Rural

Car-Free Redwood National Park Vacation Barriers

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I was hoping that planning my June 24 – July 2 car-free Redwood National Park vacation would be as easy as renting an e-bike in Eureka and then biking to Redwood National Park. I normally have Fridays off work, so I wanted to clarify that my vacation starts on Saturday and not Friday because I will be attending the Mobility as a Service (MaaS) in the US Conference in San Francisco on June 22-23. I enjoy catching up with colleagues and meeting new people at conferences. Will you be attending this conference, or do you live in San Francisco?

Since I do not feel safe or comfortable enough to bike on Highway 101, which only has “bike share the road” signs, I am not willing to bike on Highway 101. I briefly wrote about bike signage in this 2015 post. I was excited when I found Hammond Truck Road, which is shown in the below Google Maps screenshot, because I thought I found a route to avoid biking on Highway 101. Redwood National Park is the dark green area in the top right corner. Eureka is located south of Crannell. Due to Google Maps showing “This route has restricted usage or private roads,” I contacted Humboldt County staff to clarify whether I could bike on Hammond Tuck Road. As Bob’s reply shows, I would be trespassing if I biked on this road.

The route that you are considering is through private property. These roads have locked gates and are posted with signs indicating no trespassing.

Bob Bronkall, Humboldt County Surveyor

I do not want to embarrass Humboldt County too much. They are at least trying to plan for people who do not drive by providing the Hammond Trail, which I plan to bike on during my vacation. I just wish this trail went all the way to Redwood National Park. Hopefully, this trail will be extended further north someday!

Ray’s Backup Plan

It appears I will be biking less than I wanted during my June vacation. Thankfully, transit services exist between Eureka and Redwood National Park. Redwood Coast Transit operates Route 20 along the below route. While Route 20 does not provide frequent service and only operates on Monday-Saturday, I do not have any safe alternatives to consider. Due to Route 20 ending in Arcata, I may stay in Arcata to avoid having to transfer to another bus to reach Eureka. I wish there was one regional transit provider in this rural area so I could avoid having to transfer!

As this 2022 post shows, I am also concerned about whether the e-bike that I plan to rent will fit on Redwood Coast Transit’s buses. I have not found a transit system in the US that has an entire fleet that can fit e-bikes. While I am waiting for Redwood Coast Transit to confirm that my e-bike rental will not fit on their buses, I assume that I will have no e-bike when I reach Redwood National Park. Despite being used to riding an e-bike, I may rent a non-electric bike so I can take a bike on the bus to Redwood National Park.

Source: http://redwoodcoasttransit.org/routes-schedules/route-20/

Difficulty Finding Redwood National Park Tour

My next barrier after reaching Redwood National Park is finding a group tour. Redwood National Park has limited or no cell and internet services, which is great for disconnecting from social media and emails. I will be traveling alone, so I would prefer to find a group tour to prevent anything bad from happening when traveling alone in an isolated place. While I was excited to find Redwood Adventures, they only offer private tours to groups of at least two people. I emailed them to ask if I can join a larger group or schedule my tour on a less busy weekday. I realize they make more money by preventing single people from scheduling a private tour. I wish I had a girlfriend to go on the tour with me!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZzJ6C5ujSw&t

Future Blog Post

I may not blog much during my June vacation because I want to enjoy exploring Eureka, Arcata, and Redwood National Park. I also may not have reliable internet access, which I think will be great to help me disconnect from social media and emails. I hope to have time in July to publish posts on how my vacation went. What do you want to read about?

Ray’s Birthday Wish

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Tomorrow, September 19, is my birthday. September 19 also happens to be the start of Disability Rights Washington’s Week Without Driving. While Ian Davidson is in Oregon, it appears Week Without Driving is only organized in Washington. World Car Free Day also happens to be this week on September 22. As someone who lives a car-free lifestyle, these challenges feel weird to me. However, I hope they convince other people to temporarily experience car-free living. Will you be participating in Week Without Driving or World Car Free Day?

Ray’s Birthday Wish Is To Feel Safe and Comfortable When Biking, Walking, Hiking, and Riding Transit

As I was biking, walking, and riding the Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit (SMART) train from Petaluma yesterday to attend the Mill Valley Fall Arts Festival, I was thinking about my birthday wish. While birthday wishes are probably supposed to be cheap like when I was excited to get a bike as a child, I now desperately want to see the world be improved by creating expensive 8-80 Cities. I should clarify that constructing these 8-80 places will be costly, but humans are already planning to construct expensive places. Behavior change to human-scale transportation planning will be key to successfully constructing 8-80 places.

