other interventions can reduce the chances of injury or death.
Our thoughts are with the seriously injured rider. Whoever he is, and whatever he did leading up to the crash, we wish him a full and speedy recovery.
Arcata Planning Commission Takes a Stand for Bike Parking
The Arcata Planning Commission approved a small housing project near downtown this week after requiring the developer to convert one of the planned car parking spaces into a bike parking structure. We are grateful to the Commission for its recognition of the importance of safe, weather-protected bike parking!
News from Beyond the North Coast
Trump Administration’s “Safety Strategy” Severely Lacking
Surprising no one, the US Department of Transportation’s new Roadway Safety Strategy leaves out evidence-backed safety measures that the administration doesn’t like – such as road diets and bike lanes – and makes no mention of bicyclists or pedestrians.
Maybe It’s Not the Bread…
Americans visiting Europe frequently report losing weight despite eating plenty of calories. Some think there’s something magical about European flour. But maybe it’s just the fact that they walked to the restaurant.
The E-Bikelash Continues
A Southern California prosecutor has initiated a buy-back program for e-bikes, putting them in the same “threat to the community” category as guns, and treating all legal e-bikes and illegal e-motos as equivalently dangerous. As politicians across the country scramble to demonize e-bikes, this political stunt ranks among the most absurd examples.
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.