Good morning, RVA! It's 44 °F, and it’s another day with temperatures in the 60s and clouds in the skies. Also, we may see a bit of rain late this evening and into tomorrow.
Water cooler
Ali Rockett at the Richmond Times-Dispatch has a short piece remembering Corey Frazier, the VCU student who was hit and killed by a driver while riding his bike across Main Street this past weekend. What could we have changed about Main Street—a multilane, one-way road where people illegally park way too close to the intersection, and routinely speed through a residential neighborhood—to have prevented Frazier’s death?
Well, today, from 2:00–4:00 PM, Richmond’s Safe and Healthy Streets Commission will gather in the basement of the Main Library for a Vision Zero Workshop. This is the group that the Mayor has tasked with coming up with a plan to reduce traffic fatalities—for folks walking, biking, taking the bus, or driving—to zero by 2030. Richmond’s Vision Zero plan is our first real opportunity to make changes to the systemic safety problems facing our city’s streets, and it’s very important that the plan we end up empower us to do so. You can read the final draft of the plan here (PDF). An ambivalent personal opinion: This draft of the plan could be way, way more specific and more far reaching, but, on the other hand, I’d feel like we’ll have made progress if we manage to check everything off of the first year priority list.
Even if you can’t make the meeting this afternoon, please take a couple minutes, read through the plan, and let the Safe & Healthy Streets Commission know what you think.
The breweries are coming for Henrico! Michael O’Connor at the RTD was at the Henrico Board of Supervisors meeting for a...zoning update! As the region fills up with breweries like Strega Nona’s pasta pot, the outlying counties will need to update their zoning accordingly or miss out on all of the fun.
This piece by Laura French on WTVR about school bus delays in Chesterfield County will give you some idea of how school bus operator is a tough job to fill. Region-wide, school districts struggle to find enough drivers, so much so that Richmond’s new superintendent just announced a $1,000 bonus for operators who have perfect attendance. Of course, it’d be great for students to take a GRTC bus to school, which is much more reliable, comes more than once per day, and is often where the region’s talented operators end up. Unfortunately, until we expand the reach of our public transportation system significantly that remains an impossibility.
This piece in Richmond Magazine by Tyler Hammel about big development projects across the region is interesting. But, like, tell me about the jobs! A solar farm is rad (really and truly), but what’s the number of jobs per acre on a 300-acre solar farm?
Senator Kaine has co-sponsored legislation with a bunch of other Democrats to ban assault weapons among other things. Let’s pass every single thing on the Senator’s list—and then pass some more.
Sports!
- Rams host George Mason at 7:00 PM in the final home game of the season.
- Spiders welcome UMass to the Robins Center in their final home game as well, also at 7:00 PM.
This morning's longread
Automated Vehicles Can’t Save Cities
Here’s another entirely visual story, and this one’s about urban spaces, automated vehicles, and how they will and won’t impact a city.
When we understand that urban transportation is about moving people not cars our priorities for space investment become obvious.
If you’d like your longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol’ Patreon.