100% Humboldt
Humboldt County CA USA is the home of some of the most iconoclastic, genuine, and interesting folks in the world.
We are getting curious about the movers, shakers, and difference makers in Humboldt County CA-Home of the giant redwoods, 6 Rivers, and the vast Pacific Ocean.
We will discover what makes people live/evolve in the beautiful, diverse, isolated, and ever-changing Northcoast of California 100%!
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100% Humboldt
#102. Colin Fiske --Rethinking Mobility: From Car Culture to Community Care
What if the safest street is also the one that moves the most people with the least stress? That’s the question we chase with CRTP’s executive director, Colin Fiske , as we unpack how Humboldt can move beyond car-only thinking and build streets that actually serve the way we live. From Arcata’s trail links to Eureka’s most dangerous corridors, we connect policy, culture, and design into a practical roadmap for change.
We start with the wins: the Annie and Mary Trail segment tying Cal Poly Humboldt to Arcata, Bay Trail momentum, and the promise of the Great Redwood Trail from Eureka to College of the Redwoods. Then we get into the systems thinking. Protected bike lanes don’t just help cyclists; they reduce car crashes. Real bike boulevards slow and thin traffic so families feel safe. Walk audits expose blind spots on Fourth, Fifth, and Broadway, where most serious injuries cluster. And when callers demand more lanes, we talk induced demand—why congestion returns—and its lesser-known counterpart, traffic evaporation, which helps road diets and roundabouts work.
Culture counts, too. “Motonormativity” shows how we give cars a moral pass we’d never grant elsewhere. Helmets help, but the lasting fix is street design that prevents crashes. Equity threads through everything: kids, elders, and low-income neighbors bear the brunt of fast arterials. The answer is closer homes, jobs, and services—think downtown housing over a transit center—plus a connected network so no trip requires braving a hostile block. Quick-build pilots with paint and posts prove ideas fast and make long-term projects smarter.
If you care about safer crossings, reliable buses, protected lanes, and lively downtowns, you’ll find concrete steps and local examples you can act on today. Listen, share with a neighbor, and tell us: which street should get a road diet or protected lane next? If you’re enjoying the show, follow, rate, and leave a review—your feedback helps more people find conversations that move communities forward.
About 100% Humboldt with Scott Hammond
Humboldt County CA USA is the home of some of the most iconoclastic, genuine, and interesting folks in the world.
We are getting curious about the movers, shakers, and difference makers in Humboldt County CA-Home of the giant redwoods, 6 Rivers, and the vast Pacific Ocean.
We will discover what makes people live/evolve in the beautiful, diverse, isolated, and ever-changing North Coast of California 100%!
Listen in and learn what it is to be 100% Humboldt!
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Ladies and gentlemen, friends and neighbors, it's Scott Hammond at 100% Hon Bolt Podcast, episode 103, with my new best friend Colin Fisk. Thanks for having me. Hey, thanks for coming, man. Tell us uh who are you? What do you do?
SPEAKER_01:So I am the executive director of CRTP, which is the Coalition for Responsible Transportation Priorities. And uh we're a local nonprofit, been around since 2015, and we do public education advocacy around what I like to call safe, sustainable, and equitable transportation. So uh trying to make sure that it's easier, safer, more convenient, more affordable uh to get around by ways other than uh a private vehicle.
SPEAKER_00:Aaron Powell Nice. I it seems like with the new trail, uh we're we're getting closer every day.
SPEAKER_01:Aaron Powell Yeah, yeah, we've had a lot of progress lately, and uh the bay trail is super exciting.
SPEAKER_00:Aaron Powell It's so cool. I drive by every morning from Killingville to Eureka and I look over there. I go, man, I wish I was riding a bike right now. That'd be fun.
SPEAKER_01:Aaron Powell Yeah. I uh well I just rode it here and uh it is super fun. I can I can attest.
SPEAKER_00:Trevor Burrus Oh, the weather's it's that pre-storm, warm, balmy. Yeah. It's my favorite Humboldt weather.
SPEAKER_01:Aaron Powell I like it too. Although I have to say it was a headwind down here, and I'm looking forward to the tailwind back. Oh, you'll get home.
SPEAKER_00:You'll get home really quick. Yeah. It'll be good. So uh we mentioned off camera that you um um that they're they're building the Annie and Mary bike trail.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Started construction, what?
SPEAKER_01:Well, so it's divided into several sections. Um but the so the first section technically was just a little half mile in Blue Lake, and that was built a couple years ago. Right. But this next section, which starts at the skate park in Arcata near Kal Poly, and then heads up, eventually it will get up to the um pump station number one park. And so that part is under construction. Um they've actually completed the segment from the skate park to the new dorms so that the students can get back and forth on the trail and continuing to build it out. I think they're supposed to be done next summer, maybe.
SPEAKER_00:Aaron Ross Powell So the high-rise uh dorms go down to the skate park, which takes them anywhere but over the bridge back to Cal Poly.
SPEAKER_01:Aaron Powell Yeah, it'll be pretty much the most direct route to walk or bike on that trail.
SPEAKER_00:Trevor Burrus The running joke at 103 episodes is uh Cal Pol Oh no, Humboldt's Aaron. Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_01:Cal Poly. Yep, gonna get it through the head. Trevor Burrus, Jr. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So that's gonna be cool. So then the dorms would take you around to the pump station like West End Road.
SPEAKER_01:Aaron Ross Powell Yeah. The other reason, besides that connection with the university, that I think it's really exciting is that it's gonna be the first kind of safe and comfortable way to bike or walk between Valley West and the rest of Arcata. Right. Um, because with the highways, it's been so cut off from the rest of the town. Aaron Powell you'd have to go around to the hospital out that way. Aaron Ross Powell Yeah. Or West End Road where there's high-speed traffic and not real comfortable to bike.
SPEAKER_00:Trevor Burrus, Jr.: There's not a lot of bike or pedestrian lanes at all, right?
SPEAKER_01:Aaron Powell Yeah. Yeah. So this will be that there's you still have to get over uh the overpass on Gentoli, but um as sort of in coordination, Caltrans is supposed to be making a few upgrades to that. So there should be like some like bike walk lanes over the overpass after this.
SPEAKER_00:Aaron Powell So if you're missing all this, uh it's in Arcada in uh Humboldt County, which is in California. So I had to use my prop. There it was. Yeah. So so you're more than a bike guy. You're like uh a a transportation advocate for a new um I guess next level stuff. Aaron Powell Yeah. So talk about what that is. I mean, we're not gonna have cars forever.
