🌽 Good morning, RVA: Shrinking streets, an addiction to fencing, and a statistical tie

Good morning, RVA! It’s 63 °F, and today looks cloudy but nice. I think we should avoid any sort of rain until at least tomorrow—better spend some time outside today if you can!
 

Water cooler

Semmes Avenue is one of Richmond’s overly big, overly fast, and overly dangerous streets. Today, at 8:00 AM and at 5:00 PM, 5th District Councilmember Lynch will hold two rallies to get drivers to slow the heck down. I can already hear the sound of hundreds of keyboards typing “But rallies will not slow down drivers, Ross.” Correct! And the Councilmember knows this: “…when you have a big wide road, people are going to speed down it, and one of the tools is to narrow it, and I think it’s high time we start thinking about that.” Yes! Changing the physical shape of the streets is the only way to really get drivers to slow down—something we discussed recently with the Brookland Park Boulevard Bump Out Situation. This can mean taking away lanes, narrowing lanes, adding bike lanes, expanding sidewalks, or even just throwing a bunch of jersey barriers up until we figure out what is going on with drivers.
 

City Council’s Urban Design Committee will meet to again consider GRTC’s Yet Another Temporary Transfer Plaza. Last I wrote about this, UDC had some concerns about the chain link fencing used to separate out a portion of the space for car parking, which 1) looks trashy, and 2) makes pedestrian access to the actual buses harder. However, in some rare fencing good news, the letter attached to the updated engineering diagrams says, “The fence has been reduced on the east side to allow access from the south east corner of the site.” Anyway, these adjustments to the plan seem good, but, truth be told, Safari crashes every time I try to scroll through the aforelinked (and massive) PDF. That’s OK, though, we all know I can’t read engineering diagrams anyway! Richmond’s recent addiction to fencing things off aside, I’m mostly interested in how the City helps GRTC find a final, permanent location for a transfer plaza (or transfer street!). We need a place for buses to gather downtown, and, while Navy Hill and COVID-19 put a pause on the search for a bus home, the need has not vanished.
 

Small business owners in Henrico will want to check out this Small Business Resiliency Grant Program just launched by the County. From the FAQ: “Small businesses will receive grant awards between $10,000 - $25,000 and will be combined with business coaching to fully develop and execute a business plan and project for the purpose of improving or expanding business safety, sustainability, and profitability.” Special consideration will be given to businesses owned by women, minorities, and verterans—so if that’s you and you’ve got an idea bubbling around, submit the Expression of Interest and Application by November 3rd!
 

If you wish, you can read this terrifying thing by Mel Leonor in the Richmond Times-Dispatch about how new polling shows T-Mac in a statistical tie with his republican challenger. Also, in related public accountability news, I sent off my mail-in ballot over the weekend! If you need to do the same, you’ve got until October 12th to register to vote if you haven’t already, October 22nd to apply for a ballot to be mailed to you, and until October 30th to vote early in-person—lots of options to just go ahead and check this off your todo list.
 

/r/rva blowing my mind today with “candy corn flavored red vines.” This is definitely a thing that exists, although did anyone stop to ask if it should?
 

This morning’s longread

The crane who fell in love with a human

I…there’s a lot going on in this article.
 

One day, after some back petting, Walnut turned away from Crowe, extended her wings, and raised her tail — an invitation to mate. Walnut was asking Crowe to flutter to her back and perform what’s poetically known as a “cloacal kiss.” Crowe recalls being both startled and amused. “It’s what I had been working towards and hoping for, but it was still surprising when it happened,” he says. Composing himself, Crowe put a hand on Walnut’s back and then rubbed her thighs, going through the motions of artificial insemination. This would prepare both of them for the real thing, come the following March.
 

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Picture of the Day

Mum time!