Run the red, get a ticket at East Main Street's scariest intersection

After an especially rapid-fire series of pedestrian in late December, Mayor Danny Avula promised to accelerate the city’s historically deficient efforts to make its streets less deadly for non-car users. By late January, the mayor’s administration had finally activated four of the 10 automated stop-light cameras that had been approved in September 2025. One of those four is at East Main and North 25th Streets, for my money the scariest intersection on the east/west corridor that forms the neighborhood’s southerly boundary.

“For the first 30 days, drivers will be sent a warning instead of a ticket,” wrote Michael Phillips last month for The Richmonder. After that, the cameras would begin issuing $50 citations to jagoffs running that red. The cameras were activated on January 30th, so if my math is right, that means 30-day grace period will end on Sunday evening, March 1st. Or, to borrow a phrase from the late Lyndon Baines Johnson: it’s almost “nut-cutting time” on E. Main St.

Good. Good! Running red lights, much like running stop signs, is fundamentally anti-social behavior. I am somewhat sympathetic to the argument that traffic tickets can function as a regressive tax, with wealthier Richmonders behind the wheel easily affording $50 fines that disproportionately burden poorer drivers.¹ But give the month-long warning stretch, and the huge signs alerting drivers to the red-light cameras at this intersection (and presumably the others throughout the city), my sympathy only goes so far. I’ve got infinitely more for all the pedestrians that have been brutally slaughtered in the streets by reckless motorists, and the families they’ve left behind.

Under state law, Richmond is only allowed to install 23 total red-light cameras.² It’s good that the city got around to actually putting some up (albeit only four so far, and four months after it first said it would.) It should put up more, right up to the state-permitted cap. I hope it does.

I’m a little less hopeful for another road-safety project that Richmond’s newly minted Department of Transportation (RDOT) announced earlier today. With a $1 million grant from the Central Virginia Transportation Authority (CVTA), the unit—stood up by Avula within the Department of Public Works (DPW) in early January—will install so-called “permanent speed feedback signs on high-injury network (HIN) streets at key gateway entrances into the city,” per a press release. Two of those will appear in the East End: one northbound on E. Main St. near Nicholson St., and the other facing westbound traffic on Williamsburg Rd. in Montrose Heights, right by the county line.

“The signs provide a visible, data-driven step that reinforces the city’s Vision Zero strategy while encouraging drivers to slow down,” Avula said in a statement. It’s not that these locations are not worthy targets for traffic calming: data indicates that over three quarters of traffic-related deaths occur on HIN streets, even though they account for less than 10 percent of the overall grid. And it’s not that studies haven’t shown these signs can put a dent in speeding: they have, albeit to varying degrees. Especially when they’re permanent, as RDOT’s will be. (Installation will be “completed by this summer, weather permitting,” the release said. We’ll see.) Still, I’m dubious that “[e]ncourag[ing] voluntary compliance,” as RDOT put it, is more effective than redesigning roads in ways that require mandatory compliance. I’m talking about bump-outs, speed caroms, properly protected bike lanes, and the like. Real, hard, bumper-crumpling infrastructure.

If the CVTA’s million-dollar grant had to get spent on radar-based speedometers, I’m glad Richmond took the money and ran announced a plan. Go forth, says I. But like the red-light cameras, or the mural and flex posts on Mosby St., these marginal improvements are just that: marginal. The blood on the streets demands transformative reconfiguration, and fast. After all, getting hit by a driver doing 2mph over the limit is certainly better than getting hit by one doing 12mph over, but it’d be better still not to get hit at all. And if you get killed crossing E. Main St. at N. 25th St. with the right of way, and the guy behind the wheel gets a $50 ticket in the mail a month later, it doesn’t make you any less dead.

📜 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!

💉 After an East End pilot, city expands harm-reduction vending machine program

Last year, Richmond’s Office of Opioid Use and Substance Use Response (OUSUR) stationed three vending machines full of materials to prevent and reverse opioid overdoses around the city. One of those units—identical to the one in the 2025 VPM report above—was installed at the East End Library. Over the six-month pilot program, the purple machine on N. 25th St. helped to distribute “916 doses of naloxone, 276 fentanyl test strips, and 1,250 units of first aid and hygiene supplies” to community members in need, OUSUR said in a statement earlier this week.

Following City Council’s acceptance of another $100,000 award from the Virginia Opioid Abatement Authority—which also happened earlier this week; busy week for municipal opioid mitigation—OUSUR now plans to expand the program to three additional Richmond Public Library locations: North Avenue, Broad Rock, and Ginter Park. The Richmonder’s Sarah Vogelsong reported the expansion will cost around $41,000.

🤦🏻‍♂️ Reporters aren’t supposed to do free PR for cops

The Richmond Police Department has a senior public information manager who made $115,640 last year, according. It’s this person’s job to issue press releases and communicate with members of the media about what the department is doing. Members of the media, in turn, have a different job, one that almost always comes with less money and job security. It’s called “reporting” and it involves figuring out whether the official police story reflects a full and accurate portrayal of reality. Anyway, here’s CBS 6 laundering RPD press releases as straight news earlier this month:

As a reminder, The Lookout’s standard coverage will always be free, but bonus features like this one, Mad Enough to Blog It™️, are exclusively for paying subscribers. Thanks to everybody who has purchased a subscription so far!

📢 Happenings on The Hill

• Doodle on: Brian’s Books is hosting cartoonist Max Huffman Friday (2/27, as in today) from 5-7pm (as in right now, eek) with his new book, Dogtangle. Info here.

• Floppy ears here: Houndtown is holding its monthly canine rendezvous this Saturday (2/28) at 10am at Church Hill Dog Park. Hell yes, there will be dogs to adopt. More details.

• Speak out: Rev. Nathan Walton of Church Hill’s East End Fellowship was just one of 450 area faith leaders to call on the Trump administration for compassion in a joint public statement issued Friday. Read more.

• The last straw: Strawberry/vanilla twist creemees are on at Spotty Dog now until they sell out. Gaze upon its beauty.

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  Finland’s solution for this is to tie traffic-related fines to drivers’ income levels. It is an extremely safe place to drive compared to the US—but then again, virtually every country is.

2  Which is weird, because state law makes no such limitation on the number always-on, AI-powered surveillance license-plate readers, like those manufactured by Flock Safety. I should have more reporting on the latter to share soon.