Desperate for "daylight" in Church Hill

Editor’s note: Sorry today’s newsletter is late, I just got back from a reporting trip out of state. I’m sure you were waiting with bated breath for it to hit your inbox. Appreciate your patience!—Dave.

Imagine the archetypical Church Hill street corner. What distinguishing characteristics did you conjure in your mind’s eye? Red brick sidewalks, I’d bet. A lampost, maybe leaking whiffs of natural gas into the air. Maybe a stately old rowhouse with a wrought-iron fence, too.

Everybody’s idealized Church Hill street corner will have a slightly different set of defining traits. Back here in reality, though, most of our neighborhood’s intersections have a much more common, and much less ideal feature: cars parked too close to the corners, rendering curb-cuts inaccessible and safety sightlines obstructed.

Not to be a cop about it, but this is technically illegal. Per Virginia code (emphasis mine):

Of course, laws are not self-enforcing, as we are so often and unpleasantly reminded these days. I’ve lived in Church Hill for two and a half years and I can count the number of parking tickets I’ve seen on one hand, with a couple fingers to spare. Absent sustained, meaningful enforcement—ticketing, booting, towing, etc.—of the statutorily required buffer between Church Hill’s public corners and privately owned parked cars, it’s become more of a guideline. One that individual drivers often disregard for their own convenience at the expense of our neighborhood’s safety.

In urban-transit parlance, the missing open space on so many Church Hill street corners is known as “daylight.” The basic idea is that when drivers park too close to a curb, their vehicle obstructs the vision of other motorists as they approach the intersection, putting them and other road users at risk of preventable crashes.¹ The corrective for this all-too-common civic problem is, naturally, called “daylighting,” which installing hard infrastructure, like curb bump-outs, to reduce carnage. The Federal Highway Safety Administration found in a 2018 study that “restrict[ing] parking near intersections” could reduce crashes involving pedestrians by up to 30%

Parking is a touchy subject in every city in America, and I suspect Richmond is no different. Maybe some of you will email me angrily about how daylighting sucks and I should be hit by a car for suggesting it. Hopefully not? But maybe: after all, it’s true that installing bump-outs (or planters, bollards, pocket parks…) would reduce the amount of parkable surface area on our streets. But most of that surface area was never supposed to be parking anyway. More importantly, it’s the right thing to do, both throughout Richmond and here in Church Hill. Daylighting keeps the streets safe for pedestrians, cyclists, and, yes, other drivers, too.

In parts of the neighborhood, this is already happening, sort of. The Lookout recently covered the street murals that Richmond’s Department of Public Works has commissioned along Mosby St.; those are part of a street-safety initiative that includes plastic flexposts to daylight a dangerous intersection near Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School.

“The Lighter, Quicker, Cheaper project is a step in the right direction for daylighting intersections,” Joseph Carlisle, a Church Hill resident and regular bike commuter on Mosby St., told me recently, “but it is nowhere near enough to prevent these recurring and life-threatening situations.” Case in point: I wound up interviewing him because he’d nearly been sideswiped by a delivery van while riding in the bike lane on the north/south artery’s bike lane, which is also “protected” by those same easily flattened flexposts. More to come on that incident soon, but the point, at least as it pertains to daylighting, is that permanent infrastructure can do what plastic and appeals to individual drivers’ sense of decency cannot. If people can find ways to park on the corners, they will. And we’ll all be worse off for it.

To emphasize that last point, return to the curb-cuts I mentioned earlier. Hardly a day goes by that I don’t find the sidewalk ramp at N. 27th and E. Broad Sts. partially or fully blocked by a driver who prioritized proximity to Riverbend Roastery over adherence to parking regulations. This makes the intersections more blind, which is bad for reasons addressed above. But it also makes the sidewalks harder to navigate for folks in mobility scooters, wheelchairs, etc., who are forced to put themselves closer to moving auto traffic because somebody didn’t want to find a more distant parking spot up—or even [gasp] around—the block. And if you’re thinking this doesn’t affect you because you’re able-bodied, a) that’s a grim attitude, man, and b) you’re wrong. Keeping curb-cuts unobstructed benefits our elderly, our children, and our whole neighborhood, including you. This is such a known phenomenon that among sociologists and urban-planners it’s known as the “curb-cut effect.” 

