TAKE ACTION

Over the past couple of months, Richmond 300 (Richmond City’s master planning process) has hosted a bunch of meetings as part of their ongoing parking study. They’re focusing on seven areas around town with the goal of supporting “continued redevelopment of the city of Richmond while balancing the multi-modal transportation demands of its growing population.” Real talk: In some of these neighborhood there just isn’t any more room to store empty cars all day long. We need smart parking policies that encourage efficient use of the space we have and shift folks to other modes of getting around—like walking, biking, and buses. You can weigh in on what you think the parking priorities should be in each of these neighborhoods by taking a handful of surveys.

AROUND THE REGION

Looks like a couple of the transportation projects pitched to lure Amazon to Northern Virginia are set to receive a bucket of funding through the state’s Smart Scale program.

ELSEWHERE

Alon Levy, all-star technical transportation nerd, has a short (and less technical than normal) post up on their blog about public transit and technology. Will aerial drone delivery be a thing? Who knows! But their opening paragraph certainly rings true: “...[P]eople assert that new technology is about to make public transportation and the walkable urbanism that underlies it obsolete, and therefore it’s a waste of time to invest in the latter. The top examples of this are ride-hailing apps and autonomous cars, but electric cars are also a common excuse not to build urban rail. In addition, there are knock-on effects, causing transit agencies to neglect core functions like good service in favor of tech gimmicks, like Andrew Cuomo’s genius challenge.”

Indianapolis joins the list of cities considering a fare capping policy, something that we should do in Richmond. Fare capping is an easy way to make sure that those who ride public transit the most don’t end up paying more than everyone else. Learn more in this video from TransitCenter.

—Ross Catrow