Booked on Planning

When Driving Is Not An Option

• Booked on Planning • Season 4 • Episode 2

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Have you ever stopped to consider how you would get through your day if driving wasn't an option? We get into this question during our conversation with Anna Zivarts, author of "When Driving Is Not An Option: Steering Away From Car Dependency." Anna's journey, shaped by living with nystagmus, unveils the challenges and daily realities faced by non-drivers in a predominantly car-dependent society. From disabled individuals to those who simply can't afford a vehicle, Anna sheds light on an often-overlooked demographic and their need for equitable transportation solutions. Her insights encourage a deeper understanding and empathy towards fostering inclusive urban environments.

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Stephanie Rouse:

This episode is brought to you by Marvin Planning Consultants. Marvin Planning Consultants, established in 2009, is committed to their clients and professional organizations. Their team of planners has served on chapter division and national committees, including as the Nebraska Chapter President. In addition, they are committed to supporting their chapter in various APA divisions. You're listening to the booked on planning podcast, a project of the nebraska chapter of the american planning association.

Stephanie Rouse:

In each episode, we dive into how cities function by talking with authors on housing, transportation and everything in between. Join us as we get Booked On Planning. Welcome back, bookworms, to another episode of Booked On Planning. In this episode, we talk with Anna Zivarts about her book when Driving Is Not An Option Steering Away From Car Dependency. This was just one of many great transportation books published by Island Press last year that we were able to cover on the show. We tied into a lot of the concepts that are in those other books as well, like building safe, accessible streets and valuing moving people over moving cars, and Anna mentions a focus to try to tie in disability advocate groups into the work of transportation advocacy working towards better built streets.

Jennifer Hiatt:

It was such an eye-opening book I'd like to try to do the week without driving challenge with some of Lincoln's city leaders. The conversation really made me think about how car dependent I am and how much harder things would be if I couldn't just hop in my car.

Stephanie Rouse:

What really stuck with me in this episode was finding a way to value people outside a car as people who need to get places.

Jennifer Hiatt:

It seems so glaringly obvious that we would plan this way, but we don't, and the number of non-drivers is higher than you might think when you think about children, elderly, disabled people. So let's get into our conversation with author Anna Zivarts about her book when Driving is Not an Option Steering Away from Car Dependency.

Stephanie Rouse:

Anna, welcome to the Bookdown Planning Podcast. We're happy to have you on to talk about your book when Driving is Not an Option Steering Away from Car Dependency. Can you start off by talking about what spurred you to write this book?

Anna Zivarts:

Yeah, hi, thanks for having me. So this book comes both out of my personal experience and then work I got to do at Disability Rights Washington, which is where I work now. But I was born with an eye condition called nystagmus, and it's a neurological condition. It makes my eyes shake all the time when I'm conscious, and they don't really know totally why it does that, what causes it, but it reduces my visual acuity and so I do not see well enough to drive a car, among other things, and so that's really shaped the direction of my life in many ways, both in you know where I can live, where I choose to live, and the kind of work I do, and the work I do connected to the disability community.

Stephanie Rouse:

And in the introduction of the book you point out that a third of people in the US can't drive, and this population includes people who are disabled, can't afford to drive, are minority, immigrant, seniors and youth, and it's often challenging to get a good count on this population, but it's the first step in valuing the needs of non-drivers. How have you been able to successfully account for this population and the work that you've done? How have you been able?

Anna Zivarts:

to successfully account for this population and the work that you've done. So this started from me growing up in a semi-rural part of Washington state and feeling like when I turned 16 and I couldn't get my driver's license, I was the only one right. I didn't really know other adults who didn't drive, or I didn't think I did. And then I moved to New York City after college and it felt so exciting for it to be totally normalized, not to have a car and not to get places driving yourself, and that was lovely for me, to be surrounded by so many other transit riders and people who walked and rolled and biked, took the subway to get places, and so when I had a kid, I decided I wanted to move back closer to family, had the opportunity to move back here to Washington State, where I am now, and I remember reaching out to people here trying to figure out does everyone drive? Because that was my experience growing up here Is it going to be possible for me to get around without driving?

Anna Zivarts:

And you know, heard from some folks who were living here who were riding bikes and taking the bus that it was possible some folks who were living here who were riding bikes and taking the bus that it was possible.

