Pedestrian Space Cravings, Bridge Repairs, and Triple Crossing
Cheers RVA!
Today the weather remains a little cooler with a high of 84, with clouds in the early part of the day clearing out for sunshine in the afternoon.
the juice:
The Goad Gatsby from RVA Mag reports on the Watermelon Festival which took place this past Sunday, and asks the question, do people want a car-free Carytown?
The idea has been kicked around for years, and a survey last year via the Richmond Connects Transportation Plan garnered broad support.
Local merchants in Carytown have expressed skepticism, specifically how a lack of parking would hurt their businesses.
The article does note during the one day the 9-block area is car-free, the surrounding streets are packed and finding parking certainly is an issue.
Andrew Breton, president of the Mary Munford PTA and candidate for City Council in the 1st district, was at the festival and said:
The people of Richmond crave walkable pedestrian spaces.
In other walkable news, the Department of Parks, Recreation and Community for the City is now saying repairs to the pedestrian bridge at Texas Beach are expected to be completed by the end of 2026.
Repairs were originally supposed to be finished this summer.
Jon Baliles, who worked in City Hall for more than a decade, even joked a year ago in his 5×5 newsletter, the irony of the City attempting to build a stadium in two years, yet it takes four years to build a pedestrian bridge.
Also, the “sidewalk” on the Boulevard (Nickel) Bridge will be closed in the evenings beginning Wednesday. The maintenance repairs are set to last until September 12.
the pulp:
The Ultimate Backpack Supply Drive stuffed 35k backpacks with school supplies for students in the Richmond area. The drive was first started in 2017 by VCU alum Timmy Nguyen. The backpacks will be distributed to 88 Title 1 schools in Richmond, Chesterfield, and Henrico, via VPM.
Henrico County schools will have pouches or containers for phones in every classroom this school year. Middle School and High School students are already required to have their phones off during class, but this change will provide teachers the option to require phones be placed in the container rather than in backpacks. Phones are still allowed to be used during lunch but not during short breaks or trips to the bathroom. Whether this curbs tiktok challenges of flooding the bathroom remains to be unknown.
the dive:
Strong Towns dives into why traffic enforcement is not enough to save lives.
The article analyzes cities such as Charlotte whose Vision Zero program is focused on enforcement of traffic laws rather than system design.
The coordinator for traffic safety in many cities often has little power in the municipal hierarchy:
The word “our” is plural and it denotes a shared responsibility. Yet, as the audit points out, safety is merely an organizational afterthought to the core engineering operation. Charlotte is not alone in this. Most Vision Zero coordinators show up in the city's organizational chart with little authority and even less influence to institute changes.
He notes how cities should have crash response teams that analyze fatal and traumatic crashes, rather than depending on police officers to collect crash data.
Charlotte, like all cities, needs a Crash Response Team. If safety is really the priority — if it's truly committed to Vision Zero — then the city needs to activate a team to analyze each fatal and traumatic crash (there are currently around 150 of them each year). That team needs to visit the site and consider all of the factors, large and small, that contributed to the crash.
Read the full article here.
the vibe:
RIC today’s interesting facts about Richmond led me to american rails, where I found this staged photo of three trains at Triple Crossing from a 1983 event.
Have a distinguished day RVA!
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