SPEAKER_01:You know, it's hard to say what'll happen. I I uh I don't like to make predictions. But uh I think right now over the past, well, I'd say over the past century or so, um and there's a really fascinating history of it if you want to get into that, but we've really uh in the United States and in a lot of parts of the world, um, planned our transportation network and our communities, the way we build, kind of on the assumption that everyone's gonna drive a car. And that um makes it so that it's often hard to do anything but drive a car. Um so we are trying to make sure that there's a little more balance in that system and that people can get around other ways, whether it's walking or biking, rolling, taking the bus, uh, those kinds of things. Um there's a couple of reasons I think that's so important. Um one is that a lot of folks actually can't drive for for various reasons. Um folks with disabilities, obviously kids can't drive, people when they get a little older that can't drive or possibly shouldn't drive. And then there's a lot of people who just can't afford it. And so um we did a little math and uh estimated that there's at least 36,000 people in Humboldt that don't have a driver's license. Wow. That's a lot, right? Yeah, it's a lot. I mean that that includes kids, but at least 16,000 of those are adults. Yeah. And um, what's our population? Aaron Powell About 136,000.
SPEAKER_00:Aaron Ross Powell or 136, yeah. It doesn't it has it grown much?
SPEAKER_01:Aaron Ross Powell No, it's been pretty flat.
SPEAKER_00:Year over year.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Yeah. And so you know it's a lot. And and probably a lot of people with driver's licenses uh don't drive because they can't afford it, can't afford gas insurance, whatever. Yeah. And so you know, that's a lot of folks who we don't hear from sometimes in uh public meetings. They don't necessarily have their voices heard. So we try to remind people that those folks exist and they need to get around and they need to be safe and get to their work and get to health care and all those things. Um then the other reason um is you know basically environmental, that um our leading source of uh climate pollution comes from transportation, almost three-quarters of it here in Humboldt. And so um to address that issue, you know, obviously a lot of folks know we got to make the transition to electric vehicles and zero emission vehicles. But um really uh if you look at the models, we probably can't do that fast enough to meet the the climate goals that the scientists say we need to hit. So um so part of it also has to be uh just driving less and doing those other things more.
SPEAKER_00:Aaron Ross Powell Yeah. You know, as a good neighbor, uh I uh talk to a lot of people on insurance and that we insure it a lot. You know, there are a lot of people that don't drive much. They have cars, they have insurance that just drive two or three thousand miles a year, maybe or in town. You know, so there's there's a lot of reduction there. I agree, I agree with that. So let's talk about some specifics. So uh let's go back in time to um I don't know, early traffic calming measures in Humboldt. Where do we do we start with H Street and I Street or J, or would that be the a place to start?
SPEAKER_01:Aaron Ross Powell Sure. I mean so you know I've been doing this since 2015, and there certainly are um things that happened before that, um before my time. But um I would say yeah, H and I Street was kind of the thing that probably got the most attention in the last I don't know, seven, eight years. Well, the first big thing, I guess.
SPEAKER_00:Aaron Ross Powell And Heat, right? And he, yeah. Yeah. Was that Miles flattery? Was he part a big part of that?
SPEAKER_01:Aaron Ross Powell You know, uh I'm trying to remember what the timeline is where he whether he was city manager yet at that point.
SPEAKER_00:Um at 15 or 16, maybe not.
SPEAKER_01:Aaron Ross Powell Yeah. But um so I couldn't answer that for sure. But Miles.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, exactly. Um but uh you know my perspective from like an outside advocate was um you know we were just there trying to support um a good safe design for people and um making sure that people could bike safely back and forth. But the other thing that I think is missed sometimes is that putting in good bike infrastructure actually makes it safer for drivers too. Um and part of the reason is that um it tends to make people drive a little slower, and that is real that's much safer. Um but also probably it makes people um just pay a little bit more attention and realize there's other people on the road. Right. So um when you put in like a bike lane and especially a protected bike lane with like some sort of vertical element there, which we are just starting to see a couple of here in Humboldt. Um the the research shows that it's not just safer for bikers, it's also really reduces uh car crashes.
SPEAKER_00:Trevor Burrus Wow. So the numbers bear it out nationally. Probably enough data over decades, right?
SPEAKER_01:Aaron Ross Powell, yeah, there's a lot of data on it.
SPEAKER_00:Aaron Ross Powell Yeah. So uh I noticed that in Eureka and Arcata they have the uh whole streets dedicated, like I think uh Sea Street goes into Old Town from downtown and it's all green lanes.
SPEAKER_01:And so the bike boulevards they call it.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Tell me what those are. Or tell us, because a lot of us don't know what that is.
SPEAKER_01:Aaron Powell Sure. So um a bike boulevard is it's a shared street where people can bike and drive. Um but whereas you know most of our streets kind of get driving priority and and bicyclists are kind of like have to make their way however they can. Uh a bike boulevard is really meant to kind of give bikes the priority. And so the ways that you do that, um typically there's there's two uh key elements to it. One of them is controlling speed of traffic. And so that's you know the typical traffic calming stuff that we see both there and other places around town with the ball bouts and even speed bumps or you know, signage and striping, all those things. You called that ball out there on the on the curbs. The curb extensions, yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. They slow me down.
SPEAKER_01:Yep.
SPEAKER_00:That's what they're meant to do. Trevor Burrus, Jr.: And we'll talk about downtown Eureka and what a mess it is traffic-wise. For sure. Or bad habits in in a minute. But go ahead, go ahead.
SPEAKER_01:So traffic calm, slowing slowing speeds is one of the elements. Okay. The other element is uh reducing traffic volumes. And there's a couple different ways you can do that. Um, but the way that they did it here was setting up alternating one-way streets on on a couple of the blocks. So uh you can access any point by car, but you can't drive through because sooner or later you're going to hit a one-way in the other direction. Aaron Powell Really? Where's that at? Uh there's two or three of them, and I'm sorry, I don't remember on the top of my head which intersections they're at.
SPEAKER_00:Aaron Ross Powell Maybe they're way up uptown, a little bit more from downtown.
SPEAKER_01:Aaron Ross Powell The closest one, I think it's a seventh or eighth. It's not far. Aaron Powell. And then um but basically it's just one block on each side is is one way in opposite directions. Um the other way you can do it is uh what what are called diverters, where um you still have a two-way street, but every few blocks or every quarter mile or whatever, you um you kind of put some bollards or something across the intersection so cars can't continue, but bikes can. Gotcha. Um the idea is just you don't want a lot of people using the street to go long distances and cut through. You just want to have kind of local traffic to limit that volume, make it more comfortable and safe for people biking.
SPEAKER_00:Aaron Powell Gotcha. So the other I noticed in those uh bike boulevards is they a lot of green paint on that street. So you're going, oh, I'm in a what what do I do? Well, I think I'll slow down.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:I think I'll keep my eyes out for bikes because you never know what kind of bikers are going to show up on this boulevard.
SPEAKER_01:Aaron Powell Yep. The green green paint is important. Um I think people around here are learning to associate that with biking. And um just a little uh PSA here. If you see just the solid green lines, that's to tell you that's you know a bike lane or a place for a bike to stop. If you see the big sort of dotted lines, that's a conflict zone. So that's where a bike and a car might have to like be in the same area. So it's a particularly watch out for bikes kind of a thing.
SPEAKER_00:Aaron Ross Powell Okay. Good to know. Aaron Ross Powell So if you're just joining us, uh my new best friend Colin Fitz uh from the Coalition of Say It Again.
