April 08, 2006
RichmondRail.org

The anti-rail-on-Richmond forces have been making the most noise and getting the most attention lately, so I'm very pleased to discover RichmondRail.org, which describes itself as follows in its initial post:


We are a group of residents, business owners, and others who live, work, study, or spend time along Richmond in Neartown and Greenway Plaza. We love this neighborhood, its residential streets, its varied businesses, its restaurants, its stores, its art galleries, its cultural institutions, its trees. And we’d love to have a better way to get around it.

[...]

We believe a well-designed rail line will improve our neighborhood. We’re concerned about green space, traffic, flooding, safety, and the impact of construction on businesses. But we know there are ways to deal with these issues.

We’ve been watching for months as rail opponents have gone from expressing valid concerns — concerns that can and must be dealt with — to spreading hyperbole and misinformation. They don’t speak for us, and we want our voice to be heard, too.

We don’t work for METRO. We’re voters and taxpayers, so METRO works for us. We want rail on Richmond, and we want it done right, with stations in the right places, with landscaping that will make our street more, not less, attractive, and with good connections to the rest of the city. We will insist on that.


That's plenty good enough to make it into my RSS feeds. I look forward to hearing more from these folks. I was recently driving down Richmond between Shepherd and Montrose and was struck once again by how un- and under-developed that stretch of road is. It can't stay that way forever; that real estate is just too prime, and as I understand it there's going to be a high-rise built at the corner of Richmond and Dunlavy, where the old HCC building used to be. Richmond is already handling all the cars that can fit on it, so something is going to have to give. If these folks have their way, it'll be the fear and loathing about rail on Richmond that crumbles away. I wish them luck.

Posted by Charles Kuffner on April 08, 2006 to Planes, Trains, and Automobiles | TrackBack
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