nondriver

Karthik Balasubramanian is a Howard University professor and chair of DC's Multimodal Accessibility Advisory Council who became a nondriver at 24, after a Stargardt macular degeneration diagnosis that already ran in the family. Raised in the sidewalk-free Cincinnati suburbs, Karthik drifted through Seattle and Boston as a casual cyclist before DC turned a quiet preference for walkable streets into...

Una Fonte grew up legally blind in rural Vermont, an hour's walk from a bus that came when it felt like it. After a transformative time abroad in Germany, she began organizing in the US for climate and mobility justice. Una turned that experience into a body of work arguing that transportation access is the thread connecting climate, disability, and social justice more broadly. Questions? email no...

The urbanist movement loves to talk about car-free living. What it talks about less is the people who never had a choice. Anna Zivarts has spent her career building the case that those people shouldn't be a footnote to this conversation. They're the ones who should be leading it. Anna Zivarts is the founder of Nondrivers Alliance and author of When Driving Is Not an Option: Steering Away from Car...

Most people who talk about transportation alternatives have chosen to give up their car. Devin Silvernail never had that option. After a lifetime of living car-free by default, he focused his energy on fighting for equitable mobility and mobility safety improvements from inside City Hall. He reflects on organizing from within city government, and why it's important to have both an inside and outsi...