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! You can submit items for consideration, or just enjoy the news collection!
On Wednesday this week, the McKinleyville Municipal Advisory Committee reaffirmed their support for the Town Center ordinance without any major changes. However, the Final Environmental Impact Report has not yet been released, and the committee ran out of time before they got around to voting on an issue of major concern to CRTP and our supporters: whether to recommit to a lane reduction and protected bike lanes on Central Avenue. So there will be one more committee meeting on the Town Center in August. Still, if you sent an email to the committee in support of the Central Avenue redesign this week, it was clear your voice was heard! Committee members talked about how many messages they got in support of the lane reduction, overwhelming the number of messages against it.
Redwood Coast Energy Authority is planning to re-launch their e-bike voucher program very soon, providing anywhere from $400 to $1,000 toward the purchase of an e-bike for eligible Humboldt County residents. Click here for more information, or click here to sign up for a notification when the vouchers are available.
If you already have an e-bike, you can help too! 350 Humboldt is looking for owners of e-bikes – as well as electric vehicles, heat pumps, solar panels and batteries, or induction cooktops – to share their experiences with other local residents at an upcoming home electrification fair. If you’re willing to help out, click here to sign up.
A pedestrian was killed this week after being struck by a Humboldt Transit Authority bus in Arcata’s Valley West neighborhood. We grieve for the loss of this community member, and extend our condolences to the victim’s friends and family. Unlike fatal car crashes, which are tragically common, fatal crashes involving transit buses are very rare, and we are grateful to HTA for conducting an investigation into the crash, and taking steps to ensure this never happens again.
Our friends at America Walks are conducting a research project about the experiences of non-drivers. If you’re a US resident, you’re at least 18 years old, and you don’t own a vehicle, please help out by volunteering to be interviewed for the study.
Many of the federal government’s actions to address the climate crisis are legally based on a 2009 official EPA finding that climate change endangers human health. This finding is based on a large body of rigorous scientific research which has only grown since 2009. But the Trump administration is trying to discard that finding, and with it some of the few remaining climate rules that it hasn’t already abandoned. Transportation is the nation’s biggest source of climate pollution, and the administration’s proposal includes scrapping fuel efficiency standards for cars.
A new report based on interviews with hundreds of Black Americans and Canadians explores the challenges of being Black in public spaces, as well as the joy Black people still manage to express in public. Sadly, buses, streets, sidewalks, and trails are among the most common places listed by respondents when asked where they felt unsafe. Clearly, transit operators, transit riders, and street and sidewalk users of all kinds have a lot of work to do to create spaces that are safe and welcoming for everyone.
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.
Next week, the McKinleyville Municipal Advisory Committee will hold one more meeting to review the draft Town Center ordinance and its Final Environmental Impact Report – maybe the last of the dozens of such meetings it has held over the last six years. As it stands, the Town Center plans call for the development of more walkable, bikeable, transit-oriented housing, as well as bike and pedestrian safety upgrades including a lane reduction on Central Avenue. The advocacy of CRTP and our members and supporters in McKinleyville has played a key role in shaping these plans.
Unfortunately, many of the most important elements of the future Town Center – from housing density to the safety overhaul of Central Avenue – are still under attack from some opponents. Additionally, the county has muddied the waters by publishing a flawed “traffic study” recommending future street design changes that would speed up traffic and make McKinleyville’s streets less safe for people walking, biking, and rolling. You can dive into the details by reading CRTP’s May comment letter.
As of this writing, the county has not yet published the Final Environmental Impact Report, so we don’t know whether they are proposing any changes or additions to the previously approved Town Center ordinance. But we do know that it will be critical for supporters of a safe, vibrant, walkable Town Center to show up at next week’s meeting – and at the Planning Commission and Board of Supervisors meetings that will follow – to defend the plans for a safer Central Avenue and for more walkable, bikeable, transit-oriented housing.
All public buses in Humboldt County are free for the month of July, in celebration of Humboldt Transit Authority’s 50th birthday. Youth (17 and under) and seniors (62 and over) ride free in August, too! Read about Humboldt Transit Authority’s history and recent accomplishments here – and then get out there and Ride Humboldt!
