Good morning, RVA! It's 69 °F, and we’ve got clouds as far as the eye can see. Today, we should avoid the rain that’s headed our way later this week.
Water cooler
I hope I’m not stealing anyone’s thunder, but GRTC has a new trip planning tool that’s preeeeeeetty neat. This is the kind of thing you discover if you’re the type of person who has a recurring reminder to check GRTC’s project page for new information every couple of days. Anyway, this new tool will tell you how to get where you’re going on the bus using both the current and future systems—that way you can compare and contrast the two. A couple of notes! First, take advantage of the “depart at / arrive by” button for figuring out situations like getting to work on time or leaving after school lets out. Second, the new system offers not only improvements in trip time, but trip frequency. This means you may have more flexibility with when you can leave—aka more time for you to get stuff done instead of sitting around waiting for your pokey, hourly bus. Again, I haven’t seen the official announcement about this tool, but I think it uses the new official timetables. So get excited, and start planning your trips, y’all!
Tonight, City Council meets for their first regularly scheduled meeting after successfully passing the budget. You can read through the entire agenda (PDF), which is, as always, susceptible to change. A ton of stuff has been continued or withdrawn, leaving a pretty slim agenda, but Councilmember Addison’s ordinance to open up some more of the City’s data remains (ORD. 2018-127) as does the ordinance which will allow for one week of free rides when the Pulse and new bus network open (ORD. 2018-151).
The Richmond Times-Dispatch has a bit of video from this past weekend’s rally demanding justice for Marcus-David Peters, the unarmed man who was shot and killed by a Richmond Police Officer. There will be a follow-up march on June 2nd at 1:00 PM beginning at the Siegel Center and ending at the Richmond Police Headquarters on Grace Street.
A man was struck and killed by a driver while he attempted to cross Brook Road in Henrico County this past weekend. Melissa Hipolit at WTVR say it’s the third fatality on a two-mile stretch of road dating back to last November. I strongly disagree with Henrico Police’s sentiment that people are “randomly” crossing Brook Road. No one randomly crosses the road. People cross the road because they need to get to the other side, and they’ll do it in the middle of the block if the nearest crosswalk is a mile away or the nearest intersection is massive and unsafe or for a thousand other reasons that are the result of the ways in which we’ve made our streets inhospitable.
Here’s a short Twitter thread and some additional links explaining some of what’s going on with the federal government, children of immigrants, and unaccompanied minors coming into the country.
Sports!
- Mixed bag for the Squirrels over the last couple of days, but they return home tonight to face Bowie at 6:35 PM. Tickets are available online.
- Kickers got canned by the Charlotte Independence, 1-3.
- Over the weekend, the Nats swept the Marlins and beat the Orioles. The series with Baltimore continues tonight at 7:05 PM.
- Caps lost 4-6 to the (Las Vegas) Golden Knights in the first round of the Stanley Cup finals.
This morning's longread
Dialing Back on Urban Planning
Here’s a good history of how decades of planning and policy led us to our segregated state of housing.
Most visible then and now were freeways. While some major cities had been investing in systems of parkways for decades--most notably New York and Los Angeles--the Interstate Highway System took shape in the years following the war. Planned to connect major cities with one another for purposes of trade and security, the freeways would also provide new high-speed routes between city centers and nearby rural areas. At the same time, rising incomes meant more and more households were able to afford automobiles. Put together, the farms were not long for this world. Developers followed the tried-and-true method of suburbanizing along new transportation routes, just as their forebears had once built new suburbs along streetcar lines and elevated railways.
If you’d like your longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol’ Patreon.