Since my post includes suburban and rural areas, I wish 8-80 Cities included suburban and rural areas. I believe they are focused on large urban areas. Yes, I realize the 8-80 Cities non-profit organization has limited bandwidth. I am thankful that this organization exists at all to help places with their transformations. While 8-80 Cities may not be involved in the following efforts, I got excited and hopeful as I researched more about all of the regional efforts to create safe and comfortable routes to bike, walk, hike, and ride transit in the Bay Area and Northern California. Since you may not understand the significance of these efforts if you have not experienced the unsafe and uncomfortable existing routes, I want to show you one of these routes that I took yesterday.

Even though I am sharing the below experience from my perspective, 8-80 Cities is focused on making places usable by people from 8 to 80 years old. Due to this, please think about whether an 8-year-old or 80-year-old would feel safe and comfortable biking the route. I have noticed that many experienced adult cyclists say “I” statements when discussing whether a route is safe and comfortable. Yes, the route feels safe and comfortable to an experienced adult cyclist. I want to encourage these cyclists to think about the route from the indicator species’ perspective, which is discussed in the below video. Even better, I would love for these cyclists to invite an 8-year-old or an 80-year-old to ride along the route with them. How much do you want to bet that they will not feel safe and comfortable enough to even accept the ride-along invite?

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ni32qPrGmM

Biking From Petaluma To SMART’s Novato San Marin Station

The below section of Petaluma Blvd S made me feel so uncomfortable that I ended up getting off my bike and walking. Yes, I have an extreme fear of heights but I may have been able to stay on my bike if there was a trail here. Due to how uncomfortable biking next to automobiles is, I prefer to stay closer to the grass when biking. As the below photo shows, the bike lane was narrowed to provide space for the guardrail and concrete barrier. I decided to cross the road and walk my bike against traffic next to the grass.

I was surprised by how many road cyclists wearing lycra and having no rack for panniers were riding the same route. They kept passing me because I prefer to ride slowly on a hybrid bike that has a rack and panniers. Since they had no bike lock and were only carrying a water bottle, I do not understand their approach to bike touring. I guess they were just biking fast and not planning to lock their bike somewhere to stop for a meal. While I frequently see this approach to biking, it is hard for me to imagine not carrying a lock and planning where to stop for a meal. As I walked my bike down the steep hill (yes, it’s not a very steep hill), two road cyclists asked if I was doing okay. At least they were friendly even when they were biking fast!

Source: Google Maps

I felt much more comfortable at the bottom of the hill when I saw the bike trail, which is the green line south of Mickelson Pumpkin Patch to cross Highway 101. As you compare the zoomed-in map to the overview map, pay attention to the green line south of Mickelson Pumpkin Patch. Since Fire Road is a dead-end road, I would have had to bike back to Petaluma to use a different route to continue south. I Street, which goes by Tara Firma Farms, is a much hillier route than biking on Petaluma Blvd S. The 14.5 miles goes to SMART’s Novato San Marin Station. Since I was out of shape, I took a break from biking and rode the SMART train to the San Rafael Station.

Source: Google Maps
Source: Google Maps

Disappointing Park(ing) Day Weekend in San Rafael

Due to this weekend being Park(ing) Day weekend, I was hoping to see a Park(ing) Day event in Downtown San Rafael’s unused parking spaces. According to the Park(ing) Day website, Hope Housing Of Marin previously participated in Park(ing) Day. It appears there is no Park(ing) Day event in San Rafael this weekend.

Yes, I was excited to see parklets! I just wish there was more bike parking. The only nearby bike rack, which is on the sidewalk, is hidden and blocked by the clothing display. Should I have moved the clothing display and used the bike rack?

Regional Trail Planning Efforts

The rest of my journey to almost Mill Valley was much better than the beginning of my journey. I wrote “almost” because I actually did not make it all the way to the Mill Valley Fall Arts Festival. Since the festival closed at 5pm and I started my journey too late in the morning, I ended up turning around in Corte Madera. While the SMART Pathway does not reach Corte Madera, I biked along it from San Rafael to Larkspur. As the below photo shows, there are plans to extend the SMART Pathway and make it part of the 320-mile, world-class, multi-use rail-to-trail Great Redwood Trail. Yes, Kathy Fitzpatrick, this trail effort appears to be similar to the Columbia River Gorge’s Towns to Trails effort, which I wrote about in this 2021 post.

Source: https://twitter.com/grtredwoodtrail/status/1451318036674146318/photo/1

Future Blog Post

The Great Redwood Trail, which includes the SMART Pathway, is not the only regional trail planning effort in the Bay Area and Northern California. The planned 550-mile (400 miles are already complete) Bay Area Ridge Trail covers some of the route used for the Great Redwood Trail. The Bay Trail is a planned 500-mile walking and cycling path around the entire San Francisco Bay, running through all nine Bay Area counties, 47 cities, and safely across seven toll bridges. Stephan, we should take a future canoe or kayak trip on the San Francisco Bay Water Trail. I still want to explore Minnesota’s Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness with you!