At CRTP, we sometimes hear from people who are concerned about unhoused folks camping near trails in our region. It’s true that people with nowhere else to go often camp along trails, sidewalks, streets, and highways. Our view is that all members of our community, whether housed or not, deserve access to these public spaces, and that people generally only choose to live in these spaces when they don’t have access to affordable housing and other critical services. That’s one of the reasons we support building more safe, affordable homes, in areas with affordable transportation options. It’s also why we’re so proud of the Great Redwood Trail Agency for hiring social service organizations to patrol and keep their right-of-way clean, rather than relying on an armed police force to forcibly remove people. Join us in thanking the agency for this smart, enlightened approach.
As we mark the 35th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), we applaud the county’s ongoing efforts to improve accessibility at all of its facilities. However, we are disappointed that in all that time, it has only provided accessible curb ramps at a quarter of the known locations that need them. Curb ramps provide critical access for wheelchair users – who sometimes have to ride in the street if there is no ramp to access the sidewalk – as well as for parents pushing strollers and lots of other kinds of pedestrians.
Media reports indicate that the driver of a stolen van sped onto the sidewalk and then hit a parked car. The driver died, and three pedestrians were injured along with an occupant of the parked car. This kind of incident is often dismissed as a kind of unforeseeable, unpreventable “accident.” But the truth is that this is far from the first time that a driver has mounted the sidewalk and crashed with tragic consequences, and there are ways we can help prevent this kind of thing from happening again. Better street designs can make it harder to speed, for example, and well-designed barriers can protect bicyclists and pedestrians and keep cars in the street. In fact, these are exactly the kinds of upgrades CRTP has long advocated for on Broadway.
The 2021 “Bipartisan Infrastructure Law,” which funded many of the nation’s highways and even a few buses and bike lanes, is set to expire next year. That means it’s time to talk about “reauthorization.” This process, which happens in Congress every five years or so, is typically opaque and hard to understand, but has huge implications for safety, climate change, and quality of life. If you’re one of the many people left scratching their heads, check out this helpful introduction to transportation reauthorization.
It’s expensive to build and maintain parking, even when it’s “free” for drivers. So who pays for it? Taxpayers, consumers, renters, homeowners – basically everyone.
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.
Caltrans plans to replace the US-101 Eureka Slough bridges starting in 2029, and the draft environmental document for the project is now available for public review. CRTP is happy to see that both design options include separated bike and pedestrian pathways in both directions. However, we think it’s critically important for those protected bike lanes and sidewalks to actually connect with existing bike and pedestrian infrastructure on the Eureka side of the bridges.
We’re also requesting that Caltrans include some traffic calming features on the southbound bridge to slow traffic entering Eureka. And because the project will be under construction for five years or more, we are asking Caltrans to make strong commitments to keep existing bike and pedestrian infrastructure – including the Waterfront Trail and the new Humboldt Bay Trail – open for use during construction, or at least provide safe and convenient detours. You can read CRTP’s full comment letter here.
You can provide your own comments on the project during a virtual public meeting next Wednesday from 6 to 7 pm, or submit your comments to Caltrans by email. Details about the project, the meeting, and how to submit comments can be found here.
CRTP is pairing up regular bus riders with people who make local transportation-related decisions, like city and county officials, for transit ride-along trips during this year’s Week Without Driving. If you are a bus rider and you’d like to lead a decision-maker on one of your usual trips, like your commute to work or school or the grocery store, email kelsey@transportationpriorities.org for more information.
The Great Redwood Trail Agency is hiring a Trail Development Manager. The agency is charged with overseeing development of trails on old railroad rights-of-way around Humboldt Bay and all the way down to San Francisco Bay. A few segments, like the Humboldt Bay Trail, are already built and providing enormous benefits to local communities.
For many years, transportation safety advocacy groups like CRTP have been referring to incidents of traffic violence as “crashes.” You’ll never hear us call them “accidents.” That’s because we know that traffic injuries and deaths are both predictable and preventable, and when we call them “accidents” it sounds like each one is a unique, random event, and there’s nothing that can be done to stop the carnage. Now, even big government agencies like Caltrans are coming around to the idea that we should stop using the word “accident” to describe a car crash.
