Celebrating World Car Free Day During a Pandemic
By Brenden Nickels
Brenden Nickels is an office assistant at Kraus-Anderson’s Minneapolis office.
In the fall of 2017, I wrote an article entitled “There’s Lots of Ways to Arrive, Don’t Drive,” where I promote “World Car Free Day” by writing about everything one can use to travel besides driving your car. These include taking the bus or train, carpooling, walking, and riding a bicycle. However, with 66% of working people in America now working from home ever since the coronavirus arrived, this, like everything else, has experienced a major change.
For instance, here at Kraus-Anderson, we had some employees take transit to and from work, the writer of this article included, but with the pandemic, we’re all now using our cars for everything. “It’s interesting how the pandemic has shifted my ability to get around by bike, walking, or public transportation,” said KA Project Coordinator Brendan Ward. “For a while, I was scared to ride the bus because of COVID-19, but now I just don’t need to. I hope that once the city opens back up again I can be less dependent on my car again. I loved taking the bus and walking everywhere.”