Last and in this case least impressive, Sonoma County Regional Parks created the North Coast Access Trails. I wanted to share this trail system because I want to bike from Petaluma to and along the Pacific Ocean. Unfortunately, this trail system is short and not well connected. Despite this less impressive regional trail system, I am excited to experience and write more about all of these efforts in future posts! Since I want to make my blog interesting to read, is there anything in particular that you want to read about?

Reflecting on my 1st year at Clackamas Community College and 2nd-year goals

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I was planning to write this post on June 11, which was the day I started working at Clackamas Community College (CCC) in 2018. This was my first-ever full-time work anniversary. I moved back to Oregon to start this job so this also means that I have been back in Oregon for a year. Since I have been busier than usual and was involved with leading my first request for proposal (RFP) process, I had to postpone writing this post. I am going to use this 2018 post to help me write the below post. I want to share the below photo before diving into how these people helped me this academic year.

Successes

I spent most of the 2018-19 academic year applying for two grants. Since I received a $150,000 grant from Oregon Metro, my job is secure through June 2022. I also helped the City of Oregon City apply for and receive a $150,000 grant to build upon their 2017 Transportation Demand Management (TDM) Plan. The City asked me to serve as the Transportation Advisory Committee’s representative on the Downtown Oregon City TDM Implementation Working Group. The Oregon Metro grant will help fund this group’s work.

The other large grant I applied for and received was a $273,083.25 Oregon DOT grant. This grant funds the expansion of the CCC Xpress Shuttle through June 2021. Thankfully, the grant will be available again in 2021 so I can pursue the grant again to continue the expansion indefinitely. The shuttle expansion includes summer term service for the first time ever and extended evening service year-round when school is in session. As a result of the RFP process, which selected WeDriveU as the new shuttle operator, I have been able to improve the shuttle service. WeDriveU works with Tripshot, which provides the shuttle service with real-time ETAs. The shuttle service previously only used paper schedules and General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) data.

I want to thank Amy Cannata, who is the Grants Administrator, for helping me apply for the grants.

Struggles

While I had many successes during my first year, my reflection process also needs to include things that could be improved. I have been struggling to plan and fund an on-demand shuttle from rural Clackamas County to Oregon City. Even though I tried to convince Master of Urban and Regional Planning (MURP) teams from Portland State University (PSU) to select my workshop project proposal, no team selected my proposal to create a Rural Access Plan for how to improve access from rural Clackamas County to Oregon City.

I also did not receive a $50,000 Transportation Options Innovation Grant from ODOT to fund the on-demand shuttle. This grant required a plan for guaranteed long-term funding when the short-term grant funding was exhausted. Unfortunately, I was unable to guarantee this long-term funding so ODOT was unwilling to provide short-term funding for the on-demand shuttle.

While I did not receive the Transportation Options Innovation Grant, ODOT provided me with a silver lining. Since I manage the CCC Xpress Shuttle, ODOT was able to provide me with free access to Remix. This includes free training and customer support. With help from Remix, I am self-teaching myself on how to use Remix for a variety of transportation planning.

My 2nd-Year Goals at CCC

I am constantly asked about providing transportation options to reach the Wilsonville campus and from rural Clackamas County. These are my top 2nd-year goals. Thankfully, Wilsonville’s SMART received a grant to subsidize vanpools to and from Wilsonville. We are planning to launch vanpools this fall between the Wilsonville campus and the other two campuses in Oregon City and Milwaukie.

In order to plan and fund the on-demand shuttle from rural Clackamas County to Oregon City, I am realizing that I need to take a different approach. Since the shuttle needs long-term operation funding, short-term grant funders will keep asking me to provide proof that I have a plan for guaranteed long-term funding. One way to show this proof could be to show that the shuttle is in adopted transit plans. The shuttle is not in any adopted transit plans so I have started the processes to include it in as many plans as possible. These plans will be used to decide what transit projects are eligible to receive long-term funding.

A work-related personal goal is achieving my American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP) certification. Since I have a master’s degree in planning from a Planning Accreditation Board-accredited program and two years of full-time professional planning experience, I am eligible to apply to take the AICP Certification Exam in November. I applied before the Early Bird Deadline, so I should know by August 5 whether or not my application was approved.

Future Blog Post

Since my North Carolina-based family is planning a July 4-14 vacation with me to visit my grandmas, other relatives, and friends in Ohio and Pennsylvania, I plan to write a post about this. I will be in Philadelphia for my first time from July 4-6. In addition to celebrating Independence Day in Philadelphia, I plan to check out Indego because I helped plan where to install the bikeshare stations during my 2014 internship at Toole Design Group.

