Good morning, RVA! It's 40 °F, and thus begins our stretch of dramatically good weather! Today and tomorrow you can expect dry, sunny highs in the 70s, and, then, Thursday and Friday, get ready for temperatures that could hit 80 °F. We might see a bit of rain on Friday, but, most likely, we’ll stay dry and warm until at least early next week. Get out your tank tops and slip-ons, because it’s happening!
Water cooler
Did you get trapped in brutal car traffic yesterday morning? VPM reports that “several protesters blocked Interstates 95 and 64 near the Bryan Park interchange for over an hour on Monday morning.” According to an email sent to VPM, the protestors called for the U.S. to “cease all funding for the genocidal, Israeli occupation of Palestine at once.” Fair warning: I’m going to set aside the focus of this protest, which, I know is exactly the opposite of the point, and, because my brain can’t help itself, write about infrastructure. I don’t intend to minimize the horrible situation facing the people living in Gaza, but I’m aware it could read that way even though that’s not what I intend.
With that said, I think yesterday’s protest was fascinating from an urbanism and infrastructure perspective. First, it’s super dangerous to go out and stand on I-95! That in itself says something about our highway system, but every time I think about these people just...standing...in the middle the interstate, my heart rate literally increases. Second, how fragile is the car-based infrastructure we’ve built across this country? It’s optimized to speed people in and out of the suburbs as quickly as possible, but if anything—anything at all!—goes wrong, the whole system immediately fails. A total of 10 people disabled an entire region just by choosing the right place and time to simply stand still. Plus, not only did they shut down the interstate, but they also disrupted neighborhoods across the region as drivers tried to find alternate routes around the gridlock. The highways suck, yes, but, ultimately we need to make it easy and efficient for folks to take fewer trips by car. I assume bike commuters were not impacted by the sudden influx of traffic.
Finally, I do think this was an effective protest. While local elected officials—like Councilmembers, the Mayor, or even members of the General Assembly—can’t do much about our country’s involvement in the Middle East, our federal representatives certainly can. Shutting down the East Coast’s biggest thoroughfare for an hour got the Governor’s attention (Twitter) and is easily enough to have our Congressmembers and Senators take notice, too.
Eric Kolenich at the Richmond Times-Dispatch has the latest in the Public Safety Building saga: “State lawmakers have directed Virginia Commonwealth University Health to terminate an agreement that pays the city of Richmond almost $56 million for a building project that never happened.” State agencies, including public universities like VCU, do not pay real estate tax to their locality, which, in most localities, is probably annoying but not a crushing weight that looms over their every budget discussion. Not so in Richmond! An enormous amount of our city is owned by the State in some form or fashion, and every time VCU or some other agency buys up property, it removes that property from the tax rolls (a map of all the publicly-owned parcels in Richmond does exist somewhere, I just can’t find it at the moment). We’re talking millions of dollars each year that the City just cannot collect. The State does, however, provide a weak tool for localities to recapture some of that cash called PILOT, or Payment In Lieu of Taxes. Typically it’s not the easiest thing for the City to get folks to agree to pay, but, somehow Richmond got VCU to sign on for almost $56 million in PILOT fees over 25 years. That particular agreement is what state lawmakers want VCU to terminate.
I guess I get it, but I’d also love to know all current PILOTs VCU pays to the City compared to what their tax bill would be if they weren’t tax exempt. Maybe $56 million over 25 years is a steal and a great way for VCU to contribute financially to the future of the city they call home?
Em Holter, also at the RTD, says last night City Council did end up passing the changes to their rules—including tweaks to the public comment process (RES. 2024-R007). Personally, I still don’t feel like any of the changes were made to intentionally limit public involvement in Council meetings, but we’ll have to wait and see if that’s an unintended consequence or not.
Via /r/rva, I love this picture of some City-owned building in disrepair. I’m not 100% certain it’s the weirdly overgrown alley on the southern side of the Public Safety Building, but, given today’s content, let’s just say it is.
Axios Richmond’s Sabrina Moreno went to Kobop, a food truck outside of Buskey Cider, and took a picture of their “signature platter.” I...think it’s the most beautiful looking dinner that I’ve ever seen.
This morning's longread
From Snowdrop to Nightjar: Robert Marsham’s “Indications of Spring” (1789)
Look at this citizen scientist collecting useful data some 230 years ago! For decades Robert Marsham took notes on the arrival of spring in the form of some beautiful longhand tables. I love this practice because it involves both data and plants—two of my favorite things—but it also (eventually) turned into a useful public dataset. I don’t think my digital journal, full of its own indications of spring from over the years, will ever be of use to anyone but myself, but it’s a soothing routine that I can definitely recommend.
Robert Marsham’s project was handed down in the family and only came to a halt in 1958 when his great-great-great-granddaughter Mary died and her descendants were advised that their amateur contribution was no longer required, presumably judged to be no match for modern scientific methods. Despite its abrupt termination, it is the unbroken long run — 222 years — of Marsham’s “Indications of Spring” that gives it lasting scientific worth. There are a few patchy early records for places in the UK, but Marsham’s is the first truly systematic dataset, according to Tim Sparks, a professor of zoology and quantitative biology at the universities of Cambridge, Liverpool, and Poznań. “It is the longest such record for the UK and has been of immense value in determining the variability in spring and in its response to prevailing weather conditions. He inspired many others to do likewise.”8 Marsham’s record stretches back far enough that it can serve as a baseline for the investigation of changes that have already happened in the more recent past as well as for ongoing studies of the present situation.
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Picture of the Day
These stonecrop are my own indications of spring!
