I saw an interesting subtext in the discussion last Wednesday night when the Arcata City Council failed to reach agreement on the H Street sidewalk widening project between Ninth and 11th streets. The council faced the choice of providing more space to widen the sidewalks by either eliminating the bike lane or limiting parking to the east side of H Street. There was a lot of discussion of different options for accommodating bicycles if the bike lane was eliminated, but little discussion of how to more creatively accommodate parking.

This Tuesday evening the Arcata Transportation Safety Committee (TSC) will consider options for sidewalk widening on G and H Streets between 9th and 11th Streets.  The sidewalk widening is badly needed as anyone having attempted to walk down the west side of H Street knows.  This infamously narrow stretch in front of Jambalaya and several other businessses is filled with obstructions (both inanimate and living) making smooth passage difficult.

Want to save some money on next year’s taxes? If you take transit to work, you may already know about commuter checks for those who ride transit, but starting this year, there is a tax break for bicycle commuters as well. With a new tax year beginning, this is the time to put things in place so you and your employer can save some cash.  Here’s how each program works:

From the Eureka Reporter,

Eureka is implementing a parking permit program for downtown residents. Residents pay $50 for a permit that allows them to park for 72 hours at a time in city parking lots that most people pay to park in.

The fee is extremely low given the cost to the city to provide that parking, but it looks like Eurea is on the right track towards a model where people pay directly for parking instead of having you and I pay for it.

A Eureka Reporter story this morning headlined “CR drivers may be in for Halloween treat” reveals that College of the Redwoods is spending $1.5 million in Measure Q interest to repave the parking lot instead of using parking fees. That’s money that should be spent on educational facilitie

On the first day of the Towards Carfree Cities Conference in Portland, I was immediately impressed by a presentation on high-density co-housing projects that are the collaboration of Orange Splot LLC (a cohousing developer) and Communitecture, an architecture firm using innovative green building techniques and superb design to create beautiful and inviting high-density living arrangements in Portland neighborhoods.

Humboldt County Planning Commission and Staff:

We are a coalition of environmental groups who would like to see parking policies in Humboldt County reconsidered. We hope a final Circulation Element, Community Design element, and other General Plan elements will address our concerns regarding parking policy in Humboldt County.