 Welcome to In The Studio, I'm Maria Contreras-Tabbit and my guest today is Rob Davis, the Mayor of Davis. How did that happen? Good question. Well, I'm so happy to have you here with us today. Good to be here. Because you are my inspiration. Several years ago I read an article on the front page of the Davis Enterprise. Do you have any recollection as to how many years it's been? 14. So it was more than a few years ago. Yeah, 2003 I think it was. And it was all about you and your family and the topic was? Well we had decided to sell our car and go car free and some folks at the newspaper thought that would make an interesting story since we were a family of four living in Davis. With no car? Right. We got rid of our car, we had one and we got rid of it and we decided to use our bikes and our feet to get around town and so there was interest in understanding how we did that, what that meant, why we did it, questions like that. Why did you do it? Most people would think you'd be crazy to give up your car. Yeah, yeah people still do I guess to some extent. I think there were a few things. One is when we moved here from the East Coast we realized that we were using our car less and less. But we were also as a family kind of discussing ways to simplify our lives. The pace of life was just frenetic. We had an adolescent teenager and it seems like we were running off in all directions all the time and so we were having discussions about how to simplify things in general. And we started seeing the car kind of as the great enabler of all that busyness and so we started experimenting with using it less and less over the course of a month and then at one point we realized that we weren't really missing it, that we had made a transition away from needing it and so we just decided to go the rest of the way and get rid of it. Wow, I'm impressed and the article really impressed me and it's impressed me that you've done this for so long and so many of your family members went along with this change in lifestyle. I know it made a big impression on me in that we decided to go car light or divorce the car part time and again less and less by keeping one of two cars covered that car got used less and less and at a certain point it needed an expensive repair and it was the perfect time to decide to let it go. And it is nice for people to realize that they have the option, they don't have to go total abstinence, they can work in a car if they want to or even just decide to use the vehicle less by maybe batching their errands and outings or changing a car free day. That's how it started for us and then of course we we had to make a transition in terms of you know the big question people always have is well how do you do shopping? And that was an issue we had to deal with. We looked in and experimented with a variety of ways of moving ourselves and our goods across the city and we were able to learn over time what worked best for us and of course the technologies changed so much now that we're even doing it differently today than we did it then. But it is possible to carry quite a bit of stuff on a bike efficiently, especially here given the weather, it's flat, the distances are not great. And so it's doable and it didn't even take a lot of research or time to figure out the best ways for us to do that. I think one of the benefits that I found is time that I would have used in addition to a busy day spent on exercising, I could eliminate. There was no more need to have to spend any time exercising. I had enough of that built into just my day to day getting from one place to another. And I also found that it enabled me to say no to overextending myself because you have to factor in that time that maybe it's going to take you a little bit longer. But I understand that statistically that it takes the same amount of time or sometimes less to use a bike in trips that are six miles or under to use a bicycle than to drive. And think about that when you're out there looking for a parking space or having to stop at the gas station first and that sort of thing. So I think that's true. I think it simplifies a lot of areas of life. I mean, until you do it and actually you're in a situation where you don't have to think about caring for a car, because cars do take a lot of care, there's a lot more simplification than when one might realize. Oh, yeah. Average cost of operating a vehicle is $10,000 a year and those are AAA statistics. So Rob, you've done this great job of making yourself a living role model to other people. We didn't set out to do that. R-O-L-L, R-O-L-L. If you were to envision Davis in the future, what would that look like to you transportation-wise? Well, I think people want choices. And I think there are many choices. And I think one of the things that we're finding is that with e-bikes, electronic bikes, with the bike technologies, the extended frame bikes that are now available and have been for some time at an affordable cost with the different trailers, that really, people have a lot of choices about moving themselves on bikes even as they age. And so one of the things that I am really happy to see is that at sort of both ends of the life cycle, young kids, people with young families who can put their kids and their goods on a bike, and then older folks who maybe have some mobility issues but can still move around because of electric assistance, straight electronic bicycles, I'd like to see people using all of those things even more. I mean, there's been a huge change in the years since we did this. I see many more people with two or three kids on an extended bike, even babies, not just in trailers anymore, but actually with parents or guardians on the bike, it changes the whole dynamic of the relationship. Because no longer is a child behind you in a trailer. They're with you. You're engaging in conversation with them as you move across the space. No longer is the choice between having to get a bike with varying gears. Now you can have an electric assist bike. And so really, I think in addition to hoping people would walk more, I think just availing themselves of what's there now, currently in the market, much less expensive than a car. And you throw in a little bit of quality rain gear. I mean, it was raining when I left the house this morning. It was raining heavily. I arrived at my office dry. I've gone to meetings where people who arrived in cars would arrive wet and I would arrive dry. Because again, we think about the technology we need to keep ourselves dry. And so those things, there's very little adjustment to a lifestyle that's necessary to go that direction. And that would be my vision is that more people would try it. For reasons you said too, I think the health factor, I just think it's a very low impact aerobic exercise. And there's no doubt that it enables people. I think there's been research done on people with Parkinson's that getting on a bike enables people even who are in declining health to maintain balance, to