In this episode from the Talking Headways Podcast, Anna Zivarts leads a roundtable about the Week Without Driving event.
Talking Headways Shownotes
This week Talking Headways is being hosted by our friend Anna Zivarts who guides a panel of elected officials and advocates to talk about the impacts of the Week Without Driving. They look back at 2025’s activities and look forward to this year’s version.
Featured guests include:
Arizona State Senator Analise Ortiz (Referenced Videos on TikTok and Instagram)
Rochester MN City Council Member Nick Miller
Alice Hilton and Quinn Mulholland Living Streets Lexington
Kai Hall of Greater Greater Washington
Ruth Rosas of Nondrivers Alliance
Listen to Anna speak previously on Episodes 366 & 488
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Attributions
This episode comes to us courtesy of the Talking Headways Podcast.
Our theme song is Tanz den Dobberstein, used by permission of its creator, Erik Brandt. Find out more about his band, The Urban Hillbilly Quartet, on their website.
This episode was transcribed by Ian R Buck.
We’re always looking to feature new voices on the show, so if you have ideas for future episodes, drop us a line at [email protected].
Transcript
[00:00:02] Ian: Welcome to the Streets.mn podcast, the show where we highlight how transportation and land use can make our communities better places. Before we get into today’s episode, I wanted to let you know about a slight change to our release schedule in the future. We’ll still be producing two episodes a month, but starting in June they will consistently come out on Mondays. This is being done to make it easier to also schedule video posts. We’re calling these “Media Mondays,” so look for new podcasts on the first and third Mondays and new videos on the second and fourth Mondays. Now on with the episode. Today we’re bringing you an episode of the Talking Headways podcast from StreetsBlog. This one is hosted by Anna Zivarts, who has appeared on our show before. She leads a panel about the Week Without Driving initiative, and here’s the local angle: One of her guests is Nick Miller, city council member from Rochester.
[00:01:06] Jeff: This is Talking Headways, a weekly podcast about sustainable transportation and urban design. I’m Jeff Wood. This week the show is being hosted by our friend Anna Zievarts, who hosts a panel of elected officials and advocates to talk about the impacts of the Week Without Driving. They look back at 2025’s activities and look forward to this year’s version. Stay with us. Joining us today we have guest host Anna Zivarts. Anna is a visually impaired parent, the lead organizer with the Non-Drivers Alliance, and author of When Driving Isn’t an Option: Steering Away from Car Dependency. That’s episode 488 for those of you who want to go back into the Talking Headways archives and listen. In 2021, Anna launched an experiment. How can we bring attention to the ways disabled community members who couldn’t drive or couldn’t afford to drive navigated their communities? So Anna invited people who could drive, specifically elected leaders and people who worked for the agencies responsible for our streets, sidewalks, and buses, to experience what it was like to get around without driving for a week. Fast forward five years, and the Week Without Driving has grown from a few dozen participants in Washington state to a challenge with over 600 hosting organizations in all 50 states. In today’s podcast, Anna hosts a conversation between some of the advocates and elected officials who led a Week Without Driving activities in their communities in 2025. Listen in.
[00:02:32] Anna: Hello, everyone. This is Anna Zivarts with the National Week Without Driving campaign. I’m here with a wonderful panel of advocates and elected leaders and organizers from around the country who are going to share their experiences with Week Without Driving this year. I’m going to start because we’re a big group. I’m just going to read everyone’s bios and then we’ll dive right into the discussion. So first up joining us is Senator Analise Ortiz, who proudly serves the people of West Phoenix and South Glendale, representing Arizona’s 24th Legislative District. She is a born and raised Arizonan, a former investigative journalist and a daughter of educators. Ortiz champions policies to lower rent, combat corporate greed, and defend the civil rights of all people. Next up we have Nick Miller, who was elected in 2024 to Rochester, Minnesota’s City Council, where he represents Ward 2, a district that covers downtown, Mayo Clinic’s hospital campus, and mixed-use neighborhoods to the west. In his first year on council, he has moved forward a study of gaps in Rochester’s trail network, initiated a council resolution to support restoration of regional passenger rail service, and established a district in Rochester and helped shape a new policy for the Destination Medical Center Initiative, designed for well-being. From Lexington, we have Alice Hilton, who cares deeply about streets as shared public spaces, a founding member of Living Streets Lexington, a new advocacy and community building organization dedicated to co-creating safe, vibrant, and welcoming streets. Alice enjoys walking, being outside, and riding her bike, especially alongside other people. Also from Lexington, Quinn Mulholland is a Safe Streets advocate and member of Living Streets Lexington. He has experience in grassroots advocacy campaigns, having previously served as a community organizer for a local nonprofit. In addition to advocating for better transit, pedestrian, and bicycle infrastructure in his personal capacity, he also works on transportation safety issues as an urban planner for the city of Lexington. With us from Washington, D.C., we have Kai Hall, is Greater Greater Washington, D.C.’s policy manager and the coordinator of the D.C. Transportation Equity Network. Raised in the outskirts of Tokyo, Kai is an advocate for transit, rider dignity, and believes people of all ages should be able to get where they need to go safely and conveniently. And last but not least, we have Ruth Rosas, who tells stories in English and Spanish about how people move and what freedom of movement means. As an advocate for mobility justice, Ruth brings over a decade of experience in transportation, public health, youth development, and environmental justice. They believe in reclaiming streets as spaces for connection, care, and liberation. Thanks, everyone, for joining us. So my first question for you all, and we can go in the order of the intros if that’s all right, is how did you first get connected to Week Without Driving? What inspired you to get involved? Senator Ortiz, do you want to kick us off?
