Book Notes: When Driving is Not an Option: Steering Away from Car Dependency by Anna Zivarts

When Driving Is Not an Option: Steering Away from Car Dependency by Anna Zivarts

Places Discussed

Various

Posted 2024-11-29

Book Notes by John December

In this book, Anna Zivarts describes what it is like for people who do not drive an automobile to get around. She identifies specific transit and infrastructure features that can help them and calls for a coalition of nondrivers to advocate for better access to transportation. Her central argument is that by understanding the experiences of nondrivers, we can transform our transit planning, land use, mobility choices, and transportation systems to serve all people and move away from dependency on automobiles.

The author summarizes the book's main points on page 78:

"What nondrivers need--what we all need--is a transformation of the way we organize mobility, housing, and public space so that we have options for getting around that do not rely on driving a car."
"We need safe, connected places to walk, roll, and ride; transit that is as reliable as driving; and land use and remote access opportunities that reduce how much we have to travel."
"This transformation can move us away from the most harmful public health and climate impacts of automobility and start to create a more inclusive mobility system."

What I admire most about this book is that Zivarts focuses first and exclusively on those who cannot drive. Often, transit decisions are made by people who may not use transit very much or who may be highly car-dependent and see the world through the lens of automobility (an overt or unconscious bias toward accommodating and supporting automobile driving and storage over other options in nearly every decision, including inflicting health, safety, and environmental harm in order to accomodate automobiles (see also: Walker, Tapp, & Davis (2022)). Zivarts aims to understand and include those typically overlooked in transit planning. She advocates that nondrivers need to be part of decisions about transit planning, funding, building, and operational procedures.

Nondrivers Who Have No Other Option Can Help Lead Us Away from Car Dependency

Zivarts identifies herself as a "low-vision mom and nondriver," and builds out the book's first part by drawing on her experiences and many interviews with nondrivers. Two essential points of this first part are:

Nondrivers constitute a larger group of people than many people realize and they suffer more from inadequate infrastructure.
1. Estimating the number of nondrivers in the population is the first step in recognizing their importance. Census data and automobile and car registration data can provide estimates of the nondriving population. For example, the Wisconsin Department of Transportation formed a Non-Driver Advisory Committee in 2020 and asked for an estimated number of nondrivers as part of their initial work. Based on an analysis of driver's license holders, car registrations, and census data, an estimate is that 31% of Wisconsin's population are nondrivers (p. 80).
2. Describing nondriver groups raises awareness that there are more nondrivers than most people might realize. Nondrivers are not just people with disabilities or older adults but "a large and growing population of low-and middle-income working people who are ... nondrivers, many for economic reasons..." (p. 81). Denise Jess, co-chair of the Wisconsin Non-Driver Advisory Committee, stated that, as a nondriver, "It's important to know ... that you are not alone." (p. 81)
  Nondrivers include all the youth or older adults who may be out of range of having a driver's license, people who have lost their legal ability to drive, people who cannot drive a car for a variety of reasons, people who may be disabled, people who lack money to own or operate a car, or those who by choice do not wish to own or drive a car (pp. 10-20). By statistical analysis, nondrivers may be in households including immigrants, low-income, Black, Native American, or Native Alaskan people (pp. 12-33).
3. In addition to this nondriver population, there may be many more people who are currently car-dependent and hate it and who would gladly use transit, walk, or bicycle if transportation services, land use, and housing choices made it feasible.
4. Nondrivers also suffer from transit infrastructure shortcomings more than most people realize. Angie Schmitt describes what nondrivers face in her book, Right of Way: Race, Class, and the Silent Epidemic of Pedestrian Deaths in America (2020). Veronica O. Davis describes the dislocations in communities arising from transportation inequities in Inclusive Transportation: A Manifesto for Repairing Divided Communities (2023).
Nondrivers who have no choice need a seamless, safe transportation system and infrastructure that addresses their needs for affordable housing near transit stops close to critical destinations and amenities. Nondrivers need:
1. Sidewalks that provide smooth, seamless connections for travel to and from transit stops (p. 35).
2. Crosswalks that accommodate people by addressing issues of time, distance, geometry, surfaces, traffic enforcement, automobile driver obedience, construction, and other temporary or permanent barriers (p. 42).
3. Affordable housing close to transit stops of good frequency (p. 46).
4. Accommodation of individual needs that may extend from "door to door" to "hand to hand" mobility in order to reach needed destinations (p. 54).
5. Intercity buses and trains that mesh and connect with local transit so that people can get around seamlessly in their city and around their region (pp. 54-55).
6. Ride-hailing services or cabs that can accommodate special wheelchairs or scooters (pp. 65-67).
7. Housing that allows people to find joy in their living space and neighborhood that is close to useful destinations (p. 67), affordable (p. 68), and supports the chance to engage in social and local connections (pp. 73-75). (See also: the 15-minute city concept (Moreno, 2024).)
8. A serious questioning of the "kinetic elite" (p. 77) for whom a high degree of mobility and travel choices support privileges that the dominant culture may value, idolize, and support or subsidize through public spending, but which serves a level of mobility that others may not share in because of special needs, costs, or preferences.

