Wrong!  I was bicycling on the Burke-Gilman Trail near Fremont this week when I came upon this man out walking his kayak (with the help of a little trailer).   Of course I stopped to talk with him.

Jeremy enjoys paddling around in the Ship Canal and Lake Union, and it’s an easy 15-minute walk from his home to the dock in Fremont.  In this hot summer weather he’s been going out on the water 4 times a week.

Being car-free has never kept Jeremy from kayaking. This is his second car-free kayak setup – previously he had an inflatable kayak that he could put in his backpack with its pump, then hop on his bike and head to the water!

I love how Undrivers show me the blind spots in my own thinking day after day.  Hmm… there’s a boat ramp not far from my house, too – maybe I’ll get me a kayak!  -Julia Field

Undriving^TM is excited to be partnering with the City of Redmond and R-TRIP for the Redmond Summer Undriving^TM Challenge.  The 8-week long program will kick off with the Undriver Licensing Station appearing at the IMPACT Eco-Fair on July 10^th from 10 am-6 pm.  We’ll be issuing Undriver Licenses^TM to people who pledge to reduce car usage on the planet in the coming month.  The Eco-Fair will be adjacent to the ever-popular annual Derby Days celebration, so there should be plenty of excitement for Undrivers of all ages.  In addition to their personalized Undriver Licenses, newly minted Undrivers will be issued six free bus tickets courtesy of King County METRO.  Undrivers can also win prizes in the eight-week Redmond Summer Undriving^TM Challenge by logging five trips without a car:  Undriving adults can win a $25 American Express gift card, and children can win movie passes and rounds of miniature golf.  This is Undriving’s first partnership with a municipality, and we’re looking forward to spreading  Undriving on the Eastside!

On May 11, Mayor Mike McGinn announced the City’s Walk Bike Ride initiative - to make biking, walking, and transit the easiest ways to get around in Seattle.  Sounds like Undriving, right?

What will that take, for you in your neighborhood?  Have your say at one of these community meetings:

June 1^st, 6:00 pm to 7:30 pm
Bitter Lake Community Center
13035 Linden Ave. N, Seattle, WA 98133

June 7^th, 6:00 pm to 7:30 pm – RSVP
Van Asselt Community Center
2820 S Myrtle St., Seattle, WA 98108

June 14^th, 6:00 pm to 7:30 pm – RSVP
Delridge Community Center
4501 Delridge Way SW, Seattle, WA 98106

June 21^st, 6:00 pm to 7:30 pm – RSVP
Northgate Community Center
10510 5th Ave. NE, Seattle, WA 98125

These community meetings seek to answer the question, “what needs to change in your neighborhood to make walking, biking, and riding transit easy?”

Is it a closer bus stop? More sidewalks? More in-city rail transportation? More bike lanes? More pedestrian spaces?

Attendees will learn more about Walk Bike Ride, get more information on what types of projects are possible, and fill out a “ballot” that will help the City think about how we prioritize these types of transportation projects.

Meet Colleen Haggerty: she’s an Undriver from Bellingham, WA, who recently took advantage of our Online Licensing Station to receive her Undriver License.

Colleen has been an amputee for 32 years, and she is currently raising money for the Prosthetic Outreach Foundation, with the goal of funding 100 legs for amputees in developing countries.  To accomplish this, she is walking 100 miles in 100 days; read more about her work and follow her progress here.

Undrivers make the choice not to drive for many different reasons… what’s yours?  Visit us on Facebook to share your story with the rest of the Undriving community.

FLASH: Colleen was featured on KOMO 4 News on May 31st!  Watch it here.

-Luke Lamon, Undriving Program Associate

Undriving

Want more info?  Here’s an interview with Craig Benjamin of Sierra Club and Streets For All Seattle, by Publicola’s Josh Cohen.

CASCADE BICYCLE CLUB, SIERRA CLUB CASCADE
CHAPTER AND GREAT CITY ANNOUNCE NEW CAMPAIGN
FOR TRANSPORTATION FUNDING IN SEATTLE

“Streets For All Seattle” Calls for Adequate Funding of Multimodal Transportation
SEATTLE – (April 19, 2010) – Cascade Bicycle Club, Sierra Club Cascade Chapter and Great City join a coalition of community, labor, transportation and environmental groups in proudly announcing Streets For All Seattle, a new campaign calling for adequately funding multimodal transportation initiatives in Seattle.

The Streets For All Seattle supporters believe that walking, bicycling and transit should be the easiest means of transportation in Seattle. But the current situation shows pending cuts in Metro service hours and insufficient funding for the Bicycle and Pedestrian Master Plans.

