Latest / nondriver / How Darcy Reynard Navigated Losing the Ability to Drive
Transcript
- Darcy: We had a municipal election last year where the city has elected a a progressive council. quite a few of them bike are interested in biking. We're talking we're gonna try to push them for a week without driving in September. So council seems progressive, very supportive. Then it goes to admin and they do have like their complete street documents and all that, but admin just doesn't seem to want to take away anything from SUVs, even though we have so much road space here that that could be turned over. Welcome to Nondriver. Real stories of navigating our world from people who can't drive. I'm Devin Silvernail. And I'm Anna Zivarts. And today we have another really interesting guest. we have Darcy Reynard, who is from Edmonton, so our first technically international guest. Darcy grew up in Edmonton, in Alberta in Canada, and lived there for most of his life, with time spent both in Victoria and Calgary. he holds a PhD, works in active transportation advocacy. And about five years ago, testing by his optometrist identified reduced peripheral vision and he stopped driving. Darcy runs the YouTube channel Bike Bike Nudge Nudge, covering urban planning and cycling through the lens of geographic accessibility. Hi, Darcy. It's great to have you here. So I'm at Darcy last. fall when I had the opportunity to come to Edmonton and do some speaking events and I really I was not I I this is just being so US centric. I didn't realize Edmonton was such a big city. and I wasn't expecting the light rail. I definitely wasn't expecting the bike infrastructure. And then the other thing I really loved about Edmonton was this beautiful sort of river valley you have right through the middle of town that has all these trails and and access points and was lucky enough that someone lent me a bike. so I got to to bike around quite a bit. do you wanna tell us a little bit, Darcy, about your sort of transportation experience? How how you got around before when you could drive, what your experience was growing up with driving and then that transition to becoming a non driver. yeah, so I probably had the typical upbringing where both my parents drove. I got to sit in the front seat from a very young age and remember watching my dad drive and He would always take different routes, places. so I got to learn my city that way. got my license at sixteen and was driving until yeah, just about five years ago. but as a poor university student, I started doing a lot more biking for transportation. I mean, that influenced me wanting to bike around even more. So were you biking a lot for transportation when before you couldn't drive, or were you still mostly driving to get places? no, I was still biking for transportation quite a bit. like I never I never drove to work. I often had downtown office jobs, but I would bike or take transit to get to work. So I and never paid for parking downtown, never was given parking. What was that moment like when you started to realize that you were losing part of your peripheral vision and you and you weren't it it might not be safe? I just noticed that like just walking around the house or outside, I bump into things more often that I just don't see them. there was a joke on one of the old Facebook forums about the yellow wet floor signs that that people with low peripheral vision we kick them over all the time. but yeah it it was more having some night blindness and my dark my vision in the dark getting worse and worse that you'd kind of be driving along you're like, ooh, that pedestrian I Didn't see as early as I think I should have. So I actually stopped driving at night earlier. but like I said, about five years ago, I decided being an active transportation advocate, it would be quite hypocritical of me to keep driving when I probably shouldn't. So I got checked by my optometrist and he said, Yeah, you you should stop driving because your prayer provision's too low. And would you say because of that, I mean all of those things combined, did that make it easy for you to transition, you know already knowing that you you've been biking, act you know, doing active transportation, taking the bus, and then also understanding it responsibility. Or was it still kind of a hard transition? I mean, I imagine that was kind of a gut punch having to kind of rethink the way that you get around. it was a bit of both. I'm lucky enough that I live fairly close to the to the city center so I do have quite a bit of options for taking transit or biking where I am. a few years ago, my family we moved to a slightly bigger house closer to downtown. but one of the options, as it is everywhere, I think, is those brand new houses deep in the suburbs, you get a lot of house for not as much money. but I knew that if if we did that, I would be in the in the prison without walls. so on one hand it was easier because we do have a we do have infrastructure around here that I can use. I was biking and using transit. but on the other hand, it was difficult because my wife my wife came to Canada after we got married. She didn't grow grow up driving. she's not the best driver. I don't think she'll get mad at me for saying that. but then it forced all that driving upon her. We have two girls and Only the eldest just recently got her driver's