[00:05:26] Analise: Of course. Thank you for having me. I was really grateful to the Urban Phoenix Project, a local advocacy org here in Arizona, who reached out to tell me about Week Without Driving, and they asked me to take the challenge. It was important to me to do it because as an elected official, I should know what my constituents go through if they don’t drive or can’t drive. And many of my constituents on the west side of Phoenix do rely on public transit to get to work. We also have some of the deadliest intersections for pedestrians in the entire county right here in my district. And it’s really important if we’re going to change these things, we need to understand fully where the gaps are. So that’s why I took on the challenge, and I’m really grateful that I did.
[00:06:13] Anna: Thank you. Councilmember Miller.
[00:06:15] Nick: Yeah, great to be with everyone today. I first engaged with America Walks and a walk audit in a neighborhood nearby in 2023. And after joining the newsletter, found out about Week Without Driving, which I found I was already doing a lot of times. I’m normally getting around on an e-cargo bike, but it was exciting to be able to bring people together, understand the perspectives of who is not served by our transportation network and who, on a regular basis, is invisible as far as planning if you’re not able to regularly get around by car, by your own, or having someone who can give you access. So I’ve gotten more involved every year, and this was the first year I was an elected official and got to participate in the campaign and bring other colleagues on the council and also make it official for our city to participate for the first time.
[00:07:01] Anna: Awesome. Living Streets, Lexington folks, how did you all get connected?
[00:07:06] Alice: So we learned about it from America Walks in early 2024 from Ruth. Once it got picked up and was promoted on a national level. And yeah, I think just really loved how, you know, thinking about the transportation system can be kind of abstract and a little bit overwhelming. And I feel like it really took it and made it accessible and a way for people to talk about their daily experiences and connect with each other.
[00:07:31] Anna: And Kai, how has Greater Greater Washington looped into this? I know you guys have really run with it now for a number of years.
[00:07:37] Kai: Yeah. So we first heard about it in 2023 when a member of the D.C. Transportation Equity Network, which is a coalition we manage, a member from the D.C. Families for Safe Streets chapter who participates in the coalition, raised it to me as this interesting new campaign that’s coming out of Washington state that seems to align with a lot of our priorities around advocating for policies that, you know, reconnect communities that prioritize pedestrians and transit riders and non-drivers in general. So it was kind of a natural fit for us to get plugged in. It’s been incredible to work with Ruth and you, Anna, and it’s connected us to so many more of our local elected leaders and other officials who work on transportation.
[00:08:26] Anna: Awesome. Thanks, Kai. Ruth, do you want to give us some context? What’s the history of Week Without Driving? How did it get started? How has it grown? How have you been involved? Give us the overview.
[00:08:36] Ruth: Yeah. Well, Anna, you were the one that started it in Washington state, and it’s been amazing to follow the journey of Week Without Driving. It started in Washington state with the Disability Mobility Initiative to really understand how people who cannot drive experience their community and get people who are in decision making roles and generally the public to understand that because many people are not aware of what those experiences are like. In 2023, I was with America Walks and we were connected with Anna and we decided to work together to take this nationally. And so a lot of the work that I did there was how do we expand something that started in one area, you know, one state, to something that was bigger. And we started doing this mostly by our connections and our network at America Walks and kind of expand from there. And so now it is across all 50 states and we’re also internationally in Canada and Australia. And we’ve been contacted by people in many different parts of the world to understand what this is like. So it’s been really exciting to see it expand.
[00:09:45] Anna: That’s awesome. Kai, I want to go back to you for a second and ask about Greater Greater Washington. How has this been a tool to move your advocacy forward as an organization? How has that worked for you all?
