Longtime Charlottesville pedestrian advocate Kevin Cox was arrested Wednesday and charged with a crime that could jail him for a year over a homemade crosswalk he marked on Elliott Avenue in the city, one block away from where a pedestrian was struck and killed by a car last fall.
While Cox’s crosswalk creation could be called “tactical urbanism” or “guerrilla urbanism,” the city of Charlottesville has another name for it: vandalism.
“Mr. Cox turned himself into CPD in reference to a warrant that was issued in connection with property damage on Elliott Avenue,” city spokeswoman Afton Schneider told The Daily Progress in an email. “As this matter is now pending before the court, we will not be commenting further on the specifics of the case.”
Cox, however, is much less reticent.
“This is about much more than a crosswalk,” Cox told The Daily Progress. “It’s about how the city excludes pedestrians and often cyclists from street planning; we’re told to walk out of our way or get off the bicycle when the bike lane ends.”
Cox said he was galvanized by the Oct. 3 death of Mamawa Simai, a Liberian immigrant and mother fatally struck one block away by a teenage driver who allegedly admitted to traveling above the 35 mph speed limit. Within days of Simai’s death, a petition by a nearby resident urged City Council to paint a crosswalk at the intersection of Elliott and Second Street Southeast near the popular Ix Art Park; the quest failed to get the approval of the city officials.
“We collected 900 signatures, and they basically ignored us,” said Cox.
Cox’s efforts didn’t end with assisting the petition and making pleas to City Council. On May 5, he was back at the podium in council chambers championing the crosswalk proposal.
“Elliott Avenue has been poisoned,” Cox said, “by the deeply held design principle that Charlottesville is a collection of through roads for the city engineer and other county drivers to use as they tear through our town.”
“I would just encourage you,” interrupted Councilor Brian Pinkston, “to not use ad hominem attacks please.”
The remonstrance seemed to embolden Cox.
“Don’t interrupt me,” he fired back. “When the city engineer first arrived, he raised the speed limit on Locust [Avenue] from 25 to 35; that’s how he thinks.”
At the conclusion of his remarks, Cox earned a vigorous burst of applause from a girl in the gallery. Later, Cox’s supporters expressed shock at Pinkston’s allegation.
“I think Pinkston needs to have a lesson in rhetoric,” city resident Benjamin Heller told The Daily Progress. “He’s confusing ad hominem attacks with blasphemy laws.”
Heller commended Cox.
“He was critical of their philosophy,” said Heller. “Their philosophy favors cars over people.”
After several years in the post, Brennen Duncan was recently promoted from traffic engineer to city engineer. Duncan referred Daily Progress inquiries back to Schneider, the city spokeswoman, who supported Pinkston’s claim.
“When he moved from his opinions about Elliott Ave. to attacking the city engineer/traffic department,” Schneider said, “that became an ad hominem attack.”
Cox marked the crosswalk on last Saturday, and he attributes his arrest not to his deed but as retribution for his statements.
“They wanted to punish me,” he said. “It reflects a bad attitude on the part of the city staff that they’d use the process to punish me.”
Cox said he has been charged with intentional, property-damaging vandalism, a Class 1 misdemeanor punishable by up to 12 months in jail.
A day before he was handcuffed and then fingerprinted and photographed at the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail, Cox said he got wind that an arrest might be coming. He sent an email to The Daily Progress and James Freas, the deputy city manager for operations, asserting that he hadn’t damaged any property, that he’d used spray chalk. Later, Cox showed The Daily Progress an Amazon invoice for a pair of 15-ounce spray cans of Aervoe marking chalk, a product designed for athletic fields.
“Water soluble,” the seller notes on the Amazon. “Not water resistant.”
The city, however, chose not to wait for precipitation but instead promptly covered Cox’s crosswalk with a black compound. By the time The Daily Progress visited the site Wednesday, the once-opaque black compound had thinned enough to let Cox’s lines start showing through, while a nearby gutter that Cox sprayed Saturday showed the white pigment mostly washed away by recent rainfall.
Standing at the corner of his alleged crime, Cox pointed out that Virginia law already allows pedestrians to cross at most intersections.
“This is a legal crossing,” said Cox. “The drivers don’t know that, and so the crosswalks help alert the drivers.”
During The Daily Progress’ Wednesday afternoon visit, pedestrians were crossing at the rate of about one per minute. One of them was Aaron Lamb, heading home from Downtown to lower Belmont.
“It makes perfect sense to have a crosswalk,” said Lamb as he made the crossing.
Duncan, the city’s former traffic engineer, allegedly told Cox that people who wish to cross there should walk one block in either direction. However, each of those intersections is more than 300 feet away, and people on the north side have no sidewalk on which to tread that distance.
“The traffic engineers are trying to treat people like cattle who have to be herded,” said Cox, “but we’re like cats and don’t want to be herded.”
Cox’s first hearing, set for May 27, will likely be confined to asking if he plans to hire an attorney. He said he’s considering representing himself.
Source: www.dailyprogress.com
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