😢 Good morning, RVA: Frustrating surveys, goodbye Ned, and a logistical note

Good morning, RVA! It’s 26 °F, and that’s a cold and appropriately December-like temperature. Today, however, you can expect highs back up near 50 °F with clear, sunny skies. Bundle up if you’ve gotta be anywhere before 9:00 AM!
 

Water cooler

Yesterday, the City’s Department of Public Works released public engagement surveys for two different intersections: Laburnum Avenue & Hermitage Road and 7th Street & Semmes Avenue. Both of these surveys frustrate me, and, once again, I’ll link to this Charles Marohn essay titled “Most Public Engagement is Worthless” and the follow up, “Most Public Engagement is Worse Than Worthless,” by Ruben Anderson. Here’s a quote from the former: “The meeting started out with the standard public policy questions planning professionals like to ask. What do you like about the city? What do you not like? If you could change one thing, what would it be? The answers were worse than worthless, and it was painful to watch non-policy people trying to answer questions that weren’t designed for them.” That’s how I feel about these two surveys, especially the Laburnum Avenue one. Do you, as a regular person with no engineering experience, feel like you know enough to decide between a “protected intersection with left turns” and a “roundabout with only one northbound and southbound lane” This stuff is literally my hobby, and I had to talk to three different people before getting it all straight in my head—honestly, filling out the surveys made me feel bad about myself! Which is ridiculous! This quote, from the second essay I linked above, gets at it for me: “We need to be more aware of different kinds of expertise, and who has it. Each expert—engineer, resident, or designer—only specializes in a narrow field, and we mustn’t ask them to do each other’s jobs.” Yes! Don’t make me, as a resident, choose between hard-to-read engineering diagrams. But do, please, by all means, work very hard to understand how exposed I feel biking through this intersection on Hermitage and why I entirely avoid biking on Laburnum at all costs.
 

OK, back to the actual survey options. First, you can see all the concepts for Hermitage & Laburnum in this one PDF. My preference is for 2A, a fully protected intersection. I think 3B would also be a good improvement, but I’d be nervous about folks flying down Laburnum carrying 45mph of bone-crushing-speed into and out of the roundabout. I’d rather cross against a red light, I think. For what it’s worth, I have no idea what the red bar labeled “95 % Queue” represents, maybe something bad for drivers? Who can say. Also, while we’re talking about head-scratchers, check out options 1A, 1B, and 2B which all eminent domain away people’s property. Absolutely wild to me that DPW would casually present an option that has folks U-turning into what was once a person’s front yard. Bonkers!
 

Second, you can find the concepts for 7th & Semmes here, here, and here. I don’t have as many strong feelings about this one, mostly because I don’t really know much about the “funded trail” that’s shown heading down Commerce Road (is that the Fall Line? something else?). When I bike over that way, I’m usually headed to 7th, and both the second and third option seem OK for that.
 

Finally, I really do love that the City is pushing forward on making our transportation infrastructure safer. For literal years—in this very email—I’ve asked for a protected intersection at Hermitage & Laburnum, and now here’s one proposed in an official City document! That’s a big, huge deal, and I’m stoked on it! This would not have been the case even five years ago, and, despite the execution on the engagement side of things, it marks some pretty big progress.
 

In his newsletter last night, RPS Superintendent Kamras laid out the process and timeline for appointing a new School Board representative from the 9th District. Interested folks (maybe that’s you!) need to, obviously, live in the 9th District and submit an application by January 16th. I can’t seem to find a link to that application, but you could always email the Clerk of the Board if you’re interested (schoolboard@rvaschools.net).
 

Ughhhh Axios Richmond’s Ned Oliver reports that he’s moving to Uruguay, and I report that I am devastated. Oliver’s long been one of my favorite local reporters, an excellent writer with a wonderful sense for what’s interesting. What a loss for Richmond! I hope he’ll start a blog or a newsletter or something so we can all follow his next adventure.
 

WTVR has this bizarre and sad story about someone who illegally killed a well-known buck somewhere in the James River Park System, posted it on Facebook, and then claimed they shot it hunting out in Prince Edward County. The Richmond SPCA has a strong response worth reading.
 

Richard Hayes at RVAHub reports that Legend Brewing will shut down their full-service restaurant and move to a “dedicated tasting room” model with a limited and rotating menu. I think that’s super interesting, and I Wonder What It Means.
 

Logistical note! That’s a wrap for 2023, y’all! I’m packing up my email-writing machine for the next 12-or-so days, and will return to your inboxes on January 2nd, 2024. I always want to promise big, GMRVA-related things for the final week of the year—there’s so much theoretical space and time to look back and reflect on everything that happened in the year that was. Realistically, I’ll most likely spend the entire week focused on books, bikes, and watching movies. I hope you find time to do the same—or whatever fills your tank. I’ll be checking email and staying vaguely aware of my surroundings, so if something interesting happens, you stumble across a fascinating longread, or you’d just like to share your end-of-year thoughts with me, please send me an email (ross@gmrva.com). Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in 2024!
 

This morning’s longread

52 things I learned in 2023

I think I’ve linked to one of these in years past, but here’s a list of 52 interesting things this one guy learned in 2023. Tap through, give the list a scroll, and I promise that you’ll end up with at least a half dozen new tabs open for later exploration. It’s like a giant list of longreads to tide you over until I return to your inbox in 2024!
 

There’s been a colony of 15,000 wild scorpions living in the walls of Sheerness Dockyard, Kent, for over 200 years…A specialness spiral is when you wait for the perfect time to use something, then end up never using it at all. “An item that started out very ordinary, through repeated lack of use eventually becomes seen more as a treasure”…Hookworm infestation might be a cure for hay fever…Scotland’s forest cover is nearly back to where it was 1,000 years ago, while England has risen to levels last seen in 1350…Steering a bike is much, much more complicated than it seems.
 

If you’d like to suggest a longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol’ Patreon.
 

Picture of the Day

I feel sort of embarrassed this is the last picture of the day for 2023.