[00:09:56] Kai: That’s a great question, Anna. So I would say there are two main ways it’s helped us with our advocacy. The main way it’s helped us is it actually helped us develop a new concept that we call the “transportation time tax.” So after the first two years of us organizing the campaign, you know, we’d reach out to elected officials, whether they’re council members, advisory neighborhood commissioners or the mayor. And so many of them would say “no” because it would take too long for them to rely on public transit to get to the destinations they need to go to. And for us, you know, this is like one of the main things we’re trying to highlight is even in a place with relatively abundant transportation options like D.C. I think we have like the number two metro in the country. It is still too difficult to get to certain parts of the city, to get across town to the point where the people in charge of our systems won’t even use them. And so we wanted to give this kind of core frustration some language that was easily accessible to both members of the public and to decision makers. And that’s how we landed on the “transportation time tax” as saying that this is one of the core inequities in our system. It’s how are we prioritizing different people’s time based on the mode that they use. And so in D.C., it is still trips taken by transit take on average about two and a half times longer than trips taken by driving, which to us is still unacceptable. So it gives us something to work towards. So that’s one of the main things. The second thing is it raises awareness about a key constituency. You know, in D.C., about 36 percent of residents do not own a car. The last time this was counted in 2019. So it’s probably higher now. And yet a majority of our most abundant public spaces, our streets, our public streets are dedicated to the movement and storage of cars. And so we see that as a huge imbalance contributing towards a high transportation time tax. So it’s kind of given us an ability to highlight this constituency, this non-driving constituency as a group that elected officials should be listening to as well.
[00:12:10] Anna: Thanks, Kai. Senator Ortiz, watching your videos, I think that transportation time tax is something you can relate to.
[00:12:16] Analise: Yes, absolutely.
[00:12:18] Anna: Yeah. Those trips that you took in to work seemed pretty epic as far as how long they took. What was your experience sharing your week without driving journeys on social media? And how did your constituents react? What did you learn? What was that experience like?
[00:12:32] Analise: Yeah, well, it’s very clear that the public transit infrastructure is not built out here in the Phoenix metro area the way it really should be. I think anyone from other cities who’ve been here recognize that as probably the first thing that’s different about this area is that it is very hard to get around without a car. I decided to document this journey because I thought it was very important for people who always drive to find alternative ways to get around the Phoenix Valley, but also to shine a light on the injustice, right? It really is an injustice when we think about how far people have to travel without a car and how long it takes compared to someone who does have the luxury of a car. It took me what is usually a 20-minute drive into downtown Phoenix from the largely Latino neighborhood of Maryvale. It took me two hours on public transit, which typically is a 20-minute drive. That was because of delays. And as I was documenting this and putting it on social media, my comment section was just flooded with people saying the delays are the worst part. The QR codes don’t work right. Just talking about their different experiences. And then I met people on the way as well who told me what they had gone through. I met a man who has a visual impairment. He works security late at night and the buses don’t run past a certain hour. So he has to spend a lot of money on Uber and Lyft to make it home when he has those late night shifts. And that is just not right. When we talk about transportation tax, that’s something that would be included on a transportation time tax is the money you’re spending on things like Uber or Lyft as well. So it was very eye opening and I was grateful that people on social media were asking “how can we take action? What can we do to change this?” And that’s really what I think this whole campaign should be about is mobilizing people to action.
[00:14:31] Anna: That’s awesome. Hopefully we’ll be able to play a clip or two of your videos. I really appreciated how much you shared the stories of your constituents who were riding those buses because this is the daily life experience for many people in all of our communities and I think that’s so important for elected leaders and the rest of us to connect with if people aren’t already out there waiting for the bus. So I want to talk about what does it take to make that difference, to begin to change our communities, to have non-car driving options work better for all of us. And Alice and Quinn, I wanted to hear a little bit about your experience with Week Without Driving as a coalition building tool for the work you’re trying to do in Lexington. Do you want to speak to that, how it’s served as a way to bring people together who wouldn’t normally see that they have a common interest?
[00:15:18] Quinn: Yeah, definitely. So the Week Without Driving is the reason that Living Streets Lexington exists. It was a group of four citizens in Lexington, including Alice, who organized the 2024 Challenge. That was before I was a part of the group and organizing that campaign led to the formation of Living Streets Lexington as an organization. So it really was the reason that we came to exist and having that as a way to build a coalition of other organizations and we got a lot of really good news coverage and had partnered with a lot of local nonprofits and the library and the senior center and other advocacy organizations. So it was a really effective way of building out this broad-based coalition, like you mentioned. And I would also say I’ve been really inspired by the work that y’all have done, Anna and Ruth, around really centering this in not just about people who usually drive going a week and trying out not driving, but really actually changing who is at the decision-making table. That was one of the really powerful things about the challenge in Lexington was that a lot of city council members participated and we got a lot of really great feedback from them about how eye-opening it was to rely on the bus system to go about their day-to-day lives, because a lot of them don’t often ride the bus.
