Humboldt County’s fourth annual Week Without Driving begins Thursday, inviting residents, campus leaders and local officials to spend several days navigating their routines without getting behind the wheel. Organizers say the challenge is meant to highlight the daily barriers faced by nondrivers, a group that includes thousands of county residents who rely on public transit, walking, biking, or rides from others as their primary means of transportation.

Colin Fiske, executive director of the Coalition for Responsible Transportation Priorities, said the week gives decision‑makers a chance to experience the transportation system from a different vantage point while considering the transportation hardships nondrivers face.

“It’s become an annual event, and we’ve been coordinating that week here on the North Coast for the last four years in coordination with Tri County Independent Living,” said Fiske. “The idea of the week without driving is to encourage folks who are drivers to try to go for a week or as much of a week as they can, getting around without getting behind the wheel of a car, and it’s especially focused on decision makers who have some control or influence over the local transportation system.”

Fiske said the focus is to highlight the needs of nondrivers and consider trying to meet their daily travel needs. Fiske noted an individual can be a nondriver for a multitude of reasons, including age, disability, or financial constraints.

“We know that in Humboldt County, well over 30,000 people are nondrivers because that’s the minimum number of folks who don’t even have a driver’s license,” said Fiske. “We also know that a lot of folks who do have a driver’s license don’t drive often because they can’t afford to.”

The event arrives at a moment when public transit agencies are confronting significant financial pressures. Those threats make this year’s challenge especially relevant, as participants consider how their experience would change if bus service were reduced or eliminated completely.

Fiske said Humboldt Transit Authority has long operated with limited resources while covering a vast geographic area.

“We’ve always underinvested in public transit, locally and nationally. HTA has a small budget to provide a service that’s essential for so many people, and they’ve done a good job with what they have. But there are already unmet needs: providing later-night service, providing bus service on Sundays, providing more frequent service, and a number of other things,” said Fiske. “That being said, unfortunately, you know we’re facing a situation right now where instead of seeing more investment in transit, we’re seeing threats of funding cuts at all levels, and so to a certain extent, right now we’re fighting to just maintain the service that we have.”

One of the most immediate concerns is the potential loss of university‑funded bus service in Arcata. The university withdrew funding for the Green and Gold route this year and initially planned to end all evening service as well.

“For a long time, the university funded the Green and Gold route in Arcata, as well as evening service on the two Arcata routes: the Gold Route and the Red Route, and that’s from seven to 10 p.m. The vast majority of riders on both of those services were students,” said Fiske.

The university had initially cut funding for the evening service as well. CRTP had rallied the community to preserve that funding for the evening service; the university kept the evening service through the end of the current fall semester.

“At this point, they are providing what they call the Orange route service in the evening. So that’s one route instead of two. So about half the service, but there is still evening service,” said Fiske. “They’ve only committed to that through this fall semester. So, as of December, unless they commit to continuing to fund it, there will be no more evening service in Arcata at all.”

State funding is also in jeopardy. Several major transit grant programs funded by California’s Cap and Invest climate program are expected to shrink dramatically after recent regulatory changes. HTA relied on those grants for zero‑emission buses, charging infrastructure, bus stop upgrades, free youth and senior rides, and the new Eureka transit center now under construction.

“Because of some decisions that the state air resources board made a couple of months ago, basically the amount of revenue into that Cap and Invest program is going to drop precipitously,” said Fiske. “It’s expected that these transit grants will have very little to no funding starting in the next year or so, unless the legislature steps in.”

Federal funding for public transit is facing similar strain. The Trump administration’s budget proposal would cut nearly all federal transit funding, and current negotiations over the five‑year transportation reauthorization include proposals that would significantly reduce support for local agencies. Fiske said the combined pressures could force service reductions within a few years if lawmakers do not intervene.

“We’re really kind of seeing these threats across the board to these sources of funding that HTA relies on for maintaining these services and improving these services,” said Fiske. “They’ve done a great job so far of kind of securing grants, and now are able to rely somewhat on Measure O funding that we secured last year, but if things don’t change and if some of these other cuts materialize, you know we will probably be looking at service cuts within the next few years.”

More than 40 local officials have signed up to participate, including county supervisors, city councilmembers, county planners, Cal Poly Humboldt administrators and transit board members. Community members are invited to join the week without driving, and participants can choose how long they participate and are encouraged to reflect on the obstacles they encounter.

“Anybody can participate; if a week is too intimidating, just do it for a day or two, or whatever you think you can do. The point is really to just try it out and then kind of reflect on your experiences and take that forward as you think about the transportation system and how we make it easy and safe, or how it is not so easy and not so safe for folks to get around who are not drivers,” said Fiske. “The other thing that I want folks to know is that if they’re concerned about these public transit cuts, and especially if they are bus riders themselves, they can reach out to us, and we are working with local bus riders to organize support for transit.”

For more information and sign‑ups, go to https://transportationpriorities.org/transitmonthweekwithoutdriving.

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