SPEAKER_01:Coalition for Responsible Transportation Priorities.
SPEAKER_00:Aaron Ross Powell Nice. And that's your organization, huh?
SPEAKER_01:Aaron Ross Powell Yeah, I'm the executive director.
SPEAKER_00:Aaron Ross Powell How do we get a hold of you guys? Just do a shout-out in terms of wanted to participate, want to join, want to throw money at you, gold bullion.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Plus bicycles. Throw the bicycles and gold at me. Okay. Yeah. Can use some of that. Yeah. It's uh our website is transportationpriorities.org. Um you can also get there because one of my board members thought that was way too long. So CRTP.info also gets you there.
SPEAKER_00:Aaron Powell CRTP.info.
SPEAKER_01:And um who's on the board with you? Aaron Powell Well let's see. Uh we have Carol Monet, um James Clore, uh Robin Baker. James Clore.
SPEAKER_00:Uh-huh. I know James.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Premier Financial. He's great. Yeah. What's up, Jim? Um just saw him, actually. He's uh he's uh uh uh works at Humble Area Foundation, actually. Okay. Yeah. Um and then uh uh Tom Wheeler is on my board, um Josefina Barantes, Caris Geronimo, um and Peggy Martinez. I think I've got everybody.
SPEAKER_00:Aaron Powell Yeah. Sorry if we did get everybody. Close enough close enough. Yeah. So I Arcata has a boulevard, a bike boulevard too, and a little tenth, I think, by Las Vegas that goes out to the Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:I would say uh and sorry to the person who designed that, but um and Eureka has another one too that that they call a bike boulevard that was built a long time ago. Um and I would say they're not really bike boulevards. Um they they have um what we call cherrows, you know, just the the painted uh bike symbol with the two arrow signs. Um and that's kind of all they have. And so um they're uh those used to sometimes be called bike boulevards. Um it's a little bit see, legally it's the same category as a bike boulevard. Both of them are called class three facilities. Aaron Ross Powell, I see. Um and so sometimes they get called that. But really, if it's just a shareau, it doesn't provide that same safety or comfort for bikes. Um so we're trying to make sure that you know the bike boulevards that get built in the future are really meet me meet a higher standard.
SPEAKER_00:Aaron Powell Nice. So let's proceed north to the Bay Trail Arcade. We'll talk about McCanleyville last.
SPEAKER_01:Sure.
SPEAKER_00:Uh but before we do any of that, tell us tell us the college story. Were you raised up here? Uh how'd you get here? Who are you? What do you want?
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:I was raised in Philadelphia. Um and uh I went to a college in Southern California. What school? Uh Pomona College in Claremont. Sure.
SPEAKER_00:Good schools.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Is that all part of Claremont or is it just part of adjacent to uh there's the Claremont Colleges.
SPEAKER_01:It's part of the Claremont Colleges. So there's um seven institutions that are affiliated. Wow.
SPEAKER_00:Um Does that mean you're smart?
SPEAKER_01:Uh I don't know, hopefully. Um I was before I went there. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Uh No, I learned a lot there and I met my wife there. So that was great.
SPEAKER_00:Um we go down to Glendale, so Glendora. Oh, yeah. Not too far away.
SPEAKER_01:Nice.
SPEAKER_00:You ever been to that uh really cool guard the Huddington Gardens?
SPEAKER_01:I have been there.
SPEAKER_00:Oh my gosh.
SPEAKER_01:That's super cool.
SPEAKER_00:Tell us about that place. Yeah. Yeah. Right there in New York, Pasadena. It's pretty amazing.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. I digress.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, no.
SPEAKER_00:Tell us. So how'd you get to Humboldt?
SPEAKER_01:Uh well, my wife got a job at the university. Nice. Um so she's a professor of oceanography. Cool. And um we moved here in 2011. So I've been here since then. Wow.
SPEAKER_00:Reminds me of a story.
SPEAKER_01:What's that?
SPEAKER_00:So when I was uh a lot younger and I had beautiful long hair, kind of like I now you and I have the same haircut.
SPEAKER_01:I had long hair when I was younger, too. Trevor Burrus, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:I got voted best uh hair in my most prettiest hair, which who doesn't want to have pretty hair when you're in high school?
SPEAKER_03:Exactly.
SPEAKER_00:Um we were wandering uh the streets as we had uh chance to do a young uh feral hippie children in National City, California, which is it's just south of San Diego, and went to the career center, and the career center had this microfish where they talked about this university called Humboldt State. And I go, wouldn't that be great to go up there and be an ocean major or or a uh forestry major? And Phil goes, yeah. And so he he never made it. I made it. Came in as a declared ocean major.
SPEAKER_02:Wow.
SPEAKER_00:Had no idea how dumb I was. So four years later, at a liberal arts degree later, here here I sit in the podcast chair. So life life is a journey. It is indeed. Yeah. So she came out and taught, and you came uh along with the Trevor Burrus, Jep, pretty much. So what do you have a day do do you have a day job? What do you do when you're not doing this, Colin?
SPEAKER_01:Uh well, this is my day job. Um so uh you know, we're a small organization, and um most of the time uh that we've been around, I've been the only sort of full-time staff. Um right now we have another person working a few hours a week um doing social media and stuff. But uh but it is this is my job. Um and when I'm not doing this, um I do a few things. Uh let's see, um I'm also on the Community Advisory Committee for uh Redwood Coast Energy Authority. Oh, cool. And um I'm on the City of Arcata's Transactions and Use Tax Oversight Committee. Um and you know, just like to uh hang out or sort of play board games. Aaron Ross Powell I guess you have kids? Uh I don't have kids. I don't have kids. I have a dog and a cat. Aaron Powell Dog and a cat. Yeah. They are beloved members of the household.
SPEAKER_00:Aaron Powell Sure. Yeah, we have Richard the cat. Nice. Uh Jody's beloved he's beloved to Jody. I'm not sure if that applies to me, but that's another story. Anyway.
SPEAKER_01:They have their favorites.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So yeah, you so you made it to Humboldt and now it's home. How long have you guys been here? Uh 14 years since 2011. Yeah. Wow, welcome.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, thanks.
SPEAKER_00:Welcome to Humboldt County. Yeah. Um Well, cool. Good story. So tell uh what what do you see as your challenges then to get out your um your gospel of transportation and and make it palatable? And what are the obstructions and obstructionists out there that keep your um your good word and your your vision and mission from going out? And how do you how do you frame that up and tee that up?
SPEAKER_01:Well, I think uh change in general is always hard. And um, you know, as we mentioned, cars have been so central to the way we've planned our our communities for so long that um over a hundred years, yeah. It's a big change. Um I think you know that's always going to be a challenge. Um I think I think actually what we call car culture is is especially challenging. Uh it's very pervasive. Um you know, we've all been exposed to the messages in the marketing our whole lives about cars making us strong, cars making us sexy, cars making us. Yeah. You know, some people really associate themselves with their cars. I'm fast.