license. So everything that they did that need driving, suddenly was forced upon my wife to do all of that driving. I know as a you know, someone who has a driving spouse and and now lives in a place where there is a fair amount of driving, it's always such a negotiation when, especially with caregiving, you know, the places that the kid wants to go, whatever the sports practice, the birthday party, the friend's house, maybe you could do it on transit, right? But it's really takes way longer, or you could do it biking, but the weather's not great and the kid is whining about it. And it just becomes this sort of another point of tension perhaps in in a relationship of responsibilities that you have to figure out how to divide. How, yeah, how do you guys sort that out? My wife is really good about that and really dedicated to our children. I'm a bit lucky. we we got a cargo bike a few years ago. so since I'm still biking. if the weather's nice enough and it's in biking distance, I'm more than happy to do the the ten kilometers or a little more, so that's six miles or more, to bike them somewhere. actually my wife and my eldest are in China right now and it was fifty degrees Fahrenheit raining on the weekend, but my youngest wanted to go somewhere that's yeah, I think the round trip was about seven, seven miles. So we did that in the rain. I don't know if I'm also lucky that since I grew up here and I know the city very well and I just am very good with directions and my wife is not. I keep a lot of social points or charm points or whatever you want to call it with her, by just going with her, keeping her company and doing the navigation. You say you have the cargo bike and you have the one daughter who is old enough to drive now, but the younger one Does she enjoy riding in the cargo bike? she loves going on the cargo bike. she'll prefer it to driving sometimes. she did take she did tell me it takes zero effort to ride in the cargo bike, but I think that's her zero effort, not mine. I'm I'm often feeling that I need to make up for them being late, so that's definitely not zero effort on the cargo bike. I was actually watching some of your videos and I'd love to hear more about how you got started with bike bike nudge nudge, but you know, the the sort of the low stress versus higher stress routes, what you call bike my gosh, bike sewers. What what is the term you use? that one I first heard on not just bikes and he calls them painted bike gutters. painted bike gutters, there we go. Yes. The other one I call painted door zones, where you have the parking lane closest to the curb. Then the bike lanes and the travel lane. Yeah. And that feeling of like, I mean, you so you're trying to pick a route, especially when your kid is with you, that feels like as safe as possible, r recognizing that there is some risk you're exposing them to, you know, by being on a bike instead of in this, you know, very well protected vehicle. yeah. What is that the infrastructure like in and I've I've watched some of your videos that they analyze like different what places you can get on lower stress routes and safer routes versus higher speed, less safe routes. Talk to us about a little bit about yeah, what what it's like in Edmonton and how that sort of shapes where you go and don't go as a family. Edmonton is definitely getting better. we the city is building lots of active transportation infrastructure. it's getting a lot of media attention for the hundred million dollars it's spending over four years to expand the active transportation network. But at the same time, I'm involved with a few advocacy groups and what they're building is sometimes not the best stuff. So they're still routing people on bikes through neighborhoods and they just put down a little speed bump every two blocks and call that a local neighborhood bikeway, which it doesn't really qualify as that. And they've been really big in building wide sidewalks and calling them shared use paths, but All you're doing is making driving easier with those because you get people biking off the road and then you have conflicts between people biking and walking. and then in one really funny bit, while the while one group is building those wide sidewalks, there's actually another group in in city administration saying that people shouldn't be biking on the sidewalk for public safety. And the biggest reason was the intersections, which the city is not doing very much about. so things are getting better. Especially where I live, I can get on to some of the better safe infrastructure and get get quite far in the city, being quite safe. there are a lot of little missing links, a lot of a lot of little things that nudge people not to bike, but things are getting better. Would you say that the political will then? It sounds like maybe the political will is there, but maybe not the technical ability. You know, their heart's in the right place, but maybe they need to go a little bit further. Is that how it's going? Or do you still see a little bit of pushback at City Hall or or from neighbors? Yeah, we had a municipal election last year. and actually the network expansion was way down the list on on things that people were worried about. It's in field housing is the the big one here right now. but yeah we we've elected well the city has elected a a progressive council. quite