Good morning, RVA: 1,267 • 10; red bus lanes; and Henrico vaccinations

Good morning, RVA! It’s 52 °F, and it’s raining. You should expect it to continue raining throughout the morning and maybe even into the late afternoon. Tomorrow, though! Tomorrow’s weather looks amazing.

Water cooler

As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 1,267 new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealthand 10 new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 128 new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 56, Henrico: 57, and Richmond: 15). Since this pandemic began, 1,191 people have died in the Richmond region. Are Virginia’s case counts on the rise again, or are we riding it out on a bumpy plateau? The seven-day average of new reported cases bottomed out ten days ago at 1,291 (still real, real high), and, over the last week or so, it has crept back up to 1,442. We’re seeing similar trends locally, too, with a low of 129 new reported cases (that’s a seven-day average) back on March 10th. Today’s seven-day average sits at 146. The amount of virus out there is still a lot! Don’t go frolicking around without taking proper safety precautions!

Speaking of frolicking around, yesterday at his press conference, the Governor announced that he’d “ease certain mitigation measures.” You can read the full updated Executive Order 72 here (PDF), but here’s the gist: 50 people can now gather indoors and 100 people out of doors, outdoor entertainment venues can operate at 30% of their capacity with no cap on the number of attendees, and more spectators are allowed at recreational sporting events. Also, trumpet and trombone enthusiasts rejoice, because “entertainment and amusement business” employees “who must remove their masks to play a wind instrument during a performance or rehearsal” are exempt from mask requirements as long as they maintain 10 feet of distance from others. These updates take effect on April 1st.

Hey now, this is interesting: Jessica Nocera at the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that Henrico County officials are publicly asking the state to allocate more vaccine doses to the ongoing Richmond Raceway vaccination events. This feels like a very un-Henrico Way to go about things, but I’m really interested to see if it works. There’s definitely no denying that the County, which runs the vaccination site, has the capacity to efficiently vaccinate thousands and thousands of people. Nocera says that the Raceway received “just” 11,994 doses this past week, and we know from Supervisors Nelson that the County can jab out that number of doses in just a couple of days. I hope Henrico can make this happen and secure more doses for our region.

I’ve got a lot of boring news this morning—which, for me, is exciting! First, I uploaded City Council’s budget work session to The Boring Show. This first session is only an hour long, and at 2x speed I was able to get through a good chunk of it while getting ready for bed. Totally normal-person stuff to listen to while brushing your teeth! You can stay up to date on this year’s budget season directly—hearing it straight from the nine horses' mouths—by subscribing to The Boring Show podcast. Also budget-related, Chris Suarez at the RTD says Councilmembers Lynch and Jones have “said they would support increasing the proposed $2.9 million allocation for the city’s Affordable Housing Trust Fund to $10 million.” Council has final say on the budget, so we’ll see if either of these councilmembers introduces amendments to increase this year’s allocation to the Affordable Housing Trust Fund—and bonus points if they take the time to figure out how to pay for those amendments, too.

Second, the Governmental Operations committee meets today and will discuss RES. 2021-R019, a pretty boring paper that would request the CAO to create a digital connectivity map for the City. Council hopes to use this map to plan out the best way to provide universal broadband access for, specifically (like, mentioned in the resolution text (PDF)), Black and Brown families. That’s not boring at all, and you’ll remember Henrico was working on a similar thing a couple months back.

Third, the Mayor introduced ORD. 2021–078, which will officially accept about $2 million from the Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transit to paint the Pulse lanes red from Hamilton to Foushee Street—the center-running section of the Pulse. Red lanes, which is a Bus Rapid Transit best practice, will help keep drivers (and pedestrians) out of the bus lanes and keep the buses moving quickly and safely. I’m stoked on this, and the Mayor’s press release says we should see the project completed by next spring! Because I can’t not, I’m interested in what this sentence in the Background portion of the ordinance means: “The project consists of a Design and Construction phase that will determine if solid red-pavement travel lanes will be active 24 hours a day or a combination of hatched red-pavement lanes will be active 7–9:30 AM and 4–6:30 PM.” Are portions of the bus-only lanes peak-only? I don’t think that’s the case, but I’ve been trapped in this house for a long time and maybe have forgotten some details about how the world works! I’ve written about red bus lanes before, if you want to get into it.

This morning’s longread

The Holy Grail of Transportation Is Right in Front of Us

In Richmond, we need the CVTA to fund more regional bus service, and then we need Richmond and Henrico to restore the money they cut from GRTC’s operating budget a couple years back. Then we’d really be at the start of a grail quest.

People have said for years that the bus could be the next big thing in transportation. Now we can make that a reality. With the proper investment, city buses might be transformed into the sort of next-generation transportation service that technology companies and car companies have spent billions over the last decade trying to build — a cheap, accessible, comfortable, sustainable, reliable way to get around town. How might we come upon this transportation nirvana? Not through some great technological innovation or a grand infrastructure project. The holy grail is right there in front of us; it’s been right there for decades. All we’ve got to do is buy more buses, hire more bus drivers and, in some places, give buses special privileges on the road. All we’ve got to do is care enough to build bus systems that work.

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