SPEAKER_00:Yep, yeah. There you go. Yeah. I mean, I don't I don't, but oh well, yeah. I I like my Toyota Vins, it's kind of cool. Nice. It gets me where it goes. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:No, it's funny. There's a I I insured a guy that was in a car wreck, and he had a a really kind of a I didn't find it a very nice car. It was an old Mitsubishi. But you would have thought they hit his mom when they hit his car. Because he was freaked out, man. This was like his his baby, his idol, his his thing. Yeah. And it's like, I said, dude, it it's a possession. It's a pe it's a rusty piece of metal and it's getting worse.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And it, you know, it's you're gonna outlast it by hopefully by a lot. Yeah. And you cannot take it with you on the train to heaven. So just lose the Mitsubishi, bro. So you're right, there's there's that possessed that it it is an interesting uh cultural inherited uh you know, advertising is persuading us that we have desire and maybe it would could be met in a car.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Um or other things. That's what advertising is. That's what they do. Boy, we're really d uh digressing here.
SPEAKER_01:But car carry on with I think Well, yeah, so I think um there's the pressure Of it just often being difficult to get around other ways. And there's the culture. I think there's this fascinating concept that a researcher in the UK came up with coined this term a few years ago called motonormativity. And it came out of this study that he did where he which has since been repeated in the US, where he asked he surveyed a bunch of people and he asked people these paired questions where some of them are about cars and some of them are about a sort of equivalent situation that doesn't involve a car. So like the most famous one was he asked some people, you know, do you agree or disagree with this statement? You know, we shouldn't people shouldn't smoke in uh crowded areas because the fumes can poison other people. And most people in the modern day agree with that. And then he asked another group of people, people shouldn't drive fossil fuel vehicles in crowded areas because the fumes can poison other people. And almost nobody agreed with that. They thought that was a crazy position to take. And you know, uh and then he did a whole bunch of other sort of related things where you know substitute car for something else. And he found that people, even people who don't drive, but who are just you know living in this culture kind of give cars a a pass morally. You know, auto-bias. Yep. Yep. And so it's just really interesting because like they're so they have such a special place in our lives that it's like they we don't treat them we treat them as if they're a special case and different from anything else.
SPEAKER_00:Aaron Ross Powell Right, right, right. Yeah. I think of all the old TV commercials from my age when in the sixties and seventies and all the the cool oh wow, if I could have that car. A Volkswagen Beetle, what? Yeah. That's a cool 1995. What?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I know. I I it's interesting. So you have an uphill battle. You have a mindset cultural battle ahead.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Which is uh I'm glad you're up for it. That's cool. You know, after you know, and and none of this would have any context unless Joni and I have traveled to Amsterdam, not one but three times.
SPEAKER_01:Wow, I'm jealous.
SPEAKER_00:It's cool. Yeah, there's a lot of bikes. I'll tell you, there's a this is a quantifiable term. A shit ton of bikes. In fact, if you live in Amsterdam, you have two bikes. You have your party bike. It's this destroyed old thing, and it winds up at the canal eventually. And then you have your real bike, your commuter bike, or your whatever. And uh it it is bike-centric, as you know. Uh maybe you've traveled there.
SPEAKER_01:Aaron Powell I have not, unfortunately, but I have read about it quite a bit.
SPEAKER_00:Trevor Burrus, Jr. We go to Utrecht, which is Utrecht is uh south about 30 minutes and it's uh it's a third of the size, it's younger than Amsterdam. And I don't it it's very inconvenient to own a car. Just why why would you have one? Because you got mass transit that goes to London and Paris and Belgium. You know, every eight minutes my son goes, you know, you missed the train. It's not like an airline, dad. There's another one in eight minutes. I go, what? So lose the paranoia.
SPEAKER_01:Aaron Ross Powell, you know, and the fascinating thing, because I've read quite a bit about um biking in the Netherlands and the history there, uh even though I have not visited, but it's on my list. But the fascinating thing about it is that um they've had a sort of a bike culture for a long time. But in the mid-20th century, when the U.S. was uh you know knocking down neighborhoods to build highways through cities and all that kind of stuff, they were doing the exact same thing in the Netherlands. Aaron Ross Powell For highways? Yeah. Yeah. They were like they were knocking down historic buildings and widening the streets and building highways and turning their cities into car-centric cities like we did. Interesting. Um but there, there was this big backlash to it. And um it was in the form of sort of an alliance between the historic preservation people who you know didn't want the old buildings and neighborhoods torn down and um families who were really upset about their kids being unsafe with you know all the fast cars in in the neighborhoods. Aaron Powell Interesting. And um they kind of teamed up and and had a huge amount of success in um changing the the political uh narrative, I guess, in in that country to where um but it did take a couple decades, but then you know in the 80s, I think, is when they kind of started really focusing on building bike infrastructure. And now a few decades later, you know, it's like a biking paradise or whatever. But it is but I think it shows that um we can make choices and and we you know they didn't they weren't always that way.
SPEAKER_00:Um I kind of wonder about the history. I figured, oh, this is a hundred years old, probably not.
SPEAKER_01:No, no, the bike infrastructure is pretty I mean biking was around before cars, right? But um but building that specific bike infrastructure is not that old.
SPEAKER_00:Aaron Ross Powell Funny thing, really progressive country politically in every way, bikes, energy, the whole nine. Not a frickin' bike helmet in the country. Nobody wears a bike helmet, dude. Yep. It's so it's it's it's uh that Dutch personal rights, personal responsibility. If I fall my head, I die. I you know, I I I we're at a used store, uh kind of a thrift store. Bike helmets like dime a dozen, they're everywhere. It's like oh, these guys maybe children wear them. You know, could be. Yeah. I children do frequently, but that's that's all we saw. So it's a paradigm shift here.
SPEAKER_01:Aaron Ross Powell Yeah. And you know, um so I'm gonna I'll preface this by saying saying that I am very much in favor of bike helmets. I wear a helmet every time I get on a bike. However, uh the U.S. is kind of an outlier in emphasizing bike helmets um as the sort of way to be safe on a bike. And um I would say that even though a bike helmet can definitely save your life if you get in a crash, um the fact that we have one of the highest rates of bike fatalities and injuries of any country while we focus on bike helmets, I think tells you that's not the most effective thing to do. Right. The most effective thing to do is to have the safe infrastructure. And um so I guess my feeling about it is we kind of focus on that because we feel that it's the personal responsibility of a bicyclist to take it upon themselves to be safe. Whereas the attitude maybe in other countries is like it's a social responsibility to make sure that everyone on the street is safe. Um obviously I think there's a balance there. Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_00:Different framework, though.
SPEAKER_01:Trevor Burrus, yeah. But that's uh it's just a different way of thinking about it. Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_00:That's good. That's really good. So uh this the this show comes on uh Access Humboldt. And on Access Humboldt, I see the guy a lot, the guy that came and lectured in Arcada and the Warfinger in different places.
SPEAKER_01:He's the Trevor Burrus Oh, Dan Burden?
SPEAKER_00:Aaron Powell Dan, the older guy, kind of big big guy.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Tell what's Dan's uh gospel message? What's what's he all about in transportation?