As ever, I have no interest in naming and shaming drivers whose parking practices make Church Hill’s intersections desperate for daylight.² You know who you are, and I doubt this column will convince you to change your ways—though if it does, good on ya. Even if I was interested, this is your classic “individual choice vs. systemic problem” paradigm: the solution requires better infrastructure, not more invective. But with spring finally/fully here, and more people out and about on our streets and sidewalks, it felt like as good a time as any to make the case that we all deserve a little more daylight.

📜 Possum Poetry

Possum Poetry is original verse written exclusively for The Lookout by Penelope Poubelle, the Lookout’s litter critter-at-large. If you spot roadside trash you’d like her to immortalize in doggerel, email a photo to [email protected]. All submissions anonymous!

🌱 Asparagus, agave… or something else?

Church Hill is home to all sorts of pretty plants, but one of its most showstopping flora is… actually kinda ugly. I think, at least. If you’ve walked around the neighborhood for any amount of time, you’ve likely come across a low-lying fronded shrub like the one above, spotted on E. Broad St. I spent most of this week out of town, and in the time I was gone I think the stalk-like “spears” at the center of this gawky mess must have shot up two feet.

Despite said spears’ resemblance to asparagus, I’m fairly certain the plant does not belong to Asparagus officinalis. My next guess—perhaps unsurprising, given my main beat—was some form of agave plant, strains of which I was lucky enough to see up close a couple years ago on a trip to mezcal country in the Oaxacan hills. Agave is related to asparagus, which is why the quiotes it pushes up often look like oversized version of the vegetable. And the plant does grow in Virginia. But upon closer scrutiny, I’m not convinced this thing is agave, either. Do you know what it is?

Your humble Lookout editor is no horticulturist, so any and all guesses are welcome. If it’s not agave, my money is on some sort of yucca plant? Or aloe? I don’t know man, see you in the comments.

📸 Keep the Very CHill Photos coming

Last week, I put out a call for submissions to The Lookout’s weekly photo feature, and holy smokes did readers answer it. Today’s Very CHill Photo is a stunning snap from Lookout Stephen Kahn, who told me he captured the red-tailed hawk you’ll see below on the 2700 block of E. Broad St. “Breakfast of champions,” he said. Better eat your

Thanks to everybody who submitted photos from smartphones, point-and-shoots, DSLRs, and so on. I’ll be mixing them into coverage in future editions. Everybody else, send your best shots of the neighborhood my way to be featured! Here’s how.

📢 Happenings on The Hill

• Late-nighting: Friend Bar’s monthly “Graveyard Shift” is tonight (5/2) from 9pm-12am. See you there?

• Swapping: Top Stitch is holding a potluck-style fabric/supply swap at 401 N. 23rd St. on Saturday (5/3) from 11am-1pm. More details.

• Brunching: Grisette is hosting a special brunch with sister bakery Petit Four at 3119 E. Marshal St. this Sunday (5/4) from 11am-2:30pm-ish. Walk-in only. Info here.

• Tasting: Second Bottle is doing a Cinco de Mayo celebration with tacos and wine this Monday (5/5) from 6:30-8pm. Grab tickets.

• Politicking: Delegate Rae Cousins is hosting a meeting with constituents of the 79th District (which includes Church Hill) this Wednesday (5/7) at Bon Secours’ location on Nine Mile Rd. RSVP here.

Happenings on The Hill is a digital bulletin board for events, causes, and other items of interest to East Enders that don’t necessarily merit full editorial treatment. Got something for a future edition? Email the relevant details, links, etc. to [email protected] for consideration!

📸 A Very CHill Photo

Want to share your Very CHill Photo from the neighborhood? Email it to [email protected] with your name as you’d like it to appear for publication, and the camera you shot it on.

1  For a more visual explanation, check out this short video from Transportation Alternatives, a longtime New York City-based safe-streets advocacy group.

2  It’s why I blacked out the license plates in the photo above. This isn’t about these specific drivers; it’s a pervasive behavior.