Good morning, RVA: J&J clarification, the future of the NFL training camp, and take action on transit

Today you've got opportunities to both learn about and get involved in
transit policy.

Good morning, RVA! It's 63 °F, which is a heckuva lot warmer than it was 24 hours ago. Expect even warmer temperatures today and a chance for severe weather later this afternoon / evening. NBC12's Andrew Freiden says "a lot of neighborhoods will stay dry today but where storms pop, they could be very strong." Keep an eye on things and be careful!

Water cooler

Each school night, RPS Superintendent Kamras sends out two emails: RPS Direct, which that lets you know about every single RPS-related thing you could care to know about (subscribe here); and a COVID-19 Updates email that lists all of the reported COVID-19 case in the district from that day. Here's yesterday's entire list of reported cases: "No new cases." That seems like a big deal to me! As you can imagine, the list of reported cases shrinks and grows alongside the actual level of disease in our community, and zero reported cases in the local school districts seems like another indicator that we're riding through a COVID-19 low point. Will it last forever? Probably not, but it's good news nonetheless.

Yesterday, the Virginia Department of Health put out a press release clarifying the new second COVID-19 booster eligibility requirements and answered my J&J questions. From the release: "Adults aged 18–49 years who received Johnson & Johnson/Janssen COVID-19 Vaccine as both their primary series dose and booster dose may receive a second booster dose using an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine." So if you mix-and-matched J&J with an mRNA vaccine (and are not yet 50 years old), at this point, you are not eligible for a second booster. Clear as mud?

Michael Phillips at the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that the Washington Commanders may give up their annual trip to Richmond for spring training. What would that mean for the training camp that the City spent $10 million to build for an extremely wealthy NFL franchise? Chris Suarez and Eric Kolenich, also at the RTD, have some reactions from councilmembers and other government officials, but sounds like no one really knows and that everyone hopes the Commanders do decide to come back. There's a lot of non-football potential in this big, open, undeveloped green space! I mean, check out the Greater Scott's Addition chapter of Richmond 300, which marks the area as "public flex site: space to meet future community needs such as a school, library, rec center, or public space." All of those things sound way better than "NFL training camp' to me.

RVA Rapid Transit will host another virtual Transit Talk today at 12:00 PM. Log on to hear GRTC CEO Julie Timm, GRTC Board President Ben Campbell, and Hampton Roads Transit President William E. Harrell discuss...transit governance! Sounds incredibly interesting to me, a person who spends their free time thinking about things like transit governance. But! I think even normal people will get something out of today's talk—especially as Henrico County gets ready to join GRTC's board, making its leadership structure reflect the region it serves for the first time in...decades? ever?

The Virginia Transit Association has a related opportunity for you to get involved in state-level public transit policy by asking your legislators not to strip rail and transit funding from the Commonwealth's budget. This seems real bad: "The bulk of the cuts come from the suspension of, and changes to, the gas tax user fee which will reduce public transportation funding by about $107 million and passenger rail funding by $32 million. These reductions are on top of the $118 million in cuts to the passenger rail and public transit funds from the elimination of the sales tax for groceries dedicated to transportation projects." Take four minutes and use this form to email your legislators, asking them to oppose the cuts to our rail and public transportation funds!

FYI! I know it's Thursday, but City Council's fourth budget session from this past Monday is now up on the Boring Show for your listening pleasure.

This morning's longread
Inside the Palace With Mohammed bin Salman

If you're like me and know very little about foreign affairs, you'll probably find this long interview/profile of the crown prince of Saudi Arabia fascinating. The tone is weird at times, but, dang, did I learn a lot.

So far, Neom is less a city than an urbanist cargo cult. The practicalities can come later, or not at all. (The projected cost is in the hundreds of billions of dollars, a huge sum even for Saudi Arabia.) But many good ideas look crazy at first. What struck me was that Neom’s vision is really an anti-vision. It is the opposite of the old Saudi Arabia. In the old Saudi Arabia, and even to an extent today, corruption and bureaucracy layered on each other to make an entrepreneur’s nightmare. Riyadh has almost no public transportation. No matter where you are, you cannot walk anywhere, except perhaps to your local mosque. No one in Neom mentioned religion at all. Even Neom’s location is suggestive. It is far from where Saudis actually live. Instead it is huddled in a mostly empty corner, as if seeking sustenance and inspiration from Jordan and Israel. Seen this way, Neom is MBS’s declaration of intellectual and cultural bankruptcy on behalf of his country.

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