A Coalition of Nondrivers Can Help Lead Us Away from Car Dependency

Next, Zivarts expands her coverage of the nondriver group to call for a broader coalition to support a change in our transportation landscape. This coalition can work on the second part of her title--advocating for policies that "[steer] away from car dependency." She had been careful in the opening chapters to explain that her focus was first on involuntary non-drivers. She knows that many enthusiastic urbanists, transit advocates, and other nondrivers have many mobility choices and have adopted car-lite or car-free living tactics. Zivarts welcomes the perspectives of all these non-drivers, and I respect that she first described those for whom "driving is not an option." The good news is that working to steer away from car dependency makes transit better for everybody.

Zivarts first makes an essential point about mobility: improving transit by focusing only on "providing drivers or vehicle access (such as autonomous vehicles)" are only "stopgaps [that] only further entrench us in car dependence." Thus, the solution is not to hide people who do not drive by placing them in pods or cars but to build robust systems of mobility that are not based solely on automobile or even vehicle use. She states her vision: "... I challenge us to prioritize more difficult and larger-scale transformations... Ultimately, if we want our children to live in a world where car ownership and the ability to drive aren't determinants of their access to work, school, services, and community, we can't keep enabling the status quo." (pp. 78-79). (See Autonorama: The Illusory Promise of High-Tech Driving (2021) for an account of how technofuturism and fantasies about automotive technology have repeatedly thwarted approaches to enact people-first, competent-level technology for mobility).

She introduces a simple but powerful idea: to "normalize nondriving" (p. 28). The expansion of transit depends on it not being considered "weird" or noncompliant with "normal" people. (See also: Why I Walk: Taking a Step in the Right Direction by Kevin Klinkenberg.) While transit is used only by a minority of people in most areas, a large coalition of nondrivers (and part-time drivers) can make nondriving modes of mobility an accepted practice that is considered normal.

Zivarts describes what all nondrivers need:

All nondrivers must be recognized and valued as members of our society by first acknowledging that their numbers are not insignificant. As discussed earlier, the Wisconsin Department of Transportation estimates that 31% of the population are nondrivers.
Safe spaces for nondrivers must extend from people's homes to transit stops and then to the final destinations. There must be continuous sidewalks (p. 82), slowed speed of vehicles (p. 82), crosswalks that allow people enough time to cross (p. 83), an assessment of gaps in a connected transportation layer for pedestrians such as through the OpenSidewalks project (p. 84), standards for pathways and transit services such as with the Transportation Data Equity Initiative (p. 85), and a pedestrian level of transit stress (LTS) measure (p. 86).
Connections for nondrivers must be in-place, seamless, in repair, and with accountably for responsible maintenance (pp. 87-89). Multi-use trails, such as for bicycling or cross-country skiing, can also be adjusted to provide important pedestrian connectivity, particularly where people in rural areas are otherwise doomed to try to walk on rural roads without shoulders (pp. 88-89). Bicycle paths and paths for nondrivers can take inspiration from the Guidelines for Accessible Building Blocks for Bicycle Facilities and the Getting to the Curb report (p. 90).
Automobiles must be rated in terms of their danger to people outside of those vehicles (p. 90) rather than only in terms of safety for their occupants.
Transit should be as reliable as driving (p. 91) by unraveling the view that transit is only provided as a public service for people who lack a car--a "racist, ableist, and classist" assumption that perpetuates shortchanging public transit (p. 92). Instead, transit should provide accessible and dignified options (p. 92) and ensure that mass transit service is accessible to riders who need elevators. This should be done matching the level for existing for airports, buses, or rail stations (p. 92). Transit-only lanes can improve reliability, for example, and enforcement of cars parked in these lanes (p. 95).
Transit should be funded fully (pp. 95-106), including for intercity routes and on-demand services where it makes sense. The assumption that transit should "pay for itself" (p. 97) must be challenged, mainly because no other publicly-funded infrastructure faces this same scrutiny (not highways, bridges, roads, public sidewalks, or public parks). The insistence that transit should "pay for itself" represents ignorance at best and a bias based on an ideology of automobility and double standards at worst.
Support should be provided for equipment people use to "bike, scoot, and roll" (p. 106) requiring many types of storage at homes, apartments, businesses, and public facilities.
Remote access and delivery services can be built on the expansion of these services during the global COVID-19 pandemic. Innovations in remote work, home delivery, and contactless payments (pp. 111-113) created a variety of systems that can support people working from home.
An ecosystem of housing and transit services can provide closer, better-connected, and more seamless mobility between where people live and work and need to go for essential services (p 113).
Parking must be reformed so that urban land can be used more efficiently (p. 114). (See also: The High Cost of Free Parking (2005, 2011), Parking and the City (2018), Parking Reform Made Easy (2013), Carmageddon: How Cars Make Life Worse and What to Do About It (2023), Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World (2023), Rethinking Parking (2024), and the Parking Reform Network).
Housing must be supplied in ways that help people live close to where they work. (p. 116; see also: Escaping the Housing Trap: The Strong Towns Response to the Housing Crisis (2024) and Arbitrary Lines: How Zoning Broke the American City and How to Fix It (2022)).
The movement of people must be considered in the Level of Service (LOS) calculations, which have historically considered only vehicles, as exemplified by the Bellingham, Washington multimodel level of service methodology (p. 116).
Transit-oriented development (TOD) policies can place taller buildings near high-frequency transit (p. 118).

