Good morning, RVA! It's already 69 °F out there! Today you can expect more of those warm temperatures, and then a pretty decent chance for storms this afternoon. Cooler temperatures move in overnight, but the rest of the week still looks pretty lovely to me.
Water cooler
Meg Schiffres at VPM reports on the complex situation for folks experiencing homelessness. The City's inclement weather shelter will close tomorrow (it only operates in the fall and winter), and the CARES Act-funded non-congregate shelter will close later this month as that funding expires. This leaves the region's existing, and already taxed, emergency shelters to try and make space for a couple hundred extra people. Thankfully, Commonwealth Catholic Charities, who run the non-congregate shelter, has "helped a little under half of those staying at the non-congregate shelter find alternative emergency housing options." Also, I appreciate Schiffres specifically comparing the cost of keeping the shelter running through October ($265,980) to the size of the Richmond Police Department's budget ($110 million dollars). I haven't read through the entire thing, but the fourth bullet point in the City's Strategic Plan to End Homelessness is "Increase financial support to the City’s registered homeless providers to ensure supportive services are available to every homeless person." This is why budgets are awesome and important: They make your city's values extremely clear.
Richmond BizSense's Jonathan Spiers has some new information on one of the groups competing to redevelop the Diamond District. I thought this quote from the developer was pretty good: "One of the things that’s interesting about the Diamond District is that at its scale, it presents some interesting opportunities for district-wide infrastructure solutions. Things like geothermal or (photovoltaic) array or district cooling." Whoa! You know that, personally, I'm most excited to see what these teams come up with to help rebuild that neighborhood's infrastructure. And we shouldn't have to wait too much longer to know more about what each of the six development teams have proposed, either, as they've got an April 25th deadline to get the City more information.
Want to weigh in on how the state could improve Semmes Avenue? Richard Hayes at RVA Hub has the details, including a link to this survey that you can take until April 22nd. Looks like the current proposal has a shared bike/bus lane, a travel lane, and then a turning lane in the center. I'm not sure how I feel about a shared bus-bike lane and think I'd like to see a version with protected bike lanes on the outside. With the addition of bus boarding platforms, like this one in L.A., you could keep bikes protected while making bus stops efficient. Anyway, leave your feedback if you've got thoughts and opinions! Note: This is different than the other survey I linked to awhile back about reworking the intersection of Semmes and Forest Hill.
If you'd like to read an entire article about how governors and legislators can be exceedingly petty to one another, check out this piece by VPM's Ben Paviour: "With slew of vetoes, Youngkin plays ‘hardball’ with Democrats." You say hardball, I say wasting time playing silly games.
This morning's longread
'Vision Zero' at a Crossroads as U.S. Traffic Death Rise
It's possible to reduce traffic deaths in America, but it'll take hard work from bold politicians. We've taken some small steps in Richmond, but we need to do more! Elected officials have to demand more from our DPW-type folks and empower them to make our streets safer for everyone. Two specific things I loved from this piece: 1) Creating a thorough, infrastructure-focused report every time someone is seriously injured or killed on our streets, and 2) passing legislation to require that bike lanes laid out in the City's transportation plan get put down during repaving.
Vision Zero’s track record in the U.S. contrasts sharply with Europe, where road deaths have been drifting downward for years. In 2019, Helsinki had exactly three traffic fatalities — and none was a pedestrian or cyclist. For comparison, the capital of Finland has roughly as many residents as Las Vegas, a Vision Zero city where 304 people died on the road that same year. Despite Vision Zero being one of the hottest ideas in traffic safety, its European success has not translated across the Atlantic. Current trends suggest that is unlikely to change, absent a fundamental rethink around policy implementation.
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