[00:16:54] Anna: Thanks, Quinn. Going to another elected official, Councilmember Miller from Rochester. What was the reaction of your colleagues in city council and other elected officials when you were talking about the Week Without Driving challenge? How did folks engage and what was your experience like?
[00:17:11] Nick: It was a great experience to be able to invite people to join me. I think so much of my experience of riding a bike for my primary transportation around town, my colleagues see me as an outlier, as that would never work for them. That’s just something that Nick’s decided to do. He’s rearranged his life. But having the opportunity to invite people to try it for a week and not just exclusively biking, I actually had the mayor and our city council president take me up on it. I saw our council president at several public events that week showing up on his bike and the mayor at least once with a walk to school day that we did in partnership with our public school system. But I think it’s been the conversations that I’ve taken after Week Without Driving with other elected officials who didn’t participate that have been most eye-opening. For example, with the walk to school day, it happens at one of our schools along the southeast side of town, which is adjacent to a county road which is designed much like an urban highway through that neighborhood. The roadway separates a mobile home park from the school that’s their neighborhood school. And when I was walking along the side of the mobile home park, no one joined me. All of the kids that were participating in walk to school day had been bused over to a public park and were walking along the path, but nobody from the neighborhood on my side was joining just organically. And so as I’ve talked with my colleagues at Olmsted County, I’ve told them that many roads in our city are county jurisdiction or state jurisdiction, and our county does not have an adopted complete streets policy, and I’ve been able to educate them on what that would do and how it’s a safety and a pro-human development measure that they often talk about their services as not so much infrastructure but provision of human services and tying the human health element into infrastructure has been a productive conversation. We’re not there yet, but we’re in the process of adapting a safety action plan funded by Safe Streets and Roads for All. And that’s one of the key recommendations that I continue to ask that comes out is the recommendation for complete streets policy and the jurisdictions within our MPO service area.
[00:19:19] Anna: That’s awesome. I do want to talk a little bit more about the people right now who are excluded in our communities when we build infrastructure that’s based solely around car access, right? And if you are someone who can’t drive or can’t afford to drive or is too young to drive or is aged out of driving or maybe don’t have a valid license for whatever reason, there’s a lot of us out there. We’re about a third of the US population and higher percentages in low income communities, right, and some rural communities as well as urban communities. And we often are sort of not considered as sort of essential community members who need to go places. And I think one place that we see that is when we’re thinking about planning for how people get to medical care, how people get to school, right, how people get to work. But I want to ask specifically, Nick, in the context of Rochester, around your work with access to medical care, because I think that’s something that when planners are thinking about how people are going to be able to get to those doctor’s appointments, they’re not considering that not everyone can drive themselves there. Do you want to speak to the work you’re doing around health care access?
[00:20:23] Nick: Absolutely. I think so much of our community’s identity is built around Mayo Clinic. And even that we have a public funded initiative called Destination Medical Center that is designed to meet the needs of Mayo Clinic’s growth as the best hospital system in the world where we’re bringing in patients from all over the world, also regionally and locally. And I think as Mayo Clinic has access points in rural areas as well, those tend to be primary care and not specialty services. My wife is actually an eye physician and treats patients for a variety of conditions, including those that are causing visual decline and require regular treatment. And her clinic is only accessible in Rochester. So she has patients who are forced to either find a family member or pay for transportation or many times drive themselves unsafely to access their medical care. And this is a conversation she has with many of her patients who have very limited vision and she will ask them to start the conversation not “have you considered not driving?” but “when did you stop driving?” And often the response is “I drove today,” and it’s a difficult conversation to then explain that they don’t meet the requirements to drive and will lose access. Also just tell the story about many people in our community choose to move to Rochester to be closer to their medical care. I have many aging neighbors and just last week one of my neighbors accidentally pressed their gas instead of the brake as they were accessing their driveway and they hit a mature tree in the front of our yard and I was called to come back home and he was taken away by ambulance and is fortunately going to recover but it’s just a constant reminder of how poorly our transportation system serves the needs of people who live in our communities.
[00:22:13] Anna: Thanks Nick. I’m wondering if anyone else has stories you’d like to share around how The Week Without Driving really is able to help elevate those stories of non-drivers and the non-driver experience of getting access in your communities. Does anyone else have an example of that?