Zivarts concludes this section with the following: "Nondrivers must be incorporated into the decision-making and daily operations of the structures that govern our land use and transportation systems" (p. 118).

The Expertise of Nondrivers Can Help Lead Us Away from Car Dependency

In Chapter 4, Zivarts shows that nondrivers have deep expertise that can inform transit planning, infrastructure, and operations. Their expertise should be included in planning, operations, and many other aspects of creating a better transportation system for everyone.

Nondrivers can help transit professionals "see beyond the car" (p. 124). Many engineers, planners, or transit officials may (ironically) rarely use transit and may themselves be car-dependent. This introduces a terrible bias permeating transit planning and operations: it may be primarily designed, built, and operated by people who may rarely use or depend on it.
Urban planning and engineering education needs to include the needs of nondrivers. This includes licensure and credentialing bodies such as Engineer in Training (EIT) (p. 126).
Walking/rolling audits should be performed to evaluate gaps in transit access. The AARP walk audit toolkit (p. 127) is an example.
Elected officials who make transit decisions also need to see beyond the car and draw from the perspectives of non-drivers (p. 130). They might even use transit exclusively for mobility for a while to see how it works (pp. 133-134).
Transit agencies need to share decision-making power with nondrivers and the young people who will live in their long-range plans (pp. 135-137). This inclusion includes hiring nondrivers in leadership roles (p. 138).
Nondrivers show a particularly keen ability to plan trips carefully because they absolutely need to access transit within their abilities in a safe, reliable way in a uninterrupted path from their home to transit stops, at transit transfer points, and on to their final transit stop and then to their destination (and back) in a timely, safe, and cost-accessible manner.
This planning includes examining options for time, pathways, alternative routes, payment systems, costs, transfers, safe places to wait, assistive needs, multiple backup options, food and restrooms, contacts for emergencies, and backup friends to call for a ride (pp. xiii-xxi; pp. 34-77).
Examining this planning process and the deep knowledge of barriers and problems that nondrivers continuously face could greatly inform transit agencies about their customers' needs.

We Can Redefine Mobility

In her conclusion, Anna Zivarts relates the experience of nondrivers to the historical changes in American mobility in the past centuries. She quotes Peter Norton (author of Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City (2008) and Autonorama: The Illusory Promise of High-Tech Driving (2021)), who stated: "The proliferation of driving and the glib equation of mobility with mobility by car actually excluded an enormous fraction of the population" (p. 144). Norton further observes that automobile bias has removed many options for "people who had been well served by walkability, by buses, by streetcars, by commuter rail lines, passenger rail..." (p. 144). Nicholas Bloom's book, The Great American Transit Disaster, tells the story of how, in America, automobility reduced density that supports transit and worked to segregate communities (p. 144). Zivarts concludes on p. 145:

"Untangling ourselves from a dependence on mobility based on driving is not going to be easy. It's going to take organizing the biggest, most powerful coalition of people for whom automobility doesn't work. And that coalition should be centered on the needs of, and led by, nondrivers, who are the most deeply vested in rethinking a system that doesn't work for us." (p. 145).

Anna Zivarts's accomplishment in this book stems from her close understanding of nondrivers who have no other choices. They face innumerable barriers put up by engineers, planners, and officials who routinely ignore the needs of people using transit because of an automobile-centric experience, values, and academic training. Anna Zivarts' voice as a transit advocate is well-grounded in the nondriver experience, and this book is a vital account of her close understanding of the many people she interviewed and the millions of people who daily seek mobility as nondrivers.

