🌿 Good morning, RVA: RVAgreen 2050, pedestrian bridges, and gardening tips

Good morning, RVA! It’s 32 °F, and, after the sun comes up, temperatures should return to the previously scheduled springlike 60s. The next couple of days look even warmer, too, with weekend highs forecast in this upper 80s. I’m stoked!
 

Water cooler

Big news! A draft of Richmond’s climate action plan, RVAgreen 2050, is ready for public review and input (full, 190-page PDF right here). The plan lays out 49 strategies to reduce the City’s greenhouse gas emissions by 45% by 2030. Those strategies range from urban agriculture to fleet electrification to eliminating single-use plastics and are bucketed into a couple big categories: Buildings & energy, community, enviornment, transportation & mobility, and waste reduction & recovery. Scroll all the way down to page 88 to dive into the specifics of each strategy—but block out some time since there’s a lot to take in! Because the entire RVAgreen process has been very focused on community input and engagement, they’ve also launched a Community Sustainability survey that they hope to run annually to track your own neighborhood’s climate resilience. Looks like you’ve now got a like of climate-related homework to do, and you’ve got until June 19th to do it!
 

Mike Platania at Richmond BizSense reports on the death of my dream to build a mountain bike skills course in the wooded lot adjacent to Movieland. A D.C. developer has officially bought the property and plans to build a five-story, 375-unit apartment building with, gasp, 415 parking spaces. This proposed development sits within the area addressed by the Greater Scott’s Addition small area plan, which lays out a crescent of green space stretching right through the property. Maybe we can swap, like, half of those surface-level parking spots for some sort of trail or path or mini mountain bike skills course? Just spitballing.
 

Whoa, Henrico County! Check out these conceptual images of a pedestrian bridge over I-95, which would (I think) connect the GreenCity development over to the retail and residential at Brook & Parham. This is also reasonably close to the proposed alignment of the Fall Line Trail, and I wonder if one day you’d be able to bike from Downtown to whatever arena thing (MONSTER TRUCK RALLEY) at GreenCity all on safe, separated bike infrastructure? Could be rad! Also, the County will look to a federal RAISE transportation grant for this project, which (again, I think) is the same bucket of money the City would like to use to replace the bridge over the train tracks on Arthur Ashe Boulevard.
 

Governor Youngkin is still trying his best to get the General Assembly to pass some sort of gas tax holiday—which would cost the state almost half a billion dollars of transportation money while saving the average Virginian just a couple bucks (if that). Graham Moomaw has the latest details for the Virginia Mercury, including the absolutely bananas suggestions by Democrats that we give folks a $50 cash rebate for every car that they own. I know we indirectly subsidize driving at every possible turn in America, but now Democrats want to directly subsidize it with cash payments?? Get outta here with that! How about deep subsidies for e-bikes instead? Or maybe literally any other thing than giving people actual money to drive more? Luckily, House Republicans (???) voted this anti-climate proposal down.
 

Pulitzer Prize Winner Michael Paul Williams has some follow up on the situation at Montpelier he wrote about a couple weeks ago: Now the CEO of the foundation has “terminated or suspended members of its staff, including the firings of executive vice president and chief curator Elizabeth Chew, director of archeology Matt Reeves and spokeswoman Christy Moriarty…The targeted employees collectively have more than 50 years of service to Montpelier and 100 years of experience in their fields.” Sounds like a total own-goal that’s really spiraled out of control. Big yikes.
 

RVA Mag has a new gardening column with a…way different vibe…than the VPM column I normally link to. Here’s a quote to help you see what I mean, “4/20 is an excuse to indulge in one kind of weed and to do everything you can to combat another. Roll a joint, wander out into the garden, and pull up any clover, violets, dead nettles or other spring weeds that are trying to colonize your flower or vegetable beds. (Pro tip: chickens LOVE clover, dead nettle and chickweed. Violet flowers can be harvested and used to make syrups or jellies. Just make sure your dog hasn’t peed on them first.)” Great stuff.
 

This morning’s longread

For a Black Man Hired to Undo a Confederate Legacy, It Has Not Been Easy

The New York Times looks into the Black-owned company that took down Richmond’s Confederate Monuments and has kind of become the go-to folks to call if you need to get rid of a racist statue in your Southern town. What a fascinating business niche to find yourself in.
 

Mr. Henry has become one of the most reliable contractors willing and able to take on the work. But the removals are more than just a way to boost his bottom line. In dismantling the Lee statue, he said, some suggested he was fulfilling a prophecy from 1890. In an issue published that year, John Mitchell Jr., the editor of The Richmond Planet, a Black newspaper, wrote of the Black man’s role in the statue’s history: “He put up the Lee monument, and should the time come, will be there to take it down.”
 

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Picture of the Day

A cool bike/ped bridge I found on the Huckleberry Trail in Christiansburg.