The League of American Bicyclists has produced a series of short training videos to teach truck drivers how to drive safely around bicyclists. If you’re a truck driver, or know someone who is, check out these videos. You could save a life!
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.
This week, we were happy to see the Wiyot Tribe win $4 million to help build two housing projects in downtown Eureka, one primarily for elders and the other focused on families. These projects will replace underutilized city parking lots with 93 affordable housing units, all within walking and biking distance to many jobs and services, and served by multiple transit systems. This is what’s called “infill,” and it’s the kind of housing we need in order to reduce climate pollution, improve health and safety, and make living in our region more affordable.
But it’s not inevitable that future homes will be built in infill locations. Over the last century, most local homes were built on former agricultural and wild lands in sprawling, car-dependent locations, and there is a lot of pressure to continue that kind of development. It takes years of effort by tribes, public officials, planners, and advocates to make projects like the Wiyot Tribe’s possible, and they regularly face fierce backlash. (Remember the millions Rob Arkley pumped into his ballot initiative last year trying to block this and other downtown housing?)
A lot of the decisions about where to build housing start with an obscure state-mandated process called the Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA). Every eight years, the state assigns each region a specific number of new housing units in every income category, and requires local governments to make plans to ensure those homes are actually built. However, the region makes its own choices about how to divide the responsibility for those new homes among local jurisdictions. In Humboldt, a lot about the future of housing and transportation hinges on whether most of the homes will be built in existing job and service centers like Eureka and Arcata, or will be assigned instead to the mostly low-density unincorporated county.
At a meeting next week, the Humboldt County Association of Governments will hear its first update on the local RHNA allocation for the next eight-year cycle, and provide input on how the new housing should be divided among local governments. CRTP is watching closely. As always, we will be advocating for local, regional, and state policies that support infill housing development and discourage sprawl.
National advocate and author Anna Zivarts is coming to Humboldt in two weeks to give a free public talk! Zivarts is the founder of the Week Without Driving and author of When Driving Is Not an Option. The talk will be on Thursday, July 17th, at 7 pm at Arcata’s D Street Neighborhood Center. Topics will include the nondrivers in every community, the importance of meeting the transportation needs of nondrivers, how communities can work better for nondrivers (and everyone else), and valuing the expertise of nondrivers. See you next week!
The long-planned transformation of C Street into a bike-friendly thoroughfare is about to begin. The project extends from Henderson Street to Waterfront Drive. It includes traffic-calming curb extensions, median islands, and flashing beacons at key intersections, and other measures to reduce traffic speeds. Crucially, it also includes measures to reduce the volume of traffic: although vehicles will still have access to every block, alternating one-way designations will prevent drivers from using the street as a cut-through, while continuing to allow two-way bike travel throughout. Unfortunately, the crossings of 4th and 5th Streets are left out of the project (Caltrans is supposed to make improvements there), and improvements in Old Town don’t amount to much more than painted “sharrows.” But overall, the C Street Bike Boulevard will be a nice addition to the city’s growing low-stress bicycle network.
While CRTP primarily focuses on transportation safety for people, we care about our non-human neighbors, too. So periodically we feel obliged to remind the community that “roadkill” is a major hazard for wildlife in our region (and throughout the world), and can even drive some populations to extinction. Fortunately, we know a lot about how to design roads and highways to reduce or eliminate the problem for many species. The most effective way to reduce the death toll for animals is the same as it is for humans: drivers just need to slow down.
Inexplicably, it has long been illegal to enforce speed limits with cameras in California. However, a 2023 law created a pilot program to allow speed cameras in a few cities, and the first data are starting to come in. Unsurprisingly, the results show that a lot of drivers regularly exceed the speed limit – and not just by a little. Research shows that automated speed camera enforcement can significantly reduce speeding, and if the cameras are placed and monitored in a fair and equitable way, can avoid many of the inequities inherent to human traffic enforcement.
When a 7-year-old kid was killed while trying to cross the street in Gastonia, North Carolina, police did not charge the driver – or the engineers and planners who designed the street – with any crime. Instead, they arrested both parents for allowing their children to walk home by themselves.
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.