maintain a healthy lifestyle. And I think the advantages haven't even been fully enumerated yet. And as you mentioned, healthy lifestyle, for me, I know that one of the most important things that lead to a healthy lifestyle are connection to people in the community. And when we're on our bikes and we make eye contact, there's physiologically a spark that happens that keeps us going. And it makes our community safer. And it harks back to when my family first moved to Davis, which was back in 1960. And of course, when you went down the street, you would expect to see somebody you know, and you would make eye contact with them and say, good morning, or wave at them. And I love that particular aspect of being out there. You must get that a lot as mayor of our community. I mean, it is a great way to meet people. It's a great place to have meetings with people. It's a great way to spend an afternoon with a friend who you need to catch up with. These are ways that we can get together and solve problems together. I know it sounds maybe a little corny, but I do a lot of meetings on bike. I meet people. I show people our city. I'm able to get out and express a lot of the vision that I have for the city by riding around with people, hearing what they want me to see and talk about while we're together on a bike. And I think the physical spaces that are created by an automobile, the barriers that are created, obviously make that very, very difficult unless you're in the car with someone, whereas being side by side or together biking through a city like Davis is actually a very pleasant experience where we can have a lot of engagement. You've led some of those. I mean, I've built relationships with people by going out on rides with them and having those conversations. Yeah, I think exploring a way of being together in these spaces as we're moving across them is something that more of us should have an opportunity to do. I've also read statistics that show that communities where more people ride bikes have lower crime rates because our eyes are on the street. People see us. We recognize people. We recognize who belongs in the neighborhood. Maybe somebody's new. We might stop, say hello and that sort of thing. So I love just the fact that we make these connections when we're out there seeing each other. And I know of myself as a bike rider on most days in Davis, I assign a couple days a week when I know I have to use my car maybe to do some things I can't do on the bike or choose not to do, that I always see people I know that I don't feel that sense of road rage that I feel when I have that anxiety from being at an intersection that's piling up and maybe it's rush hour traffic and somebody did something they weren't supposed to do. I never have that feeling of road rage when I'm on my bike. I feel connected to everything that's going on around me. You can hear things, smell things. It's just a totally different experience. Well, whenever I did a speech for the incoming Hall of Fame inductees last year and it was about 300 people in the room and I just asked people to call out when I'm on a bike, I feel. And words like joy and freedom and I feel like a child and I feel young and I feel happy, words that really express that sense of freedom of just kind of a lost joy that we have as kids of autonomy. Remember that first time you got on your bike and you were able to ride without your parents? People rediscover that when they're on a bike and I think after you've done it for a while you kind of take that for granted but it is part of an overall healthy community where we're also giving ourselves time to move out of the constraints of technology and be able to just be out in the air, out in the sunshine, even out in the rain in a childlike way. Those are things that make us all healthier in addition to the social elements that we were talking about earlier. And I particularly appreciate the fact that I don't think I've ever seen you riding your bike out there with headphones on or using your cell phone. Well, then maybe you haven't seen me. I don't ride with headphones. I just don't see the point. I don't run with headphones either. There are times when my phone rings and I have to take a call, but I'll usually stop. Pull over, thanks. I don't text while I ride. That's the good way to be a good role model. So in the future, people that come to our community, thousands of new people come to our community every year, whether they be students or staff or just new residents because it's a wonderful place to live. What would you do to encourage people to get into the lifestyle? Because it's not as easy as just walking into a bike shop and buying a bike. I think there's a lot more to it. Yeah, I don't know if there's a whole lot more to it. I mean, I think it is to look at your routine and ask people who have been here for a while what would be the best, safest, quickest way to get between here and where I typically go on a bike. If you talk to local folks, I guarantee you they will help you develop a route that will be low stress between pretty much any two points in the city. Low stress, fairly quiet, fun, relatively few crossings of major arterials. Talk to us. We have a city booth at the farmer's market once a month and I really enjoy it when new folks come and say I just arrived in Davis, I live here, I need to go here. How do I do that? And I can get out a map and I can show them a route that will work for them. And there are a lot of people that are moving across this town that love sharing their experiences of the best way to go from point A to point B or point A, B, N, C. And then from there it's just discovery. Once you do it, once you have that way that you know and feel confident in, then you begin experimenting. And after a while, exploring the city and figuring out ways to get from different places to different places becomes almost like a game and it can become a very enjoyable thing. Even things that we used to talk to our kids about I bet I can get here faster than you can by going this route and we'd have rules that we would use to make sure that everybody wasn't pedaling as hard as we could. But it became a way just to say, how do we think about our city? How do you view it differently if you're on foot, if you're on a bike or if you're in a wheelchair? And I think it behooves all of us to understand how people experience movement in this space because this is our home, this is where we live and we do need to move through it. That's right, streets are for everyone. And not just for cars, not just for bikes, all of us. Everybody needs to get to food. Everybody needs to get to school or to work. So thank you for joining me. The bike campaign is looking forward to coming out with a new transportation guide and bike map that will make it easier for everyone. We're looking forward to having this posted on the city of Davis website to make it even easier for you to get around. Thank you for joining me today here at In The Studio.