SPEAKER_01:Aaron Ross Powell Well, shoot, I don't want to speak for Dan. He's the what do they say, the the Johnny Appleseed of walkability or something?
SPEAKER_00:Aaron Powell He is the he is that guy or though, right? He is that guy.
SPEAKER_01:So he comes to towns and lectures and and teaches and I think he was one of the inventors of uh what they call the walk audit, um which uh we've done a few here, and he has come here and led several. And it's basically you get together in a group and you just walk a certain route and you kind of walk slowly and you stop and you look at things and you make notes of like uh how safe is it to walk here? How comfortable is it if you were to imagine yourself in another person's position, like uh someone who's blind or a wheelchair or a kid, or you know, how might it feel to that person? Wow. And then you kind of um you take all those notes and you use that sort of crowd-sourced knowledge from people um participating, and then you write up a little report and you kind of figure out um what you could do to make it better. Right. Um so he was a real um a real innovator of that method, and he kind of does that everywhere he goes. Um and uh CRTP has has picked it up. We did um we did one actually two last year uh on Fourth and Fifth Streets in Eureka.
SPEAKER_00:I was gonna say, did somebody do a downtown?
SPEAKER_01:Aaron Ross Powell Yeah. So we actually we came out with a report a couple of months ago um based on that and also other like crash data and other um you know information to uh sort of document the safety issues, particularly on that corridor, the Caltrans Fourth and Fifth Street corridor, and make recommendations for making it safer. Aaron Powell Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:When I first came to Humboldt, they had a bypass plan. Yeah. Bought a bunch of homes up and they were gonna bypass the whole darn thing. And then that plan got, well, bypassed. So see what you did there. Trevor Burrus, I was waiting I was waiting for that one all day. Um interesting that you would pick those. I was thinking of that. I go, they're not gonna do downtown. That would be disastrous. That's the first place you went.
SPEAKER_01:So Well, the first place we went was Broadway, I would say. Trevor Burrus, Jr. Okay. That would be second. We've been working on Broadway for a while. Trevor Burrus, Jr. It's a tie. Yeah. But that I mean, honestly, if you look at uh pedestrian and bike deaths and serious injuries over the years in Humboldt County, that's where they're concentrated, is Broadway, fourth and fifth streets.
SPEAKER_00:Aaron Powell had a couple friends. Uh Scott Q. Marcus has been on the show and great friend. He got hit downtown and flipped over. Uh haven't had Cliff Burk Berkowitz yet, but he he got hit uh somewhere on the way to Ferndale and crazy accident. So what are some of the hot spots in Eureka that do you know offhand that are hot intersections like Myrtle and West or H and Seventh or I mean well corridor-wise, it's definitely that 101 corridor.
SPEAKER_01:Trevor Burrus, Jr. In terms of um the particular intersections, yeah. I just went through Myrtle and West and uh not fun on your bike. Um I bet, yeah. A lot of people I know avoid that intersection.
SPEAKER_00:Um that's your way on back to the trail, though, to go back through um behind open door to get to the trail, right?
SPEAKER_01:Yep, that's where I was coming from. Um I think in general what I would say is that um the the there's this class of street called an urban arterial. I don't want to get too wonky here, but basically an arterial is the kind of street uh like Broadway Fourth and Fifth, but also like Harris, Henderson, H.I. you know, the streets that were designed to carry as much traffic as possible as fast as possible. And um, they were designed at a time when that was just the priority. But the problem is that when you do that through a neighborhood, through a community uh where people are also going to be walking, biking, schools, yeah, senior centers, businesses, um it's dangerous. You know, it's dangerous to have that many cars going that fast.
SPEAKER_00:You can't jam through Henderson Center. That's just a bad thing.
SPEAKER_01:Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Right, exactly. Yeah. And so um urban arterials, that type of road uh just everywhere in this country is where the most people are are killed and injured on um and so a lot of the what has to be done to make things safer is kind of retrofitting those uh those types of streets. And I mean that involves um a change in priorities, basically. Sure. We have to be willing to say, you know, when we're in an established community, when we're in Eureka or Akata or uh even going through Willow Creek or Auric or wherever, like the priority is gonna be safety and not speed and throughput. Um and I would say you know, when you pose it like that, I would most people kind of agree with you. But uh but when it comes right down to it, there's often a lot of resistance because people are used to it. They don't want to spend another minute getting from one side of town to the other or whatever. Right. Um but for us it's like you hear all the time uh safety first, and you know, the Caltrans will say that, this the city transportation departments will say that. But we really really gotta if that's true, we go we gotta do that. You know, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And culturally we don't want to really we like that. Right. We pay lip service. Yeah. It's like the doctors of oncology in the backs having cigarettes. It's like okay. We want to cure cancer. Um so to your point then, um so Joni went to this Mi'kmaq meeting a couple weeks ago, and we want to traffic uh we want to calm traffic on Central Avenue. Um, it as soon as first blush without even looking at anything. Oh that I that's a terrible idea. How do you do that on Central Avenue? You know, the traffic will be backed up back into Arcata because and that could be true. I mean, i I don't know what'll happen, but as she explained the idea to me and how we could take four lanes into two at certain parts of McKinleyville, and your net time drive from, say, entering uh Six Rivers Brewery to coming out at Ace Hardware could be less because there's fewer lights.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Now you're talking. And hey, that's if if it's fewer lights and more safety and more roundabouts. Um talk to that for a minute.
SPEAKER_01:Aaron Ross Powell Yeah. So it's an interesting thing. Um what seems like a little bit of a diversion, but I'm gonna get back to this. Sure. So um there's a concept called induced travel or induced demand. And um I would say this is kind of the central principle of transportation planning. And it's something that um has been documented for many decades now. And you the probably you've heard of like the classic example, which is you have a freeway and it gets and it's real congested. And so the engineers add another lane to the freeway and then six months later it's the same amount congested. You're like, well, how could that be? And it's called it's induced travel, and it means basically if you build more capacity, people will fill it up. Sure. Um and the idea is like basically from an economic perspective, uh the cost of travel is mostly time. And so when you reduce the amount of time that it takes, then uh people will you know it's cheaper to do, so people will do it until it gets slow again, and then you know, then it reaches that equilibrium of congestion.
SPEAKER_00:Trevor Burrus, Jr.: I think of my budget, if I make more money I spend it. Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
SPEAKER_01:And so that's pretty that's well documented. We've we know that that happens. We still often try to add capacity to relieve congestion, even though we know it won't work, but that's another thing.
SPEAKER_00:Trevor Burrus, Jr.: It's LA freeways, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Um but uh the inverse of that, it turns out, is also kind of true, um, although less well known. And it's sometimes they call it traffic evaporation, which is um if you remove capacity, uh people drive less. Um and it's hard to explain how that happens. And I would say that like the experts really don't know how that happens. Um some of it is people take other routes, but uh when you look at something like a road diet like we're talking about in McKinleyville, um, those have been extensively studied, and they actually rarely result in large amounts of traffic being diverted to other streets, even though you would think that might be the case. Aaron Powell There's not other streets. Right. And in McKinleyville there's not. Well, there's the highway, but yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Trevor Burrus, Jr.: There's the highway and then there's um McKinleyville Avenue, which is low capacity.