a few of them bike are interested in biking. the advocacy groups keep reaching out to counselors and get them to go on biking ride-alongs. we're we're talking we're gonna try to push them for a week without driving in September. I think I would really like them to do that because I would like city council and especially high levels of admin to to experience that and try and figure out how to get by without driving. so council seems progressive, very supportive. Then it goes to admin and they they do have like their complete street complete street documents and all that, but something's going on there that I'm not sure exactly what's happening and and it's still we have a very loud and I think very minority part of the city that any time you threaten an SUV lane or a parking spot, they get very upset and admin just doesn't seem to wanna to wanna take away anything from SUVs, even though we have so much road space here that that could be turned over. There's also pushback right at the provincial level around bike infrastructure or city like local city control of street design, right? Yeah, we're getting that too. you hear it more often out of Ontario with Doug Ford. but yes here in Alberta as well. We've had some pushback because cities only exist at the like provinces allow cities to exist. and some provincial governments are realizing that they can push around cities and tell them what to do. So a few of the bike lanes were being threatened. I think they're going to introduce a bill for the fall saying that cities will need to get permission to put bike lanes in and all those bike lanes cannot take any space away from from cars. Is it true that in in Alberta that there is kind of an outsized kind of an outsized voice from the oil and gas industry? Yeah, I would agree with that. we're very much on the boom and bust cycles of the oil industry. the booms aren't quite as much because a lot of it's being automated and so the the boom profits tend to go to shareholders and CEOs. but yes, a lot of people are always concerned about how how the oil industry's doing. we can't do things to stop people from driving cars, it seems. the provincial government did put a they put severe restrictions on solar and wind installations. And I think the number dropped ninety-five percent the year after they did it. So So yeah, we are as the hockey team is the Edmonton Oilers, and as I say, this is oil country and it applies to just more than the hockey team. Yeah, it's funny. I actually I bought an Oilers mug when I was in Edmonton because I was like, you know, it is it was such a a lovely city and it felt so transit forward and bike friendly. And I I was there in September, of course, when the weather was beautiful. and just to remember that, you know, so much of why that city exists has to do with the oil industry. and I think, yeah. that sort of economic reality was was interesting for me to to consider. I, you know, so I I mentioned I was there in September, it was beautiful, the biking was lovely. I know it gets really, really cold. And I actually I think I first heard about Edmonton on War on Cars when the folks up from that podcast were up there for the winter biking festival. Do you bike in the winter? I know in some of your videos on bike, bike, nudge, nudge, you talk about snow removal and the challenges with that, but what is what is the winter like for you with transportation? I actually used to have a website called winterbiking.ca where people could draw in the route that they used and rate it from low to high as if it was cleaned or not or if it was in good condition. I work from home now, so I don't have to ride in the winter if I don't really want to. I tend to take my fat bike out more often just for fun. but I do have my old cyclocross bike with study tires that I'll I'll ride in the winter if I need to or want to. winter riding is getting better in Empton as well. They're doing better snow clearance. they have their priority routes. there are still issues like they're they don't have the Ulu Finland level of snow clearing policy. it's more like once the snow finishes, they have 24 hours or 48 hours, depending on the priority level, to clear it. And we keep wondering that. If it's 48 hours from when the snow stops and then it starts snowing again, does that mean you're not going to go out and clear the lane for until it stops snowing again? and the clearing can be hit and miss. they do use contractors and sometimes the contractors' maps seem to have gaps in them. and just it's interesting, and I've been thinking about that for a video as well, that because the lanes get cleared, but A lot of the biking depends on these neighborhood connections that people know about, but those don't get cleared. And it's hit or miss whether that's all ice, it's all slush, it's all brown sugar, or is it nice hard packed snow that's it's easy to ride on? So it's it's a big difference between summer and winter, how all these little connections can be broken. Brown sugar. I like that term. I hadn't heard that one before. I like it better than snurt, the snow. Snow dirt mix, they call it snurt, but I I like brown sugar a bit better. I'm assuming they have a snow clearance schedule or snow clearance map. and then it sounds like it's really on arterials and it really is dependent on timing. And so it makes me wonder