After I take Greyhound from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, my family will pick me up in Pittsburgh to take me to Erie, which is where Grandma Atkinson lives. My family will then visit the Cleveland area, which is where Grandma Stoodt and my other Stoodt relatives live. Since Columbus won the USDOT’s 2016 Smart City Challenge, I asked my family to visit Columbus so I could meet with City officials working on making Columbus a smart city. I fly back to Portland in the evening on July 13 and return to work on July 15.

Raising Awareness About Suburban and Rural Transportation Issues

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As I approach my one-year work anniversary at Clackamas Community College in June and a year being back in Oregon, I have been reflecting on my new job and life in general. While I am excited to share that all three of my conference presentation proposals this year were accepted, all of the conferences are in Portland. As the below photo shows, I presented on a three-person panel (photo includes the moderator) on April 25 about Transit Connections in Suburban and Mixed Land Use Environments at the Oregon Active Transportation Summit in Portland.

Since I believe my session was one of the few sessions that discussed suburban or rural transportation issues, the audience thanked me for raising awareness about these issues. While it is helpful to learn about Portland’s issues and from Portland’s success stories, the audience agreed with me that we need to discuss suburban and rural issues and context-sensitive solutions more at conferences. We realize that conferences have limited space for sessions and most of the session proposals probably came from urban areas. Would moving conferences from Portland to a suburban or rural place at least every few years help change the dynamics of the conference enough to discuss suburban and rural issues more?

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Ray presented on a panel at the Oregon Active Transportation Summit about Transit Connections in Suburban and Mixed Land Use Environments. Left to right: Jeff Pazdalski, Executive Director, Westside Transportation Alliance; Ray Atkinson, Transportation Systems Analyst, Clackamas Community College; Erin Wardell, Principal Planner, Washington County; (Moderator) Stacy Revay, City of Beaverton

 

The second conference I am presenting at is the National Urbanism Next Conference in Portland. I was selected to present the below lightning talk (pecha kucha) on May 7 about the topic: How do we harness emerging technologies to reach desired outcomes?

The title of my presentation is Beyond Urban Areas: Providing Suburban and Rural Clackamas County with Reliable Transportation Options. Since the lightning talks organizer had to close the online RSVP form after over 200 people confirmed they are attending, I expect to present to a large audience. While I should have time after my presentation to talk with the audience about my presentation, the lightning talk format does not allow time for a question and answer period after each presentation nor at the end of all the presentations.

As the below list of lightning talk presenters shows, I am the only presenter representing a college or university. Do you think I will also be the only presenter that discusses suburban and rural transportation issues?

Ray Atkinson, Clackamas Community College
Chris Bonnarigo, bKl Architecture
Regina Clewlow, Populus
Paul Curtis, Vectos South Ltd.
Maya Krolikowski, Crandall Arambula
Stephanie Lonsdale, Portland Bureau of Transportation
Martin Schmidt, Graz Linien
Rick Stein, Urban Decision Group
Tiffany Swift, Walker Macy
Darby Watson, Parametrix

 

The third conference I am presenting at is the Association of Pedestrian and Bicycle Professionals (APBP) Conference in Portland. My four-person panel, which includes me and professionals from Chicago, Ottawa, and a suburb of Philadelphia, was selected to present on August 26 about The Multimodal Suburb: Transforming Communities Through Planning, Policy, Advocacy… and a Little Rule Breaking. I will add my presentation to this post after I create it.

How would discussions at conferences change if they were in suburban or rural areas?

While I enjoy visiting Portland, I am frustrated that all of the conferences are in Portland because I believe many Portlanders and urbanists, in general, have difficulty thinking outside their urban bubble. I was guilty of this when I lived in Portland during graduate school at PSU. Most of my volunteer advocacy/activist work from Fall 2014-Fall 2016 focused on Portland.

Even though I did my workshop project in Tigard, which is a suburb of Portland, I likely would not have thought about Tigard issues if my workshop team had not chosen to work in Tigard. I visited Tigard for the first time when my workshop team started our project. I had also never visited Oregon City before moving here for my current job. I realize some Portlanders leave Portland for more than just recreating in the Cascades or the Oregon Coast, but I believe my perspective is accurate for most Portlanders.

Since I am still a volunteer Portland advocate/activist, I know that Portland volunteers have limited bandwidth. As Jonathan Maus at BikePortland.org tweeted, Portland volunteers are already getting burned out by their Portland advocacy/activist work. Due to this, is it reasonable to ask them to help me with my suburban and rural advocacy/activist work?

While I realize that many suburban and rural residents hate having Portlanders influence how their areas are planned, car-centric suburban and rural thinking is negatively impacting the entire Portland region. Widening highways and building more parking lots are hurting the entire Portland region, so Portlanders should be involved with suburban and rural decisions.

Future Blog Post

Since my one-year work anniversary at Clackamas Community College is in June and I will have been back in Oregon for a year in June, I plan to write a post about how my one-year goals went and what my two-year goals are.