Good morning, RVA! It’s 62 °F, and that was a lot of rain last night! Today, though, you can expect dry skies and highs in the mid 70s. It may be the best day of the week weather wise, but it’s hard to tell since the five-day forecast looks so amazing. Definitely time to queue up your best late-spring outside plans, which, for me, means (finally) getting the vegetable garden planted.
Water cooler
Hey, I think this is a medium-big deal: The Department of Public Works is, once again, asking for your feedback on the proposed bike lane on Westover Hills Boulevard south of the Nickel Bridge. Back in February, I wrote about DPW’s original survey, suggesting that folks request physically protected bike lanes as part of the project. In this new survey, DPW notes that they “received significant feedback to add physical protection to the proposed bike lane. DPW proposes placing a physical barrier between the bike lane and traffic.” First, thank you to everyone who wrote in asking for a better project design. Look, it made a difference! And, honestly, we really shouldn’t even be building bike lanes without some sort of physical protection at this point. Second, thank you to DPW for listening to the folks who wrote in—it’s really gratifying to see the public engagement process working properly. However, because I can’t leave well enough alone, I do still think this project can be even better: As currently designed, the bike lane leaves Westover Hills Boulevard at Clarence Street and continues down 49th Street—with just sharrows!—and dead ends at Hill Top Drive. Currently, there’s no way to get from that dead end over to the apartments by Reedy Creek or, more importantly, George Wythe High School. I’m not sure I know the best and safest way to make this connection other than to just extend the bike lane all the way down to Midlothian Turnpike instead of branching off to 49th. So…that’s what I’m going to ask for, emphasizing a safe connection to George Wythe, when I fill out this new survey!
Speaking of George Wythe, this evening, Richmond Public Schools will hold another one of their school-renaming public hearings, this one for George Wythe High School. The renaming committee has come up with an interesting set of names for folks to consider, which includes zero options that feature people(!): Capitol City High School of the Arts, Culture High School of the Arts, Gateway High School of the Arts, Heritage High School of the Arts, and South Richmond High School of the Arts. All told, RPS will rename four schools this round—Binford Middle, John B. Cary Elementary, Ginter Park Elementary, and George Wythe High—and I think I’ve now written about them all! We’re not done, though, because I imagine there are still schools within the District named after dead Confederates or slaveowners (looking at you John Marshall), so I bet we’ll see at least one more round of renaming at some point in the future.