too, like how do the drivers even handle that if their neighborhood streets aren't cleared? I mean, it makes sense for a place like Seattle, right, where it snows it used to snow never. And now it snow is maybe, you know, what two weeks a year, maybe more now. And the city doesn't know how to handle it. But again, it's it's a place where historically that hasn't been a thing. And so it it's really interesting that it sounds not too dissimilar. Like Calgary, for example, how does that compare to Edmonton? Are they better or worse? And you hear from Vancouver and I think Seattle's the same, and I hear my sister in law lived in Shanghai that When you get those rare snowfalls, because it's also very close to freezing, you tend to get a lot of freezing rain and ice, so that's it's different than what it is here. Calgary, I th it kind of feels better, but Calgary gets Chinooks, which are the warm winds that come down off the mountains. and Calgary can go from well below freezing to like fifty or sixty degrees Fahrenheit in a matter of hours. So when I was in Calgary, their snow clearing policy seemed to be wait for a schinook. and then you get icy patches. Emmetton is quite good. it is still very like carbrain mode-normativity. we had a unusually big snowfall in December, and everyone was out crying and saying, we can't drive on our residential roads. So the city had to like had big meetings on Do we dump a bunch of more money into snow clearing so we can clear those roads? but that was kind of an outlier event. and they I think they looked at like surge snow clearing policies, but I don't think they actually paid for or decided to permanently increase the budget. Talking about climate change, and you did some of your PhD research on carbon pricing, right? Which then after the fact it the the work you were doing it it didn't get implemented right at the the sort of the national government level. But can you share a little bit about that and the research you were doing? So my research was on carbon pricing and its effect on mobility and social exclusion. at the time it was applicable because we Canada did have carbon pricing, but it became this political football and when we changed prime ministers, they got rid of the carbon pricing. So it's all gone in Canada now. But the interesting part that still applies and still informs kind of my bike advocacy was the mobility part and the social exclusion part. So with with the price of with the price of gas going up quite a bit, right now, like part of my research was looking at that because carbon pricing would increase the the price of fuel. and being in North America here so car dependent, even though I like the cost of fuel going way, way up because it shows people how car dependent they are. I do realize that it's very difficult on many people. and it might cause social exclusion because so many people drive to work and that's not that's not a choice they have. So they're gonna have to save money in their gas budget somewhere else. And that might be going out and being with friends and getting into the getting getting into the neighborhood and that sort of thing. The sort of carbon pricing conversation in Canada, is that just all on ice now as far as it sort of a national policy, or I'm guessing it's probably not gonna be a provincial policy in Alberta anytime soon, but are other provinces considering carbon pricing? BC still has their carbon price as far as I know. the federal policy was a backstop saying that if your province didn't put in carbon pricing, then the federal government would do it. Many provinces put in their own Alberta actually had one the four years that we had more of a a left government other than the past rest of our provincial provincial history that we've had right wing governments. they put in a carbon price, but that's all gone now. so as far as I know, a a federal carbon pricing scheme, at least for consumers, is gone. The social exclusion angle though is so interesting and important to talk about. you know, I think that's something that Anna and I talk about. on this podcast and then we've also individually talked about in our work that access to transportation, for example, is linked to ev almost everything else. And there's this massive ripple effect that does happen. if you take if you take away one thing or if you add one thing. That could be the choice between, you know, potentially getting a meal and getting to where they need to go. And it's so important that you know those conversations are happening. Are you seeing that on the local level in in Edmonton or even you know the national level as well in Canada? Or is that still something that is really needing to gain steam? I do think you might start hearing, yeah, people being socially isolated that they they can't leave their home. They there's probably people who are gonna start saying, and I I might have seen one or two stories already about people who Saying that they can't even afford to get to work anymore. You work remotely. I work remotely. I think a lot of people shifted to remote work during the pandemic, who had that option, right? And now, we were talking about how a lot of jobs and in like in you work for the federal government in in Canada well, you know, were required to come back in into the office. And sort of that that shift back to I think in some ways like having that that sort of the socialization of being in an office I miss. You know, I miss that those those connections. I also really do appreciate the sort of flexibility I have working from home. Yeah, what is your experience like with remote work and and the you know, what you hear from your coworkers and I guess some of the the the benefits or d disadvantages of of that trade off. that's another reason why I and got got my eye tested again to see if I should be driving. 