You Can Help Lead Us Away from Car Dependency

Zivarts includes a handy list of what you can do (pp. 147-150), and I summarize it here:

If you drive, seek ways to use a different mode for some trips--walking, bicycling, public transit--where you can. Look to utilize destinations close to home, combine trips, and challenge yourself and others to consider shifting modes away from automobile use for routine trips.
Keep the sidewalk clear at your home, business, or other location. Understand that people walking, using assistive wheelchairs or scooters, and others absolutely need unencumbered access to sidewalks, including curb ramps and crosswalks. Report illegally parked cars and other obstructions blocking pedestrian pathways—these are insurmountable barriers to the safe use of sidewalks and connecting pathways.
Support transit by finding ways to use it where you live now and plan your future home locations in more transit-accessible, walkable locations. Show political support for leaders who support transit and its increased effectiveness and funding. Teach your children about different transit modes--walking, bicycling, and public transit by bus, streetcar, train, and subway. As you age out of driving, make plans to locate your home in an area where you can have independent mobility by walking and using public transit.
Make room for people who are routinely ignored in transit decisions. For transportation issues, the irony is that transportation users might be solicited for comments, but engineers or planners, schooled in car-first transit ideology, sweep aside concerns and comments that could make transit better. Make sure those who are not in the room are considered when making decisions.

I Have Moved Away from Car Dependency

I am a nondriver and characterize myself as "car-free" because I see many benefits of not owning or operating a car. I have had the privilege to earn my living independently and live car-free for decades. Since I no longer have a driver's license (by choice, getting a state identification card instead), I can empathize with people who have no option to drive. I can also understand those who would like to reduce their need to drive. I have maintained information files covering car-free and car-lite tips.

After reading Anna Zivarts' book, I see that nondrivers need a more seamless transit experience. We need land use planning and decisions that place affordable housing and other essential destinations proximate to transit—that is, right at or near transit stops. We need infrastructure, vehicles, sidewalks, paths, and land use that supports door-to-vehicle-to-door mobility and smooths over and heals the gaps in access and pathways for people using assistive devices, wheelchairs, scooters, as well as all of us who make their way to transit--walking, biking, or rolling.

Someone who does not drive should be able to live a full life with independence and dignity through mobility access from their home to their essential and critical destinations. It is challenging to implement this seamlessness because of the practices of separating land use decisions from transit, the incessant bias of automobility placing automobile travel and parking as the top priority, and narrow-minded thinking about transit as viewing transit as a simple problem of bringing people "from A to B" in as fast a manner as possible, without considering at all how people can live nearby to get to A, from B, and the land use decisions around A and B, and community values other than speed that make that transit accessible to all and useful.

I use skills in living car-free every day. I walk and take a streetcar for most of my trips. I plan my transit trips locally and in the region using Google Maps, transit Web sites, apps, and real-time tracking of streetcars and buses. I use my knowledge about local sites, neighborhoods, and conditions. I keep a keen eye on alternatives for when a transit vehicle, construction delays, or detours could change transit availability and alternative routes and modes of mobility. I watch the weather and have suitable clothing for rain, colder, or warmer weather.

The most significant factor that has helped me live car-free is my choice of home location: close to the features I travel to regularly, close to stops in a network of county bus routes, and near a streetcar route connecting to an intermodal (regional bus and rail) station. I picked a place to live in a neighborhood near the historic heart of the city, where streetcar service carved out the streets more than a century ago (Canfield, 1972). This historic grid of streets forms the "good bones" of a car-free life. My life very much comports with the idea of the 15-minute city concept (Moreno, 2024).

In my blog, I have described my experience riding the local streetcar, including years of not even riding in an automobile. As part of my study, I have read and prepared notes files on books covering transportation and urbanism. I can see correspondences with Zivarts book. Susan Handy outlines new assumptions for transportation issues in Shifting Gears (2023); Veronica O. Davis describes a foundation for community repair based on equity in transportation in Inclusive Transportation: A Manifesto for Repairing Divided Communities (2023); Charles Marohn rethinks the engineering approach to transit in the book Confessions of a Recovering Engineer; and Megan Kimble uncovers the origins of the conflict between communities and highway builders in City Limits: Infrastructure, Inequality, and the Future of America's Highways (2024). The changes in attitude in urban and transportation planning may open up more opportunities to better serve nondrivers--and everyone--in our country.

Transit planning, land use planning, and infrastructure--when these are separated from each other and from thinking about the health, equity, livability, and prosperity needs of the community and transit riders, we see problems many people experience in using transit or living in urban areas. By looking at the big picture of housing, transit, living, and destinations and origins of all kinds covering all life's activities, we can begin to remake transit, steer away from car dependency, and serve all people.