Good morning, RVA! It's 47 °F, and today—this whole week really—looks a bit cooler with highs floating around in the 60s. I say get out there and enjoy it, because we only have but so many boots and flannel days left before True Summer shows up and we’re all sweating through our shirts.
Water cooler
Today you can take a couple of minutes to fill out the City’s survey about their plan to implement a one-way conversion on a short stretch of Brook Road south of Clay Street and north of Broad Street. I think the impetus for this change is solely to create 15 new parking spaces in the neighborhood, but the survey also mentions reducing conflict points and increasing road safety. I’m no engineer, but...I don’t know about all that. Typically converting a two-way road to one-way road means drivers have more room, will drive faster, and will pay less attention to bikes/pedestrians coming from unanticipated directions. Also, while I’m not smart enough to say if this conversion will make the neighborhood less safe, I am smart enough to say that it’s annoying to give up a pretty handy way to bike from the Maggie Walker Plaza to Abner Clay Park in exchange for just 15 parking spaces.
While I’ve filled out the previous survey (because it took a grand total of 30 seconds), I’m still working my way through the West Broad Street BRT Corridor Analysis PDF before leaving any feedback. I think I mentioned it last week, but this is an early and necessary analysis that needs doing before the region can move forward on any of the real work to make a westward BRT extension a reality. Honestly, don’t be intimidated, because as far as transportation analysis PDFs go, this one looks pretty enjoyable. So dig into it—you’ve got until May 15th to submit any feedback.
Now that the City has eliminated parking minimums, it’s on to the next of the Three Zoning Changes: Authorizing ADUs everywhere! In her newsletter this past Friday, Councilmember Jordan says “We have been advised that the ADU paper will likely come before Council sometime in May or June.“ That’s exciting, and I’ll make sure to keep an eye out for it.
Last week, Governor Youngkin’s Chief Diversity Officer, Martin Brown, a former Heritage Foundation fellow, gave a speech at VMI proclaiming that diversity, equity, and inclusion work is dead. I guess not dead enough for him to stop collecting his $160,000 paycheck though? I mean, at this point, it does sort of feel like an editor from The Onion runs the Governor’s appointments. David Ress at the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that the Virginia NAACP, the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus, the Virginia Asian American and Pacific Islander Caucus, and the Virginia Latino Caucus are all calling for Brown’s resignation.
I’m a couple weeks late in linking to Greetings From Richmond, an excellent video about our “gritty DIY skate scene.” It’s worth watching the entire 13 minutes—even if you’re not into skateboarding—for a look at a very-Richmond subculture that, at least in my mind, represents some of the best attributes of our weird, small, dirty, big-hearted city.
Via /r/r, “a lime tree ready to be harvested.”
It’s officially RVA Bike Month! That means a million bike and bike-adjacent events enticing you each day to hop on your bike and ride off into the sunset. Today’s enticers: Hardtail Happy Hour and trail ride (meet at Dogwood Dell) and Bike Monday Bros Casual Ride (meet at the Robinson Street Starbucks). Get out there and ride, y’all!
This morning's longread
Electric Buses Are the Future. Agencies Are Still Right to be Cautious.
Richmond’s natural-gas-powered bus fleet buys all of its fuel from the City’s own natural gas utility. This creates a pretty big disincentive to electrify our public transit system, but, after reading this thoughtful longread about the challenges facing transportation agencies trying to go fully electric, I wonder if we should let a few peer cities take a whack at it first and figure out how to solve some of the problems.
In an ideal world, battery electric buses would be a one-for-one drop in replacement for diesels. They’re not. Electrification requires major infrastructure, electric buses are sometimes less reliable than the buses they replace, and running electrics can require schedule adjustments or a larger fleet. We should see improvement on all these fronts: time and money solves infrastructure, reliability gets better over time, and better technology with longer range could fix scheduling issues...Today, though, electrifying bus fleets requires considerable budget, and it takes concerted attention from agency staff and management. And, at the end of the day, even if it goes well, the agency is simply operating the same service it was before – not necessarily more frequent or reliable service, which is what riders care most about. Electrification is good, but there are also many other things agencies need to be focusing on.
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Picture of the Day
Idk, our front yard is weird.