Anna Zivarts:

But it wasn't really until I started working at a disability organization when I met lots of other disabled folks who didn't drive and couldn't drive, that I started to see, oh my gosh, there are so many non-drivers out there. And then I started reflecting more on the work I had done for many years in New York with labor unions, with service worker unions, where many of the members were low wage immigrants, lots of low wage immigrant women who couldn't afford cars and also didn't have driver's licenses. And so I started to think, you know, gosh, there are so many of us. And then you think about kids, you think about people aging out of driving, and that's sort of when I started to realize that there was this sort of unseen and unrecognized need for transportation access that didn't involve driving, and it wasn't just people who wanted to bike places out of sort of you know, the fun of doing that or the desire to be environmental. There were many people who didn't have that choice.

Stephanie Rouse:

It's interesting you point out, once you started looking, you started seeing all these other people, because I've noticed that when I started paying attention to who is actually biking year I've started to notice like there are a lot of people actually out biking. The perception is that there's not people biking for commuting, but once you start to look you see that there are plenty of people out there choosing to do that or that, have to do that.

Anna Zivarts:

Exactly right and you start to notice that in all sorts of ways you know the people biking and it's probably like in my neighborhood. You know, if you've got a nice fancy e-bike you're going to take the relaxing like bike routes but those are all really through hilly areas and so if you can't afford an e-bike you're going to be riding the sidewalks on the arterials because those are much flatter, and every time I'm down there trying to cross this big gnarly arterial in my neighborhood I see people biking out of necessity.

Anna Zivarts:

Or, you know, when you see the like paths worn in the shoulder and the side of busy roads where there's no sidewalk, and you're like okay, a lot of people walk here and we may not see them all the time, but clearly there are people who are using this part of our infrastructure out of necessity who are not recognizing as valid users of this transportation system or, you know, rewarding with a system that really is designed around their needs.

Jennifer Hiatt:

And one of the points that you make in the book that struck me is the apps like Google Earth actually aren't really all that helpful in planning out walking and biking routes, which I would have never thought of. So can you explain why that is and what communities can do to help reduce this gap in data information?

Anna Zivarts:

Oh my, gosh the data gap.

Anna Zivarts:

It's huge, right, and it's so frustrating, you know, because we've had Google Maps now for a long time, but it's really just based on car routes, and so when you take a pedestrian route or you ask for a pedestrian route, what it's doing is just telling you you know the car route at a slower speed, and that doesn't work.

Anna Zivarts:

If you need to make sure that you have an accessible route, for example, with curb ramps or with accessible pedestrian, you know the audible tactile signals to get across an intersection, and so there are folks out there doing really great data collection around trying to map accessibility and sidewalks, but it's not universal yet and you know there's not the expectation that it's something that our transportation departments collect and maintain the way they do data about roadways for cars, and that part, for me, is so frustrating because you know they could, and it's not like it's rocket science, like the technology exists now. There's lots of different ways to do it, but they're worried about the liability if they have all this data that shows missing sidewalks or missing curb ramps and someone gets hurt or someone wants to bring an ADA complaint.

Anna Zivarts:

They don't want to be responsible, and so they'd rather often rather not have that data which is, then how do you go out and make a plan to fix the gaps if you don't actually know where those gaps are?

Stephanie Rouse:

Yeah, one of the frustrating things as well is like with our bike network in our downtown core. There's areas where you're not supposed to ride on the sidewalk, but we also have a lot of one-way streets and most people rely on Google to map you where you're going. You're not going to look at a bike map and say I'm going to take this route and I tried mercilessly to get Google to update their routing so they would stop sending bicyclists down the wrong way of a one-way where they weren't supposed to be on the sidewalk, and it's just like pulling teeth to work with Google if you have the data, even to get them to update it, because a lot of people rely on that versus another separate app. Or if they were just trying to go to GIS and on a web-based website to find a route.

Anna Zivarts:

Yeah, it is so frustrating that Google hasn't figured out biking stuff better, and I think they just haven't put the racehorses there, but like the bike to transit piece like that. That's not a routable option on Google is just ridiculous, cause it's. It's mostly how I get around now if I'm biking somewhere, and yeah, but there's no way to sort of figure it out with the transit connections. Yeah, that is frustrating. I have to say.

Anna Zivarts:

the transit app I've become a fan of it doesn't always have all the data on local transit schedules as much as Google does in parts of our state, but for Seattle it's pretty good.