SPEAKER_01:Aaron Powell Yeah. But um a lot of what happens is probably people uh make other plans, they uh they use other modes of transportation, or they take fewer trips or they chain their trips together so they don't have to go out multiple times a day.
SPEAKER_00:Aaron Powell So numbers bear this up, that there is evaporation.
SPEAKER_01:Aaron Ross Powell Yeah. And um I would say the most famous examples are um when cities uh have eliminated entire urban freeways, right? And this has happened a number of times now. Um and every time this happens, you you can be sure you're gonna hear the phrase Carmageddon. That's you know, the prediction the prediction is like there will just be completely stopped traffic everywhere in the city because where are all those cars gonna go?
SPEAKER_00:Never happens.
SPEAKER_01:Never happens.
SPEAKER_00:Where does it evaporate to?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, exactly. It's fascinating, right?
SPEAKER_00:Trevor Burrus, Jr. Where all the socks go in the laundry.
SPEAKER_01:It's one of those like emergent phenomena that like you know, you couldn't predict it from any one person's behavior, but somehow when everybody gets together it's a truth.
SPEAKER_00:Interesting.
SPEAKER_01:So you know that's a thing. And and there's also and Dan Burden talked about this too, is that like you can also just design a street so that two lanes could carry as much as four. Um part of that is like what they call friction, you know. So it's the the stopping and the go stop go, stop, go, and the the driveways and you know, kind of like uh managing those things. Um but also counterintuitively, sometimes when you have more lanes in the same direction, it slows things down because people are changing lanes and trying to, you know, act they're sort of acting unpredictably, trying to speed in front of other people or whatever. Yeah. Where if you only have one lane, everyone's just kind of going the same speed, doing the same thing. Because you gotta. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Hey, if you're just joining us, it's uh Scott Hammond, 100% Humboldt uh podcast with my new best friend Colin Fisk, who is about to uh perhaps heard this Dick Taylor.
SPEAKER_01:Oh man, exciting.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, this is the quinoa crunch. This is Adam Dick's uh mom Colleen's favorite. I think she might have invented this. And um I'm looking for my uh uh quality body uh card here, uh one of my other sponsors. And Kim Kemp likes us. She has this on red-headed black belt so uh you're soon to be very famous. Wow. All right. So hey, let's do the quiz. You ready?
SPEAKER_01:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:The bell. Well, now I'm nervous. Question number one. What do you like about Humboldt? Oh, a lot. A lot. Make these fast. I'm gonna have a lot of these. Oh, geez. All right. I had a lot of coffee today.
SPEAKER_01:Do you uh I like how much detail you want me to go into? Just a little. Okay. Well, I I love the natural landscapes, I love uh the redwoods and and the beach and the dunes and the rivers and um and I like I like the people. It's just uh a welcoming, warm environment.
SPEAKER_00:Aaron Powell Yeah, nice. Good answer. What uh what fills up your cup? What what what is what what fulfills you in in life?
SPEAKER_01:I think it's uh time spent with people that I love, you know, time with my friends and my family and um just doing things that are fun and meaningful for us together.
SPEAKER_00:Cool. Ready? Number three. What do you find soul crushing? Um You're laughing because you're already thinking of soul work.
SPEAKER_01:Well, you know, uh paperwork. I'm not I I don't like paperwork.
SPEAKER_00:Um just leave it at that. We'll just stop at paperwork. So you have a uh a full day, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. in Humboldt. And uh, you know, cost is no object. So what would you do with a with a 12-hour day that was yours?
SPEAKER_01:Wow, let's see. Uh I would definitely go for a hike somewhere. Um probably uh probably in Prairie Creek. Um although there's a lot of good places to choose.
SPEAKER_00:Um My wife's gonna like your answer, just Prairie Creek in general. That'll work. It's beautiful up there.
SPEAKER_01:Um I would definitely go to uh a restaurant that I like. Uh let's see. There's a lot of those to choose from too. I really like Renatas. I like get the crepes. Um let's see, I like I like brick and fire in Eureka here, you know. Sure. Just uh my wife and I'm kind of foodies, you know, running into into food. Um so I would probably do that. Um maybe go out uh go out for a drink. We my favorite beer bar is Dead Reckoning in Arcata. Sure. Does a good job. Yep. I like to hang out there. Oh well I knew until you asked me that.
SPEAKER_00:Is he a Scotsman?
SPEAKER_01:It's completely escaped me.
SPEAKER_00:Oh it's uh it's not Sean. It's uh No. Uh I'll think of him in a minute. Nice guy.
SPEAKER_01:Well now I'm embarrassed. I can't believe that.
SPEAKER_00:Do they have Pliny of the Elder on tap? They do. Yeah. I've heard that. Yeah. Pliny the Elder if you don't know. Yeah. Incredible tap list. Yeah. It's uh No, he's got some really interesting stuff. Yeah. Theo is his name. Theo, thank you. You were looking for that one.
SPEAKER_01:I was like, I can't believe it. I can't remember that.
SPEAKER_00:And uh last question. What would you like to see happen in Humboldt?
SPEAKER_01:Wow, that's that's big. Yeah. Well, I guess since I'm a transportation person, I'll stick to that side of things. Um I would like to see uh I would like to see it just easier to get around without a car. I'd like to see better public transportation. You know, and I would say the Humboldt Transit Authority does an incredible job with a very small budget and a huge area to cover, but like just to make it easier to get back and forth, get around uh by bus, um more like a complete network of safe bike facilities would be cool. So it's like we're talking about we have this great trail, but then I got to go through Myrtle and West to get here, you know? Right. It's like if you if we had a whole network, so you didn't have to like take your life in your hands once or twice. Right. This arterial, yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:That'd be super cool. So you could go all the way up Myrtle and go old Arcata Road safely.
SPEAKER_01:Aaron Ross Powell Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Even that. That'd be cool. Aaron Ross Powell You think that'll ever happen?
SPEAKER_01:I think there's there's nothing nothing stopping it if we have the will.
SPEAKER_00:Aaron Ross Powell Yeah. Yeah. Well, hey, congrats on the quinoa crunch uh Dick Taylor, located in in Old Town Eureka, California.
SPEAKER_01:Aaron Ross Powell I neglected to say I should go to Dick Taylor, too, because that factory is pretty cool.
SPEAKER_00:Aaron Ross Powell And it's right on the trail. Yep. Yep. Go in there right after we're done here. Nice. So yeah, no, I appreciate that. So uh I'll give you Joni's two questions. So what what's realistic and what's idealistic in terms of your outcomes and your vision for the county and transportation? What do you what general big picture things would you want to share? Let's go ideal first.
