Barley Lewis-McCabe

The first day of October marks the beginning of the National Week Without Driving, an event encouraging drivers to experience the barriers non-drivers face in a car-centric world. Learn about and enjoy the pleasure of walking, rolling, biking, bussing and so much more.

Morgan King, university climate action analyst and Cal Poly Humboldt sustainable transportation committee chair said,

“One of the goals of the week without driving is to get those folks making decisions around mobility and transportation to actually experience what it’s like to be a non-driver,” King said. “For me, my pie in the sky [goal] is that our university president, our vice presidents, participate and try it out,” King said. “They’re the ones that ultimately have the decision-making [power] and influence how new parking is built and how funding for things like transit is diminished.”

Building and maintaining parking lots is incredibly expensive. King cited parking feasibility studies the university conducted with outside firms, saying that it would be much more beneficial to improve infrastructure to help students get to campus without using a car instead of making it easier for them to park. 

Fifth-year interdisciplinary studies major Meg Hatcher has a car and a bike but chooses to walk to school every day. Hatcher finds it hard to talk about student access to transportation without acknowledging proposed cuts to university-funded transportation services.

“I think students’ access to transportation and bus lines being cut are very much linked.
I don’t know what the answer is, except keep running buses because students need to get places and community members need to get places,” Hatcher said. “So, I am pro-public transportation.” 

Ishan Grewal, a senior general biology major lives at the Hinarr Hu Moulik (HHM) complex but struggles to find parking near his dorm, so he parks his car on campus and relies on shuttles to and from HHM. 

 “It can be a hassle to get back and forth just because the bus and shuttles got defunded; it’s like the scheduling’s been kind of funky… The schedule is posted on physical paper, but they don’t follow it to the T,” Grewal said. “Sometimes I’ll be waiting there for 20 minutes and I’m like, okay, well, screw this.
I just walk and I literally get to campus before the bus shows up.” 

King described how building more parking isn’t the catch-all solution it may seem. 

“Generally, it can be an issue for some to find parking on campus,” King said. “But does that mean that we build more parking, or instead do we invest in transit, pedestrian and bike infrastructure to alleviate parking constraints?”

Barley is the good-timing Editor In Chief of The Lumberjack, as well as a jack of all trades news writer. Contact him for any reason at bl258@humboldt.edu