[00:22:30] Kai: Yeah, here in Washington D.C. we had almost a third of the D.C. council and a number of advisory neighborhood commissioners participate and many of those commissioners are non-drivers themselves. I live in Ward 1 which is also the densest part of D.C. with some of the lowest rates of car ownership and that is thanks in large part to good land use decisions and also relatively abundant access to transit but there are still gaps in- D.C.’s relatively unique compared to the rest of the country in that we do have good options but there are still gaps whether it’s in the sidewalk network like we’ve had folks highlight how sometimes the sidewalk will just stop and then it’s just road or more often than not it’s the fact that many of our sidewalks are not ADA compliant and so if you are using some sort of mobility device you may not be able to access the street or the curb safely. There’s also folks who highlighted the lack of bus shelters and how in my area especially like the densest part of D.C. we also have the highest rates of the urban heat island effect but we don’t have as many shelters as the wealthier, temperature wise coolest part of D.C. and so we had folks highlight some of those disparities as they went about their day. Things that you might not notice unless it really affects you you know but everyone benefits from accessible sidewalks, accessible bus stops, having a place to rest while you wait for the bus a sheltered place to wait for the bus.
[00:24:05] Anna: Thanks, Kai. And I think maybe you know this story but I’m not sure if anybody else does on this call but actually the original idea for Week Without Driving came out of my experience doing a day in the life of event it was with the hotel workers in D.C. and with then candidate Muriel Bowser who’s now your mayor and we were meeting a hotel house cleaner out at her home somewhere in the outskirts of D.C. and rode the bus together with candidate Bowser and then transferred to the metro and that was still back in the day where you had to pay twice. There wasn’t a free transfer and I remember you know this housekeeper was talking about what a financial penalty that was for her and how difficult it was to have to pay that extra bit because she couldn’t afford to live in a more central area in the city where she could ride the metro without taking a bus first and that conversation with candidate Bowser really made me reflect and when it came to thinking about how do we highlight these stories of non-drivers that’s really where the idea started so thanks D.C. for helping us with that.
[00:25:08] Ian: Before they continue let’s take a quick break in the parklet. Streets.mn is having a springtime fundraising drive. As an all-volunteer, non-profit organization, sustaining donors are what keeps Streets.mn running and supports our mission to foster positive connections and inclusive conversations about better places in Minnesota. As a small token of our appreciation, this month all new sustaining donors will receive their choice of a Streets.mn Bike spoke card or a sticker that can be used to add some flair to your Go-to transit card or whatever else you use it on. Help support our mission with a sustaining donation today at [https://streets.mn/donate].
[00:25:59] Anna: I think that that housing piece is something that we think about a lot. You know around like who has access right? Well those of us who can’t drive or can’t afford to drive many of us would love to live in areas with great transit near the places where we work or go to school often that’s where housing is a premium right, and so we’re forced further out into areas with less sidewalks, less connectivity, less transit options. Is that something that happens in the Phoenix area Senator Ortiz?
[00:26:27] Analise: Oh absolutely yes and housing is another top priority for me and finding ways that we can build smarter more dense cities and what we have here in Arizona is the light rail system which primarily runs through the most populated areas of downtown Phoenix and it goes into the cities of Tempe and Mesa. Past voter approvals to have it go into more cities like the city of Glendale (which is in my district) were actually shot down by voters and you’ll see that the arguments against the light rail extending are almost always rooted in racism and classism and we actually are still having to fight to extend the light rail into my neighborhood here in Maryvale. We’re having a council meeting on it in a couple of days and so it’s very frustrating and when we think about where housing is built we absolutely need to be building denser along public transit corridors. The two things go hand in hand and we continue to see push back on the development of affordable housing or dense housing near transit corridors for the few transit systems that we do have like our light rail. So we really do need to do a better job I think as a movement of explaining how these two issues are inextricably linked and how we all deserve a place to live that we can afford while also being able to get to work or our friend’s house or church or the hospital or whatever it might be through the method of transportation that is best for us and for our families.
[00:28:04] Anna: Thank you. Folks from Lexington, I’m curious to hear a little bit more about your campaigns with Living Streets Lexington. What are you all focused on from an advocacy perspective and what are the ways that Week Without Driving is helping you sort of elevate those conversations and highlight the issues that you want to focus on?
[00:28:22] Alice: Yeah, I mean part of the reason that we were so excited about Week Without Driving and really kind of coalesced around it as the campaign, the thing that we were going to throw all of our weight and energy into is that we were trying to figure out in Lexington there’s a lot of disconnect between cyclist advocacy and transit advocacy and I feel like the bus system often gets left out of conversations or like the conversations that we were all kind of privy to and I feel like Week Without Driving really helped us bridge that gap and start building a relationship with leaders in our transit agency and with bus riders and because I guess LexTran, Lexington is like any other city where the bus system works really well for some people like if you’re a University of Kentucky student then it’s great and you can rely on it and it’s dependable and fast and frequent but then obviously for other folks who also rely on it, it doesn’t work as well. And so I think it was just a really good container to try and talk about all of these different pieces at once and in relation to each other and because we did the Week Without Driving campaign in 2024 we built some really solid relationships with transit agency leadership; and now we’re able to use that to get an American Public Transit Association grant to do a transit advocacy academy and are really trying to work to build up a cohort of Lexington residents who I think to Senator Ortiz’s point are thinking about the relationship between housing and growth and transit and it’s a pilot project and we’re packing a lot into four sessions but we’re going to see where it goes.
