Higher Speeding Fines For W. Cary Street

City Council passed a measure on Monday that places higher fines on speeders on West Cary Street between Addison and Cherry streets near VCU – an additional $200 fine for speeding.

From an earlier article on WRIC:

The speed limit in that residential stretch is supposed to be only 25 miles per hour, yet neighbors say they saw drivers appear to be going much faster.

Mark Brandon with the uptown association has been working with the city for nearly 20 years to find a solution.

“An accident in this intersection could go right up into people’s houses,” he says. “Being a city, our houses are close to the curbs.”

City Councilman Parker Agelasto has proposed a solution: a $200 additional fine on top of a speeding ticket. Many neighbors like the idea.

Agelasto says that 85 percent of drivers on that street go at least 10 miles an hour over the speed limit. According a city ordinance, the street is eligible for the fine increase, which is actually one of the most inexpensive ways to calm traffic in the area.

“For now, it could be very helpful. Cary St gets a lot of traffic, downtown, at high speeds, mostly in the morning.”

Trash/Recycling Pickup Tomorrow

This Wednesday is a red Wednesday, which means trash and recycling pickup. Please make sure you pick up containers after pickup tomorrow night. They do not belong on the sidewalk after tomorrow night.

Don’t forget Project Clean Move. Speaking of which, this Saturday is the Sierra Club Falls of the James Big Yard Sale at University of Richmond. Here is an just a very small fraction of the stuff being diverted from landfill in preparation for this annual event:
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How Much Are The Lyrics To Kerosene Hat Worth?

Planet Money has a somewhat interesting radio show this week on music lyrics. It prominently features Camper Beethoven/Cracker singer David Lowery. As mentioned before, Lowery lived on the 200 block of S. Laurel while he wrote much of the album Kerosene Hat.

The topic of the Planet Money show is about how lyrics of songs are available on the internet and the question of ‘fair use’. From the show synopsis:

There are roughly 5 million searches for lyrics per day on Google, according to LyricFind. Those searches often lead to websites that post lyrics to lots of songs — and, in many cases, sites that post ads alongside those lyrics.

David Lowery, frontman and songwriter for Cracker and Camper van Beethoven, is waging war on the sites he believes make money off song lyrics but don’t pay the songwriter. Once he took a closer look at where his music was making money on the Internet, he realized: There were more people searching to find lyrics to his songs than searching to illegally download mp3s of his music. And he wasn’t making money off those searches. Last November, after months of exhaustive and systematic Googling, he released something called The Undesirable Lyric Website List.

There’s more to it, of course, and may be worth a full listen.