The Streets For All Seattle coalition has identified a number of potential funding sources – to the tune of $30 million dollars – for walking, biking and transit infrastructure. The group looks forward to working with the Seattle City Council, Mayor McGinn and partners to create dedicated funding mechanisms for multi-modal transportation initiatives in Seattle.

Streets For All Seattle also looks forward to engaging Seattle citizens in a conversation about how we fund and build the pedestrian, bicycle and transit infrastructure to align with a forward-thinking vision, one that includes transportation choices that make sense for our city and vibrant neighborhoods that are safe and accessible for everyone.

This video was produced by Mary Janisch, Suna Gurol, and Tracey Cheng, of the University of Washington Master of Communication in Digital Media program.  Thanks to Mary, Suna and Tracey – and also to Undriver Steve Richmond.

Undriver #2,421:  Joel Flachsbart

“I grew up in the suburbs of Portland, Oregon and moved to New Orleans after college to teach middle school math.  While in New Orleans I lived, serendipitously, only two blocks from the school where I taught AND a wonderful grocery store.  For the first time in my life, I could work and eat without driving.  I drove my car so rarely that my battery would often die from lack of use.  The situation shifted my perspective on driving and transportation.  I realized during this time how incredibly backwards it is to live somewhere that requires you to use petroleum in order to EAT.  Yet, this is the unfortunate circumstance of so many of us.  How did this happen?

I have since made a commitment to locate my life in such a way as to require as little gas and driving as possible.  Walkable neighborhoods do more than save us on using oil.  They connect people and generate value by allowing us to appreciate the richness of a local community.

What I like about the Undriving movement is that it flips the transportation hierarchy and places cars at the bottom where they belong. My Undriver License reminds me to consider walking first, then biking, then taking light rail or the bus, then carpooling.  And if nothing else will work, only then do I take a car.”

Thanks, Joel, for this simple way of looking at Undriving decision-making!   We’d love to hear from others who give this a try.  How’d it go?

1)    You use a bicycle for the majority of commuting trips, and

2)    You are not already be accepting other qualified transportation fringe benefits, such as those offered to transit riders.

This legislation attempts to extend to cyclists some of the same benefits already offered to employees who use transit or carpool.  It is administered through an employer’s commuter benefit provider, whether in-house or contracted.  The Bicycle Commuter Tax Provision offers a monetary incentive to people who choose a bicycle over a car in their daily commute, and though $20/month may not seem like much, $240 a year is a fair estimation of the cost for maintenance and care of a daily commuter cycle over the course of 12 months.  The League of American Bicyclists has put together an FAQ page here, including downloadable forms to submit to your employer.  Happy riding! -Luke Lamon

- Undriving intern Luke Lamon is studying Community, Environment, and Planning at the University of Washington.  Raising awareness of this tax credit is the aim of his senior project.

Soren was excited to get licensed to Undrive at the Sustainable Ballard Festival. Initially, he wanted the license because it was “pretty cool,” and because he loves all things with wheels. However, while waiting in line he began to chat with his mom, Kimberly, about what their Undriving pledge would be. Together they decided to start carpooling to preschool at least one of the two days that Soren attends.

Kimberly continues with the story, “The back-to-school pancake breakfast was a few weeks later, and a niggling at my conscience prompted me to use that event as an opportunity to start talking to some other parents to see if anyone lived close enough to us to carpool. I quickly found two eager families and we figured out a schedule that seemed would work for us.

A few months into the project, it is still a work in progress! One family is eager in spirit, but having a hard time making the carpool a routine. Plus there have been some hiccups in the plan: I managed to lose the booster seat that belonged to another family and there were disruptions like the chicken pox, family trips, and snow days – all of which have threatened to derail our project.

There have been some unexpected benefits from carrying out our Undriving pledge. We have made friends with these two families, had more play dates, and started a conversation with our preschool about creating system in which more families can carpool. Oh, and we have driven less as well!

In talking with my son about global warming and polar bears, he has become another, louder voice encouraging me to Undrive some more. This year, our project is to learn 2 bus routes really well and then ride those two buses from one end of the route to the other. We want to see if we can take the bus more places than we thought. We came up with this idea after learning that our dentist has a Magnolia office, which we can access by taking one bus. Previously I had looked into taking 2 (or more) buses to his (closer) Greenwood office, but it made the journey long and cumbersome with two small children. I am hoping that if I see what stores and offices are along a particular route, I will be inspired to take the bus to them. Soren is very excited about this project because he loves riding the bus! And to ride it from one end to the other, well that also will be ‘pretty cool’.”