Good morning, RVA: 444 • 12; Herring's brief; and statewide COVID-19 regulations

Good morning, RVA! It’s 67 °F, and highs today will land somewhere around 80 °F. It’s looking like we might catch some sunshine today—or at least a break in the rain.

Water cooler

As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 444 new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealth and 12 new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 102 new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 57, Henrico: 21, and Richmond: 24). Since this pandemic began, 208 people have died in the Richmond region. I still think something different is going on in Chesterfield, but, who knows for sure. Check out these cumulative reported positive case graphs for Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield. They all different and interesting shapes, with Richmond’s starting to bend into an S-curve, Henrico’s looking like a straight line, while Chesterfield’s much more resembles a classic exponential curve (blah, blah standard disclaimer about these graphs being a function of testing still applies!). Make sure you tune in to the Governor’s coronabriefing today, as he plans to share some details about what moving into Phase Three will look like across the Commonwealth.

Ned Oliver at the Virginia Mercury has an interesting piece on proposed statewide COVID-19 regulations for businesses. I super agree with this quote from the Legal Aid Justice Center’s Jason Yarashes about the necessity of actual-factual regulations: “With enforceable regulations, workers will feel more empowered to speak out for their safety in the workplace, particularly during COVID when essential workers are risking their lives to keep the economy alive and feed their families.” It’d have been cool if the Governor had set up these rules and regulations before opening up businesses and moving the Commonwealth in the Phase Two, but, unfortunately, that’s not the timeline in which we live!

Whether because of the rain or because folks just needed to catch up on some sleep, I think last night was Richmond’s first night without a major protest downtown since May? However, the Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Sabrina Moreno returns from furlough and has a few pictures from an event that took place on the Southsidealong with some video of the ridiculous fort built by the Richmond Police Department outside of their headquarters. I don’t know what the dip in protestor activity means. Are folks generally satisfied with the Mayor’s decision to fire the Police Chief? Have they run out of monuments to tear down? Are they maybe just tired and need a hot second to catch their breath? I have no idea!

You know who’s not taking a break? Attorney General Mark Herring, that’s who. A judge will hear the case delaying the removal of the Lee monument today, and yesterday the AG filed his brief which he helpfully explains in this twitter thread. The brief quotes John Mitchell Jr, and ends with “The ‘pride’ plaintiff asserts that he and other unidentified members of his family have felt ‘for 130 years’ when pondering the statue of Lee towering over Richmond and the plurality of its population Lee fought to keep enslaved is not shared by all…Each day it stands cuts a deeper wound into the hearts and minds of those who have endured the pain of systemic racism and injustice for far too long.” About the lawsuit to keep the statue up, Herring’s spokesperson had this to say: “This random person who came out of nowhere doesn’t get to dictate what the commonwealth does with its own statue…The statue needs to come down and AG Herring will continue to work to make that happen.”

GRTC had their regularly scheduled board meeting this week, and you can download and check out the board packet (PDF) which is filled with all kinds of interesting things. Probably of most interest to normal people is the ridership report on page 33. Even in the midst of an ultracrisis, the Richmond region’s fixed-route bus ridership (everything that’s not an express route) is down just 29%—and down just 22% on buses that are not the Pulse. In fact, year-to-date ridership compared to last year, across every route, is down a total of 0.31%. The lack of cratering ridership that some other cities have seen speaks to the importance of public transportation to our region’s essential workers.

At tonight’s Richmond 300 virtual summit you can spend some time talking through the plans for Stony Point Fashion Park. I know, I know, I can hear some of your eyes rolling at this very moment, but the quick plan outlining the potential for that disconnected and underused part of town is surprisingly interesting (PDF). It’s not like the current plan for the area is working out, right? You can register for tonight’s summit over on the Eventbrite.

Tomorrow is Juneteenth, and some folks will have the day off for the first time. Superintendent Kamras says RPS employees will have Monday off because Friday was already a planned summer holiday and “declaring Friday ‘off’ doesn’t provide any additional benefit to our employees.” In yesterday’s email, Kamras shares some background on Juneteenth from Dr. Henry Louis Gates, which you should read but I’ll quote a bit: “Hardly the recipe for a celebration — which is what makes the story of Juneteenth all the more remarkable. Defying confusion and delay, terror and violence, the newly “freed” black men and women of Texas, with the aid of the Freedmen’s Bureau (itself delayed from arriving until September 1865), now had a date to rally around. In one of the most inspiring grassroots efforts of the post-Civil War period, they transformed June 19 from a day of unheeded military orders into their own annual rite, “Juneteenth,” beginning one year later in 1866.”

This morning’s longread

Fear of Public Transit Got Ahead of the Evidence

This is some good news. I haven’t found my way back on a bus yet, but that’s mostly because I’m privileged enough to not have needed to find my way back anywhere.

Even during a pandemic, public-transit systems show themselves to be indispensable to the functioning of big cities, transporting essential workers to jobs, while also acting as a major engine of economic stability and equity. As New York and other cities take steps to reopen, transit agencies’ most pressing job, next to managing massive budget shortfalls, will be managing fear while they seek to reclaim the passengers they have lost. High-visibility cleaning and strong health-messaging campaigns, coupled with universal mask wearing, can help reassure passengers that they can return to a safe transit system. But more reassuring still is the lack of evidence that public-transit systems have played a role in COVID-19 transmission—and a growing body of research pointing in the other direction.

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