AROUND THE REGION

Pulse station construction continues all along Broad Street, and it's exciting to watch. Here's the full list of stations under varying degrees of construction at the moment: Willow Lawn, Staples Mill East/West, Cleveland East/West, Science Museum East/West, Allison Street East, VCU & VUU East/West, Government Center East, Shockoe Bottom East, East Riverfront East/West, and Orleans. You can see the very beginnings of Government Center East pictured above. To my untrained eye, the Allison Street East station looks furthest along—with the concrete poured for the actual boarding platform! You can check the progress of that station on the live Lee's Famous Recipe Chicken Station Construction Cam.

The Chesterfield Planning Commission will take another look at the Northern Jefferson Davis Special Area Plan this coming Tuesday. This plan looks at the future land use, bicycle and pedestrian amenities, street design, and transit options for the corridor. While the plan stops short of recommending that GRTC provide hourly, local service from the city limits to John Tyler along Route 1, the planners have slowly added more transit options as the plan has moved through the County's process. Soon the Commission will schedule a public hearing on the plan and will welcome your public comments—which we'll definitely let you know about!

ELSEWHERE

For the next couple of weeks, this section of our wonderful weekly email will be provided by our new intern Zac. He'll be helping us with some research, planning, and writing—including, among other things, this!

San Antonio turns to rapid transit to solve its congestion woes. VIA, the region’s transit agency, has proposed bringing bus rapid transit with dedicated lanes, as well as light rail, to the city. They’ve narrowed the placement of the transit lines to four possible corridors and will ask for public input to finalize those locations. It’s a great sign that car centric cities have realized the benefits of providing transit options instead of continuously adding more lanes.

The Twin Cities have narrowed the options for connecting St. Paul to Mall of America and the airport to six finalists: a BRT line, four streetcar variations based off of Kansas City’s KC Streetcar, or leaving it as is. Kansas City’s streetcar has helped spur development downtown and St. Paul officials hope for similar revitalization. Public meetings will be held at the end of the month and a final plan chosen by the end of the year.

Tulsa officials just unveiled the branding of the city’s first BRT line: The line will be known as Aero, hearkening back to the city’s past as an aerospace pioneer, and the stations and bus will echo the city’s Art Deco architecture. Officials hope the branding will make Tulsans rethink their perceptions of public transit and take pride in the Aero. Public buy-in is huge for transit, and it’s good to see city officials fired up.

If you'd like to support RVA Rapid Transit's work to bring a truly regional transit system to Richmond, consider picking up an awesome transit map T-shirt or making a tax-deductible donation.

—Ross Catrow