Good morning, RVA: Three examples, do you have a VPN?, and join the GMRVA Patreon!

What you browse is your own personal business, not the General Assembly’s
and certainly not some random internet company.

Good morning, RVA! It's 66 °F, and, dang, that was some weather! I hope you made it through the night dry and connected to the electrical grid—looks like a couple hundred people across the region are still without power this morning. Today, though, is a vast improvement over all that wind and rain, with highs in the mid 80s, sunshine until the afternoon, and then a chance for more storms this evening (but mostly likely nothing as severe as last night).

Water cooler

Yesterday, I mentioned how transformative it would be to have the federal government commit to recurring investments in our local communities at the scale of the American Rescue Plan Act—consistent support rather than this once-in-a-generation windfall. Turns out, Mallory Noe-Payne at Radio IQ was a mile ahead of me and reported four separate stories from Virginia towns where ARPA or CARES Act funding made transformational projects a reality. In Roanoke they built a grocery store in a neighborhood once leveled by Urban Renewal. In Bristol they started construction on a new school, replacing one declared functionally obsolete in 2011. In Afton they launched a public bus line over the mountain, connecting Staunton, Waynesboro, and Charlottesville. And, finally, in Scottsville they added DMV services to their Town Hall which serves a large, rural surrounding area. None of these are glitzy projects, wasting tax payer dollars so elected officials can have something big and shiny to point at when the next election cycle comes around. They are all great examples of things that—in a country not obsessively focused on cutting public services down to the bone—should make up some of the core functions of government. Just think about what your neighborhood would be if we had enough money for the basic of civilization—things like roads, sewers, and schools!

Ben Paviour at VPM reports that residents who “want to browse online pornography in Virginia will have to identify their age using unspecified technology under a new law that goes into effect Saturday.” I have so many thoughts! First, its fascinating what things Republicans want to paternalistically legislate and what things they think should be left up to parents to handle (although this bill did pass with large, bipartisan support). Second, the language in this bill (SB 1515) is wild! It defines “content harmful to minors” as “any description or representation of nudity, sexual conduct, sexual excitement, or sadomasochistic abuse when it (i) appeals to the prurient, shameful, or morbid interest of minors; (ii) is patently offensive to prevailing standards in the adult community as a whole with respect to what is suitable material for minors; and (iii) is, when taken as a whole, lacking in serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors." Prurient, shameful interest of minors?? What the heck, did The Scarlet Letter write this legislation!? Third, Wirecutter has a decent list of VPN’s that will allow you to shift the location of your internet traffic to wherever you’d like and circumvent any sort of geographic-based age verification. Makes sure you read “the competition” section for a ton more options. Fourth, what you browse is your own personal business, not the General Assembly’s and certainly not some random internet company! This whole thing certainly seems like a slippery slope we’re about to slide down right into some protracted court cases. Until then, I await the digital privacy experts out there to send me a good longread!

The Chesapeake Climate Action Network are encouraging folks to show up at a Dominion open house at 4:00 PM (9536 Dawnshire Road) today to rally against a new proposed methane gas plant in Chesterfield. Charlie Paullin at the Virginia Mercury reported on this a couple weeks back, and I totally missed it: “Four natural gas combustion turbines will be proposed for the facility, which will be similar to one Dominion originally sought in 2019 but put on hold as the utility shifted its focus toward renewable energy sources to comply with the Virginia Clean Economy Act.” New governor, new anti-climate plans from our Commonwealth’s energy monopoly—see what kind of consequences elections can have? Anyway, investing in new fossil fuel capacity, in the year 2023, is just about one of the dumbest thing we could do with two thirds of a billion dollars.

This is horrible: the Richmond Police Department reports that a person riding a dirt bike on Broad Street collided with a GRTC bus and died. RPD report that the bus driver was headed eastbound on Broad Street, making a left turn onto 7th Street when the person on the dirt bike ran into the side of the bus.

I have one, small City Council reminder: the Public Safety committee will meet today at 1:00 PM and will host Interim Chief of Police Rick Edward’s for a “review on crime.” You can watch live over on the City’s legislative website.

OK! This is the penultimate time I will mention the Good Morning, RVA pledge drive—scout’s honor! At this very moment, I’m 80% of the way toward my goal of increasing monthly Patreon contributions by $381. That’s amazing! I continue to be impressed by folks’ generosity and willingness to support this weird—but hopefully useful—passion project. Thank you to everyone who’s recently joined the Patreon or upped their monthly contribution, it means a lot to me. And, if you’ve been waiting to do so, why not head over to patreon.com/gmrva this morning, tap a few buttons, and help me reach my goal before the week’s end?

This morning's longread
It’s Time To Subsidize E-bikes

Offering e-bike subsidies is a duh-level policy, but I didn’t expect the City of Denver, which launched (maybe the first?) municipal e-bike subsidy program a year ago, to see such dramatic results so quickly. Here’s a PDF of how Denver recommends other cities go about setting up their own e-bike subsidy program, you know, should anyone reading this email newsletter want to advocate for Richmond doing the same!

Initially, Denver officials figured they’d get only modest demand for the ebike vouchers, so they issued 600. Whoops: Denver residents snapped up those 600 vouchers in the first ten minutes. So the city freed up more money, and issued a total of 4,734. Of those, 2,330 went to low-income-qualified buyers. Recently, Denver released a study on the impact of the ebike program, and it appears to have achieved most of the goals the city aimed at (some top-level findings listed here). The new owners rode their ebikes an average of 26 miles a week, 22 of which replaced miles they’d normally have driven in a car. Fully 71% said they were driving their gas-powered vehicles less often. Cars in Denver are now being driven 100,000 fewer miles every week than before. All of which leads to my argument here: We should start offering tons of subsidies for ebikes, now.

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

A place to rest after a long, long day of bike riding. I posted a few more thoughts and pictures from my recent trip over on my blog.