Getting around

Today (Thursday, May 14) is the annual “Bike to Work Day,” equal parts celebration and encouragement of safe and affordable transportation that doesn’t involve driving a fossil-fuel powered vehicle.
The ascendance of the personal motorized vehicle has changed so much of how we live in the last century, it’s staggering to contemplate. Shopping centers, business parks, subdivisions, office buildings … these common environments – and anything with the word “regional” associated with it – are dependent on accessible and convenient personal transportation.
Yet, we know that driving pollutes our air, clogs our roads and frays our nerves. It also discourages exercise and isolates us inside our giant metal machines.
Can we imagine a world without it? Where we can find what we need without getting on the freeway (and without paying UPS to deliver it all from Amazon)? This area used to function without cars, and some are envisioning a future where we have some of the options of an older time.
Bicycling, walking and riding the train used to be common, popular and effective forms of transportation, and they’re all coming back, with varying degrees of success.
Bicycling is easy, fun and well-accepted in Healdsburg. Our surrounding valleys are so popular with cyclists, that recreational and professional riders come from all over the world to pedal around in vast loops. Bike shops, bike rentals and bike touring companies make up a significant part of our economy, along with a cottage industry of small manufacturers of frames, bags, clothing and accessories.
Healdsburg has been recognized as a Bicycle-Friendly City by the League of American Bicyclists, bike racks are everywhere in town, and wineries have even figured out how to sell wine to cyclists, although we trust that most of that wine is shipped home, not carted back to the hotel on the back of a bike.
Walking is also relatively easy in Healdsburg. City policies encourage pedestrian-friendly planning, especially downtown, and limited experiments in closing streets and narrowing intersections seem to be working. The neighborhoods surrounding the town center are delightful places to walk, and the city is flat enough to make walking to the grocery store manageable, especially when you compare a stroll down a pleasant sidewalk with a traverse across a giant parking lot at a regional shopping center.
Passenger and freight trains used to be a daily occurrence in Healdsburg, but those who long for their return may have to keep longing for a few more years. The Sonoma Marin Area Rail Transit (SMART) is busily laying track and readying its system, but so far, does not extend north of Airport Boulevard.
Despite keen interest from its supporters and a vision that a functioning train can replace the need for a fourth lane on Highway 101, we are skeptical that SMART will blow its whistle in downtown Healdsburg anytime soon. With a $39 million price tag just to get a few miles from Airport Boulevard to downtown Windsor, we worry that taking the next leap northward to Healdsburg will be too great a financial burden for the train, especially with a projected cost of $30 million to cross the Russian River.
Nevertheless, train proponents keep writing grant proposals and searching for funds, and it may happen yet.
While we wait, let’s be grateful that we live in a place that encourages cycling and walking, and let’s keep telling City Hall that we like these alternatives. Let’s guzzle from our water bottles, not our gas tanks.
– Ray Holley