[00:29:54] Quinn: And I would also just add to that like one of the things that I have really loved about the programming that we did around the Week Without Driving this year was we did a lot to try to get people like we did a social bus ride to a bar that does karaoke in Lexington and like you know I think a lot of times there is a lot of importance to getting people to see the limitations of transit and how hard it can be to rely on it but also I think there’s something to be said for like uplifting that transit is an amazing resource and can be a really great and wonderful and social experience and it’s truly like a melting pot of all different types of people and just sort of celebrating the bus as something that is not only essential but also can be a fun experience for people was also important.
[00:30:46] Anna: Totally. I’m going to ask Ruth to share a few highlights from different activities that we’ve heard about from around the country and actually around the world with Week Without Driving. I know that we don’t always hear about everything that happens we try to follow things with the hashtag on social media that’s #WeekWithoutDriving and ask for folks to report those to us but there’s always new things that we’re learning about because it is a very diffuse and grassroots movement. So Ruth do you want to share a few of your favorite activities that have occurred that you’d like to highlight?
[00:31:17] Ruth: Absolutely. Some of the amazing things that people have done and this isn’t everything right? People all over the country are doing amazing things and like Anna said, sometimes we don’t get to hear the full story of how they organize but people have done things like bike/walk audits and have invited their elected officials to come with them also round tables. One of the big things about Week Without Driving is that we are obviously very passionate about making sure that people with disabilities are included in these different activities that people do and people with disabilities are often excluded because people don’t know how to include them or don’t know the accessibility needs and so people have done round table discussions and making sure that elected officials hear from their constituents. People have done meetups or after work gatherings. One of the really cool things that people did this year was build bus benches which was amazing because they got to do really interesting and creative paint around them and it was amazing to see that people were able to use this bus bench as a way to highlight that many places don’t actually have the things that people need which is shelter and a place to actually you know wait for the bus as we heard throughout this conversation many times people are not actually waiting the time that maybe your app says you’re waiting a lot longer or maybe there’s ghost buses and so we really need to make sure that those people have accommodations because there’s a lot of people with disabilities who don’t have that access. I’ve been thinking about this a lot and I think it’s just amazing to see what people have done. A lot of the amazing things that I have seen is the bus ride-alongs because they try to get their mayors or elected officials to go with them and many elected officials have never done that before and so it’s a way to incentivize people to see that their mayor or their elected official their city council member is actually also trying to understand their lived reality. And so a lot of these really amazing activities are incentivizing storytelling. One of the big things that we have seen is uplifting the stories of involuntary non-drivers the stories that we don’t normally hear; whether it be people that are low income or people with disabilities or even you know children included I talk about this a lot because this is a big thing that in my personal life is really important. We often see people not including children in these stories and I talk about how I had to walk to school. It was over a mile and I had to walk with my little sister and I was very young and so was my sister and I live in northern Illinois and it used to snow a lot and it was very cold and I think that often we exclude children from these conversations and so highlighting those personal stories are really important we’ve seen young people be included in these conversations which sometimes is the first time that we hear about this especially in certain communities in rural communities and so I think that the storytelling aspect of this is really really important and so what has come out of Week Without Driving is that we’re shifting the narrative around non-drivers and we’re shifting the narrative about who is being talked about and the amazing thing is that there’s a lot of content and so I definitely urge and encourage people if you want to see how Week Without Driving has happened in your community or your state, look it up because there’s probably something that’s been highlighted and so please do so on Instagram or TikTok and we’re hoping to do that a lot more in the upcoming year so that people can see all these stories that are being told.
[00:35:01] Anna: Thanks Ruth. Yeah so coming into this next year, 2026 Week Without Driving, we have dates, we’re going to push it just a tad later so we overlap with the Walk/Bike to School Day and that we have lots of participation from communities all over the country. So October 1st through 8th is what we’re leaning towards for 2026 as our official Week Without Driving dates. We’ll be doing national organizing support starting in February with our national kickoff and invite anybody who’s interested both in the US or anywhere in the world really to join those webinars and learn more. I want to hear a little bit about what you all are thinking as organizers and your communities as elected officials. What would your hopes be for next year for Week Without Driving? Is there anything you’d like to try? Anyone you’d like to try to invite to participate? Any sort of fun activities you’d like to try to organize?
