To End Car Dependency, We Must Change Who Has A Seat At the Table

In a guest post, Anna Zivarts says our transit systems should be shaped by people who actually use them.

Transit board leaders who don't ride transit can't fully understand what's working—and what isn't. Photo via Wikimedia Commons; CC-by-2.0 license

By Anna Zivarts

“If you could change one thing to make our communities less car-dependent, what would it be?”

That’s a question I get asked a lot in rooms full of climate and family-bike advocates, transit agency staff, and elected leaders working to build more affordable, dense housing. They are eager for checklists of steps they can take to make our communities more accessible for people who can’t, can’t afford to, or choose not to drive. They want to know what the solution is.

They don’t always like it when I respond that the most durable and profound change comes from changing who gets to have a seat at the tables where the decisions that shape our communities are being made. If I could change anything, what I would change first is making sure that people who don’t have the option of driving get to redesign our land use and transportation systems.

This is a radical proposition. It’s hard for most people to disagree that we need to “include” nondrivers in these decisions. But by insisting that nondrivers are treated as equal partners, we are asking for a revision to existing decision-making structures, and this kind of restructuring always meets resistance.

The organization I work for, Disability Rights Washington, has been advocating for the past three years to allow transit riders to hold voting seats on public transit boards (This year, the bill is HB 1418). We’ve witnessed how the elected leaders and representatives who hold those seats are rarely, if ever, transit riders themselves, and so have little understanding of what makes these systems work, or not work, for riders. In fact, we keep seeing examples of transit boards voting to cut taxes and gut service. In the Tri Cities, Ben Franklin Transit’s board attempted cuts in 2022 and 2024. This year, Island Transit’s board is floating tax cuts.

While making sure transit riders are represented on transit boards seems like a commonsense proposition, we struggle against a slew of objections grounded in paternalism, and sometimes unacknowledged ableism or racism, toward those of us who rely on transit.

“But X doesn’t have the background, the education, the expertise to make that decision.”

“Transit riders won’t think about the larger system and will only advocate for their own specific preferences.”

“People who rely on transit won’t understand fiscal responsibility.”

“If they want to make decisions about transit, they should run for office and win elections like the other leaders on these boards.”

Of course, we would love to see more nondrivers—in particular disabled, immigrant and non-white nondrivers—win elected office and serve on transit boards in that capacity. But in most parts of our country, outside the cores of large, dense cities, a candidate needs a car (or the financial resources to hire a personal driver) to be taken seriously. That’s because candidates are expected to be in a lot of different places in a very short amount of time, in a way that is only possible with driving.

It’s unacceptable that the people governing transit have zero experience with the system because they “don’t have the time” to utilize it. If car-dependent communities make it infeasible for nondrivers to win elected office, we need to make sure that these voices are still present on transit boards.

And this discussion of who gets to govern extends beyond transit boards, to any space where decisions are getting made or information is being shared about our transportation system or built environment.

We also need people who rely on transit working at, and running, transit agencies. We wouldn’t accept the head of an agency or company who doesn’t believe enough in the service or product to use it—so why do we accept it from transit agency leaders? Our paternalism toward people who rely on transit shapes who we envision as capable or qualified. (This is why Disability Rights Washington is championing another bill this session to prevent employers from requiring driver’s licenses when driving isn’t an essential function of the job.

Almost no one would say they aspire to spend hours driving to and from a job, getting in fights over parking spaces at Costco, or waiting half an hour in the car queue to pick our kids up from school. Yet when we design our communities to prioritize car access over all other ways of connecting, these outcomes are inevitable. Additionally, the financial burden of car ownership is significant. If we build our communities to require car access for independent travel, we are locking households into a system of car dependence that can be a tremendous financial stressor.

But it’s difficult to untangle this dependence, because once you’ve purchased a car, you’re bought in. If it’s going to be faster and safer to get somewhere by driving, why wouldn’t you drive, when the cost per mile once the car is purchased is minimal? Even though many people would prefer a life where they didn't have to drive so much, driving–for those who can drive and who can afford to drive–is the rational choice in pretty much every community in the US. That’s why we need the voices of nondrivers to disrupt this paradox. Because driving isn’t an option for us, we are willing to push for changes that would make it possible for everyone to live without car dependence, even if (and when) those changes require tradeoffs.

If those of us who can’t or don’t drive are in the room, sharing our passion and deep knowledge of getting around relying on transit, we’ll get better policies and more successful transportation systems for our communities.

Anna Zivarts is a visually impaired parent and author of When Driving Is Not an Option: Steering Away from Car Dependency (Island Press, 2024). Joining the team at Disability Rights Washington in 2018, Zivarts led the Rooted in Rights storytelling project and launched the Week Without Driving challenge to address the needs of nondrivers in planning accessible communities. Previously, Zivarts spent fifteen years as a communications strategist for labor and political campaigns, working as a storyfinder for the LGBT & HIV/AIDS Project at the ACLU and co-founding the NYC-based communications and storytelling firm, Time of Day Media.