TAKE ACTION

Henrico has finished up their three in-person meetings about the redesign of their portion of the region's transit network. If you missed them, you can still participate through their online survey. If you ever find yourself in the County (even for shopping), you should take two minutes and fill out this survey! It’s important!

We should see the County's recommended changes some time soon.

AROUND THE REGION

The fine folks at TransitCenter released a new video about bus stop balancing that you should watch. This video does a good job of explaining how systems get to a place where some routes have a stop on every single block (sound familiar?), how that makes the system inefficient, and what to do about it. Richmond will rebalance some of our stops as part of the Richmond Transit Network Plan—check out the recommended stop additions and removals from this past April's updates.

You can see an important visual update on our Gingerbread Transit Company above. If you find yourself at Hardywood for the Hardywood Gingerbread House Challenge today, give us a vote!

ELSEWHERE

The National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO) just released a Blueprint For Autonomous Urbanism (PDF). This study "is a human-oriented vision for the potential of city streets, intersections and networks—one in which automation can serve the goals of safety, equity, public health, and sustainability." If you've ever wondered how automated vehicles will impact cities this extremely readable report is for you!

Madison, Wisconsin has run out of bus capacity and will cast their collective eye toward BRT to solve their transit problems. Efficiently connecting people to education centers, like the University of Wisconsin, is rad.

I love this article about a group of youth from Santa Ana working to include skateboarding in the area's transportation conversations. Lots of kids from all across America skateboard as a means of transportation and engineers and planners should consider that when designing the built enviornment.

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