[00:35:54] Analise: I would love to see more of my colleagues here in Arizona participate. I was the only elected official who took part so I’m definitely going to put out the call but also I love the idea of making it fun and maybe doing some type of ride-along on the bus with the whole community or with whoever wants to join and making it an organizing opportunity maybe jumping on the bus or the light rail from restaurant to restaurant get different snacks, try different food and then have a conversation at the end about the policies that we can change together.
[00:36:27] Anna: That’s awesome yeah I’m a huge fan of the fun activities too and I think we had some actually transit agencies in the past have done bus wraps to celebrate Week Without Driving we’ve seen transit bingo cards which is pretty cool and it hasn’t happened for Week Without Driving yet. I’ve been trying to get an agency to help me do this but a “wheels on the bus” ride-along where you’re singing and storytelling for kids riding the bus and ultimately going through a bus wash. That’s the goal. I haven’t gotten it to happen yet for Week Without Driving but. My Lexington friends, any ideas that you’re thinking about or I know we’re still early in the planning for 2026 but anything you’d like to aspire to for next year?
[00:37:06] Nick: I’ll echo what Senator Ortiz said as far as hoping to see more of my colleagues join and I think one of the interesting things about 2026 is that it is an election year and there will be candidates out making the case for why they should be representing different parts of our city. And I am encouraged that those are new audience members both for participating in Week Without Driving feeling a special pressure perhaps to understand how our communities and our city services are working and go out and try those and publicize their experience as candidates and also perhaps add some additional weight to the invitation to my colleagues on the council today who have not participated yet. So I think 2026 is a huge opportunity to grow who is participating and who is talking about the Week Without Driving.
[00:37:53] Anna: Thanks Councilmember Miller. I think that is something that’s interesting because with the Week Without Driving I feel like often when we invite elected officials there’s this push back that’s like, “oh I’m in the midst of campaigning, I’m too busy to do this I don’t have time to ride the bus” or “I couldn’t possibly take transit or walk or bike to this thing that I need to do as a candidate” and I think it really does raise some important issues of how does anyone who doesn’t have access to driving potentially ever run for office then or serve as an elected official if we’re requiring them to basically be able to drive or afford a driver? And so I think while it is challenging to try to do Week Without Driving while you’re campaigning in most parts of this country I do think it’s an important thing to consider because if we have these requirements around or expectations around what it means to be an elected official that require a driver’s license that’s really limiting to a lot of folks.
[00:38:46] Nick: I’ll just add I think seeing Zohran and Mamdani’s campaign centered public transit and the challenges and the opportunities to make it a more efficient service and a service of choice for residents is a winning issue in urban areas and can be highlighted and I think that going along in the bus and talking with riders is an important constituency that is often not able to perhaps make it to other campaign events or get to know candidates. And I think we should be actively trying to earn the votes of everyone in our community and understanding their needs and making sure that representation at the local policymaking level is addressing those daily needs and I think public transit is a huge need or at least transportation more generally we would not be able to do our daily lives without good access to transportation.
[00:39:34] Anna: Thanks Nick. Kai, Quinn, Alice any ideas you want to share or thoughts for next year what you’re hoping?
[00:39:42] Kai: You know I’m still kind of wrapping my head around what happened this year. In 2025 we saw a close to 60% increase in participation compared to 2024. Super encouraging. Next year, election year, I think it’s a huge opportunity to educate candidates especially in DC the mayor has a huge role to play in how transportation projects are built or not built and you know hearing your story, Anna, of how Week Without Driving came to be with then-candidate Muriel Bowser and now you know her three terms in and seeing how she’s kind of evolved. I’m hoping we can get her on the bus with us to talk about these issues. I’m hoping we’ll get candidates on the bus ultimately like going back to Ruth’s point this is about narrative change and so I think for us we’re really trying to use the transportation time tax as one way to tell a story about like what is one of the core issues with our system even though we have a pretty good system relative to most other places. Time how we value people’s time and all the infrastructure choices we make to affect that it all matters and building out partnerships you know the time tax concept came about with partnership with DC transportation equity network members and I really look forward to continuing to work with our residents to build this out.
[00:41:06] Anna: And Kai, for folks who aren’t familiar when you said 60% increase were you talking about elected officials and your do you want to talk about your website tracking a little bit?