Stephanie Rouse:

So in the chapter on what non-drivers need, you talk about ADA transition plans, but that many of these lack minimum requirements and there's really no accountability for making them do that. Minimum requirements and there's really no accountability for making them do that. I know in our community there's some funding concerns with the newly adapted PROAG the Public Right-of-Way Accessibility Guidelines for Non-Transportation Listeners because it has so much more force behind it than the last version. It seems hopeful that there'll be a lot of meaningful upgrades in our public right-of-way as a result. Do you agree or what do you think about the latest PROAG?

Anna Zivarts:

I'm excited that it finally got passed and it's you know, it's there I was actually.

Anna Zivarts:

You know it's funny because I was actually just working on a new op-ed this morning around ADA transition plans and we've been lucky in that we've had a very proactive and supportive state DOT who last September put out notice to all the local jurisdictions that they pass through federal funding to that those local jurisdictions are going to are required were required by January 1st, to submit transition plans to the state DOT for evaluation to make sure they met minimum requirements. They don't, they're not going to be eligible for for federal funding.

Anna Zivarts:

So I'm hoping I was actually just put an email out to our state DOT to check in about what percentage of the local jurisdictions have submitted those plans and have met the requirements. But you know, many state DOTs aren't doing that and there are many communities that don't have these transition plans or they don't have the data right. Going back to the data question, they actually don't know where they're missing curb ramps or where their curb ramps are not compliant. And with the PROAG updates, I think there's going to be a lot more work to do too with updating all of this.

Jennifer Hiatt:

So I was surprised to learn the ADA assessments for pedestrian environments don't look at things like sidewalk slope, minimum effective width or even like lighting for the environment. And why do you think there are such glaring gaps in the ADA requirements? Like that's the whole point of the ADA, to my understanding, and how do we fix that?

Anna Zivarts:

Yeah, I mean. So I am not an attorney and not an ADA compliance specialist, so I like to preface everything I say by that, because I you know.

Anna Zivarts:

Part of that is because I think that, while the ADA has helped us in many ways make our environments and our communities, our institutions, more accessible, there's a lot that it just doesn't cover, and you know part from when the era in which it was written, and partially because standards evolve, best practices evolve and these things are expensive and people didn't want them to be included Like you think about. You know how cab companies got carve outs around ADA accessibility when the ADA passed and now how that's impacted the accessibility of ride hail and potentially the accessibility of robo-taxis. That comes down to the industries getting carve-outs. I think there's lots of other ways we can create change, though, outside of that sort of legal enforcement. It's up to us to do the organizing and create the political pressure to demand change, because, at the end of the day, like these changes that we need are so expensive that it's going to take that political will to fund them.

Stephanie Rouse:

At least locally here in Lincoln, that's been really successful is when federal funding has ADA requirements tied to it. So we're getting a lot of bus stop upgrades because a certain percentage of our transit agencies funding has to be used towards ADA accessibility upgrades. And then, anytime we have a federal road project, we always are upgrading all of the curb ramps and any really bad sidewalks that are adjacent to that roadway to meet ADA standards. I'd like to think we would do it anyways, but I know that a big piece of that is the federal funding requirements that we have.

Anna Zivarts:

Yeah, no, and I think we could be doing that with all the pass-through dollars right, both federal and, if you have a state where it's possible to have the state make requirements around complete streets, for example, and funding that they give to local projects, right, that it's possible to create more pedestrian-friendly environments, more accessible environments. But I think the other flip side of that is and something that we've run into a lot here in Washington state is okay, fine, you have this like eight lane highway and you have lovely sidewalks with lovely ADA compliant curb ramps, but it's still this awful pedestrian environment because of the noise, because of the high speed traffic, because of the inherent risk of crossing in that situation or just being hit by a car that leaves the roadway. And so I think if we really want to talk about accessibility, we have to talk about reducing vehicle miles traveled and reducing those environments where we have a lot of high speed, high volume cars, so that we create less car dependent communities.

Jennifer Hiatt:

So one of my favorite comments in transportation planning which I'm not a transportation planner, so I'm Stephanie is educating me, but we talk about cars leaving the roadway like they weren't driven off of the road. Yes, they have, they have. No, no, whatever, they just left the roadway. Yeah somebody drove them off the road. That was an action.