SPEAKER_01:Aaron Ross Powell Okay. Ideal. Aaron Ross Powell And it kind of piggybacks on the last question. It's kind of a similar answer, I would say, to to what I was I was just trying to express. But um I think making it yeah, making it so that um Well let me step back for a second. You know, it's not possible to envision that kind of place where it's just easy to walk and bike and take the bus everywhere without some changes to the landscape. You know, and uh I know to some people density is a bad word, but we need to have more density, in other words, like more people close to each other and to work and to school and to all those things to make it possible to walk or bike and to make it possible to have good transit service. So I think um and I personally think that if we start doing that, which um you know Eureka has been doing some of that lately with um the affordable housing downtown and the transit center that's going to be built with um apartments above it. Aaron Powell I was gonna ask about that. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Is that behind Los Coast Brewery?
SPEAKER_01:Aaron Powell Right, exactly. And so I think that um that not only will help make it possible to walk and bike places, take the bus, but also isn't it you know it enlivens the community a little bit, you know? It's like right now you could go downtown Eureka at certain times of the night and there's like nothing, it's dead. Aaron Ross Powell Certain times of the day, dude. Certain times of the day.
SPEAKER_00:That's just like I'm gonna I walk around going, the only thing is happening are banks and dispensaries. Yep. Yeah. It's like not even that.
SPEAKER_01:And part of that is because not very many people live there. Right. But like if people live in that and you find that um in any city where like the downtown is like just businesses, you know, just offices or whatever, um at night or during you know, holidays or whatever, it's just dead.
SPEAKER_00:Trevor Burrus, Jr. J dead.
SPEAKER_01:But like when people live there, then it's active more. You can support more like businesses that are open at all hours, you can kind of get that more vibrant scene and people can get to know each other more. There's people on the sidewalk you're running into. So um all the kind of things that we love about having like small towns, I think you can kind of like amp that up by having just a few more people in those core areas. Um yeah, I think, you know, I guess making um making our small towns, our Eureka, Arcata and the smaller towns more vibrant, um more walkable, more bikeable, um, investing more in the transit system so like you don't have to like look at this complicated schedule and figure out where you're gonna go and hope you don't miss the last bus, but you can just walk out there and be like, a bus is gonna come in a few minutes, you know. Yeah. Right. Um that would be that would be an ideal transportation system for me. Oh. And also nobody's dying. Yeah. That's that's a really big thing. Um because it's like a leading cause of death, especially for kids and like bikes? Um just traffic in general.
SPEAKER_00:Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Just get a in a car wreck. Trevor Burrus, yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Um real quick on the homeless, and I I don't mean to digress there, but uh certainly we have a high degree of homeless people that get hit on Broadway or middle of the night, fourth or fifth. Um how do you attribute that? I mean, there there's certainly it takes two people to get in a car wreck, but or more.
SPEAKER_01:Aaron Ross Powell I mean, we don't so I'll say this is mostly speculation because we don't actually have data on like the housing status of people who are hit. Um but anecdotally it does seem like um there's a high proportion of of houseless folks who are um victims of of those crashes. Um that's not just true here, that's true um where it's been looked at.
SPEAKER_00:It's true that we're tracks in San Diego or Portland or wherever.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And I think likely reasons are um one is that uh people who don't have a house often end up uh living in places that are uh high risk for that. So like living in uh sort of under underpasses or living um you know in proximity to speeding traffic. And so that just like they have a higher risk than um those of us who might have the luxury of living in a nice calm neighborhood somewhere. Um and the other thing is that because they live in those areas, they're likely to be um around uh at times when people might not be looking for pedestrians or bicyclists, like late at night. In storms. In storms, yep, exactly. So I think those are probably two of the big factors. Um I would say that though it's kind of it's kind of an indicator thing. Um and actually there's really interesting research that shows that um nationwide the rates of uh pedestrians who are killed in car crashes are much higher in low-income neighborhoods. And interesting. They're higher in um they're higher among um uh people of color, and especially among Native Americans than among the general population. And so, you know, the it's not just houseless people. This is kind of like the people who are most vulnerable in our society are the ones who are bearing the brunt of the problem. And I think that that um I think there's a lot of reasons for that, some of them I just discussed, but um you know a big if you back up a little bit, a big reason is that we're building these high-speed, dangerous facilities in places where um you know you or I probably wouldn't want to live, but people who don't have a choice might be living there.
SPEAKER_00:And then they're exposed. Yeah. And then they get hurt.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. That tracks. Um do some more shouts shout-outs. How do we get a hold of you if we want to, you know, get on the board, throw you, throw you money. Yeah, yeah. What do we do to participate? Do you guys have monthly meetings?
SPEAKER_01:Aaron Ross Powell We don't have monthly meetings. Um we do have uh uh an email list where we send out um uh actually a weekly email newsletter comes out every Friday that uh has a lot of information about what's going on locally in the transportation type world, also opportunities for people to get involved, um you know, speak up, comment on public issues, that kind of stuff.
SPEAKER_00:So good to email you and get on the list.
SPEAKER_01:Aaron Powell Yeah, there's a sign-up sheet, our sign-up form on our um on our website um if you're interested in getting more involved. Uh we also have a volunteer list. Um one thing I didn't mention is we do bike valet at public events. Um so uh this past year I think we did maybe twelve or fifteen events. Um the like we do Oyster Festival, North Country Fair, um all sorts of um smaller events where if you bike there, we'll watch your bike for you.
SPEAKER_00:Um Warfinger.
SPEAKER_01:Oh yeah. Yep. Was it the trail celebration?
SPEAKER_00:Correct. Yep. We did it there, yep. That was you guys. Yep. So you don't re- you know Reese Hughes, then. Oh yeah. Hey Reese, what's up, Reese?
SPEAKER_01:Reese is great. Great guy. So yeah, so we uh we take volunteers for that or for other you know, other tasks that we have.
SPEAKER_00:Um email address again or website?
SPEAKER_01:Website is transportationpriorities.org or crtp.info if you if you want to share it. Okay. Um there's a contact form on there if you just have anything you want to contact us about. Um just yeah, encourage anyone to reach out.
SPEAKER_00:Aaron Powell Sweet. So before we sign off and talk about your legacy and your your gravestone and all that stuff, um we took a bike ride with you and the group uh in McKinleyville and the new uh uh we started out at at uh is it Hicksari down there at the foot of school?
SPEAKER_01:Aaron Ross Powell Uh The Hammond Trail.
SPEAKER_00:The Hammond Trail. Yeah. What's the foot of it's it's the foot of schools. Yeah, we started on the Hammond Trail. Um the Hammond.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that uh what is it? You know about the Hammond Trail?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's named after my great-great-great-grandfather, Andrew Hammond. I think you told me that. Yeah, I'm a London baron uh London. Uh I'm a lumber barons uh kid, and I just show up here for fun. I just hang out. Now he um Andrew was quite a guy, though. He had uh the biggest uh redwood mill in the world at the time at uh Samoa, and it later became I think Georgia Pacific. They did a monopoly buster on that, and he wound up in Hammond, Oregon, way up by Astoria.
