Good Morning, RVA: BRT contracts, embarrassing headlines, infographics, and new twenties
Just another bright and sunshiney day in RVA.
Photo by: Jeremy Brooks
Good morning, RVA! It’s 48 °F and the wonderful weather continues. Soak it in, because tomorrow evening brings with it a chance of thunderstorms. But for now, things are warm, sunny, and bright.
Water cooler
Whoa nelly, there is a lot of fascinating stuff in this long article about BRT construction by Robert Zullo. The big news: The state has approved a design-build contract for the Pulse…which is $11.5 million more than original estimates. State Transportation Secretary Layne blames “GRTC’s inefficiencies.” GRTC notes that state officials had a chance to review the cost estimates throughout the planning process. Regardless of who or what’s at fault (differing construction costs between when the estimate was put together and now?), the state is on the hook for any and all construction overruns. Mayoral candidate and current councilman Jon Baliles also makes an appearance in the article, lobbying the state to delay the project or change its design–a design that’s already been approved by just about every city committee and commission we’ve got.
Here’s a headline you never want to read: “Richmond Mayor’s son and former city council member get in screaming match at school board meeting.” First, that headline is defintiely an exaggeration. Second, you can probably guess which ham-sandwich-favoring former councilman provoked the incident.
Infographics! Richmond Magazine has a series of grocery-related infographics by Sarah Lockwood that I’m enamored with. Check out the map of grocery store locations and remember, once again, that vast areas of the city are without easy access to food.
All of the governor’s vetoes will stand, as the General Assembly failed to override any of them yesterday. This includes the Gov’s baller veto of HB 587.
US Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew announced that Harriet Tubman will be featured on the front of the new $20. This is awesome! Less awesome is that Andrew Jackson will be featured on the back. Here is definitely the best fan rendering of the new bill I’ve seen. Now, who gets to be featured in Venmo, because I haven’t seen a $20 bill in I can’t remember how long!
Sports!
- Squirrels left Richmond on a positive note with a 3-2 win over Reading. Tonight at 6:00 PM they begin an away series with Altoona.
- Another day, another win for the Nats, who are now 11-3. They take on the Marlins today at 1:10 PM.
- Caps lost one to the Flyers, keeping the series alive / interesting.
This morning’s longread
What Ever Happened to Planet Vulcan?
Science! Man this was such a good longread.
As a good police procedural would have it, he soldiered on, examining–and eliminating–as many suspects as he could. Historian of astronomy Morton Grosser tallied Le Verrier’s potential culprits: perhaps there was something about the space out by Uranus, some resisting stuff (an ether) that affected its motion. Was there a giant moon orbiting Uranus, tugging it off course? Might some stray object, a comet, perhaps, have collided with Uranus, literally knocking it from its appointed round? Le Verrier even paused on the fraught possibility that Newton’s law of gravitation might need modification. Last: was there some as-yet-undiscovered object, another planet, whose gravitational influence could account for the discrepancies between Uranus’s theoretically predicted and the observed track?
This morning’s Instagram
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Ross Catrow
Founder and publisher of RVANews.
Notice: Comments that are not conducive to an interesting and thoughtful conversation may be removed at the editor’s discretion.