🚧 Good morning, RVA: Fatal crash on Grove, removing slip lanes, and community fridges

Good morning, RVA! It’s 73 °F, and I think we mostly missed out on yesterday’s severe storms. That’s good news—I like to avoid 60 mph straight-line winds whenever I can. Today, though, you can expect very calm winds, clear skies, and highs in the 90s. As far as the current forecast goes, we’ve got nothing severe in our immediate future.
 

Water cooler

Will Gonzalez at WRIC reports that a driver hit and killed a man riding a scooter at the intersection of Grove Avenue and N. Lombardy Street this past Sunday at 7:33 AM. I haven’t see any more details, but I would guess that speed was probably a factor. This is, I think, either the third or fourth person to be hit and killed by a driver on and around VCU’s campus in 2023. It’s upsetting that I can’t even remembering how many people have died using our streets in just that area, and I wonder when will we start to adress this problem with the seriousness it deserves. While I appreciate the City’s current efforts to rapidly install speed tables in a bunch of different neighborhoods (I’ve got two new ones up near me and they’re definitely working), we’ve got to do more. We need to pair tactical efforts that respond directly to a horrible incident like this with bigger, bolder, holistic citywide efforts to slow drivers down. How do we launch a fatality review board, but for crashes? Can we do something to discourage ownership of massive vehicles in the city? Where can we shunt traffic off of neighborhood streets and onto highways? Can we audit and eliminate every slip lane and sweeping, speedy turn? We know this work is not hopeless if we take it seriously. Cities across the country and the world have taken concrete—and successful!—steps towards making their streets safe for everyone. We should, too.
 

Speaking of, via /r/rva here’s a picture of how you can easily, quickly, and cheaply get rid of a dangerous slip lane (this is the intersection of 10th and Leigh, back behind VCU Health). I’m not sure if this is a permanent installation, a pilot, or some temporary infrastructure while waiting on nearby construction, but it does prove that this sort of thing is totally possible.
 

VPM’s Phil Liles has a really charming interview with Taylor Scott, founder of RVA Community Fridges. I love Scott’s positive attitude and willingness to just get out there and do something. This quote is great: “We are fully volunteer-ran by our community of Richmond. We are currently in the steps of filing a 1023-EZ to be a nonprofit, which I’m sure will provide a lot of opportunity for more community partners. But currently, for the last two and a half years, we have just been solely rocking on community strength. And it’s been wonderful.” One of the reasons I love Richmond is for its mid-sized city vibes. A single person can have an idea, get it off the ground, and start making an impact right almost immediately.
 

David Ress at the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports on the lack of progress Dominion has made on its plans for supporting Virginia’s growing number of electric vehicles. I link to it mainly for this doublethink head-scratcher: “Dominion has said rapid growth in the number of EVs on Virginia roads is one reason why adding more natural gas-fired power plants to its fleet — which would boost its greenhouse gas emissions — is the most realistic long-term option for the next 15 and 25 years, even though the Virginia Clean Economy Act calls for it to emit no carbon by 2045.” It’s clear to me that Dominion has one set of goals, and, without actual laws and regulations, those goals will not align with my own personal goal of a having habitable planet for my theoretical grandchildren.
 

This morning’s longread

The Heat Death of the American Frontier

Heads up: This is an incredibly depressing piece about the impending (like pretty dang short-term) impacts of climate change. I’ve started saving these sorts of articles—like I did the pieces in early 2017 about the rise of authoritarianism in the United States—so I can look back in five years and see if we were worried too much or not enough.
 

But heat. Heat is different. Heat comes for everyone. It blankets entire cities, states, regions. It does not touch one home and leave a neighbor’s unscathed. Nor does it arrive unpredictably. The heat will come, you can be sure, every summer. And it will reliably get hotter. And hotter. And hotter. There is no hope that it will disappear for the next few years, or offer a period of respite. The heat will come. It will keep coming. And a population raised in air conditioned bubbles will be pushed towards the recognition that you cannot air condition the entire world. For the past week, you could have put your finger on the northern border of South Carolina and traced a line heading west, following the northern borders of Georgia and Mississippi and Alabama and Arkansas and Oklahoma and New Mexico and Arizona and Nevada and slicing through California to the sea, and every single state under that line would have been dealing with 100-degree temperatures. The heat is here.
 

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Picture of the Day

I just can’t get over the color of this Cana lily.