🦅 Good morning, RVA: Transportation needs maps, book bans, and invasive plants

Good morning, RVA! It’s 60 °F, and we’ve got another great day ahead of us. Today, you can expect highs in the low 80s, some gusty winds, and a continued break in the humidity. I know this sort of weather can’t last forever, as we approach full and actual summer, but I’m excited for it to stretch out for as long as possible.
 

Water cooler

Richmond Connects, the sort of umbrella project for the City’s transportation planning process, has released 17 different Needs Assessment maps, each detailing the specific pedestrian, bicycle, and transit needs for small areas of Richmond. For example, here’s the map of the transportation issues facing just the Manchester/Swansboro area that highlights how unsafe biking on Semmes feels and how the unreliability of buses makes using transit a challenge. I think, especially in the areas in which you live or spend a lot of time, none of the needs will surprise you—which is good! Things like too-fast streets, scary intersections, and dangerous bike lanes are pretty obvious to anyone who uses them. The Richmond Connects folks will be back in our inboxes this month or next with proposals for actual projects that could address these actual transportation needs. Exciting! Stay tuned.
 

The City has updated their legislative website following this past Monday’s meeting, and that means I have just the tiniest City Council update for you today. First, they continued the ordinance to ban exotic animals (ORD. 2023–130) until their June 26th meeting. Em Holter at the Richmond Times-Dispatch explains with this headline: “Richmond to reconsider proposed animal ban following outcry from falconers. OK! Second, the resolution to get the CAO to put together a plan for the City to take ownership of Evergreen and East End cemeteries (RES. 2023-R011) was sent back to the Governmental Operations committee. You can, as always, follow along with the legislation I’ve got my eye on via the GMRVA Legislation Tracker. So far this year, 15 ordinances and resolutions I’ve followed have passed and zero have failed! I’m not sure what that means, but I think it’s interesting.
 

The RTD’s Sean Jones reports that the Hanover County School Board passed their book-banning policy last night and then immediately banned 17 books. I can’t find the full list of books on the school district’s BoardDocs site, I think because, in one of the most dysfunctional actions a public body can take, “The agenda item to ban those books was added after the body’s closed session that took place immediately before Tuesday night’s public meeting.” School Board members describe the now-banned books as “vulgar,” which, honestly, is a great word to describe this Board’s recent behavior.
 

Jonathan Spiers at Richmond BizSense reports on additional costs VCU Health must pay as a result of bailing on the redevelopment of 500 N. 10th Street. Big, expensive yikes for them, but pretty good news for the City as the health system is still on the hook for demolishing the decrepit and terrible Public Safety Building—even though they’ve backed out of putting something shiny and new in its place.
 

It’s the time of year when I tell you to go volunteer with the James River Association to help remove invasive plants from Chapel Island. They’ve got four opportunities this summer for you to roll up your sleeves and get out there—with the first one taking place this Friday, June 16th from 12:00–2:00 PM. It takes a lot of effort to tear out decades of invasives, so I’m going to keep reminding you about this until the work is done. My dream, however, is that at some point in the future—when I’m still writing Good Morning, RVA but about AI zoning and right-of-way for flying cars—I’ll be able to note that JRA has finally finished up at Chapel Island and moved upriver to begin de-invasive-ing some other section of the James River Park System!
 

Friends! Subscribers! Patrons! The Good Morning, RVA pledge drive continues, and you can, right this very moment, chip in a couple of bucks over on the ol’ patreon: patreon.com/gmrva. I set my slightly ambitious (but still achievable) goal at increasing the amount of monthly GMRVA patronage by $381. I’m stoked to report that, as of this morning, we’re 59% of the way there, with just $155 left to go. Really incredible stuff, and I’m thankful for everyone that’s newly joined the Patreon and for existing patrons that upped their donation amount. Y’all are wonderful.
 

This morning’s patron longread

Deadly Traffic in Suburbia Points to Deep-Seated Structural Problems

Submitted by Patron Lisa. The problem of suburbs and how to retrofit them to make safe environments for people outside of cars has gotta be one of the harder problems for urbanists to solve. Yeah we can build new urban villages, nestled in the bones of decaying malls or on massive plots of farmland in the far-flung exurbs, but what do we do with the endless Brandermillian cul-de-sacs that already make up a huge portion of our metropolitan areas?
 

Because they are both streets and roads, they are referred to by traffic safety advocates as “stroads.” When suburbs were new, stroads were considered efficient solutions, not problems. They moved traffic efficiently across sprawling distances. In 1929, The New York Times wrote of the benefit that a “magnificent artery of traffic” in wide, straight roads would provide in speeding traffic through Nassau and Suffolk counties. Now, safe-street advocates say stroads are inhospitable to anything other than motor vehicles. “We’re stuck with a status quo that is dysfunctional, and it is a question of whether people are willing to blame the essential principals behind it,” Mr. Norton said. “I think you have to change the fundamentals.”
 

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Picture of the Day

My first trip back to a movie theatre since 2019!