lammius

Does anyone know the status of the rail line that runs behind Cape Henry Ave? Who owns it, is it active with freight service, etc? It goes to Miller Store Road on the south side of the airport. Just need a clever way to connect it to the other side where the terminals are. But that line goes from the airport area to the freight line by Ballentine. It would connect further down to the line that goes to the Amtrak Station by Harbor Park. IMO, if you could connect these segments and deal with what (if any) freight rail operation happens there, you’ve got a good LRT corridor from downtown to be airport.

Bus system redesigns are all the rage these days. Seems every city is doing one.

she kept the receipts

I see there's something on the southwest corner of City Hall/St Pauls?

Wouldn’t they have to get an approval from the planning/zoning board if they wanted to change their approved site and building plan? Unless they’ve appeared before the board recently to amend their approved plan, I’d think we’re gonna get what’s in the approved plan. Has anyone been monitoring the planning/zoning board agendas?

A little more elbow room on that sidewalk might be nice

Interesting and optimistic study of 20th century pedestrian malls. About 1/3 of them still exist. What are the secret ingredients for successful pedestrian malls vs those that failed?

Open the streets (for pedestrians and cafes). Get out of your cars. Experience city life.

If you read this book (link below) and know the demographics of neighborhoods in the city, the bounds of the “urban renewal” area are no surprise. Black, White and Brown: The Battle for Progress in 1950s Norfolk https://www.amazon.com/dp/1732310505/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_hkgBEb3N95HHE

Just a thought

Meh. It's not what I'd have come up with, but it's something.

The mall is more than 20 years old at this point. You can see how its design tried to shield visitors from the city outside. Now that downtown's a decent place, you wish it would do the opposite. For years I've wanted to see what downtown would look like if MacMall was demolished and the street grid restored. You could have some really great new development with ground floor retail/restaurant and office/residential/hotel/whatever above. Something like CityCenterDC but with a few taller buildings might work well.

Thanks. Been a while since I've been to Norfolk, so I haven't kept up with all the changes (including moving the bus xfer center).

Haven't been following this too closely over the past couple of years. Why is this called "Transit Center"? Where's the transit?

I always thought Craney Island would be a good place for a larger regional airport. That, or a massive expansion of the "Hampton Roads executive airport" out toward Suffolk

Agree. I'll continue to say that dismissing light rail on the west side is one of Norfolk's biggest missed opportunities in my lifetime. And there have been lots of missed opportunities in my lifetime.

“The project is, however, designed to be fully walkable once visitors have parked." So is a Walmart.

What do they mean by "Waterside connectivity?"

City Hall Av, I think https://www.google.com/maps/@36.8477692,-76.2898364,3a,67.2y,287.1h,89.19t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1spPgk7kskdpMm4mopzmEFgA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

99.7% sure it’s art and you guys are reading too much into it. However, I’d point out that road diets aren’t usually aimed at improving traffic flow. They’re usually intended to slow traffic and reduce fatalities (there are over 40,000 traffic deaths a year in the US). It’s not Norfolk being “Norfolk,” it’s a shift in philosophy in cities across the country. Whereas for decades last century the priority in street design and operation was to move more vehicles quickly, now the priority is to reduce fatalities, even if it slows traffic. A pedestrian hit at 30 mph has a 50/50 shot at survival. At 20 mph there’s a 90% chance of survival. And for every 1 mph reduction in speed, the frequency of crashes decreases 5%. So reducing speeds results in fewer crashes and less risk of fatalities. In the US that philosophy is called “Vision Zero.” In Europe it’s called “Stop the Child Murder.” Something about the name has made their campaign more effective than the US counterpart.

Usually I'm lamenting how designs for Norfolk buildings would look better at twice the height. Don't get me wrong, twice the height here would be great, but from this angle this is a good-looking 20-story building. I wonder how wide it is (north to south)

Just about every city that has elevated a highway through downtown is looking for ways to (or already has) knock them down. If you want to prevent waterfront visitors from exploring the rest of downtown, then making them walk under a hulking gloomy underpass is a good way to do it. No property is freed up under an overpass. There's structures and (since it's a state road) I'm pretty confident VDOT owns it. I think elevating these roads would have the opposite of the intended effect, it would not unite downtown, rather it would exacerbate the separation of the pieces. And with residential units all along Boush Street, you're not going to get past environmental review for bringing travel lanes up a couple of stories to those units' windows. Best thing to do in order to make downtown more cohesive is not to elevate the roads, but to knit the community together. Right now Waterside Drive and St. Pauls are arterial highways. Boush is a little better but could still be improved. Few streets actually cross St. Pauls. Union St ends on St. Pauls. Main St ends, Plume St ends, Mariner St ends, Freemason St ends, etc. The reasons for this are partly due to urban design fads of the mid-to-late 20th century, and partly a bit more sinister. On St. Pauls, let's reintroduce the street grid. Make it look less like Greenbrier Parkway and more like an urban street. Break up the superblocks so that side streets go across. Create 4-way intersections with bumpouts and celebrated crosswalks for pedestrians. On Waterside Drive, signalize the Commercial Pl intersection and put crosswalks there. Put crosswalks on BOTH sides of Atlantic St and on BOTH sides of Martins Ln. Do away with that stupid hillside next to WTC and continue the sidewalk to connect with Boush Street. Every street should have sidewalks on BOTH sides. At least 8 feet wide. Every 4-way intersection should have 4 crosswalks. I'd love to see the parking deck by Waterside redeveloped so that there's something useful on the ground floor. The 1970s-80s "bunker style" architecture kills street life. Build something on that patch in front of Icon, or dress it up into a nice square park. Redevelop the Sheraton site (HUGE) into something mixed-use and interesting. Then, once we address some issues on Monticello and carve up MacArthur Center to grid Norfolk TF out, we can DARE pedestrians to not roam all over downtown.

History. The Norfolk Virginian was the region’s first daily paper (I think), founded in 1865. The Public Ledger was the afternoon paper. Another paper started later in the 1800s, the Daily Pilot. Portsmouth had a daily paper start up called the Portsmouth Star. At some point in the 20th century the papers merged. The morning paper was called the Virginian-Pilot (taking the names from the Norfolk Virginian and the Daily Pilot). The afternoon paper was called the Ledger-Star (taking the names of the Public Ledger and the Portsmouth Star). It remained that way until 1995 when the afternoon paper stopped being produced. For some number of years after that, the morning paper had all the names on the heading “The Virginian-Pilot and Ledger-Star.” Not sure when the “Ledger-Star” name was removed for good.

It is ridiculous, but there's an army of urban gondola enthusiasts pitching them all over the U.S. The promise is that it's cheap, requires *no* land, and offers a better level of service than surface transit modes. It can rarely deliver any of those three promises. In addition for finding places for the poles (you need 2 meters, which is basically the better part of a traffic lane), you need to site stations. To do that within the public ROW is going to be difficult to do (look at the pic below!). So ridiculous station construction and/or property acquisition to build the bloody stations is thrown in the cost formula. And then there's the travel time. These things average a measly 11 mph (including multiple stops on a line-haul route). To go from downtown Norfolk to NOB at 11 mph, that's a 45 minute trip. Gondolas are good for getting over a physical barrier (a mountainside, occasionally a river, etc.), for a short distance (a mile or two tops). As a mode of urban transport in a flat and relatively un-dense city, and for such a long distance, it's ridiculous. The only reason not to build LRT on Norfolk's west side is because you're trying to be cheap.