Anna Zivarts:

I think there's two sides of that, though, right, because it's like you know. There's the like okay, the drivers are sure the drivers are doing dangerous things, but also we like systemically design these roads for cars to go really fast, right? So it's both Absolutely.

Jennifer Hiatt:

It is both Absolutely. And speaking of expensive. Another challenge to identify is sidewalk maintenance. Most cities take the position that sidewalk maintenance is the property owner's responsibility Lincoln, ironically for repairs not necessarily like snow scooping and whatever, but for repairing it's supposed to be the city's responsibility, but we have no money to do it. This is generally a problem because people really aren't proactive about their sidewalk maintenance. What other models for sidewalk maintenance have you come across or think are good models that cities could implement?

Anna Zivarts:

I mean, this one's so tricky because it comes down to funding, right, and if the city doesn't have funding to just fully be responsible for it, then how do you transition to that system? I know Denver right passed a big transportation levy but then everything got more expensive and so then they had to sort of reevaluate the assessments and extend the timeline for when their sidewalk network was going to be complete and repaired pretty dramatically. In Seattle we have huge problems. It is the individual property owner's responsibility. But there's equity implications, right, if you're saying, okay, this homeowner, who's a retiree, doesn't have any income to do this, and then has this giant tree root uplift situation that they are responsible for paying for. So I like the idea.

Anna Zivarts:

I think Oakland and some other places have tried with liens put on the property and then when the property is sold, that funding is collected and so as a way to get some funding but without having to put people in a hard spot in the short term. But you know that's more complicated. I guess in my dream world it would be you know, something that the city is responsible for, but I guess you've seen in Lincoln that it's not right that there's. If there's not the funding to do that, then it just doesn't happen and it's not being prioritized. So I think you know what we see just sort of broadly maintenance of our all our roadway systems is a problem where we're continuing to expand highway capacity and fund new sorts of infrastructure projects to expand capacity, without having the funding really to maintain and repair what we need to to keep the existing system running. And I just want us to keep on thinking that the sidewalks are part of that existing system and part of what we should be calculating when we think about that upkeep and that backlog of maintenance.

Stephanie Rouse:

And one issue that we have here with new sidewalk construction is that is what with single family or residential subdivisions is the sidewalk gets put in when the house gets put in and it is part of their fees when they do that. So if you have, like, a house that doesn't get put in for 10 years, it's like the last in the subdivision you'll have a break in the sidewalk network. Or we have a lot of older neighborhoods where the lot never developed, so the sidewalks go along and then all of a sudden disappear and because no one developed it, it never got put in and the city doesn't pay to put those in. And then you get the whole issue of homeowners that don't want sidewalks in front of their homes if they weren't there to begin with because they don't want to maintain those sidewalks or plow the snow or anything like that. So it's always so many issues with what seems to be a super simple concept.

Anna Zivarts:

Oh, it's interesting. We have a lot of streets in Seattle that don't have sidewalks at all and you know, people then use that space for car parking and so when it's not that, cars couldn't still be parked on the streets if they built the sidewalks, but then the roadway would be narrower and cause slower traffic, which is my street is lucky, and it's actually kind of unique to Seattle. I haven't seen this a lot of other places where they're like de facto one way streets because of street parking and so cars really have to slow down because you're always are going to be encountering another car coming the other direction and have to kind of pull into an open spot to let that other car pass. So it's beautiful sort of natural traffic calming, but it can only happen if the sidewalks get built out and the street gets narrowed by cars parking on both sides.

Jennifer Hiatt:

So yeah, my street here in Lincoln is like that too. If cars are parked it's just a one way, and my parents are from a rural area and they come in there no-transcript.

Anna Zivarts:

Great, or just. You know we're home a lot with their cars, and then, as people started going back into the office, the cars were all gone during the day and I noticed, you know, cars going through much more quickly, and so we have this thing called chip drop. There's so many trees in our area and people you know need trees trimmed or taken down because they've fallen down, and so arborists will go around and they'll have these trucks full of wood chips that are free, that they're just trying to get rid of, and so you could put in this request through this app to get free loads of wood chips and logs. Whenever the traffic gets too much on our street, I'll put one in front of our house as traffic calming, because it acts like a car that I don't have to be able to slow down cars a little bit and force them to yield. That's genius, it's great. I don't know how many cities this exists in and you need a lot of trees to make it work, but it is brilliant.