The Humboldt Transit Authority was founded in 1975. To celebrate their fiftieth birthday, they’re offering free rides on all buses throughout the month of July! Regular bus riders will save a little money, and it’s also a great opportunity for new riders and the bus-curious to get out there and try public transit. Unfortunately, however, you can’t ride today – there are no buses running on Independence Day.
National advocate and author Anna Zivarts is coming to Humboldt in two weeks to give a free public talk! Zivarts is the founder of the Week Without Driving and author of When Driving Is Not an Option. The talk will be on Thursday, July 17th, at 7 pm at Arcata’s D Street Neighborhood Center. Topics will include the nondrivers in every community, the importance of meeting the transportation needs of nondrivers, how communities can work better for nondrivers (and everyone else), and valuing the expertise of nondrivers. Don’t forget to mark your calendar!
The Humboldt County Association of Governments will be leading a new planning effort to improve safety for kids walking and biking to school in Loleta, as well as connectivity to tribal lands. The plan is funded by a $310,000 grant from Caltrans. We appreciate this funding and look forward to safer conditions in Loleta. However, we are also struck by the contrast with another funding announcement this week: $40 million from the state to “jump-start the design phase” of the Last Chance Grade project.
CRTP has always supported a long-term, responsible solution for the long-running problems on US-101 at Last Chance Grade, and we know the project will be expensive. But it is hard not to notice that the state spends hundreds of times more to maintain highways than it does to ensure kids can get to school safely. Because while the Last Chance Grade project is unusually expensive, Caltrans routinely spends tens of millions of dollars to repave sections of rural highway in our region, while local governments and tribes – and even staff within Caltrans itself – are forced to compete with each other for much, much smaller amounts of money dedicated to safety and sustainability.
Caltrans plans to replace the US-101 Eureka Slough bridges starting in 2029, and the draft environmental document for the project is now available for public review. CRTP is happy to see that both design options include separated bike and pedestrian pathways in both directions. You can find more information, including the Environmental Impact Report and how to comment on it, here.
At CRTP, when we talk about “pedestrians,” we mean people walking as well as people using wheelchairs, scooters, canes, and other mobility devices. That’s why you might notice us using phrases like “walking and rolling” when we talk about what pedestrians do. It’s also why we highly recommend that our supporters read an ongoing series of opinion pieces in the North Coast Journal about Cal Poly Humboldt’s lack of accessibility for people with mobility limitations. It’s is an important reminder of the need to design streets, roads, sidewalks, buildings, and other public places in ways that work for people of all ages and abilities.
The state budget bill just signed by Governor Newsom includes a bunch of policy changes aimed at encouraging more housing production, including exempting most new infill housing projects from environmental review. At the same time, new climate rules also took effect this week which are expected to moderately increase the price of gasoline over the next several years.
Both the new housing laws and the new climate rules include a host of highly technical details, and for transportation advocates there is plenty to both like and dislike. We hope that, as proponents have argued, the result will be more walkable, transit-oriented development and less climate-destroying transportation pollution. But we also know that at least some of the changes to the climate rules are likely to increase emissions, and that lengthy environmental reviews are not the only barrier to infill housing.
American children are biking a lot less than their parents and grandparents did. It may be partly because parents are increasingly aware of the prevalence of dangerous streets and dangerous vehicles. But relinquishing this form of independent mobility comes with significant costs to kids – and their parents.
Proponents of self-driving vehicles have long claimed that they are so much safer than human drivers that traffic deaths will soon become a thing of the past. But at least one major autonomous vehicle maker admits that they are now training the cars to act more like human drivers, because passengers and other drivers get impatient with slow, risk-averse robot driving. If this trend continues while autonomous vehicle adoption increases in future years, the consequences for street safety could be enormous.
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.
The bike and pedestrian trail along the shores of Humboldt Bay between Eureka and Arcata is complete! The new trail fills a major gap in the Humboldt Bay Trail and functions as a key part of the bigger Great Redwood Trail. We’ve been waiting a long time for this, and it’s time to celebrate!