'cause that was also the part when we went to return to office for three days a week. I am the only person on my team and actually in my whole branch at work that that lives in Emmetton. So I would be going in three days a week to sit at another computer with no one I work with around me. so I'd be on I'd be using Teams or like being remote anyway. So it didn't didn't make a lot of sense for me. So with my eye test, I was able to get a duty to accommodate, which allows me to work from home all the time. I yeah, I do feel the social exclusion because as more people are going into the office, and I think early July, they have to start going in four days four days a week. so the number of events we're doing trying to connect people who are working from home is going down and down. So the social exclusion is becoming a bit l sort of becoming a bit more. and Yeah, being able to interact with people, get those spontaneous collaborations, that's quite down for me. So you know, so for Devin and I, our vision condition, we have the same one, Nystagmus, it's it's pretty stable. aside from just, you know, the rush usual sort of aging and psychos. but do you your your condition I'm I'm guessing is progressive and I'm I'm curious. If you think there'll be a point when biking's not gonna be something that's as safe or comfortable for you, or do you feel like do you feel your ability there shifting? I have only a few years of biking left. I'm I'm not sure quite how long, but we'll see. I actually bought a new but different type of cargo bike for my wife. so a a long tail that I can sit on the back. we have a We have a bockfeet and the problem with that is I'm too heavy for my wife or my daughters to to always keep it held up and and when you're when you're in the bucket there's nothing you can do if it starts to tip over. Whereas the long tail I c I can put my feet down so I can I can actually hold them up until they start pedaling. and we did test it and my wife she's not a big cyclist, she was against buying it, but she's tried it a couple of times and then before she went to China, she rode it to work every every day for her commute. So I I think she likes it. Yeah, we have a a long tail cargo bike and my kids' legs are finally long enough to put them down if I do something silly, which is kind of nice. It seems like it's also maybe like five, ten years ago, the the Bachfeet's, you know, style bike, that was the one that was gaining steam. But the long tail just seems to be for a lot of people more practical too. You know, where I live, that's basically like the bike of choice nowadays. And you do see families doing that too. And so, not only is it cute, you know, it's very cute to see families, you know, having the kids and the parents on the back. it's it's also just it feels a little bit more practical as well. So that's really cool. Yeah, I think 'cause it it feels a little bit more like like a regular bike. The the Bachfees I don't have a problem riding. My youngest loves riding it. actually riding it, taking friends around. But the long tail does feel a bit more like a bike. And it's the manufacturer's related to the bike that my wife had been riding every day. Well, not every day, but had been riding as her main bike. so I think the handling is quite close for her. It's funny on this podcast, a lot of the people I I wanted to interview and initially came up with our list are are folks who are low vision and do bike for transportation. And I was thinking we could have a whole podcast series on just that segment of the non-driver community. Cause I, you know, it I think it's something that there's not a lot of visibility around. And I know, you know, as someone who also used to race bikes, I there was a lot of shame and stigma around telling people I couldn't see things because I I didn't want to be I didn't want people to think it wasn't safe for me to ride. and I definitely have my limitations. Like, you know, you mentioned the the pedestrians appearing out of nowhere. That definitely happens to me in certain light conditions when I'm biking. And thankfully, you know, I there's time with biking and not going too fast to go around them. If I was going, you know, 40 miles an hour, it would not be the case. But yeah, I'm curious as a low vision cyclist, what are the things that like for you for infrastructure and design intersections or bike infrastructure? that you find make it, you know, most accessible for you? The problem really is intersections. because of lacking peripheral vision, when things get more convoluted, more chaotic, I slow down quite a bit because I want to make sure that I'm safe. I'm I'm not endangering someone else. so yeah, the the bike lanes tend to be good, but that's one big failing of the city right now is they don't do anything about intersections. I have a few examples around the city where they actually