Good morning, RVA: Democracy!, free fares, and cutting down huge trees

I had a blast voting at yesterday’s firehouse primary for the 4th
Congressional District. Thanks to all the volunteers who made it happen!

Good morning, RVA! It's 28 °F, and you can expect highs in the mid 40s later today. Tomorrow, rain soggily tramps back in and maybe sticks around most of the day. After we muddle through that, though, we’ve got clear and bright days—with teeth-chattering lows—on through to next week.

Water cooler

Democracy! Yesterday’s Democratic firehouse primary to nominate a candidate for Virginia’s 4th Congressional seat was really special. I voted at Diversity Thrift with thousands of other folks who patiently stood in line for an hour on a cold and dark Tuesday evening. The vibe was so positive and wonderful, and I truthfully had a blast. Thank you to all of the volunteers who pulled off an incredible event at Diversity—and I hear things went just as smoothly at Dogtown Dance and at the other polling locations across the region. Vote counting starts this morning at 10:00 AM (Twitter), so tune back in later today for results!

Yesterday, GRTC announced that they would continue fare-free bus service through at least June 2024. Here’s the important bit: “GRTC recently received funding from the Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation to support the program through June 2025 with assurances that a local match would be made to offset the total cost of the annual $5.6 million program.” This is good news; the zero-fare program removes a lot of the friction of riding the bus, improving access for lots of folks. I still think our region has a lot of work to do to make our free-to-ride system better and more useful for riders, and I worry that all of this money going to offset fares could be used instead to expand and improve bus service. Some specific concerns: Since the system redesign a couple of years back, two of our most frequent, 15-minute routes—the #4 and the #5—have quietly become barely acceptable 30-minute routes; GRTC is considering bisecting the #1, ending cross-town, one-seat rides; and every day a handful of buses just never make it into service causing frequent delays. There’s lots to fix and improve in addition to keeping fares free, and I hope we don’t lose sight of that over the next couple of years. No one will ride the bus—no matter how free it is—if it’s slow and doesn’t get you where you need to go.

Pulitzer Prize Winner Michael Paul Williams reports that eight or nine century-old shade trees have been cut down in Mosby Court, one of Richmond’s public housing neighborhoods. A Richmond Redevelopment and Housing Authority spokesperson said that the trees were cut down “as part of a curb appeal improvement request that came from the City of Richmond.” However, according the the Mayor’s spokesperson, the City “requested RRHA to pick up trash and remove brush—not trees.” What a big and irrecoverable mistake. Even if RRHA or the City replants five times as many replacement trees it’ll be decades—assuming the City can keep them alive—before they provide enough shade to cool these communities during our ever-hottening summers. I mean, it should not be at all shocking or surprising that Mosby Court has one of the highest levels of urban heat vulnerability in the city, according to RVA Green 2050. The new RRHA CEO has paused any further removal of trees for now, but the damage is already done. I think someone, the City or RRHA, needs to do something to make this right—above and beyond planting new baby trees (which also needs to happen).

Autumn Childress at WRIC followed up on the story about Richmond’s Sheriff polygraphing two employees to find out who leaked information to the media. The Sheriff says, “We have a right to polygraph,” which I’m not sure is ever the quote you want to lead with when talking about your own employees.

Via /r/rva these neat pictures of old Richmond-Petersburg Turnpike toll tickets. Of course, construction of the Richmond-Petersburg Turnpike would go on to tear permanent holes through Richmond’s majority-Black neighborhoods—definitely not neat by all counts.

Logistical note! We did it: This is the last Good Morning, RVA of 2022! First, we’ve definitely entered the part of the year when there’s not a ton of new news and year-end lists and retrospectives start to take over the headlines. Second, I’m exhausted. Despite a waning and transitioning pandemic, 2022, at least for me, was still a lot. So I’m going to take the next dozen or so days to rest, relax, play some video games, watch some horror films, spend time with my family, and, if I can find enough layers, ride some bikes. I hope you’ve got some time set aside to work through your own list of extracurriculars—or, if that sounds too much like work, that you find time to sit quietly and stare out a window. I’ll be back in your inboxes on January 3rd. Have an excellent rest of 2022 and ride safe.

This morning's longread
The Case For Protected Bike Lanes

I chose this morning’s longread solely for its blurb: “Giving cyclists their own space results in some pretty big benefits beyond just a lack of dead cyclists.”

Bike advocates argue that separation is key to driving up cyclist participation. And so it appears from a new study of early separated lane projects in the U.S. Across six cities, the study finds a rise of ridership between 21% and 171% after the lanes were installed...Almost half of riders said they were cycling more frequently as a result of the new lanes, with those on Dearborn Street, in Chicago, reporting the biggest increase. Most importantly, the research found that the lanes increased participation in cycling generally. Ten percent of cyclists said they would have used another form of transportation before the lanes were built.

If you’d like to suggest a longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol’ Patreon.

Picture of the Day

Just doing some democracy.