Trail-related events Saturday morning include volunteer clean-ups, a do-it-yourself fun run, a group skate date, and more. Then, at 1 pm, you can join CRTP and Latino Outdoors for a group bike ride from the Arcata Marsh down to the Adorni Center, where the official celebration will just be getting started. From 3-6 pm at the Adorni Center, we’ll have live music and a DJ, food trucks and beer, bike rentals and tune-ups, bike valet service, and lots of local nonprofits and agencies providing information and giveaways.
The celebration will start with some mixing, mingling, and music, followed by brief comments from local leaders and trail supporters including State Senator Mike McGuire, Great Redwood Trail Agency Executive Director Elaine Hogan, and Humboldt County Public Works Deputy Director Hank Seemann. After that, it’s just a party!
The Humboldt Transit Authority will be running a bus back and forth from 11 am to 7 pm for people who only want to walk/run/bike/skate one way, and it will be coordinated with a vehicle from Wildtrail Tours for added bike hauling capacity. You can find all the details on the event website. See you tomorrow!
Want to Take Your Support for CRTP to the Next Level?
CRTP is looking for new members for our Board of Directors. Candidates for the Board should share a commitment to our mission and goals, and should have time or other resources to contribute to the organization. To find out more about joining CRTP’s Board of Directors, or to submit a completed application, email colin@transportationpriorities.org.
If you’re not quite ready to join the Board, here’s another opportunity to consider: We are currently seeking transit riders to lead ride-alongs with local decision-makers during this year’s Week Without Driving. If you ride the bus regularly and would be interested in sharing your transit experience with a local leader or public official, email kelsey@transportationpriorities.org.
Thanks to pressure from transit supporters across the state, the budget deal recently announced by Governor Newsom and the state legislature restores transit funding that the governor previously proposed cutting, and includes some emergency support for the big transit systems in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area. This represents a major win for transit, and it wouldn’t have happened without the thousands of phone calls and emails from people like you. Meanwhile, the fate of major transit grants currently funded from the state’s cap-and-trade program (including millions of dollars in local grants on the North Coast) remains unresolved, although state leaders have promised to address the issue soon.
There was a packed house Wednesday for the McKinleyville Municipal Advisory Committee meeting, full of supporters of the Town Center plans (including CRTP members!) as well as opponents. County planning staff and Supervisor Steve Madrone spent a long time seeking to educate people about the plans – which have been developed with extensive public input over the last five years – and dispel misinformation that has been spread recently by some opponents.
The committee reaffirmed its support for the Town Center plans, which call for a more walkable, bikeable, transit-friendly core to the community. However, the issue is expected to be back on their agenda again in July, including a specific question about whether they really want to replace two of the current lanes on Central Avenue with protected bikeways. CRTP and our supporters fought hard for this redesign for many years, and we will be working to make sure the committee and the county don’t go back on their promise of a safer Central Avenue.
Earlier in the meeting, the committee weighed in on two other street redesigns. First, they approved final plans for the Hiller Avenue quick-build project. While CRTP is disappointed that the committee chose a design for the intersection of Hiller & McKinleyville Avenue that we don’t think will provide adequate protection for bicyclists and pedestrians, we are excited for the rest of the project, which includes protected bikeways, traffic calming, and public art.
Next, the committee discussed a proposal to make Nursery Avenue into a single-lane, one-way street with a two-way bike facility, in an attempt to address current issues on the street including drivers regularly parking in the bike lanes. At CRTP’s encouragement, the committee asked the county to include physical separation elements between the driving lane and the two-way bikeway to keep cars from parking there, too.
Economic development officials often argue that roads and highways stimulate local economies, and business owners routinely fight for more parking for their customers. But a new economic analysis shows that, at both city and neighborhood scales, more driving and more parking are both correlated with lower economic productivity. It turns out that driving is expensive, and there are usually more productive uses for land than highways or parking lots.
On the other hand, if the economic analysis doesn’t convince you, and you want to know how to design a community with too much parking, there’s now a video game just for you!
Following up on its recent investigation that revealed just how often our legal system allows dangerous drivers to stay on the road, CalMatters has a new story about how, even on the rare occasions when the law requires a driver’s license to be revoked or suspended, courts often fail to report that fact to the DMV.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
At CRTP, we continue to do the important work of educating and advocating for safe, sustainable and equitable transportation on the North Coast. We keep sending out newsletters and emails and social media posts about local issues and events, and it might seem like everything is normal. But it isn’t.