Stephanie Rouse:

So we just interviewed Gray Ennis on his book Dark PR, which is all about industry framing and how it's counterproductive to positive change, and in it he talked about real change coming from organized coalitions fighting at the top level, and you say something similar about needing to build a big enough coalition to demand change. How can advocates either start or plug into this type of work? As it relates to transportation advocacy?

Anna Zivarts:

I mean what I'm excited about is the potential to bring in some of the disability community into active transportation and transit organizing, because I think often disabled advocates are separate or separated or doing other things and while these issues are super important to us, we may not be connected to, say, a transit or biking or walking or safe streets or, you know, safe routes to school sort of advocacy spaces, and so how do you bring those connections together?

Anna Zivarts:

And that's been exciting work for me and part of the work that has happened has been through this Week Without Driving Challenge that we initially launched here in Washington state. It's gone four years now. Two years ago we partnered with America Walks to be able to allow it to grow nationally and America Walks has really taken it and run with it and last year we had participants in all 50 states through that partnership and that's a way for local groups who want to highlight what it's like in their communities to get around without driving can partner with disabled folks, disabled organizations, to highlight those experiences and bring them forward and educate elected leaders and other decision makers about the gaps in the system. You know where that bus doesn't run, what happens when it stops running at 5 or 6 pm on Saturday nights? How do you get home from dinner?

Anna Zivarts:

how do you get somewhere on Sunday if there's not Sunday service or if the sidewalks aren't plowed, or you know there's no lights and you're trying to get across the street to a bus stop in the dark with your kids, Like all these experiences that those of us who can't drive have all the time but people who have that option to drive may not realize, and so that's been part of that coalition building have that option to drive may not realize, and so that's been part of that coalition building.

Jennifer Hiatt:

One of the examples that you highlight is the city of Bellingham's success with reconfiguring the way that they measured the movement of people, which I never really thought about. So can you explain what they did and why you felt that was a good example?

Anna Zivarts:

Sure, yeah, I met Chris Como, who's a planner with the city of Bellingham for a long time and now works as a consultant. But you know they were having a lot of growth.

Anna Zivarts:

A lot of Washington state has had a lot of growth and you know a lot new people coming in and pressure right to continue to expand their street widths and their street capacity because there was traffic and he was really, I think, instrumental in helping folks there think about well, okay, traffic can be a good thing, because we, you know, we want it to be safe to walk and roll around our communities and traffic slows things down a little bit.

Anna Zivarts:

And also traffic means, you know, that we're a vibrant community, that people want to be here and with that vibrancy, you know it's okay if it takes you a little longer at rush hour to get through town. But that, I think, is something that we've struggled with a lot in Washington state and, I think, a lot of places in the West where people sort of came and they weren't very densely populated, they weren't big cities yet, and then, as growth has happened and we've had incredible population growth and incredible wealth growth, all of that change has really been challenging for folks to accept that we are transitioning from small towns and smaller communities into large cities and we need to prepare to get around differently and to be in a sort of a different, a different built environment because we have grown so much.

Jennifer Hiatt:

You know they were like well, everybody should be considered. Traffic and how everybody moves is important, and like isn't that the worst duh moment that every planner should have? But I don't think enough planners have had that yet.

Anna Zivarts:

Oh my gosh, I know right, and we are a very tech-friendly town. Here in Seattle, I was just blue sky. What are we calling it Bleeding yesterday about? Our mayor was quoted in this article in the tech media about how Amazon has required everyone to go back to work five days a week and everyone's really worried about what that's going to do for traffic volumes in our city, and he was like, well, AI is going to solve it and it just.

Anna Zivarts:

You know, I think this idea that AI and the AI he was referring to was our intelligent traffic signals that you know, can only count people moving in vehicles. They don't have a way of measuring people moving outside of vehicles yet, based on cell phone signals and the movement of them in cars, but it doesn't work if you're not in a car with you know your pace, and so, yeah, just that, yeah, we can have this whole system based around moving cars and increasing, you know, their vehicle throughput, and that's what we're going to measure as success. As a city, even a city with very explicit goals around climate and vehicle miles, travel reductions and Vision Zero we're still going to spend a lot of money on these intelligent traffic signals that just value car throughput.