SPEAKER_02:Wow.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, the lumber guys.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:There you go. No relation. Joni gets every time I bring it up, she just gets so tweaked to stop. So anyway, uh where was it going with that? Um we did the ride. We did the ride. Tell us about the ride and then the the traffic uh calming on uh McKillingville Avenue.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Um so we did a little sort of family-friendly bike ride, um, started at the trailhead of um the Mad River Trail, that new trail there, and then took the um I don't know what the name of that segment is along School Road.
SPEAKER_00:Aaron Powell It has a name. Yeah. That trail. It does. Then we went up to the Hammond Trail.
SPEAKER_01:Trevor Burrus, Up the Up the Hammond Trail, um to Hiller Park, uh picked up some more folks there, and then just headed um up Hiller uh to Central and back down and stopped at uh Seagoat Farm Stand.
SPEAKER_00:Might be out of calling it McKenna. It's Hiller Avenue. Hill Hiller. Yeah. Hiller's where they did the the the county came in and did the traffic slowing for the bike lane.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:That was cool, by the way. The i with the A-frame there at the um the uh Seagoat Farms. Yeah. It used to be Grace Good Shepherd Church, I think.
SPEAKER_01:Aaron Ross Powell That's still there. Still is that's a cool little store. It is a cool spot, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I like that.
SPEAKER_01:And they um actually I should give them a shout out because uh Seagoat, it's a it's a nonprofit, and they um really coordinated the mural part of that project. They kind of brought the artists on board and helped raise money and um actually is still ongoing. They're still raising money for uh a mural in the new roundabout that that was built at that intersection. Oh cool.
SPEAKER_00:It's just built a week or two ago. Aaron Powell Johnny took me on it. She was so excited. Yeah. Yeah. I think we should have gone twice.
SPEAKER_01:It was it's pretty cool. And that um again, I I don't want to get too much in the weeds because I can talk about this stuff all day. But what they did there, it's called a quick build project. And it's the idea is like if you don't have to do any new paving uh or or cement, you can do stuff pretty quick with just like paint and plastic.
SPEAKER_00:Aaron Powell those uh plastic.
SPEAKER_01:Yep, those old bollard things. And um so the idea is like it's not gonna last forever, but um you can get some of those safety gains right away, and you can have people interact with it and like get feedback and figure out what to do in in making it permanent. Aaron Powell So you can tweak it up as you go. Trevor Burrus, Jr. So we've been trying to um promote that idea around here to kind of like because sometimes you know you do this work and you're like, wow, that bike lane. Yeah, we agreed to do that bike lane, and now it's been 10 years and they finally painted the bike lane. You know, it's like maybe we could do it a little quicker and even if it's not permanent, get some of that information. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And what if it really, really worked?
SPEAKER_01:Aaron Powell Exactly.
SPEAKER_00:Aaron Ross Powell So would we do the same on the on the uh Central Avenue proposal? Would that be kind of a trial and error type of thing?
SPEAKER_01:I think it's gonna still be more public process before you figure out exactly what happens there. But um I would say in that case, well actually with Hiller too, um you know the McKinleyville Town Center ordinance that was just adopted, it it shows what it'll be roughly in the long term. Um but there is a possibility of um having some of those quick-build things in the near term because it'll probably take a long time to raise the money and figure out how to do the permanent.
SPEAKER_00:So you must have some advocates at county level then, Steve and Drone and different people.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, Steve's been a great friend. Um we actually gave him our responsible transportation champion award this year um for all of his work on trails and transit. Congrats, Steve.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. What are my first guesses? Oh yeah. Yeah, he was great. Really great guy. It's funny when you actually talk to people how you discover, oh, Colin's actually a pretty cool guy. Scott Scott's we we could go either way on Scott, but he's okay. We like him anyway. So uh parting shots. Uh what are we what are we saying at your let your uh your funeral, at your celebration life? What would you what would you hope that people would say about you, Colin? Uh he cared. Nice. That's what I would hope people would say. Aaron Ross Powell It's good. Caring. Caring's good. I think you know, caring and then and then expressing that care.
SPEAKER_01:I think that's you know I'm not writing your funeral, but well I've tried to devote my life to making things a little bit better, you know. And there's a lot of different ways to do that. But um I think transportation transportation interests me because it's this cross-section between like all these important things, the environment and social safety and equity and the economy and you know, community, and it's like all these things are wrapped up in it. And um and I feel like you know you can make improvements that really change people's lives.
SPEAKER_00:Aaron Powell I like it. And before we go, I'd like to talk about the red great Redwood Trail for a sec. I mean, that's gotta h have play into your vision in the next decade. Yeah. Yeah. Because as we connect that next leg to Lolita or wherever south.
SPEAKER_01:Yep. Yeah. Um so the next segment that's being planned, um, in addition to the Annie and Mary Trail, which is uh ongoing, um, is extending the trail south from Eureka to CR. Um and we participated in a planning study for that. Um so there's initial plans for that, and then they have to raise money to do the engineering work and environmental review and then actually build it. But but that's sort of the next big step in our area. And that's super cool because so many um students at CR commute and and don't drive, they ride the bus or whatever, or people do bike down there and it's kind of dangerous. Um, it's got to be highway time. Trevor Burrus, yeah. So so that's that's a really exciting next step.
SPEAKER_00:Trevor Burrus, Jr.: And Lolita would be a stop on the trail, right?
SPEAKER_01:Lolita, it'll go right through Lolita. Um so I would say you know, the the trail, um, the whole Great Redwood Trail is like a huge vision. It's gonna take a long time. Sure. Um but the parts that are most exciting to me are the parts that are um not just recreation, like not just the backcountry trail, although I love that, but but that also function to provide safe transportation for people. Um and so like that that Eureka de CR is a great example where it's like it's gonna be beautiful. You're gonna be going right through the National Wildlife Refuge and all that stuff. Oh, that's perfect. But it's also like really important safety infrastructure.
SPEAKER_00:Trevor Burrus, Jr.: It's got a purpose, it's taking students back and forth. Yeah. That's great. Yeah, really glad you came. Yeah, thanks for having me. Appreciate you. Yeah. So uh hey everybody. Uh Scott Hammon, 100% Humboldt with with my new best friend, Colin. And uh thanks for listening. And you could join us on uh uh Access Humboldt, all the podcast platforms, YouTube, and of course um right here. Uh this will be a less broadcast for the year. And honored. Oh yeah, we're honored to have you. And uh gosh, I I want to thank so many people. Nick, my main man with growing pains uh podcast. Nick Flores is amazing. Uh my daughter Kalia, my wife Joni's a big supporter. Uh Quality Body Works in our Eureka. I was gonna say Arcada. They're in Eureka. Uh Kib Kemp, we're we're on her uh redheaded black belt all the time. And of course, our good friends at Dick Taylor Chocolates, where their chocolates just it's pretty good. It's pretty darn good. It's pretty darn good. We saw them play down at the steeple in Fern Dilly where Huckleberry Flint, they're amazing.
SPEAKER_02:Cool.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, back in the uh love to see those guys. Anyway, uh hey, again, thanks for having us and uh we're out.