We are a small organization focused on local and regional issues, but we can’t afford to pretend that the federal government’s actions don’t affect us. We must speak up for freedom of expression, for democracy, for equity, for safety. We support the right of everybody – including immigrants, LGBTQIA+ people, and other marginalized communities currently under attack – to use streets, bike lanes, sidewalks, public transit, and other public spaces without fear, to get where they need to go, to express themselves, and to participate as full members of society. We stand in solidarity with all members of our community.
Vision Zero is both an acknowledgement that traffic deaths and serious injuries are preventable, and a commitment to eliminate them in a specified time period. Some local Humboldt County governments have officially adopted Vision Zero policies, but most have not. Next week, however, the Humboldt County Association of Governments officially kicks off development of a Vision Zero Action Plan for the whole county with a public open house on Tuesday evening from 5:30 – 7:30 pm at Eureka’s Wharfinger Building. Drop in to learn more about the plan and provide your input.
Final construction on the Humboldt Bay Trail is very nearly complete, after decades of work from local nonprofits, advocates and agencies. In fact, we are just two weeks away from the official Grand Opening Celebration! Don’t forget to mark your calendars for June 28th.
With many of our most important priorities – including climate action, safe bike and pedestrian infrastructure, walkable communities, and equity for all – under attack from the federal government, it’s an especially important time to acknowledge and celebrate our victories.
The California legislature’s latest budget proposal restores over $1 billion in transit funding that had been cut from Governor Newsom’s last proposal. This is nowhere near the amount of sustained funding needed for transit systems across the state, but it should prevent the kinds of drastic service cuts that might otherwise have been necessary. Click here to urge the governor to accept the transit funding proposal.
In related news, this week the Humboldt County Association of Governments’ Social Services Transportation Advisory Council heard the plan for how new Measure O revenues will be used to support transit over the next year. The proposal includes paying for more late-night Redwood Transit System service, supporting the new long-distance North State Express routes to Willits and Willow Creek, maintaining Eureka and Southern Humboldt Intercity service, and purchasing new vehicles to allow more frequent service. Measure O has already become a critical source of support for local transit, and it wouldn’t have happened without the sustained efforts of CRTP and our allies. Thank you!
While legislators restored some transit funding for the next fiscal year, they did not restore the draconian but supposedly “one-time” cuts to the Active Transportation Program from last year’s budget. That will leave the state able to fund only a handful of bike and pedestrian infrastructure projects in the next year, directly affecting the prospects of many local projects on the North Coast.
Other transportation reform legislation seems to be faring a little bit better in Sacramento this year, with bills to allow lower speed limits and quick-build safety projects on state highways, allow installation of speed limiting technology in the cars of dangerous drivers, and streamline sustainable transportation projects all progressing. Check out CalBike’s summary of legislation at the mid-point of the legislative session.
A new study shows that building protected, safe, low-stress bike facilities results in a lot more people riding bikes. But details matter! Caltrans is currently updating its design policies for “Class IV” (protected) bikeways, and CalBike is offering an opportunity for you to provide your feedback directly. CRTP will also be providing feedback to Caltrans through our seat on the California Walk & Bike Technical Advisory Committee.
The Highway Trust Fund would have run out of money long ago if not for continuous bailouts by Congress. Meanwhile, it has continued to pump money into destructive new highway projects while failing to deliver safety improvements, climate action, or congestion relief – or even a well-maintained highway system. Maybe it’s time we try something else.
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.
Editor’s Note: The Collector will be taking a break for the next couple of weeks. We’ll be back with more transportation information and analysis in June!
This week, CRTP published our new web-based Quick-Build Toolkit. Quick-build projects use paint and other low-cost materials to improve streets quickly, typically without expensive groundbreaking or paving work. Quick-builds can take months to go from concept to construction, instead of the years or decades that are often required for conventional street improvements.
The new toolkit is meant to support the implementation of urgently needed safe and sustainable transportation upgrades in North Coast communities. Check it out, and then encourage your local government to try out the quick-build approach!