Stephanie Rouse:

And the reliance on AI to fix everything or things like EVs are going to be the solution to everything. It doesn't change anything about how the current system is operating, and it's clearly not operating well when there's just a rise, a crazy amount of rise and deaths of pedestrian and bicyclists year over year.

Anna Zivarts:

Yeah, no, and part of that is like not counting right, like not valuing people outside of cars as people who need to go places, and that goes back to that, I think, what we were talking about at the beginning with non-drivers, and just like counting non-drivers as people who have valid mobility needs. And I guess I don't know if you want to get like all dark, but someone I know, an advocate here in Washington state, who is low vision, like I am, was crossing a street in December with a friend of his haven't seen, you know, the police reports yet, but a driver almost hit them. They got in an argument with the driver. The driver got out and assaulted my friend and my friend then died as a result of those injuries and it just it makes me so angry and it particularly makes me angry and that the devaluing of people who are moving outside of vehicles like that they don't have a right to be on the street feels, feels really hard. Oh, it's just been on my mind. On my mind.

Stephanie Rouse:

Yeah, no, I totally understand the amount of times that biking with traffic and a car gets too close or gets aggressive, and just how angry it makes me that they don't value the lives of people around them. They don't understand the risks that everyone else outside of a vehicle takes. It's just, it baffles me. I think one of the more impactful ways to make change is getting elected officials on board and getting them to understand why we need to make change, because we can ask for better infrastructure all day long or try and implement complete streets programs, but it really comes down to local elected officials, which is why I thought the Week Without Driving campaign is so impactful and it seems to have been successful in the communities where they've gotten their elected leaders to try this out for an entire week, because they understand what's going on. How have communities been able to convince their officials to participate in these kind of activities?

Anna Zivarts:

Yeah, I mean it's a lift right for a lot of electeds because so many of our communities are so car dependent and you know even our electeds here that participated the very first year, I think you know we went to the people who were already sort of you know the transit supporters and the bike folks and even they.

Anna Zivarts:

There's a council member, her name's Claudia Balducci, here in King County and she participated the first year and I think her takeaway was wow, like I actually thought I could totally do this and it would be easy.

Anna Zivarts:

But I am used to when there's a trip that's inconvenient or a dark, or I have to take my kids somewhere on the weekend with soccer equipment, like that, those sorts of trips she would drive and she said to actually do all her trips for the week was eye-opening and I think so that that piece I think is really valuable for folks who are already our allies, to get them to understand that it's not just the easy trips, that there are people in their communities that need to do this for all trips and it's those, you know, marginal trips that aren't so easy or fun or comfortable that we need to be figuring out.

Anna Zivarts:

The other piece that's been surprising and I think encouraging for me with this is the places where we've had elected leaders join us who perhaps aren't already allies, and a lot of the times that's because they have a family member who is a non-driver, who is disabled or can't drive for other reasons, and so are already sort of empathetic and sympathetic to what we're asking. And so that's been, I think, an end to places where people don't see themselves as, like you know, part of the bike lobby. I'm particularly excited about how we expand that sort of outreach and really deepen some of the connections with disability organizations that haven't seen themselves in sort of this advocacy space before perhaps, but this is a way, a way in and a way for disabled community members to build relationships with elected leaders.

Jennifer Hiatt:

Another way to have change occur is to change how we're educating people throughout this. But I know I didn't really have hardly a transportation class and certainly it didn't focus on disability mobility at all. Stephanie, I don't know if you had anything, nope.

Stephanie Rouse:

It was an elected and I did not elect to be a transportation planner back then. It's fair.

Jennifer Hiatt:

So why do you think urban planning and engineering schools have so far failed to consider this kind of accessibility? I mean, we talk about walkability all the time, but schools don't seem to be making the connection. So how can we help those schools bridge that gap? Oh my gosh.

Anna Zivarts:

I mean, I do feel like part of this comes down to like valuing non-drivers and, first of all, recognizing that non-drivers exist and like I think there's this notion okay, they exist, but their children are old people and those people are just in this like liminal state. They're only going to be there. Young people are very old people for a very little time and so therefore, we can write them off and actually recognizing right that there's always a lot of young people.

Anna Zivarts:

There's always a lot of people in our communities that have aged out of driving, and there are also people for whom you know, like myself, who will never drive, with disabilities, or people who really can't afford to, and maybe there's this aspirational idea that they're going to be able to afford a car, but that may or may not be the case anytime soon.

