Week Without Driving in PA

If the campaign has caught your attention, perhaps you have already signed up to participate yourself this year and expect to be able to give it a go, getting around without driving at the beginning of October. But what does the Week Without Driving here in PA look like more broadly for people who aren’t as familiar with the non-driving life?

For people for whom every week is a week without driving, it is a prompt to:

• Reach out to elected officials both at the local and state levels, i.e. the city, township, or borough leaders whether they are called commissioners, supervisors, council members, or mayors, and state legislators from both the State House and State Senate,
• Share with those leaders about the experience of being someone who gets around sometimes/often/always without a private motor vehicle,
• Invite them to join in for a day or even a single ride to see what it is like on the ground in the area they represent from a perspective they may not have had occasion to consider; this could be a walk, a bike ride, or a transit trip but the goal would be to show how to get from one functional destination to another.
• Send the invitation to the press — not just to their office.

For social service or other advocacy/supporting organizations:

• Sign on as a co-sponsor for the state by signing up on WeekWithoutDrivingPA.org
• Start with staff (especially those that may be non-drivers to highlight them and then also to those who assume this is not relevant to them or impossible)
• Share prompts with coalition partners both in advance and day by day the week of the event; consider ideas like this, but tailored to your community —
  • “if you needed to get to the library without driving, how would you do that?”
  • “if your child needed to get back to the high school to attend evening  rehearsal for the musical”
  • “lunch without driving — with a panel of non-drivers” (get there without driving and learn from the panel)
  • “if you need to get to a council meeting on Tuesday evening at 6:30pm, Monday at 5:30pm, how would you do it?”
  • “If you needed to get to a doctor’s appointment at ____…”
  • “Happy hour without driving…”
  • “If you needed to get to a nearby park or trail for a social outing…”
• Host an event for publicity or education or fun —
  • Rally without driving,
  • Press conference without driving,
  • Coffee without driving,
  • Meet me at the _____ without driving…
• Invite elected officials to participate/sign up, even just for a day — consider using petitions to reach city council/county, state reps
• Issue Press Releases (at the very least) — generic text from 2025 is available here
• Request proclamations and/or resolutions in support of the observance from Mayors, Councils, and County Commissioners (stay tuned for a PA-specific template to be posted here later this spring)
• Inform — let people know that there are non-drivers
• Tie to other critical topics — for example health outcomes like diabetes or climate

Key message: IF YOU CANNOT DO WEEK WITHOUT DRIVING, THAT IS THE POINT! What do your constituents or fellow community members/neighbors do when they can’t get to that municipal meeting? If transit would not be dependable enough for you, what does that mean for people who use it all the time? If you have limited options, see this as a thought experiment. It is an invitation to reflect on that fact and the implications for others who live in your area!

This is also a call for the 30+ fixed route transit providers operating outside of the Philly and Pittsburgh areas to help promote this. Some ideas for activities those transportation authorities could offer to engage community and state leaders:

• Hold a transit tour, inviting leaders who may never have taken transit in the area to ride from their municipal building to the public library or a community park or the grocery store,
• Support your regular riders in reaching out to their representatives by offering reduced fares to both participants for that ride,
• Offer some promotional rides — “Dollar Days”? — to get more people on the bus,
• Host a panel discussion – possible participants:
  • a regular rider,
  • a transit driver,
  • a transit leader,
  • a planning official, or
  • a supportive elected official,
• Engage with your staff (could they get to your offices or the bus depot without driving themselves?)
• Share press releases — PA-specific template will soon be available from WeekWithoutDrivingPA.org.

No matter what level of engagement or effort goes into WWD, at the very least every transit provider should be sharing press releases about it!