Good morning, RVA! It's 42 °F, and highs today should hangout in the upper 60s. All things considered, looks like a pretty nice day, weatherwise, ahead of us.
Water cooler
As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 51 positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealth. Two people in Virginia have died as a result of the virus.
Justin Mattingly and Bridget Balch at the Richmond Times-Dispatch have an update and more details on all the local coronavirus cases of which they're aware. Mattingly and Balch point out that their numbers differ from the official Virginia Department of Health numbers—or at least it's unclear if the VDH totals include some of the newer regional cases. As I said a couple days ago—400 years back in virus time—high-quality information is critical during a crisis. At least in my view, the VDH coronavirus page should be the most authoritative and up-to-date source of all coronavirus info in the Commonwealth. That probably means bringing a person from the web team to all of the meetings and empowering them to make near-real-time updates to the website. I know VDH is ultra busy dealing with an actual, literal crisis, but clear communication is so super important at this moment in time.
The City of Richmond have shut their offices down for the rest of the week. The Mayor also issued new guidance for restaurants: Eliminate bar seating, move tables at least six feet apart, and limit on-site service to 50% of their normal capacity. We've seen other places, entire neighboring states even, shut down bars and restaurants to everything but takeout service. I think that's the direction the Mayor should have gone, but, I get it, it's such a tough call to make. Not only will many restaurants go out of business over the next couple of months, regardless of this new guidance from the Mayor, but folks who depend on restaurant jobs face an extremely uncertain future. Also, remember that City is funding new school construction with meals tax revenue—a revenue source that's about to take a nosedive. I appreciate the Mayor making these tough calls, though. On a lot of fronts, he's taking the lead in Virginia and other localities are following along.
Speaking of restaurant closures, Richard Hayes at RVAHub has the ultimate list of things that are now closed in Richmond due to the coronavirus. At this point in time over 70 restaurants have decided to close, move to takeout only, or actually factually close forever. It takes a lot of work to maintain a list like that, so good on him.
Richmond Public Schools announced yesterday that they're closing schools through Spring Break, which means "we will be closed, at a minimum, until Monday, April 13." Emphasis, the Superintendent's. OK! Dang, that's a lot of days! But, as my son says, let's gooooo! The previous link has some updated information about food distribution centers, too, and a video of the Superintendent reading the first few chapters of Wishtree if you're looking for a Language Arts exercise.
GRTC's new CEO, Julie Timm, shared this good and common sense advice on Twitter: "Transit is an essential service to most of our riders. Please don’t ride if you can stay home. GRTC will stay open as long as we can keep our operators healthy. Service reductions and other measures are likely coming very soon to minimize contact points. Stay safe, stay home." I appreciate Timm's honesty here about service reductions, which, like restaurant closures, will destabilize a lot of folks' lives.
However, in transit good news, the new #111 bus in Chesterfield opened for service yesterday. Sabrina Moreno at the RTD rode along with some of the advocates who've been working to bring bus service to the Route 1 corridor for years. It's still hard for me to believe/comprehend that there's now decent, new bus service in Chesterfield County. What a time to be alive—in so many ways!
City parks remain open! Although, maybe don't touch any of the playground equipment. For me personally, and probably you, access to open green space does a lot positive good for my state of mind. That said, I'm nervous about where to draw the line between a safe, socially-distant park visit and something that puts other folks in danger. Use your commonsense, double down on empathy, and do your part to flatten the curve.
Quartz says that Universal Pictures will begin to release current theatrical movies online as soon as Friday. Toll the bells, because I can't help but think this marks a dramatic and permanent shift in how movies work. I can easily see a post-coronavirus world where we just don't go to movie theatres anymore. Box Office Mojo looked at the impact of the virus on the global box office, and found that this past week, the 11th week of the year, saw the top ten movies combine for the lowest Week 11 revenue total since 1995. Yikes. Bow Tie Cinemas temporarily closed all of their locations yesterday with no set date to reopen.
This morning's longread
Why the US Sucks at Building Public Transit
It's definitely not the best time to take public transportation, but that doesn't mean I've stopped reading about public transportation. Nothing shocking in this article, but it is a great overview of the things our country needs to change if we want to make the future of cities livable and sustainable.
Like most crises, there is no single cause. Our cities, and our federal government, have made a lot of mistakes. Some were obvious at the time, others only in hindsight, but most have been a combination of the two. We keep doing things that stopped being good ideas a long time ago. Many of those mistakes have to do with housing policy, which is inextricably linked to transportation policy. But the most obvious cause of our transportation crisis is a simple one: America sucks at building public transportation. Why is this? Why does the U.S. suck at building good, useful public transit?
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