Anna Zivarts:

And so, rather than sort of projecting this driving this on everyone, let's really recognize that it's not working very well for so many people. And then there's other people who would prefer not to and choose not to, if they can set up their lives in a way that they don't have to drive so much. So I feel like it comes back to that like valuing non drivers, and I think you know, when I talk to audiences in particular like engineers or folks who work in DOTs, the biggest pushback I get is around this like but there can't actually be that many drivers right, like you're making this up like this is not real, and I think that is because it challenges this notion that we've designed this system. You know that works really well for driving and is failing a lot of other people. So I think that that's sort of the heart of why it's it's not taught.

Jennifer Hiatt:

Well, and I think that that's. It's so interesting that we don't value that, because disability is technically the one box that, like almost anyone, could potentially enter at any point in their life. You don't know what is going to happen. You could end up in that space where you're perfectly fine fine in quotation marks and then you have to learn how to navigate a new normal, and that number could just always be expanding. So why would we devalue what would be? A large population Doesn't make sense.

Anna Zivarts:

Yeah, I mean, there's so much fear about that happening, right, people don't want to think about it and you know, having had the opportunities to talk to some folks who recently lost the ability to drive or have had their licenses suspended for medical reasons, there is so much anger, right, when, when it happens and when that's not what you're expecting your life to have happen to you. And so, yeah, I mean, I think there's also a bit of like plugging the ears and you know, la, la, la la. Like, you know, I don't want to know, I don't want to think about this, because if it was to happen to me, my life, the way it's set up right now, would be so disrupted.

Jennifer Hiatt:

Well, in conclusion, while we would recommend everybody pick up a copy of your book and read through it because it's so eye opening, what are other books that you would recommend our readers check out?

Anna Zivarts:

Yeah, I love this question. When you said it to me, I was like oh my gosh, I'm gonna have to because I've been reading a lot lately.

Anna Zivarts:

And part of it's that I'm really interested in sort of understanding more about other low vision and blind authors. Yeah. And so that led me to a book called Exploding the Phone by Phil Lapsley. It's not a new book but it's about phone hacking and a lot of blind folks involved. But these sort of virtual communities in the beginning of what is sort of the web in many ways, I thought was super interesting. And then the other book I wanted to recommend, and this is a bit more- sort of standard planner.

Anna Zivarts:

Bartering with the Bones of their Dead by Laurie Arnold, and this one is from Washington state but I think could be and should be really interesting to folks nationally. Laurie Arnold's part of the Colville tribe and this is about sort of the history of that tribe.

Anna Zivarts:

They're in Northeast Washington state a huge part of our state actually, and tribal politics and, yeah, trying to make decisions about tribal governance, which I've been super interested in governance questions lately in the context of transit. But this, yeah, this one was just, you know, not a history that I had learned about growing up here in Washington.

Stephanie Rouse:

State and I think something that is well worth a read. I always love when our authors give us some kind of on the edges of planning books, because I think it really helps expand your understanding or your knowledge within the subject and gives you a better context.

Anna Zivarts:

Yeah, I wanted to give you some stuff that you know isn't just the latest. I mean, I love all my other Island Press authors and there's lots of good stuff, but I feel like everybody hears about those books already, so here's some some different ones Exactly.

Jennifer Hiatt:

We promise we are covering the Island Press books. They are great. They are great books.

Anna Zivarts:

Island Press is wonderful, I have to say. It's been just wonderful to work with a nonprofit press too that really is mission driven and has made it possible for me to get out there and get the word out and really help share the book. And you know, it's not all about the bottom line. So that's, that's great.

Stephanie Rouse:

Well, anna, thank you so much for joining us today to talk about your book. When driving is not an option steering away from car dependency.

Anna Zivarts:

Thank you guys. Thanks for the wonderful interview and take care.

Jennifer Hiatt:

We hope you enjoyed this conversation with Anna Zivart about her book when Driving is Not an Option Steering Away from Car Dependency. You can get your own copy through the publisher at Island Press, or click the link in our show notes to take you directly to our affiliate page. Remember to subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts, and please rate, review and share the show. Thank you for listening and we'll talk to you next time on Booked on Planning, thank you.

People on this episode

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Jennifer Hiatt

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Stephanie Rouse, AICP

Co-host