[00:41:14] Kai: Oh yeah so it’s like overall so this year we had a little over a hundred folks participate about half of them were elected officials and we used we launched a new web page that we called our “accountability tracker” basically it showed all of our list of elected and appointed officials who have some sort of role to play in our transportation systems and we showed their pictures and we showed who we invited we had that all in one tab and then they were all in grayscale and as they committed to the campaign we shifted them over to what we called the champions tab where their picture would be in full color and so we would keep pushing this you know saying like “these are our champions” it was you know somewhat of a shaming tool which I think is effective especially for elected officials who stubbornly say no if we can show them that there are you know (this is like relatively minor) but like if there are consequences to saying no choosing not to opt in to you know highlight the experiences of this big constituency. I don’t know how else you’ll get movement. So we were really excited to launch that new tool and honestly one of the biggest things that made a difference was to Senator Ortiz and Council Member Miller’s experiences you know having existing public officials take initiative without even the advocates needing to ask that makes such a difference and honestly like that was a huge part of our success this year. the CEO of WMATA was already on it. We had various agency heads here reach out they’re like “when are you going to do it?” so that was a huge part of it.
[00:42:54] Anna: That’s awesome alright Alice and Quinn did you want to share what your hopes are?
[00:42:59] Alice: Yeah I mean I’m thrilled to hear that it’s going to be a little bit later in the year in 2026 because the past two have fallen during our school district’s fall break. I feel like that opens up the whole opportunity to work with some of our emerging bike buses and talk about the school pick up and drop off line and how awful that is for everyone involved. And then also we’ve had some conversations with high schoolers who are interested in learning how to ride the bus. I’m excited I did not know those were the dates so I’m thrilled. And then Quinn I don’t know if you’d add anything to that.
[00:43:30] Quinn: That’s exactly what I was going to say it’s to Ruth’s point earlier engaging with young people is so critical and so it’s really exciting that we’re going to be able to do more with our local K-12 population so yeah I’m really excited.
[00:43:45] Anna: That’s great yeah I was actually just emailing with someone about doing a presentation with us around Week Without Driving and she’s busy because she’s training all the 7th graders in her community on this it’s like a two week intro to taking the bus program I thought isn’t that so cool? We’re lucky in Washington state that we do have fare free transit for everyone under 18 so that makes it a little easier to get some folks access who wouldn’t otherwise have it. Is there anyone else who wants to share any experiences, thoughts, takeaways around Week Without Driving before we wrap this up?
[00:44:17] Kai: I guess one note for me is I’m just really happy that we have a structured way to tell the story of- when I organize the campaign in DC, one experience I draw on is my childhood in Japan my grandmother was one of my primary caretakers and thinking back about how I grew up, we mainly got around by train and walking and biking because our communities were built in such a way where that was prioritized and being able to bring that experience and seeing that there’s this compelling narrative that we’re trying to tell here both locally and then connecting it to the national story, it’s been really empowering and so I am just really grateful to you, Anna and Ruth for organizing this.
[00:45:05] Anna: We’re really grateful to all of you all for participating, for joining today for continuing and helping us grow this, yeah, what you’re saying Kai this ability to do narrative change and talk about, “gosh, how can we make communities that work better for all of us not just people who can drive, but everyone who needs to get somewhere and be connected and get there safely and comfortably and with dignity.” And right now, unfortunately, too many of our transportation systems are set up just to be able to do that in a car but that’s a choice and it’s not a choice that has to be the way that it is forever in the future if we start to organize alternatives. So thank you all for joining, if you are interested in learning more about Week Without Driving, it’s [https://weekwithoutdriving.org] is the website. We welcome you again to join our monthly webinars, to start to organize with us as we prepare for the 2026 Week Without Driving events in October. Thank you!
[00:46:04] Jeff: And thanks for joining us for the Talking Headways Podcast. It is a project of The Overhead Wire and appears first on Streetsblog USA. Thanks to our generous Patreon supporters who support the show and Mondays at The Overhead Wire. You can support the show as always by going to [https://patreon.com/theoverheadwire]. Sign up for our almost 20-year-old newsletter by visiting [https://theoverheadwire.com] or check out the show notes for merch or other opportunities to connect. Follow along using your podcatcher of choice but if you can’t find it there you can always find it at its original home at [https://usa.streetsblog.org]. we’ll see you next time at Talking Headways.
[00:46:40] Ian: And thank you for joining us for this episode of the Streets.mn Podcast. This episode comes to us courtesy of the Talking Headways Podcast, all rights reserved. The music you’re hearing right now is by Erik Brant and the Urban Hillbilly Quartet. This episode was transcribed by me, Ian R. Buck. We’re always looking to feature new voices on the Streets.mn Podcast, so if you have ideas for future episodes, drop us a line at [[email protected]]. Find other listeners and discuss this episode on your favorite social media platform using the hashtag #StreetsMNPodcast. Until next time, take care.