The Shortline 6-14-24
A daily ebike commute from Keezletown to Harrisonburg • Harrisonburg's affordability gap • A new housing trust fund in Norfolk • Why failing to notify renters about rezonings can skew city decisions
Note: there likely will be no Shortline roundup next week.
A short video about Rockingham County resident and JMU ISAT professor Wayne Teel recently won first place in the EPA’s EV Transportation Video Challenge in the Personal Mobility category. Local filmmaker Wade Puffenbarger interviewed Teel about his daily ebike commute from Keezletown to JMU campus, and how he travels “100 miles a week using four square feel of solar panels."
‘On the county roads, there are no shoulders,” said Teel. “The traffic is relatively light and you don’t have cars meeting by you going both ways. That’s a really rare occurrence. Once you hit the city, it is quite a bit safer.”
I’ve been a broken record on this, but I think traffic planners are still underestimating the potential sea change ebikes could bring to personal transportation in the US if safer routes to common destinations become available to people on bikes.
Some other local headlines:
The affordability gap — an estimate of the difference between an area’s median household income and how much income is necessary to afford payments on a median-priced home in that area — is near a 10-year high in the U.S. The latest numbers from the NBC News Home Buyer Index show what experts say is a housing market inaccessible to a growing number of people. According to that index, Harrisonburg has an affordability gap of $7,653, while Rockingham County has a negative gap of -$4,900. (NBC News)
The median sales price over the past 12 months ($336,010) in Harrisonburg and Rockingham County is now 8% higher than in the prior 12 month period. Three years ago 81% of home sales were existing homes and only 19% were new homes. This year only 71% of homes that are selling are existing homes and 29% are new homes. (Scott Rogers)
Harrisonburg City Council unanimously approved a zoning ordinance amendment prohibiting new vape shops within 1,000 feet of a school or child daycare center. (The Citizen) Note: 1,000 feet is the maximum regulation allowed by the state legislature. Vape shops cannot be banned altogether.
The Waynesboro City Council and Waynesboro Planning Commission recently held a joint meeting where Director of Community Development Leslie Tate provided what she called a “high-level overview” of cottage housing. Tate made a presentation to both governing bodies seeking input as staff works to draft an ordinance and zoning amendments that would allow cottage housing in the city limits. (AFP)
The SAW Housing Summit will convene in Staunton on June 27, 2024 to discuss the next steps in addressing housing challenges in the Staunton-Augusta-Waynesboro (SAW) area. (SAW Housing)
Former state legislator Tim Anderson, an attorney from the Virginia Beach area, has filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the speed camera enforcement. Nearly 25,000 tickets were issued to drivers traveling on East Market Street in Harrisonburg. (Rocktown Now)
The I-81 corridor improvement program, passed by legislators following a study in 2018, is on track to address some of traffic issues, but not before inflation and other hold ups add a billion and a half dollars and two years to the project’s timeline. (WVTF)
Virginia
In response to the affordable housing crisis in Norfolk, the city plans to create a housing trust fund. City leaders say the program will act as a flexible funding source to help pay for developments, invest in housing initiatives and other uses. Richmond, a similarly sized city, proposed spending about $3.2 million on its Affordable Housing Trust Fund in its 2025 budget. Other localities have spent more: Henrico County turned an economic windfall from data centers into a new $60 million housing trust fund in May. (The Virginian-Pilot)
The Richmond region has created a powerful transit network, launching the first express bus route in the city, called The Pulse, as well as a total redesign of existing bus routes in 2018. Dropping all fares during the pandemic put more people onto the Pulse. Transit ridership in the Richmond region was one of the first in the country to surpass pre-pandemic levels. It rose another 14 percent in just the past year. (SCLC)
The Virginia Zoning Atlas now has the ability to make comparisons between two of Virginia’s planning district commissions. We can now see that Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads—although very different physically—use zoning in very similar ways. (HousingForward Virginia)
The Washington County Board of Supervisors voted to approve an ordinance that establishes 26 guidelines or requirements governing any future solar operations in the county. (Bristol Herald-Courier)
Elsewhere
Changes designed to encourage people to take forms of transportation other than a car have contributed to a 40% decline in air pollution, according to officials in Paris. (NBC News)
Nationwide, pedestrian deaths have climbed or remained essentially flat every year for the last 15 years, skyrocketing 75 percent between 2010 and 2022. Policymakers have to take a stand for what's right — and advocates have to hold them to a higher standard. (StreetsBlog USA)
The failure to directly notify renters about rezoning hearings can skew the decision-making process—and the housing market— toward homeowners and exacerbate anti-development tendencies in land-use law. (ProMarket)
As co-living resembled high end single-room occupancy (SRO) buildings, it seemed there was more openness from residents and policymakers to enable deeply affordable, traditional SRO buildings, but then the co-living market collapsed. Does the end of mainstream co-living in the U.S. portend a retrenchment in innovative, scalable solutions to addressing the demographic shifts of our day? (The New Urban Order)
Advocates for the Tenant Education Advocacy Mediation (TEAM) project in North Carolina have been pushing for the city of Greensboro to commit to funding the program that helps tenants stay housed through mitigation and legal representation. The requested $440,000 funding for TEAM has made it into Greensboro’s draft budget. (Next City)
Ann Arbor nonprofit Avalon Housing has partnered with two other organizations to launch an electric car-sharing system at three of the affordable housing properties. (Second Wave Media)
Bloom, a startup that’s helping build an American supply chain for micromobility brands, is working with American factories in Detroit to create a new domestic supply chain for light electric vehicles like e-bikes. (Fast Company)
To eliminate carbon emissions by 2050, governments face unprecedented technical, economic and political challenges, making rapid and inexpensive transition impossible. (Fraser Institute)
According to the Purdue University/CME Group Ag Economy Barometer, farmers expect solar energy production to have a larger impact on farmland value in the next five years. (Brownfield)