Main the Nationwide Week With out Driving, October 2-8, 2023
By Ruth Rosas, Program Supervisor for America Walks
A few of us began driving after we may and have by no means lived life and not using a automobile. A few of us by no means had the flexibility to drive so we all know precisely how exhausting it may be to get round our communities. Wherever you might be on that scale, if you go outdoors it’s exhausting to disregard how a lot of the environment is constructed for automobiles.
The prioritization of driving in the US has brought about individuals with out the flexibility, selection, or need to drive to face challenges that aren’t effectively understood or forgotten by those that drive. In lots of communities, there are few or no alternate options to driving. This makes it close to not possible to get to high school, work, run errands, and different each day life actions for the quarter of Individuals who can’t drive. So if we need to create communities which might be livable, equitable, walkable, related, and accessible, we should embrace nondrivers within the conversations and decision-making tables to design all streets and roads. Their lived experiences are a useful useful resource to constructing and working our transportation programs and slowly transferring away from our car-dependent tradition.
Take Half within the Nationwide Week With out Driving
We’re agency believers that the shortcoming or option to not drive or personal a car mustn’t diminish individuals’s high quality of life. That’s the reason this 12 months, America Walks is internet hosting the inaugural Nationwide Week With out Driving, October 2-8, 2023. We’re working in partnership with the Incapacity Mobility Initiative at Incapacity Rights Washington, who began this marketing campaign two years in the past documenting and interviewing nondrivers throughout the state of Washington and uplifting their wants.
This 12 months, we’re taking that problem nationwide as a result of communities throughout the nation have wants which have been ignored and silenced. Addressing the obstacles for non-drivers requires a mix of coverage and infrastructure adjustments. That’s the reason one of many targets of the marketing campaign is to get as many elected officers, public officers, and transportation professionals to take part and really dwell via the challenges of navigating life and not using a automobile.
A necessary a part of our democratic governance is to have our voices heard. We have to mobilize group members and authorities officers to name for improved pedestrian and transit infrastructure that permits everybody to get to the place they’re going, no matter their capability to drive. Collectively, our advocacy has the ability to make the locations we dwell, work, and play extra accessible for all.
Click on beneath to learn our press launch highlighting all of the Nationwide Week With out Driving organizers and be part of us by signing up right here. Organizations interested by internet hosting Week With out Driving of their communities can have entry to sources, supplies, and help to make this occasion potential. People who’re interested by collaborating will get updates and get related to any native sources which might be obtainable.
If in case you have any questions, please contact Program Supervisor and Week With out Driving Nationwide Organizing Committee organizer, Ruth Rosas at ruth@americawalks.org.