CRTP is looking for volunteers to help out with bike valet at the Juneteenth Day Festival on Saturday, June 21st at Halvorsen Park in Eureka. If you’re available to help that day, please reply to this email and let us know. If you want to help with bike valet but aren’t available for the Juneteenth event, let us know that too – we have plenty of other bike valet volunteer opportunities coming up!
In recent years, scientists have identified a chemical contained in car and truck tires that is highly toxic to aquatic life, particularly coho salmon. With every vehicle emitting trillions of microscopic tire particles on every trip, chemicals like this inevitably end up in the environment. Now, a study by Humboldt Waterkeeper has identified high concentrations of the toxic “6PPD-quinone” in runoff from large parking lots in Arcata and Eureka. So you can add saving the coho to the long list of reasons that we need to start driving less.
A new study has found that the risk of a pedestrian or bicyclist being killed is 44% higher when hit by an SUV or pick-up truck than when hit by a sedan. For kids, the increased risk is 82%. This research adds to the growing evidence suggesting that car and truck bloat is one of the main causes of increasing pedestrian deaths in the United States.
A study in France has concluded that men emit 26% more climate pollution than women on average. Most of that difference is caused by men eating more meat and driving more, suggesting that cultural norms encouraging environmentally destructive male behavior are playing a major role in exacerbating global climate chaos.
Shared streets, also called woonerfs, are common in Europe and becoming more popular in the United States. A new law in Washington state is the first in the US to allow speed limits as low as 10 mph and to formalize a hierarchy for shared streets, where bicyclists are required to yield to pedestrians and motorists are required to yield to bicyclists.
Despite lawyers and Congress’ own parliamentary experts warning that the action is illegal, the US House and Senate have voted to repeal federal approval for California’s plan to transition to 100% zero-emission vehicle sales by 2035. While electric vehicles leave many car-related problems unsolved (see for example the article above about tire pollution), they are nevertheless a crucial part of any serious effort to address the climate crisis. California officials have announced they will challenge the action in court.
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.
Thanks to everyone who joined us on Wednesday for CRTP’s bike safety audit on Eureka’s 4th & 5th Streets. We had a great turnout and heard from a lot of people who bike – and people who would like to bike more – about the hazards that currently exist and what might be done to address them. And don’t forget, if you missed the bike audit, you can always make reports about your experiences on Street Story!
This Tuesday, transit supporters in Arcata and eleven other cities across California dropped banners on highway overpasses demanding that Governor Gavin Newsom include $2 billion in emergency transit funding in his May budget revision. Without this funding, many transit agencies face a “death spiral” of service cuts and declining ridership.
Unfortunately, when the governor released his revised budget the next day, he not only failed to include the requested emergency transit funding, he also proposed eliminating funding for existing transit grant programs that many agencies – including the Humboldt Transit Authority, the Redwood Coast Transit Authority in Del Norte, and the Yurok Tribe – have been relying on in recent years to improve service and fill gaps in their budgets.
We are grateful at this moment that we were recently able to secure significant local funding for Humboldt County public transit from Measure O. But if the governor’s funding cuts are approved by the legislature, it’s a very real possibility that our new local funding will be needed just to keep our existing transit service from collapsing, instead of using it to implement much-needed service improvements.
Next Tuesday, the Eureka City Council is set to approve a contract for construction of the long-awaited C Street Bike Boulevard. The project includes measures to reduce and slow down car traffic on C Street, improve bike crossings of high-traffic streets, and add signage, pavement marking and bike parking.
In addition to slashing transit funding, the governor’s revised budget proposal also fails to include sufficient funding for bike and pedestrian infrastructure. Additionally, the Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities grant program – which has funded local infill housing including the Linc Housing projects in Eureka and Sorrel Place and 30th Street Commons in Arcata, as well as bikeshare and carshare stations, sidewalk and bikeway improvements, free transit pass programs and new transit service – is also proposed for funding elimination.
President Trump’s budget proposal doesn’t change the overall dollar amount for transportation very much. But it’s pretty clear that he intends for a lot more of that money to go to highways, and a lot less to transit, bike and pedestrian infrastructure, and street safety improvements.
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.