The Davis Transportation Commission met to discuss greenhouse gas emissions and ways to advance city biking culture
By YUENJO FAN — city@theaggie.org
The city of Davis Transportation Commission met on Jan. 13 to provide updates on the city’s transportation climate plan while addressing biking culture.
The Climate Action and Adaptation Plan (CAAP), is the city government’s project to cut back on greenhouse gas emissions and to reach carbon neutrality. Adopted by the city council back in April 2023, the initiative seeks to encourage eco-friendly policies, assess areas of climate vulnerability and engage in community outreach to spread awareness for environmental justice. Kerry Loux, the CAAP project manager, spoke at the meeting and addressed new updates to the climate plan.
“The goals that were directed by the city council were to come up with a plan that attains carbon neutrality by 2040,” Loux said. “That is five years ahead of the current state goal of 2045. We were looking at cost-effective and measurable actions that we could undertake to attain that goal with a diversity, equity and inclusion focus.”
In order to cut back on greenhouse gases, the CAAP also focuses on methods of prevention through connecting with members of the public. To decrease air pollution, addressing carbon emissions will likely require a larger number of the public to direct their attention toward this issue.
“A major focus of the CAAP was to have robust community engagement,” Loux said. “As you are probably aware, transportation is over 80% of our greenhouse gas emissions, and those emissions can be very difficult to address with city policies, because you can’t force someone to get on their bikes. But, we are trying to do things that make those options more palatable and to have incentives with community partners to help people make those choices.”
The city has already been at work to implement these incentives, including city-led community workshops that seek to educate Davis residents about the importance of reducing greenhouse gases. Yet due to the relative infancy of this climate plan, there will be more complex outreach efforts expected to come in the future.
The commission also touched on different ways that Davis could improve on its transportation systems and culture to assist with the climate project. For a town that prides itself on being bike-friendly, a general sentiment existed in the meeting about the need to encourage more eco-friendly commuting.
After taking a trip to Europe, Schuyler Campbell, a commission member, discussed his observations and mentioned how Davis could take inspiration from European cities to accommodate even more bicycles and cleaner commuting.
“There is one city I visited — Utrecht, Netherlands — which had such excellent bicycle infrastructure that it completely neglected public transit,” Campbell said. “I can palpably see how much a community can benefit from substantial changes to their infrastructure and their policies. […] It took a city that had a solid biking culture into one that had a dominant one and [also] made the city more walkable.”
If Davis were to have less public transportation in place of more biking, it would help reduce carbon emissions and assist the CAAP in reaching its 2040 goal. Mark Huising, a commission member originally from the Netherlands, shared his recent experience navigating through Davis with his visiting parents and its contrasts with European biking culture.
“I’ll share, real briefly, a couple things that we did when [my parents] were here, that we used to do when I was still living [in Europe], in that same spirit of what is possible to build on what we already have,” Huising said. “We went to downtown, bought a bike and had dinner. You never see groups of four or five families with bikes [biking] somewhere together. And it’s so striking to see that not happening because it’s all you see every single day in [Europe].”
The commission further emphasized the importance of a transportation system that prioritizes bicycles and pedestrians due to its ability to decrease pollution and create a friendlier city atmosphere. Even with Davis’ prominent biking culture, the commission believes that there is still room for improvements that will benefit city residents while also working toward the CAAP’s goal of carbon neutrality.
Written By Yuenjo Fan — city@theaggie.org