TAKE ACTION

The most important way you can Take Action this week is to go vote! This coming Tuesday, November 6th is Election Day, and to help get out the vote, the City will offer free bus rides on local routes within the City limits. Using this cool map put together by GRTC, you can see that almost every single one of the City’s polling places (minus about a dozen or so) are a short walk from a bus stop. If you still, for some reason, haven’t ridden the bus, Tuesday would be a great opportunity to kick the tires and try it out.

After doing one of your civic duties and voting, consider volunteering as an extra in an upcoming GRTC commercial. They’re looking for a diverse group of folks of all ages to hang out and look awesome on November 14th from 1:00–8:00 PM. If you’re interested, contact Ashley Mason ().

AROUND THE REGION

Justin Mattingly from the Richmond Times-Dispatch was at the RTD’s 75th Public Square where the paper unveiled the results of a regional survey that asked folks about goals for the region. Improvements to the transportation system makes the top-10 list of things people from all over the region are looking for. As a 65-year-old Henrico resident said, “You need a good [transportation] system so you don’t need to use cars all the time.” Yes!

Jim McConnell, for the Chesterfield Observer, writes about Chesterfield County’s new (and slow but steady) progress on sidewalks. The goal is, of course, to have GRTC run local, fixed-route bus service along the County’s major corridors. Accessing that future bus service gets a lot safer and more comfortable if there’s a good network of high-quality sidewalks and paths in place. This is good work from the County and double good because the State is footing most of the bill.

RVA Rapid Transit’s quest to win top honors at the Better Housing Coalition Gingerbread House Challenge continues! This year, the theme is “Holiday Movies” and our crack team of gingerbread urban planners and gingerbread transportation analysts have put together a transit-twist on the Polar Express (see below). Stop by Hardywood today between 12:00 PM and 5:30 PM to check out the gingerbread creations and vote (for us).

ELSEWHERE

I want to quote each and every paragraph from this piece in the Atlantic at you. In it, Jarrett Walker addresses almost every reason I’ve heard folks use to suggest implementing on-demand bus service instead of regular ol’ fixed-route service. This is a particularly timely article for our region, as Chesterfield County is—at this very minute—deciding whether they should run fixed-route GRTC service on Route 1 or some sort of on-demand service provided by a private company out of Loudon County. Decision makers and county leaders! Read this article!

—Ross Catrow