Texas Beach Bridge, Brutal Temperatures, and the State of the City
Cheers RVA!
The frigid winter weather continues today, with sunshine expected but a high of only 26, with evening temperatures expected to drop all the way down to 10. Bundle up!
the juice:
Construction is set to begin on the Texas Beach Pedestrian Bridge with plans being finalized and signage already up in the area.
The only legal access to Texas Beach is via the pedestrian bridge which was constructed in the 1970’s but was deemed “structurally unsafe” and closed in September 2022.
The project is being funded entirely by grants from the American Rescue Plan Act which was signed into law during the pandemic.
With the steel and concrete bridge being located in an inaccessible area at the bottom of a slope and crossing an active rail line, a number of engineering challenges emerge.
According to Richmond Parks and Recreation’s Construction Manager Allen McCound via WTVR:
[The project has] been incredibly complex. There's no road to get here. There's no place here to set up a crane and swing a new bridge into place. Dealing with property lines and easements and canals — there's been a lot of complexity about getting the project to this date. So I'm really proud of where we are right now, but I'm going to be even more proud when we can walk across that.
The North Bank Trail will detour around the construction zone.
The Federal deadline to finish repairs is December 2026.
the pulp:
The Richmond Strikers and Richmond Kickers are joining together to form Richmond United, a soccer club comprising of roughly 10k players. The club will continue to provide opportunities for competitive and recreational play with pre-school programs all the way up to U-19.
The first episode of a series of Short Documentaries about “Richmond and its engrained problems” has been released on youtube by Myles Black. The producer wrote on reddit:
The reason why this matters: Redlining and other Jim Crow Era policies have ripped apart communities across the United States, leaving mostly African American families left with inherited debt, leaving the culture to start at a place lower than zero. Anti-Racist work needs to be done — to undo what has been engrained and imprinted within our society. ‘The Clear Redline’ unearths and shines a light onto something that everyone can see, and leads you to a mental space of “This cannot go on.”
Watch the 16-minute episode here.
the dive:
The Richmonder has published some of the slides created by its director David Poole from a recent live event, “The (Real) State of the City”, via editor Michael Phillips.
The presentation of data illustrates a number of key issues facing the city: the impact of collective bargaining on city employee salaries, the proportionality of number of employees by sector, fiscal stress as compared to the surrounding counties, and an analysis of annual debt service from the past 15 years into the next 15 years.
The entire article is absolutely worth a read, but one particular graphic was striking, the negative correlation between 3rd grading reading scores and the percentage of economically disadvantaged students in RPS schools:
Read more here.
the vibe:
A bright, sunshiny, very cold day.
Have a hibernal day RVA!
Thanks for reading. Feel free to leave a comment. Help this newsletter grow by convincing a friend to subscribe.