just stop the bike lane before the intersection and and I my dark humor is like, Are they stopping that? Because if they had a bike lane through the intersection and someone got hit, then they're liable. Whereas if they stop it and say, Well, they weren't on bike infrastructure, it's not our fault. I wanna just let you talk a little bit about your your YouTube channel and yeah, how that got started, what your your hopes are for that and yeah, what what you hope, you know, people who are are are watching and listening learn from from your experience. Yeah, I started it actually it was more for cargo biking because that was starting to become a thing and I kind of wanted to advocate for cargo bikes and I really liked mine where like my wife got into it as well. She liked biking and going getting groceries with me in the in the cargo bike. although it I tended to get a lot more views when I showed the various infrastructure around Emmitton and how it could be better and gave comments on that sort of thing. So it's evolved a bit more into critiquing infrastructure and trying to say what are my thoughts on good infrastructure that I've that I've re wrote on or read about. I do want to get back into the talk a bit more about cargo bikes again. I have an idea for one. which might be relevant with kind of the rise in eMoto's and the demonization of electric bikes. Like I know J New Jersey just I think they passed a very restrictive law that even my pedal assist cargo bike, I'll if I was there, I my sixteen year old couldn't ride it. Well, maybe she's old enough now, but she would need a proper driver's license, a motorcycle helmet, registration, license, insurance, all that sort of thing to to ride something that Is basically just a bike, but it gives you a little bit of help. Yeah. More discussion of the people who will be excluded if we start to crack down on slower speed, heavier cargo bikes. I I think the throttle distinction is pretty silly, personally. I think we should be looking at overall speed. Yeah, I I much prefer the pedal assist ones, but I I do hear from people who the little bit of throttle to help get up hills or when you're really tired, or people who have disabilities who They they need the help getting going. They they can't do hopping or get pedaling. They need they need that throttle so they can have two feet down to to get moving. Like for example, when we moved to France, we left my wife's bike with my mom. You know, and my mom lives in rural Washington State, and she likes to bike to work. and didn't want to do it with a traditional bike. And the thing that really helped her was the throttle on on my wife's bike that would max out at, you know, twenty-five miles per hour, I believe. So again, yeah, it's a it's a very silly idea. I mean a lot of times it's by people who have no information about the thing that they're that they're creating policy on. So having more videos out there in the world would be super helpful. Well, one thing that we like to close out with as well is you know, we we really want to get people's kind of more hopeful perspective on on things going forward. And so I was curious how you feel. Like what is one thing that really makes you hopeful for non drivers like us, you know, looking forward, it could be around active transportation or anything else. Is there something that that really gives you hope as you're looking toward the future? Here in Emmonton, they are trying to increase the active transportation, trying to keep transit going. I know transit funding is bit more of problem in the US from what I hear. but I think more more realization that there are people who can't drive. There's a lot of people who can't drive. and I'm seeing more even able bodied advocates pushing back when you get the the NIMBY's at the consultations who s who demand that every single disabled person must be driven everywhere and they must be able to park within one foot of the door they're going to. Whereas I'm standing there going, like, no, if you keep that parking, you keep those driving lanes and you don't put in transit or active transportation, you're actually limiting what I can do. And I know there are a lot of people like me. as a disabled person, we're we're not a monolith. We're not we're not all the same. So some of us can't drive, but we can get around other ways. And but there are people who do need to be driven everywhere that they can't get around themselves. So And they're disabled people who can't bike, but they can drive. So Darcy, thanks so much for joining us. really appreciate. If folks want, if you want folks to find you, do you wanna tell them, yeah, how to how to get in touch or where to find you online? so bike bike nudge nudge is nice if people would watch a few videos. and I am on Blue Sky and Mastodon as Geo Darcy. All right. Well, thanks so much. Okay, thank you. Thanks for listening to Non-Driver. I'm Anna Zivarts. And I'm Devin Silvernail. If today's conversation resonated with you, please subscribe and share the show with a friend. You can also leave us a review wherever you listen. It genuinely helps other people find the show. Nondriver is brought to you by the Nondrivers Alliance. Find more info at non-drivers.org. And this episode was produced by Devin. Wanna get in touch? Email us at nondriverpodcast at proton.me. We'll see you next week.